XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Lombrosians and lombrosianism in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires

• In Event: Rethinking Racial Hierarchies: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Built Environment in São Paulo (SESSION II)

Abstract

Cesare Lombroso and his scuola positiva of criminal anthropology were highly influential in forming the social sciences and ethnographic sensibility in Brazil and Argentina. Rather than carefully read or analysed, Lombroso and his school were cited, interpreted and somewhat creolized according to modalities specific to the socio-racial context, revealing significant historical entanglements between social scientists in Italy and Latin America (as shown by the sojourns of the Italian scholars Guglielmo Ferrero, Gina Lombroso and Enrico Ferri in 1907-1910). The complex and never-passive process of reception and reinterpretation of Lombrosian ideas was characterized by a dynamic of attraction and rejection. This article examines the reception and influence of “Lombrosianism” in S. Paulo, which was quite different from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires – the three cities were competing for the status of the cultural capital of South America.

Author

• Livio Sansone, UFBA