Autoethnographies and Analysis of the Pandemic by Neophytes in Anthropology: Discoveries, Reinventions, and Sensitivities

Abstract

This paper brings to light perceptions that 84 students had from the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of them freshmen in social sciences at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). From autoethnographies and reports, interpreted in dialogue with anthropological classic texts and articles by Brazilian anthropologists, we are introduced to various spaces of confinement, different family arrangements, sufferings, doubts, discoveries and reinventions. In the midst of an unusual context, fundamentals of anthropology proved to be capable of broadening cognitive and analytical horizons, contributing to the resignification of experiences and emotions.