Social anthropology in Argentina during the 60s and 70s - Nation, critical marginality and the other Argentina

By analyzing the work of five authors self-adscribed as "social anthropologists," this article depicts the ways in which they created an anthropological field of knowledge to study contemporary Argentina. This occurred in a country whose State, and social and political society conceived as a white, modern and civilized Nation, whose development was hindered by its barbarian and traditional pole. Research by Eduardo Archetti, Leopoldo Bartolome, Santiago Bilbao, Esther Hermitte and Hebe Vessuri carried out between 1965 and 1975 shows that this field of knowledge emerged along with a new definition of the Argentina Nation which differed from the dualistic view suggested by the modernization theory. We can also connect its appearance to the attempt to preserve an autonomous academic space in a context of political intolerance and polarization that led to the bloody dictatorship self-labelled "Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional" (National Reorganization Process) and, in some cases, to the end of these authors' academic carreers in Argentina.