Abstract

GRONDONA, Ana. Argentine Sociology of Mentalities from Ingenieros to Germani: Races, History and Scientific Discourse From the Perspective of a History of the Present from the South. Temas debates (En línea) [online]. 2021, n.42, pp.13-37. ISSN 1853-984X.

This paper presents a review of the ways in which Argentine sociology analysed the relationship between mentalities, races and history. In particular, we are interested in proposing a perspective that, informed by the history of the present, constitutes a series that puts together (and contrasts) the ways in which these questions were treated at the dawn of sociology and in Gino Germani’s scientific project. The outcome of such exercise will force us to critically return to the genealogy of racism proposed by Michel Foucault in his 1976 seminar at the Collège de France. The text is organized in four sections. In the first place, we will present the documents that we have analysed and look into the way in which the race struggle is built as a historical discourse. Then, we will relate our findings to some of the aforementioned Foucauldian thematization of the history of racism. Next, we review the ways in which the historical narrative of the race struggle was conjugated in the sociology of the early twentieth century in a language that claimed to be scientific. Then, we will give way to the relationship between those original texts and the scientific sociology of Gino Germani to, finally, rise some questions to take this research forward.

Keywords : Argentine sociology; Genealogy of racism; History of mentalities.

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