The consecration of vanguards: collective memory and biography of scientific practices at the College of Medical Sciences of the University of Campinas

THESES

The consecration of vanguards: collective memory and biography of scientific practices at the College of Medical Sciences of the University of Campinas

Miguel Montagner

Thesis Doctoral (2007) Programa de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva, Departamento de Medicina Preventiva e Social, Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas. [e-mail]

Key words: Bourdieu. Field. Habitus. Halbwachs. Collective memory. Collective biography. Collective persona. Vanguard. Primary group.

The present thesis follows a perspective of sociology of science and seeks to understand the scientific practices of researchers from an institution of the medical field, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Our theoretical reference was the Pierre Bourdieu's genetic constructivism. Through this author, we aimed to correlate and delineate the construction of the scientific habitus of professors and the relation of these habitus with the social scope in which they inserted themselves, built their social trajectories and constituted their primary groups. Respecting the quantitative sphere, we outlined and analyzed the main statistical characteristics of these professors using the analysis of Lattes Platform Curricula of all full professors from the College of Medical Sciences of the University of Campinas (Unicamp). In the qualitative sphere, we performed interviews focused on a sample of professors and the structural analysis of their answers, in order to understand their practices and values as scientists, as well as their subjective idealizations regarding their own personal trajectories, i.e. collective memories of their own practices.

Comparing both types of data, we synthesized the main characteristics of each group within a collective biography of a collective persona, seeking to elucidate how the vanguard groups represented by these primary groups existent in the institution conceive and define themselves as social groups, their conceptions of the meaning of science and the way in which these dispositions present in their habitus are transformed into concrete actions.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  31 Aug 2012
• Date of issue
  June 2008