Romão, José Eustáquio2004Romão , J E 2004 , ' A civilização do oprimido ' , Campus Social : Revista Lusófona de Ciências Sociais .1645-9857Campus Social : Revista Lusófona de Ciências SociaisIt is important to define the terms culture, civilization and paradigm. Starting with the premise that all peoples have their cultures, this text studies the formation of culture as a process that results from three different processes, namely, productive, social and symbolic. All three jointly make the “civilizing process” or a process of search of full realization of humaneness. It is proposed as hypothesis that this process is only possible with the help of the oppressed, viewed as historical agents and not in ontological terms, because there is no “oppressed in se”, nor an “oppressor in se”. Both are the outcome of historical relationships. A worker may be an oppressed in his factory, but an oppressor of his own wife and children at home. The “civilizing impulse” is seen as resulting from the human consciousness of imperfection and consequent search of perfection and of the need for change of conditions of suffering. It is the movement of change that leads to “civilization”, not the institutionalization and structuring of the gains.application/pdfporopenAccessSOCIOLOGIAHISTÓRIA DA CULTURASOCIOLOGYCULTURAL HISTORYarticle