This Palgrave Pivot offers a comprehensive portrayal of the development of sociology in Argentina from the mid-1950s to the present day. This first long-term account in English maps the discipline's troubled trajectory and its close relation to the broader (and turbulent) Argentinian political and economic context, and provides a dramatic exemplification of the politicization and polarization of an academic field and its consequences. Divided in seven chapters, this book examines the sharply different phases that the discipline went through: from the pioneering 1950s, in which sociology was presented as a science, to the activist revolt in the 1960s, led by the student movement, to the traumatic experience of the 1970s, when a cruel dictatorship was established and many sociologists were persecuted, and from its progressive recovery from the 1980s to its current growing (yet unstable) presence within academia, and within state agencies, corporations and consulting agencies, and NGOs.This work will appeal to social scientists and students interested in the relations between academia and politics, and to a general readership interested in the recent history of Argentina and Latin-America.

Highlights the importance of institutions and funding to understanding sociologist's practices Maps the main transformations of the field against the broader (and turbulent) Argentinian social and political context Extends beyond analysis of sociology as an academic discipline to address the constitution of sociology as a consulting profession

Autorentext

Juan Pedro Blois is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and a professor at the National University of General Sarmiento. He has been a visiting scholar at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the University of South Florida, and the University of Columbia, US.

Inhalt
1.Introduction.- 2.The Modernization of the Social Sciences: Gino Germani and Sociology as a Science (19551966).- 3. Expansion, Politicization, and the Emergence of a National Sociology (19661974).- 4.Authoritarianism, Censorship, and the Retreat of Sociology (19741983).- 5.The Restoration of Democracy and the Recovery of Sociology (19831989).- 6.Academic Professionalization and the Making of Sociology as a Consultant Profession (1989 to the Present).- 7.Concluding Remarks: The Specter of Sisyphus.