Folklore is, chronologically speaking, the first theme taken up by Florestan Fernandes in his noteworthy intellectual journey, having dealt with this subject since his days as an undergraduate student at the Faculty of Philosophy in São Paulo. If we consider his whole work, folklore is a secondary matter, specific to his student days, a "flat theme" from the beginning of his career. However, it is in these studies that Florestan wages his first academic battle, in which his adhesion to a scientific sociology takes shape, based on the systematics of observational procedures and scope of explanations. Thus, by looking at the small group of papers on folklore written during his formative years (1941-1953), it is possible to follow the first steps of his definition of sociology as science, which can be transcribed into three complementary lines of analysis: 1. the sociological explanation for folkloric manifestations; 2. the sociological explanation for folkloric studies in modern society; and 3. the redefinition of folklore as a sociological method.
Florestan Fernandes; sociology; folklore; science; culture; Brazil