Banca de DEFESA: FLAVIANA MORAES PANTOJA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : FLAVIANA MORAES PANTOJA
DATE: 11/02/2026
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: VIDEOCONFERÊNCIA
TITLE:

Power, Gender, and Enchanted Beings: An Analysis of Caboclo Pajelança in the Amazon (1890-1930).

 

KEY WORDS:

Pajelança Cabocla; Gender; Criminalization; Belém (PA); Social History; 
Coloniality.

 

PAGES: 248
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: História
SUMMARY:

This thesis analyzes pajelança cabocla, an Afro-Indigenous healing practice, from the
perspective of gender and the power asymmetries that permeated popular healing
between the 1890s and 1930s in Belém, Pará. The central objective is to investigate how
the hygienist project of the time instrumentalized legal and media apparatuses to
criminalize pajelança and how this discursive and judicial operation selectively
imposed the stigma based on gender patterns, promoting persecution of female
healers/pajés in contrast to their male counterparts. The study adopts an intersectional
approach, considering the categories of gender, race, and class, and uses the Pará press
and judicial records from the District of Belém as sources. The methodology employs
Discourse Analysis, grounded in Foucault and decolonial theory. The results
demonstrate that the criminalization of pajelança was not just a clash for medical
hegemony, but an operation of social control and epistemic violence, in which the
popular care exercised by racialized and poor women was converted into transgression
and the stigma of "sorceress," while male pajés showed a greater capacity for agency
and negotiation with power structures. It is concluded that the repression of pajelança
during the period was a systematic project that policed gender boundaries, disciplining
bodies and knowledge to ensure the maintenance of the patriarchal and hygienist order.

 

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externa à Instituição - FRANCIANE GAMA LACERDA - UFPA
Externo à Instituição - ALDRIN MOURA DE FIGUEIREDO - UFPA
Externa à Instituição - ANA PAULA VOSNE MARTINS - UFPR
Interna - 1718370 - LUCIANA MENDES GANDELMAN
Presidente - 386989 - MARGARETH DE ALMEIDA GONCALVES