Between Science and Politics: Donald Pierson and the quest for a scientific sociology in Brazil

Abstract

This paper analyzes the political dimension embedded in the work of the American sociologist Donald Pierson in Brazil. A former student of Robert Park at the University of Chicago, Pierson played a major role in the institutionalization of the social sciences in Brazil from the 1930s through the 1950s. While Pierson’s intellectual ambitions were centered on an academic agenda and he defended a strict division between science and politics, we argue that a proper historical understanding of his endeavor can only be achieved through an analysis of his underlying assumptions about the nature of both science and society – assumptions that were rooted in a reformist, liberal-democratic understanding of the world. To bring to light these values, we examine two key moments in Pierson’s career: 1) his doctoral research on race relations in Bahia, done in the mid-1930s; 2) his efforts to promote the field of sociology in Brazil during the Good Neighbor Policy and World War II, when he was hired to teach at the São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics.