A CHAPTER OF CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY IN SÃO PAULO: THE TRAJECTORY OF CENEDIC (1995-2015)

Abstract

This article aims to present and problematize the intellectual itinerary of the Centro de Estudos dos Direitos da Cidadania (CENEDIC), founded in 1995 by Francisco de Oliveira, Maria Célia Paoli and Vera Telles, then professors of Sociology at University of São Paulo. The text analyzes - considering the historical-political changes in Brazilian society at the time - the transformations that the Center’s intellectuals went through from 1995 to 2015, a moment in which a new stage in its history is beginning. The central hypothesis is that the theoretical and normative inflection identified in CENEDIC at the end of the 1990s - simultaneously with the lowering of the horizon of expectations generated in the previous decade - can be understood as an intellectual response to what they understood as the advance of neoliberalism in the country, whose “negative” charge was accentuated throughout the 2000s.

Keywords: Intellectuals; Sociology; University of São Paulo; Democracy; Neoliberalism