Authority and Affection in Narratives about Bullying: notes on teachers’ point of view

Abstract

This paper analyzes how teachers from public schools in Rio de Janeiro describe and comment on episodes of bullying. Based upon a theoretical perspective that advocates for the understanding of “violence” as an emic category, analysis approaches the existence of a “semantic displacement” between “bullying” and “violence”. Its focus is on how teachers impose their authority in these contexts. Data is a set of 11 in-depth interviews conducted with teachers from public schools in Rio de Janeiro. Classical theories on authority, such as Max Weber’s and Bronislaw Malinowski’s works, are referred to in the final remarks in order to explore the way teachers’ strategies to enforce their authority when confronted with bullying episodes may contribute to the deepening of the understanding of the relations between affection and authority.