How Brazilian social scientists responded to the pandemic

Rodrigo Toniol,Miriam Grossi

doi:10.1590/s0104-71832021000100016

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we propose a critical and situational assessment of Brazilian social scientists’ production on the COVID pandemic. We take stock of production within the context of the pandemic, yet also go further to sketch out some of the general characteristics of scientific production within Brazilian social sciences. Our major reference is a publication that, from within the social sciences, initiated an entire movement toward public reflections on the pandemic: the Social Scientists and Coronavirus Bulletin. It was published on a daily basis under the auspices of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (Anpocs), in partnership with other scientific associations. We argue that social sciences’ reaction to the pandemic both engages and contrasts with the tradition of debates on health within our disciplines. We also offer a classification scheme for the wide range of texts written “in the heat of the moment” by social scientists, in their quest to understand the pandemic and its effects. Finally, we offer a brief and descriptive analysis of the Bulletin’s texts characteristics, unfolding into a larger discussion of the institutional transformations that have marked Brazilian social sciences.

Highlights

This article discusses what we refer to as an experience in engaged intellectual production toward building an understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. It took the concrete shape of a publication that was made available through the Anpocs website, under the title of the Social Scientists and Coronavirus Bulletin (Boletim Cientistas Sociais e o Coronavírus, 2020)
In this article we provide a critical and situational analysis of the intellectual field of the social sciences in Brazil, based on articles that were published in the Social Scientists and Coronavirus Bulletin, between March and July of 2020
While at first we looked to explanations and analyses provided by colleagues in the field of the study of epidemics, viruses and health, we soon realized, from the scope of articles received for publication in the Bulletin, that concerns regarding the coronavirus went way beyond the field of health

Summary

Introduction

This article discusses what we refer to as an experience in engaged intellectual production toward building an understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Throughout the year 2020, the Bulletin became a significant reference that went beyond the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and political science It was replicated by the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência – SBPC) and by other scientific associations, used as teaching material in the classroom and to provide supporting texts to commissions for the combat of coronavirus within several universities. It became an instrument for foreign researchers wanting to understand the impacts that COVID-19 was having in Brazil under the Bolsonaro administration.

See examples brought out by participants in the CL01Colloquium

12 Priorities made explicit in its Article 2

Findings

São Paulo: EPU