Politics, Academy, and National Reality. Controversy spaces in Argentinean social sciences during the decade of 1960

GIL, GASTÓN JULIÁN

Dublin

Conferencia; ISA RCHS Interim Conference "CHANGING UNIVERSITIES: CHANGING SOCIOLOGY"; 2012

ISA

Social sciences in Latin America experienced, during the decade of 1960, a great number of debates concerning the very foundations of different academic fields. In the concrete case of Argentina, research programs such as "Proyecto Marginalidad" constituted fundamental issues of those controversy spaces which were characteristic of disciplinary developments of social sciences, particularly sociology. Mainly influenced by the critical context that had been deepened by Project Camelot, Argentinean social scientists got engaged in debates about the theories that should be chosen in order to account for "national reality", the origins of fundings for scientific research, or the applied dimension of science. In this sense, the practices of philanthropic organizations like Ford Foundation stimulated considerably the ideological passions of that period; those practices also contributed to fragmentation in various academic groups. In this way, the problem of American imperialism, and its consequent economic and cultural dependence, were present in the controversy spaces of academic fields whose historic evolutions cannot be fully understood without considering their strong links with national and international politics.