This article analyzes Fernando Henrique Cardoso's social, intellectual and professional trajectory in order to understand the different social resources and personal dispositions carried out in his career as sociologist or in his activities as a professional politician. It seeks to prove that the social capitals and the dispositions that might explain his prestige as researcher and professor of social sciences were very different from those required in the political domain, the ones allowing his fast rise to be the president of the Republic. After having examined his family origins, it focuses his scholar investments and the choice of the sociologist's occupation, a promising career suddenly blocked by the 1964 military coup. The exile encouraged new initiatives and brought him international appraisal, this moment being crowned with his access to the chair of political science at the University of São Paulo; the AI-5 enforced by the military rulers will enable him to assume a double condition, as social scientist and as an important opposition leader facing the military. Finally, it analyzes how he was able to reconvert his social and personal resources into the political profession.
Sociology; Political field; Social trajectory; Social capitals; Dispositions