Social Sciences, Academic Autonomy Policies and Internationalization Strategies during the Last Argentinian Military Dictatorship (1974-1983) An Analysis of the Cases of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales and the Centro de Estudios de Estad

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, in a context of endemic political instability, the Argentinian university’s scientific system underwent a marked process of restraint in its academic autonomy. State universities were seized repeatedly by the authoritarian regimes, and decimated in their research and teaching activities. Nevertheless, with the core aim of reducing the growing situations of heteronomy regarding the sphere of power, some institutions that operated as havens for academic autonomy and displayed as a means of survival a strategy of international irradiation, emerged in the areas of the social sciences. From a historical-structural perspective, the text’s analysis focuses on two of the so-called “independent academic centers” of great relevance and significance in Argentina and in the Southern Cone: the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales and the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad. An emphasis is placed on the relationship/tension between the centers’ struggles for academic autonomy and the internationalization strategies they arrayed: the orchestration of support funds from abroad, disciplinary/professional external recognition, and the flow of international academic contacts.