Sebastião Vila Nova was born in Rio Largo, Alagoas, on 18 January 1944. His family moved to Recife while he was still a child. From a poor background, he had to work at a young age: selling Christmas baskets door to door; working as a radio actor on radio soap operas at the Tamandaré and Clube radio stations, being paid for roles that needed a child’s voice; office boy, in a glass company; shop assistant at the bookstore Companhia Editora Nacional, where he met many Pernambuco intellectuals and made many friends.
He completed his primary education at suburban private schools and in public schools.
In 1966, he entered the Olinda Seminary, staying there for one year.
He graduated from the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Recife, in 1971. From 1972 to 1973, he did a post-graduate course in the Integrated Masters Programme in Economics and Sociology, also at UFPE and, in 1989, the Advanced Course in English Language at the American Language Institute of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
He composed and directed the music of several plays staged by the now defunct Teatro Popular do Nordeste (Northeast Popular Theatre).
In 1974 he won the Recife Award for Humanities with the essay A realidade social da ficção: uma sociologia paralela (The Social Reality of Fiction: A Parallel Sociology), republished in 2005 by the Editora Massangana of the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation.
He carried out various activities as a professor and department head at UFPE and Universidade Católica de Pernambuco. He was a visiting professor at the International University in Lisbon, at the masters in no Political Science of Lusófona University, also in Lisbon, and at the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago.
In December 2002 he received the title of ‘Cidadão de Pernambuco’ (Citizen of Pernambuco), granted by the State Legislative Assembly.
Researcher at the then-called Joaquim Nabuco Institute for Social Research, today the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, he was Superintendent of the Tropicology Institute and editor of Fundaj’s official magazine, Ciência & Trópico (Science and Tropics) (1991-2002).
He is the author of various books, including Introdução à sociologia (Introduction to Sociology), his most well-known work, published in several editions after the first in 1981; A realidade social da ficção: uma sociologia paralela (1975); Teoria completa dos dias e das noites (Complete Theory of Days and Nights) (poetry, 1979); Desigualdade, classe e sociedade: uma introdução aos princípios e problemas da estratificação social (Inequality, Class and Society: An Introduction to the Principles and Problems of Social Stratification) (1982); Ciência social: humanismo ou técnica?: ensaios sobre problemas de teoria, pesquisa e planejamento social (Social Science: Humanism or Technique?: Essays on the Problems of Theory, Research and Social Planning) (1985); Sociologias & pós-sociologia em Gilberto Freyre: algumas fontes e afinidades teóricas e metodológicas do seu pensamento (Sociologies and Post-sociology in Gilberto Freyre: Some Sources and Theoretical and Methodological Affinities of his Thinking) (1995); Donald Pierson e a Escola de Chicago na sociologia brasileira: entre humanistas e messiânicos (Donald Pierson and the Chicago School in Brazilian Sociology: Between Humanists and Messianics) (1998).
He was a contributor to the Recife Newspapers Diario de Pernambuco and Jornal do Commercio, from the 1970s, which published hundreds of his articles on sociology, music and literature.
Due to health problems, he retired in 2003.
Recife, 25 January 2008.
(Updated on 31 August 2009).
Translated by Peter Leamy, March 2011.
sources consulted
VILA NOVA, Sebastião. Discurso de agradecimento à Câmara dos Deputados de Pernambuco pela recepção do título de Cidadão Pernambucano, por indicação do deputado estadual Carlos Lapa. Recife, 2002.
______. Curriculum-vitae. Recife, 2000.
how to quote this text
Source: GASPAR, Lúcia. Sebastião Vila Nova. Pesquisa Escolar On-Line, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Recife. Available at: <http://basilio.fundaj.gov.br/pesquisaescolar/>. Accessed: day month year. Exemple: 6 Aug. 2009.