Abstract
Interpretation of the Brazilian reality is much older than the institutionalization of sociology. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the self-taught, dilettantes, and intellectuals from other disciplines have been publishing their views on contextual topics, such as the formation of the nation-state, identity, and racial miscegenation. This “social imagination” thought critically about the Brazilian reality. Proto-scientific writings appeared under the influence of both culturalism and positivism. The culturalist approach influenced further works and established a tradition called Essayism, which creatively combined literature, history, and sociology, whereas positivism waned in importance across the decades. These first “social imagineers” envisioned many of the issues further worked on by sociology in Brazil.
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Notes
- 1.
Later, the Law School of Olinda moved to Recife, the most developed city of the northeastern region, and the Law School of São Paulo was incorporated into the University of São Paulo (USP) in the 1930s.
- 2.
This was the deadliest war in Latin America. Paraguay fought against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay for territorial control.
- 3.
The abolition of slavery took place in 1888, a year before the Proclamation of the Republic.
- 4.
The Massacre of Canudos was the final act of a conflict between settlers and the Brazilian state in 1897 (see below for more details).
- 5.
These artists and intellectuals were the same who promoted the Week of Modern Art in 1922 (see below for further details).
- 6.
Ensaios de Filosofia do Direito (1895) (Essays on Philosophy of Law) and Introdução à História da Literatura Brasileira (Introduction to Brazilian Literature) (1881).
- 7.
Pierre-Guillaume-Frédéric Le Play (1806–1882) was a French economist who acknowledged the family as the cornerstone of any social structure through its support of the individual and the socialization environment of children. The family budget would be the source of primary empirical data for studying phenomena like the insertion of the family into the social structure.
- 8.
For instance, Os Africanos no Brasil (The Africans in Brazil) (1890–1905) and As raças humanas e a responsabilidade penal no Brasil (The Human Races and Criminal Responsibility in Brazil) (1894).
- 9.
Paulo Egídio was accepted as a member of the International Institute of Sociology in Paris, as a protégé of Gabriel Tarde.
- 10.
His main contribution on this topic is the book Estudos de Sociologia Criminal (Studies on Criminal Sociology) (1900).
- 11.
Questões vigentes de Filosofia e de Direito (Actual issues of Philosophy and Law) (1888).
- 12.
Although essayism is often characterized as something different from sociology because of its deep dialogue with other disciplines, we must consider whether sociology itself is not hybrid too. The interesting book Between Literature and Science (1994), by Wolf Lepenies, demonstrates how the trajectories and the works of Comte, Durkheim, and Weber have crucial connections between sociology other cultural areas, such as psychology, religion, and literature.
References
Celarent, B. (2017). Varieties of Social Imagination (A. Abbott, ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Chacon, V. (1977). A história das ideias sociológicas no Brasil. São Paulo: EDUSP.
Favero, M. d. L. A. (2006). A Universidade no Brasil: das origens à Reforma Universitária de 1968. Educar, 28, 17–36.
Skidmore, T. (1974). Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Domingos Cordeiro, V., Neri, H. (2019). Before the 1930s—Interpreting the Nation State: Sociological Imagination in a Pre-institutionalized Context. In: Sociology in Brazil. Sociology Transformed. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10439-9_2
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