How Brazilian social scientists responded to the pandemic

Abstract

In this article, we propose a critical and situational assessment of Brazilian social scientists’ production on the COVID pandemic. We take stock of production within the context of the pandemic, yet also go further to sketch out some of the general characteristics of scientific production within Brazilian social sciences. Our major reference is a publication that, from within the social sciences, initiated an entire movement toward public reflections on the pandemic: the Social Scientists and Coronavirus Bulletin. It was published on a daily basis under the auspices of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (Anpocs), in partnership with other scientific associations. We argue that social sciences’ reaction to the pandemic both engages and contrasts with the tradition of debates on health within our disciplines. We also offer a classification scheme for the wide range of texts written “in the heat of the moment” by social scientists, in their quest to understand the pandemic and its effects. Finally, we offer a brief and descriptive analysis of the Bulletin’s texts characteristics, unfolding into a larger discussion of the institutional transformations that have marked Brazilian social sciences.