The article analyses intellectual struggles and changes in the independence process of Brazilian social sciences and of the production and circulation of written messages about Brazil, by focusing on the publishing and reception of The masters and the slaves by Gilberto Freyre. Between the first and the 14th edition of the book and the consecration of authors such as Florestan Fernandes, a symbolic battle took place to universalize the genuine forms (narrative styles, institutional projects, editorial formulas, invention and representation of readers' communities) to think about Brazil. The article shows how the judgement over Freyre and his first book to be regionalist, is originated in the positions and conceptions that Freyre himself adopted on his trajectory as well as in the dominant positions on the intellectual field during the forties in São Paulo, which aimed to consolidate the "national and scientific Sociology". Altogether with the speeches' interpretation, the principles of its dispersion, the edition and the establishment of academic knowledge, the article seeks the understanding of how the book, the work and the author have become what they are at the present moment, enlightened by the changes in the selection means of Brazilian interpreters' pantheon.
Gilberto Freyre; Florestan Fernandes; Civilization process; Regionalism; Sociology of intellectual production