Micro-histórias da violência e do crime sobre os sujeitos infantis no Rio Grande do Sul (Primeira República)

Abstract

This study, situated within the field of the History of Education, aims to identify and analyze the regimes of educability and legal narratives concerning violence and criminality involving child subjects during the First Brazilian Republic (1890–1930) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The research draws upon criminal case files preserved at the Public Archives of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (APERS), which document incidents involving children who were victims of physical, symbolic, and sexual violence, mistreatment, and infanticide. The study seeks to highlight the social and legislative transformations related to the care and protection of childhood and youth, in a context where children were perceived at times as corruptive subjects and at other times as vulnerable individuals, susceptible to exploitation, coercion, and various forms of violence. By analyzing cases originating from local police departments and prosecuted by the Public Ministry, the research intends to understand the legal representations constructed around the universe of childhood, as well as the prevailing regime of educability. The investigation is grounded in Foucauldian concepts of violence, sexuality, abnormality, and microphysics, and is methodologically supported by microhistory, drawing particularly on the works of Carlo Ginzburg and Boris Fausto. The reconstruction of these micro-histories of violence allows for the identification of how medical and legal knowledge produced representations and outlined embryonic mechanisms of protection and care aimed at child victims of violence. A detailed analysis of the criminal cases revealed the recurrence of three main typologies of offenses against child subjects: physical violence, sexual violence, and infanticide.