THE NORTHEASTERN INTELLECTUAL IN SOCIAL SCIENCES: THE CASE OF THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF CEARÁ (1950-1984).

• Grant number: 24/23033-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Marcia Cristina Consolim
• Grantee: Louise Uchoa Cruz
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to analyze the intellectual development trajectories of sociologists from the Northeast, based on the case of the Federal University of Ceará, from the perspective of the strategies developed to legitimize them in the Brazilian social sciences space. The period covered by this research, between 1950 and 1984, concerns the establishment of a relatively autonomous space for social sciences in Brazil, a context in which symbolic power is accumulated through specific capital, in titles, intellectual productions and international circulation (Miceli 1989). This research assumes that, in the period in question, Northeastern institutions occupied a dominant position in the space of postgraduate programs in social sciences in the country, and seeks to objectify the structural opposition between the Northeast and Southeast. This opposition is expressed, firstly, by the hierarchies between the more traditional and older institutions in the Southeast and the younger and therefore less legitimate institutions in the Northeast, but also, secondly, by the trajectories, intellectual practices and hierarchies of research objects/themes. These objective relationships, which still have an impact on the representations of intellectual circles today, were the result of the process of establishing the university field in Brazil. Thus, the aim is to investigate, more specifically, through the history of the institution and the trajectories of sociology professors at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), the field of possibilities for professors in the Department of Sociology. The hypothesis of the research is that UFC professors, who graduated in other states or in different courses, were driven to legitimize themselves, in the case of trajectories, by international circulation and, in the case of research lines, by focusing on objects and themes that were more "cultural" than "economic". Therefore, the aim is to answer the following question: what are the conditions for the "choice" of social sciences by these professors and, more than that, what career strategies were put into practice in relation to those of sociologists from the Southeast. The approach adopted is Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of intellectuals, according to which trajectories allow us to objectify, in comparative terms, the specificities of the consecration of a group of individuals in the context of the opposition between "center" and "periphery" within the country itself. To this end, we intend to conduct a prosopographic study of the chosen professors, as well as qualitative interviews with the most recognized intellectuals.