Abstracts - "Education, Academic Production and Good Neighborhood"
Thiago da Costa Lopes, Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/ Fiocruz
Sociologists go to war: social sciences and cultural diplomacy in Brazil-US relations (1939-1945)
In the 1930s and 1940s, Social Sciences in Brazil were largely impacted by the work of scholars from Europe and the US in their process of institutionalization as an academic activity within the country's universities. The historiographical debates about the issue still lack, however, more systematic analyses on the historical circumstances in which these cross-border movements occurred.
Based on archival research in Brazil and the US, this paper brings together elements for a preliminary analysis of how World War II influenced Brazil-USA relations in the realm of Social Sciences. The period allows us to reflect on how the history of sociology and anthropology was deeply interwoven with the history of international relations and cultural diplomacy.
While Social Sciences were taking their first steps in Brazilian academia, F. D. Roosevelt Administration launched its well-known diplomatic efforts to bring Latin America closer to the US in the international arena. The imminence of a world conflict in the late 1930s, and its outbreak shortly afterwards, gave a new impetus to the Good Neighbor Policy. Concerns over what was called “hemispheric solidarity” in the face of the rising global threat represented by Fascism led the US to a strong investment in the field of technical and scientific cooperation with the other "American Republics". This process had decisive implications, not yet fully examined in its historical contingencies and details, for the history of Social Sciences in the Americas.
The paper addresses the key role played by three social scientists during the wartime diplomatic efforts involving Brazil and the US: the Brazilian anthropologist Arthur Ramos and the US sociologists Donald Pierson and T. Lynn Smith. Ramos was an important broker in the attempts of both Pierson and Smith to connect with Brazilian intellectual circles while his own career benefited from US efforts to bring Brazil closer to the “democratic fight” against the Axis powers. Ramos’ trip to the US in 1940 allowed him to strengthen his ties to US academia and consolidate his identity and activities as a “true” professional anthropologist working at Universidade do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro. In the case of Pierson, the Good Neighbor Policy offered him the grounds to pursue the ambitious project of turning sociology into an empirically based social science, an agenda which he sought to fulfill while working as a professor at Escola de Sociologia e Política in São Paulo. Finally, Smith, a professor at Louisiana State University, was able to expand the inter-American networks of rural sociology (his field of expertise) and the empirical universe available to his discipline (centered on the study of rural communities) after being assigned by the Roosevelt Administration to work as an agricultural analyst in Rio’s Embassy in 1941-42, amid US concerns over food supply and the production of strategic raw materials for the war.
Focusing on the travels of Smith, the paper examines not only how his commitment to fostering social-scientific exchanges was related to the Good Neighbor Policy and the war efforts but also how his substantive sociological views about Brazil were informed by geopolitical imaginaries and anxieties stemming from the global conflict.
Adriana Mendonça Cunha, Fiocruz
Inter-American relations and educational exchanges in times of war: Robert King Hall's travels to Brazil (1940-1942).
This work addresses the travels of American researcher Robert King Hall to Brazil between 1940 and 1942. Pursuing his doctorate in comparative education at the University of Michigan (UM), Hall investigated federal control of secondary education in three Latin American republics: Argentina, Brazil and Chile. In 1940, he obtained a scholarship for a six-month stay in Brazil through the Brazilian Fellowship Program, signed between UM and the Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos (IBEU). The objective of the program was to promote educational exchange between the two countries and its creation accompanied changes in the United States' foreign policy towards Latin America in the 1930s. Concerned about the intensification of relations between Nazi Germany and countries on the continent, the government American sought to strengthen economic, political and cultural ties with Latin Americans through the so-called Good Neighbor Policy. With the outbreak of the Second World War (1939-1945), cultural diplomacy became a decisive instrument to contain Axis influence in the region. It was at this juncture that Robert King Hall undertook his investigations into Latin American education. When he arrived in Brazil in 1940, the country had become the focus of American foreign policy. The abundance of strategic materials, the commercial and cultural relations maintained with Germany and the strong presence of Axis immigrants were crucial elements for the interests of the Roosevelt government, which wanted to make the country the main ally of the United States on the continent. Interested in discussing the role of education in the formation of authoritarian regimes, Hall studied the secondary education reforms organized by the Vargas government. He also drew his attention to the process of nationalization of foreigners promoted by the Estado Novo (1937-1945). Not by chance, he visited regions of German and Japanese colonization in the states of São Paulo and Santa Catarina to observe the reforms that were being implemented there. The region, marked by the strong presence of a population from Axis countries, was seen not only as an obstacle to Vargas' nationalist projects, but also as a threat to inter-American security. The topic aroused the interest of Hall, who saw the language as an important element in containing the advance of the Axis on the continent. The mandatory use of Portuguese would promote the nationalization of immigrants living in Brazil, making them, in fact, Brazilian citizens. At the same time, Hall drew attention to the importance of spreading the English language in promoting exchanges between the United States and Latin America. Working with the Commission on English Language Studies, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and linked to Harvard University, Hall returned to Latin America in 1942, to develop activities related to this topic in Argentina and Brazil. By analyzing the observations, meetings and networks built by Hall during these trips, I sought to demonstrate how they were crucial not only for shaping his trajectory as a specialist in comparative education, but for his performance as an intellectual aligned with the geopolitical interests of the United States. in building its hegemony during and after the war.
Talita Emily Fontes da Silva, PPGHCS/ COC/ Fiocruz
On the margins of good neighborliness: The Brazil-United States Institute and the Challenges of U.S. Cultural Diplomacy (1939 – 1941)
This presentation aims to discuss the fluctuating position of U.S. cultural diplomacy between the late 1930s and early 1940s, focusing on the trajectory of the Brazil-United States Institute (IBEU) during its initial years of operation. We will explore how the challenges faced by the Institute, inaugurated in 1937, and the subsequent efforts to ensure its continuity, illustrate the tensions, dilemmas, and diversity of actors involved in the establishment and execution of cultural relations activities amidst the strengthening of the Good Neighbor policy. The starting point of our analysis is the year 1939, when the IBEU, after two years in existence, faced difficulties in securing solid funding sources. It was during this period that the writer Levi Carneiro, the active president of the Institute, published a brief report in which, despite praising the relevance of the initiative, he presented an unfavorable outlook for the organization's continuity. Being a non-governmental entity aimed at “promoting, by all convenient means, the expansion of cultural relations between Brazil and the United States”, the IBEU was established with the favorable winds of Pan-American integration, led by the United States, as one of its fundamental drivers. This initiative had, until that moment, one of its main expressions in the Convention for the Promotion of Inter-American Cultural Relations, endorsed at the Buenos Aires Conference (1936). However, the expectation of channeling some of the projects and promises established in Buenos Aires turned into demands and frustrations. As the IBEU and its governing boards, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, sought support from the State Department in Washington D.C., the newly inaugurated Division of Cultural Relations began its activities timidly, with a low budget and under an improvised tone that added to a series of doubts about the limits of the sector's actions. The Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, himself stated that the Division, created in 1938, was a completely new and unprecedented initiative to guide its planners (ARNDT, 2005, p. 65). In this context, our goal is to demonstrate, through the debates that involved the maintenance of the IBEU's activities, how between the discourse of the Good Neighbor policy and practice, U.S. cultural diplomacy on the brink of war was situated in a field full of doubts and inaccuracies, subject to local pressures and dissatisfactions.