ÉMILE-GUILLAUME LÉONARD AND THE PROTESTANT RELIGIOUS DOMINANCE IN BRAZIL

BIOBIOGRAPHICAL PATHS

Abstract

How can we understand the construction of Brazilian politics today without a rigorous analysis of the formation of the pluralities of Protestant denominations in the country, from the perspective of informational influence and its consequences? Starting from this question, the research problematizes knowledge of and about religion as one of the greatest challenges in studies on social relations in any society. From this point of view, the study questions the religious dimension through the lens of informational research. The objective is to identify and problematize the role of Émile-Guillaume Léonard through the theoretical-methodological lens of his work via Information Science, specifically, via Bibliography. As specific objectives, it proposes to recognize the informational and historiographical practices of the researcher and to contextualize the importance of his bibliographic work for the domain of religious information in the first half of the 20th century, the period in which he worked in Brazil. This is a qualitative, exploratory, and bibliographical research, based on a historical and biobibliographical epistemology. The construction of the bibliography is seen here as an integral part of the development of not only meta-knowledge, Information Science and its frontiers, but also fundamental knowledge for other analytical and scientific dimensions, such as the sciences of religion, based on the trajectory of an author's thought and work in their space and time. The results point to the innovative contributions of Émile-Guillaume Léonard, through the theoretical and methodological structure of Bibliography, to understanding the construction of religion in Brazil, focusing on Protestant formations.