Career Building in a Highly Politicized Period: Argentine Social Scientist in the 1960s

DIEZ, MARÍA AGUSTINA

The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America

Ashgate

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012; p. 187 - 203

Career Building in a High Politicized Period: Argentine Social Scientist in the 1960s María Agustina Diez The objective of this paper is to outline the development of certain academic practices and their relation to the way in which the agents in the field of social sciences built their academic careers in the 1966-1976 period. Through the research process, we could also notice that the careers analyzed provided information about key elements to understanding the history of a very specific period in the field of Argentine social sciences. All the specific literature reviewed regarding the last dictatorships denounces the profound damage inflicted to the academic field by military interventions. Despite this, we consider that the intervention resulting from the 1966 coup d’etat in Argentina did not completely dismantle knowledge production in the social sciences. Even though social scientists underwent forced relocation processes within the academic field, they also appropriated new spaces, entering into dialogue with private centers and bringing about reconversions of capitals acquired in the previous stage. In turn, the growing politicization and radicalization process permeated the whole scientific-university field, and therefore, the academic practices of social scientists. We are interested in the way all these processes influenced academic career building.