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Georges Dumas: From the Psychology in the French Academic Field to the Intellectual Movement Between France and Latin America (1890-1930)
Georges Dumas: From the Psychology in the French Academic Field to the Intellectual Movement Between France and Latin America (1890-1930)
Thursday, July 17, 2014: 11:15 AM
Room: Booth 49
Oral Presentation
This research aims to investigate Georges Dumas´s trajectory (1866-1946), a man who was a professor, prestigious psychologist and French "cultural ambassador" in Latin America. The study of his trajectory allows determining, in a privileged way, the social and intellectual conditions of the institutionalization of "scientific psychology" in France and the relations between an academic group and the Republican government. One of the main goals is to identify, through the social and intellectual dispositions of Dumas and the circle of scientific psychologists, how it happened that a professional ethos was produced - based on the identity of a "scientist-philosopher".
I intend to show that this ethos is the result of a cultural and scientific background, in general ended with Ph.D. titles in Medicine and Arts. Theses dispositions, created in the intersection of a literary culture and a scientific one, can be seen, in the social field, as a result of a slight differentiation of an academic elite regarding to the other ones. In the scientific field, the result was a moderate vision of the disciplinary specialization - looking forward to maintaining some continuity between natural sciences and social sciences; between sciences and philosophy. In the international field, these dispositions produced a coexistence of scientific practices focused on pairs and cultural practices focused on a larger public. Looking from the progressive differentiation between medical careers and literary or metaphysic philosophy, this positions can be taken as an expression of a distinguishing life style.