From amateurs and erudite dilettantes to professional researchers in the 50 years of the Social Sciences studies at the Federal University of Ceará

Abstract

Testimonial text and narrative of facts and circumstances that surrounded the creation of the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, under the Humanities Center of the Federal University of Ceará and its subsequent transformation into the Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy. The narrative recaptures not only the socio-cultural scene of Fortaleza in the distant years of the 1950s, as well as the important events, characters and outstanding actors of the intellectual life, the institutions that gave it life and color, the prevailing political factors that in short led to the advent of the first university of Ceará. The text registers important aspects related to adoption of the University Reform of 1968, inspired by a North American model, and its institutional repercussion in the UFC, with a substantial change in its organizational structure and adaptation of academic and research functions to a new legal, ordering matrix, according to rules and statutory definitions followed from then on. As a result, disciplines and fields of knowledge of social sciences were united in a specific organic unit, by association of parallel teaching activities, previously disseminated by several schools and colleges in the UFC. The rich collaboration provided by UNESCO is highlighted, through scholarships for the specialization of teachers, bibliographical materials and the accomplishment of missions of French specialists in the corresponding fields of study and research. The text works a synthesis of a long journey, and involves the activities developed in two decades, during which the author exercised teaching and research functions, associated with administrative duties, in the exercise of the functions of faculty director, department head, deputy to rector in charge of research and post-graduation and rector of the UFC.