This article discusses the intellectual context pertaining to the period of the founding and first decade of existence of the Revista de Antropologia. Attention is given to the growing importance of university-based production in the social sciences at the time, as areas of specialization and sectors of knowledge are defined. A reexamination of articles, book reviews and commentaries - which are seen to reflect a general interest in exploring possibilities of the anthropological investigation of "complex societies" - allows for an effort to outline a set of questions relating to "cultural change", one of the major themes of the period. This study presents clear evidence of collaborative efforts involving sociologists and anthropologists, as well as of disputes within and between their respective disciplines and institutional niches. Ideas pertaining to the so-called polarized relations, so often emphasized, involving university disciplines and institutions in the social sciences of São Paulo during this period, can be fruitfully reconsidered on the basis of the material here presented.
Revista de Antropologia; social sciences in Brazil; community studies; cultural change