Abstract

GIORGI, Guido Ignacio. Social sciences, catholicism and politics: Episodes in the public trajectory of José Luis de Ímaz. Soc. relig. [online]. 2017, vol.27, n.47, pp.102-133. ISSN 1853-7081.

The name of Argentinian sociologist José Luis de Ímaz is usually linked to his most famous academic opus: Those who rule, published in 1964. Nevertheless, his political and academic trajectory goes through five decades, embedded in two overlapped social worlds: the catholic movement and the social sciences. This paper examines the repertoire of his public interventions as a social scientist, a catholic cadre and as politician. In each episode, we consider de Ímaz aimed to have impact on public affairs, by suggesting courses of action, issuing draft bills, delivering situational diagnosis or even accepting political positions either in dictatorships or democratic governments. Behind these public interventions lays the very same cosmovision inspired in the communitarianism of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. The reconstruction of de Ímaz biography allows us to know better the relationship between religion and politics, by studying a number of experiences in which converge the religious world and social sciences world in Argentina during the XXth Century.

Keywords : Argentine; Catholicism; Trajectorie; Intelectuals; Political Sociology.