Biblioteca de Ciências Sociais: the Editorial Project of North American Social Science in Brazil, 1943-1950

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Abstract

This paper examines the Biblioteca de Ciências Sociais (BCS), a book series organized by the American sociologist Donald Pierson during his tenure at the Escola Livre de Sociologia e Política (ELSP) and published by Livraria Martins Editora in São Paulo between 1943 and 1950. The BCS represents a significant yet understudied episode in the history of social science in Brazil. Comprising eleven titles in twelve volumes, the collection introduced Brazilian readers to foundational works of North American social science, including authors such as Ralph Linton, Robert Redfield, Louis Thurstone, and Robert MacIver, whose individual prestige lent the collection significant symbolic capital within the emerging Brazilian academic field. The collection thus operated at the intersection of cultural diplomacy, academic institution-building, and the emerging market for scientific publishing in mid-twentieth-century Brazil.
The research adopts a historical-sociological approach, combining archival research with sociology of knowledge, particularly the concepts of the social conditions of intellectual production. The analysis draws primarily on the Donald Pierson Papers, housed at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, including correspondence exchanged between Pierson, the Martins publishing house, North American authors, and American funding agencies such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Understanding the BCS's trajectory illuminates broader dynamics of center-periphery relations in knowledge production, contributing to scholarship on the internationalization of the social sciences and theories of dependent internationalism.

Authors

• Jonatas Oliveira Pantoja, University of São Paulo

• Marcia Cristina Consolim, Federal University of São Paulo