Social Sciences, Intellectual Work, and Autonomy: Four Case Studies about Ourselves

Abstract

Social Sciences, Intellectual Work, and Autonomy: Four Case Studies about Ourselves How do social scientists work in academia? What are the effects of temporal acceleration and neoliberal regulation on the daily practices of these professionals? This article discusses these issues through the empirical analysis of four case studies on work practices of social scientists based on semi-structured interviews with university professors from the city of Rio de Janeiro. The collected data were analyzed from three main axes: a) the construction of strategies of intellectual autonomy in the daily work of the teachers; b) the tension between individual strategies and the demands of institutional life in universities and c) the particularities of the Brazilian case and the need for a critical dialogue with the international bibliography, which is excessively concentrated in the reality of the Northern Hemisphere.