A collective intellectual biography that sheds new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy.
Would the most recognizable ideas in the French social sciences have developed without the influence of Brazilian intellectuals? While any study of Brazilian social sciences acknowledges the influence of French scholars, Ian Merkel argues the reverse is also true: the French social sciences were profoundly marked by Brazilian intellectual thought, particularly through the University of Sao Paulo. Through the idea of the cluster, Merkel traces the intertwined networks of Claude Levi-Strauss, Fernand Braudel, Roger Bastide, and Pierre Monbeig as they overlapped at USP and engaged with Brazilian scholars such as Mario de Andrade, Gilberto Freyre, and Caio Prado Jr..
Through this collective intellectual biography of Brazilian and French social sciences, Terms of Exchange reveals connections that shed new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy, even as it prompts us to revisit established thinking on the process of knowledge formation through fieldwork and intellectual exchange. At a time when canons are being rewritten, this book reframes the history of modern social scientific thought.
Title: Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the French Social Sciences (The Life of Ideas)
Author: Merkel, Ian
ISBN: 9780226819365
Binding:
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 2022-04-29
Number of Pages: 272
Weight: 0.5218 kg
A rich examination of the intriguing crossings between Brazilian and French social sciences from the 1930s to the 1950s, Terms of Exchange offers the first history of the interactions among such characters as Roger Bastide, Claude Levi-Strauss, Arthur Ramos, Caio Prado Jr., Florestan Fernandes, Paul Rivet, Gilberto Freyre, and Fernand Braudel. * Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, University of Chicago *
This book reconsiders the intellectual itineraries of the French professors who came to Sao Paulo to found USP. Challenging traditional geographies of knowledge, Merkel situates the Brazilian experience of social scientists such as Braudel and Levi-Strauss at the center of important epistemological inflections of the mid-twentieth century. * Gabriela Pellegrino Soares, University of Sao Paulo *
Merkel explores with brio a little-known episode of transatlantic intellectual history: the prewar dialectics of exchange between a small group of not-yet-famous French visiting professors at the University of Sao Paulo and their Brazilian hosts. The great merit of the book is to highlight the weight of their Brazilian experience on those who later deeply transformed the French social sciences. * Philippe Descola, author of Beyond Nature and Culture *