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IBGE - Brazilian Statistical and Geographic Institute

05/28/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/28/2021 14:16

IBGE launches book by Nilo Bernardes with the grounds of geographical thinking in Brazil May 28, 2021

  • At a glance

  • With 500 copies published, 'Initiation to Geography' results from a partnership between the IBGE Memory Project and the Brazilian Journal of Geography.
  • The author died in a car accident in 1991, leaving the work unfinished.
  • The geographer's family presents manuscripts of book aimed at university students.

Today (May 28) the IBGE launches the book Initiation to Geography.. It is an unprecedented work by geographer and professor Nilo Bernardes - dead in 1991 - who worked at the IBGE from 1945 to 1982, having also taught at Colégio Pedro II - a very renowned school - and at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Rio), as well as at the Postgraduate School of the History Department of the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).

Initially, the work was meant to be a series gradually published by the end of the 1980s, with content for the initial periods of graduation. However, in 1991, a car accident in the Região dos Lagos victimized Mr. and Mrs. Bernardes. The tragedy took away from the national scenario two professionals of relevant contributions in the world of Geography in its most varied spheres - scientific, academic, institutional and educational. As a result, the book was left unfinished.

Book addresses fundamental content for geographers, such as the importance of fieldwork - Art: Helga Szpiz / IBGE News Agency

In 2017, Angela Cavalcanti Bernardes, one of the couple's daughters, came to the Brazilian Journal of Geography and to the IBGE Department of Geography to propose the edition of the work, entrusting the Institute with the custody of the handwritten and typewritten originals, which became now public. In a moving preface, the daughter herself recalls her relationship with her parents and their trips throughout the interior of the country. Nilo and Lysia met at the National Council of Geography (CNG) and participated, together or in separate teams, in pioneering field trip data collection. They got married in 1948 and had four children.

In, fundamental contents aimed at professionals in the field are addressed, such as the importance of fieldwork and how it should be organized, the relationship between Geography and other areas of knowledge, the emergence of environmental issues in geographic studies and the value of geographic explanation. The introduction of 'Initiation to Geography', contextualizing the thinking of that time, was written by professor Sergio Nunes Pereira, from the UFF Department of Geography and specialist in the history of geographical thought.

'More than a tribute to Professor Bernardes, the book recovers the history of how the geographical thinking was formed in Brazil', explains Maria Lúcia Vilarinhos, executive-editor of the Brazilian Journal of Geography and head of the project. Since the beginning of the book's elaboration, in the 1980s up to nowadays, Geography has undergone deep changes, not only because of new technologies that had an impact on the field, but also because of the emergence of new themes.

According to Ms. Vilarinhos, even though it is an unfinished work and there is a time gap between its writing and publication, the book brings important perspective on themes always present in geographic studies. 'Targeted at the educational field, the absence of the book was much felt at the time, but even today it can fulfill its role', claims the IBGE geographer.

This online edition is the result of a partnership between the IBGE Memory Project and the Brazilian Journal of Geography (RBG).The series, since the 1990s, has been bringing to the public studies developed by IBGE professionals who have stood out in their specific knowledge fields.