Peronism, post-Peronist and professionalization: academic trajectories, strategies for self-preservation and disciple circles in Buenos Aires, 1945-1963

Abstract

In this article I analyze the anthropological field in Buenos Aires in the period between 1945 and 1963. The aim is to reconstruct the trajectories, the repositioning and the strategies adopted by distinguished members of the field towards Peronism and in the later stage. It argues that while the state's presence changed the conditions of action of the agents (leading them to extend the dispute into the political arena), there appears to have been a crisis of hierarchies, a dismemberment of disciple circles or an alteration of the rules of succession. Therefore, our hypothesis is that, although the advent of Peronism would draw antagonisms, their mark on the discipline system was secondary, predominantly self-preservation mechanisms, networks of sociability, interpersonal loyalties and affinities. In that sense, I try to show the operation of the logic of academic production and reproduction (the relative autonomy of the field) in a time of enormous political, ideological and intellectual effervescence