Elites acadêmicas: As ciências sociais na Academia Brasileira de Ciências

Abstract

The objective of this article is to highlight a particular pattern in the scientific careers of the 30 Social Science section members of the centennial Brazilian Academy of Science. Created in 2000, the section is composed of anthropology, demography, political science, economics, geography, history, international relations and sociology, disciplines around which hierarchies and differentiations materialize. Academics are characterized by a series of elements: geographical origin, gender, age and scientific education. It is evident that the path leading to scientific capital and notoriety is merged with that of institution-building through the support that enabled the institutionalization of these sciences in the country between 1960 and 1980. Academic elites, as they are constructed today, demonstrate a form of consecration whose main principle is to conduct the selective recognition of peers. This symbolic action reveals traces of possible social conditions of the academic life in the country.