TRIBO EMO: EMOÇÕES COMO MEDIAÇÕES CONSTITUTIVAS DA ADOLESCÊNCIA

Abstract

In this study, we researched the meaning of being an adolescent for ten members of the urban tribe named emotional hardcore (EMO) in the municipality of Goiânia, in the state of Goiás, Brazil. We intended to grasp the senses and the meanings that adolescents belonging to the EMO tribe attribute to adolescence and the emotional dimensions that are present in their relationships with themselves, their peers, their families, their schools, and society. This research aimed at offering a contribution to social psychology, broadening the knowledge about adolescence from the perspective of social historical psychology in relation to the singularity of the individual and the social subjectivity in which the study participants are inserted. This study was carried out based on social historical psychology and on Vigotski, its main representative, who used the dialectical materialism as a philosophy, theory, and method. We employed qualitative research using the methodological proposal of triangulation procedure: simple observation, interviews, and focus groups. Participants were ten adolescents, ranging from 15 to 17 years old, five of each sex, members of the EMO tribe. In this study, we gave these adolescents the chance of being heard, which opened the possibility of understanding them as significant individuals, who have things to say, to do, to think about, who are aware of what is going on around them, and who reflect the events of human life, revealing how they are constituted and how they constitute themselves based on their social relationships. Therefore, at first, the analysis of the senses and meanings that emerged during this research revealed that adolescence means a time to make a mess, passage and transition, pressure, conflicts, uncertainties, loneliness, as well as a time for discoveries and challenges; in a second moment, it showed that the participants correlated adolescence with their spaces in the EMO tribe, in their families, and in their schools, also allowing us to grasp both the senses and meanings of sexuality and prejudice experienced by the adolescents belonging to the EMO tribe.