Governo, ditadura e ciências sociais: O caso português

This article discusses the presumed inexistence of the social sciences during the Portuguese New State. It performs a synthesis of the most recent works on the history of sociology in Portugal, integrates it in the pertinent international context and suggests that the partial institutionalization of that knowledge in the course of the dictatorship can be understood as an "unanticipated consequence" of certain actions of the regime and as a result of the subsequent efforts by middle-ranking state officials and/or government consultants to give university dignity to their technical activities. Complementarily, the same process can also be understood as the progressive and incomplete "autonomization" of social-scientific "social fields" with different origins.