Susan Leigh Star (1954-2010): trajetória de vida, levantamento da obra e seleção de alguns conceitos-chave

Abstract

Susan Leigh Star (Leigh) was an author who contributed to several fields of knowledge in areas such as Sociology, Computing, Design, Museology, and, mainly, the area in which this thesis belongs, the studies in Science, Technology, and Society. Although the author has several contributions to these and other fields of study, she is not well-known or debated in Brazil. From this context, in this dissertation, we had the main goal to present Leigh’s trajectory, systematize the work of (and about) the author, and comment on some key concepts chosen to interpret her works. As specific goals, we highlight our intention to produce a biographical narrative of the author, the division of periods of her works, the definition of basic concepts for understanding her literature, an extensive listing of his complete work, and a collection of metadata of her work. To achieve these goals, we adopted an extensive survey of the works of (and about) Leigh, such as books, book chapters, academic articles, newspaper articles, websites, blogs, and others. Being qualitative and exploratory research, we adopted a bibliographic review process of all the material found in our survey. In the first chapter, Introduction, we present our justification, objectives, method, and thesis structure. In the second chapter, Trajectory of Susan Leigh Star, we structured Leigh’s biographical trajectory, from the author’s childhood until her death, and summarized her main periods of literary production, from her first publications to posthumous tributes for the author. The third chapter, Key Concepts for Understanding the literary work, summarizes the main concepts for understanding Leigh’s thoughts. In the last chapter, Summary, we present a summary of the chapters worked on throughout the thesis, notes for future studies, and some considerations about Leigh’s work. As a result, in this thesis, we believe we have contributed with a systematic survey to a greater understanding of the author’s biographical trajectory, the main themes and objects worked on in each period of her production, the definition of basic concepts for understanding her work, an extensive list of her literary, and with a collection of free and open access metadata of all the author’s production.