ODEBRECHT AWARD FOR HISTORICAL RESEARCH - CLARIVAL DO PRADO VALLADARES

CULTURAL HERITAGE, MEMORY AND INFORMATION

Abstract

The objective is to analyze the significance of the Odebrecht Prize for Historical Research—Clarival do Prado Valladares—for Novonor’s institutional memory and for the cultural heritage of Salvador, by identifying and characterizing works related to the city. This study is a documentary, qualitative, and descriptive research project, with a corpus consisting of the thirteen books published between 2005 and 2017 and institutional documents. The analysis considered the categories of recorded information, cultural heritage, institutional memory, and representations of Salvador, with interpretations grounded in Peircean semiotics. The results identified seven works related to Salvador—three with a specific focus and four with a tangential one—that document and disseminate different historical, cultural, and heritage aspects of the city. The publications constitute interpretive snapshots that highlight specific spaces, institutions, figures, and cultural expressions. The Award’s relationship with institutional memory, in turn, involves processes of recording, representation, and the incorporation of the initiative into the organization’s narratives. It is concluded that the publications function as documents and signs that materialize and circulate information, contributing to the construction of meaning about the past and highlighting the relationships between information, memory, and cultural heritage.