By BRUNO GALVÃO*
Commentary on the book by Alberto Guerreiro Ramos
If every scientific object has an inseparable historical character, as sociologist Alberto Guerreiro Ramos (1915-1982) stated, then it is imperative to consider that a large part of his work was produced in a context of both optimism for the horizon that was envisioned, nationally and internationally, and for the challenges to reach it: the Cold War, Afro-Asian decolonization movements, democracy, industrialization of the third world, urbanization, among others.
Guerreiro Ramos, like other intellectuals at ISEB, took on the task of developing a science for that situation and that time, which in Brazil was marked as national developmentalism.
Reissued and relaunched in the publishing market last year The sociological reduction, originally written in 1958, is a treatise for all Brazilian scientists, still relevant today. In it, Alberto Guerreiro Ramos proposes a method for science done in Brazil to meet the country's needs.
The sociological reduction, as one of his main writings, is produced from the point of view of an engaged intellectual, who saw Brazil in a new phase: a phase of national development. At this stage, when the people emancipate themselves from a life of mere subsistence to a life of complex consumption, they also emancipate themselves from the mere condition of object to become subject. As a subject, they demand critical thinking to develop fully. According to Guerreiro Ramos, this phase arises from industrialization and two consequences: urbanization and the change in consumption patterns.
The national development phase as a scientific purpose
Industrialization would be directly linked to the end of colonial subjectivation: to industrialize, a national project is needed, and “a people who project faces their circumstances actively, seeking to explore their potential according to determined urgencies” (p.64).
According to him, a colonized people always has its eyes outward; the colony (or the contemporary colonial condition), as a reflex economy, is always a project and instrument of the metropolis. However, when a people begins to have a project, they acquire a subjective individuality, seeing themselves as a center of reference.
As a consequence of industrialization, Guerreiro Ramos believes that urbanization led to an unprecedented degree of politicization of the Brazilian masses. Unlike underdeveloped countries with a primarily rural character, the high population density of urbanized countries and their faster pace would provide a change in collective psychology, with the tension of urban life bringing organizational possibilities and participation in political life (p.66).
Industrialization and development ultimately lead to increased purchasing power and the specialization of labor (which sometimes requires higher levels of formal education). According to Guerreiro Ramos, the population discovered politics through its integration into the sphere of interactions that emerged in the country thanks to the formation of the internal consumer market, the result of a post-colonial economy that looks outward.
As a result, he believes: “The more a population assimilates non-vegetative consumption habits, the more its political consciousness grows and the greater its pressure becomes to obtain resources that will ensure higher levels of existence. Precarious standards of existence, keeping the population in a state of servitude to nature, do not provide for the deepening of its subjectivity” (p.70).
This new stage of Brazilian society expresses the collective project of a historical personality, the country's claim to master itself, to determine itself (p.72). In this condition, it demands its own analytical methods, a particular science, a unique sociology.
Roughly speaking, Ramos's work is based on the principle of a country that was on the path of developmentalism and demanded a science that would contribute to the demands of this historical phase, which, because it was historical, could only be met by a production resulting from its own historical context. There was a need to establish a national sociology.
In the work, the author seeks to develop a theoretical instrument that would be a method, an intellectual and existential attitude, a way of critically assimilating foreign production and an ontology (Bariani, 2015, p. 16).
Sociological reduction as a method of assimilation
In a concise manner, the theoretical instrument developed as a foundation for the country's scientific development, sociological reduction, is defined as “a methodical attitude that aims to discover the referential assumptions, of a historical nature, of the objects and facts of social reality” (p. 74).
Otherwise, it consists of eliminating that which, due to its accessory and secondary nature, disturbs the effort to understand and obtain the essential part of a given piece of information. This is because sociological reduction operates through a perspectivist logic. For Guerreiro, the perspective in which objects (scientific, cultural) are found partly constitutes them. If transferred to another context, they cease to be exactly what they were.
Science is made from historical frameworks [frame of reference]. Therefore, an effort is required to access the content of the object, removing the curtains of the social context in which it was made. “Each object implies the historical totality in which it is integrated and, therefore, is non-transferable, in the fullness of all its circumstantial ingredients”.
One can, however, adopt a parenthetical stance: “putting in parentheses” the historical adjective notes of the cultural product and grasping its determinants, in such a way that, in another context, it can serve subsidiarily, and not as a model, for new elaboration. Sociological reduction opposes literal transplantation.
It can also be inferred that sociological reduction, in a broad sense, implies the search for the essence of a given element, thus understood as its nuclear content. […] The methodical attitude allows the obtaining of this essence, making explicit the peripheral elements that give local identity to these cultural objects. It is important to point out that these peripheral aspects can be perceived as what in fact affects the absorption of the nuclear content of an object in a reality different from that in which it was conceived (Bergue and Klering, 2010, p. 141).
From this methodical attitude, the primary objective is to be able to use foreign, “alien” contributions, recovering what they have of a universal character, and mediating them through the particularity of the local. The sociological reduction is not part of a “jealous revenge” of using only that which is endogenous, “indigenous”.
Importing science is, according to Guerreiro Ramos, a necessity for all peoples. “Guerreiro Ramos knew that science is universal because it results from an organized effort of specialists dispersed throughout and that has the same semantic circle” (Leite, 1983, p. 77).
However, as Bariani (2015, p.17) explains, it starts from considering that the scientist, as a social being, being-in-the-world and being-of-the-world (as he approaches Martin Heidegger), inevitably finds himself inserted in a specific context. Therefore, his actions, values and worldview are necessarily anchored in his material, historical and socially particular existence. “Thus, thinking (and therefore also scientific thinking and sociology in particular) could only be something relativized, related, directed from a specific perspective”.
For Guerreiro Ramos, the problem with Brazilian science (and particularly sociology) is that it has scientists who are alienated from their reality, sometimes driven by the prestige of science produced in the great centers of excellence in first world countries, who apply in their context a mere mechanical, uncritical transposition of imported scientific techniques, without considering their real applicability. And this mere analogical repetition of techniques and studies, for him, is completely contrary to the essence of science, because it loses sight of the constitutive particularity of every historical situation.
“In peripheral countries, sociology ceases to be backward as it frees itself from the effect of prestige and is oriented towards inducing its rules from the historical-social context in which it is integrated” (p. 30).
The reduction is thus inserted as an expression of a scientist who rejects the colonial relationship of science, considering colonization as “a condition of subordination of the native culture, which has consequences in the construction of identities. The colonized subject is the one who, to the detriment of his native culture, submits to the values and perceptions constituted by modern culture.” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 347).
Based on this problem, Guerreiro Ramos postulates that the attitude of sociological reduction is described in seven general conceptions: (i) it is a methodical attitude; (ii) it does not admit the existence, in social reality, of objects without presuppositions; (iii) it postulates the notion of world; (iv) it is perspectivist; (v) its supports are collective and not individual; (vi) it is a critical-assimilative procedure of foreign experience; (vii) although its collective supports are popular experiences, it is a highly elaborated attitude.
For each postulate, Guerreiro Ramos elaborates a justification. We can summarize, in general terms, some of them. Sociological reduction is a methodical attitude, as it is not natural or spontaneous; it is an evaluation that follows rules and strives to purify objects of their deepest meanings.
Postulates 2, 3 and 4 concern an aspect already discussed, about the way in which Guerreiro Ramos sees the context as a constitutive part of the objects. “The notion of world stipulates, therefore, that it is fundamental to sociological reduction to seek the referential elements of culture to stipulate its ends. The interpretative activity provided by sociology must account for this notion of world, in which the objects of knowledge are not dissociated from the subject who seeks to interpret them.” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 354).
Postulates 5 and 7 are closely linked to the construction of critical mass, which Guerreiro Ramos defines as necessary for a nation that emancipates itself, that aims to dominate itself and, therefore, has a collective, popular national project. Thus, the support for reduction is not “in the head” of the researcher, but inherent to society in its current material condition.
Finally, point 6 describes its main functional character. Guerreiro Ramos Ramos (p.74-75) highlights that “sociological reduction does not imply isolationism or romantic exaltation of the local, regional or national. It is, on the contrary, driven by an aspiration to the universal, mediated, however, by the local, regional or national”.
Sociological reduction operates methodologically based on four laws or, outside the field of hard sciences, tendencies. The first would be the law of commitment: in peripheral countries, reduction can only occur to scientists who have adopted a stance of engagement or conscious commitment to their context.
The conscious commitment that Guerreiro Ramos refers to is that of the scientist understanding himself as a historical and contextual being, without being a mere replicator of science or a boastful exalter under the pretext of doing science. It is the systematic immersion of the social scientist in the point of view of his own community, consistent with the idea that the nation is the set of values and perceptions that a community has about itself (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 355).
The law of compromise is based on a radical critique, that is, on a reflection on the existential foundations of science in action or of scientific production. “The compromise we are talking about here, to the extent that it is systematic, places the scientist in the universal point of view of the human community. The regional and the national, in such a compromise, are not final terms, they are immediate terms of the concretization of the universal” (p.101).
“Here it is demonstrated that a researcher’s notion of the world is not constituted exclusively, nor in the first instance, of intellectual effort, but is of non-intellectual effort and of the existential perspective of the scientist himself. Thus, the researcher would be conditioned by an existential a priori, that is, by his experience with objects/people of the particular world in which he lived and by his historical-social context, whether or not he is aware of this conditioning” (Capelari et al., 2014, p. 9)
Law on the subsidiary nature of foreign scientific production
The second law would be the law of the subsidiary nature of foreign scientific production: in light of sociological reduction, all foreign scientific production is, in principle, subsidiary. The perspectivist nature explains the law, understanding that the context of the objects partly constitutes them.
Guerreiro Ramos gives the example of the concept of State, which, as an object of sociology, has different forms (noemas) and is referred to the referential act (noesis) of the respective sociologist, having different interpretations depending on the country being studied. It is important to say, however, that “a national sociology does not postulate that sociology varies from nation to nation, but that the context and culture in which social knowledge is constructed matter” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 355).
Here, it is worth highlighting long quotes from the author. “As long as, through sociological reduction, we discover, in the context in which they arise, the meaning of sociological products (for example, the different noemes of the State), we can use them as subsidies, in a noesis that is not merely imitative (p.110).
This is because, for Guerreiro Ramos, any system, theory, concept, research technique or method, unless developed for idle purposes, is always made to meet an imposition, and it is in this “for” that the historical quotation marks of the objects are found. “When we use an object or product, without reducing it, we are involved by the intentionality that it carries. Observance of this law will lead the sociologist to use foreign production as raw material for theoretical elaboration, conditioned by particular factors of the society in which he lives” (p.110).
But in a country whose people have become subjects, society itself places before the researcher the tasks he must undertake. “These tasks cease to be arbitrarily selected by the individual taste of the sociologist and begin to be determined by the community. The idle nature of sociological speculation in colonial countries is evident in the fact that it has no demands of its own, but obeys the variations of foreign trends.”
Law of universality of general statements of science
The third law of sociological reduction is the law of the universality of general scientific statements: the universality of science is only admitted in the domain of general statements. Science is universal because its professionals share the same semantic circle and are part of a global collaborative effort. “As he himself proclaimed – “in science there is no room for Jacobinism” – no one can make progress unless based on what has been achieved through universal effort” (Leite, 1983, p. 77).
However, since science is made to meet some imposition, and such impositions are historically located, it is necessary to take the parenthetical attitude of removing its historical quotation marks in order to capture its universal meaning. “In this sense, the sociological reduction does not deny the universality of science, but rather demands that the researcher submit scientific work to the demands of the community in which he or she lives” (Capelari et al., 2014, p. 10).
Nor is it a question of confusing “national science” with mere “applied science”. Historical reality, as stated, imposes its specific demands on researchers.
“In the author’s view, when the development process is analyzed from the perspective of structural and functional prerequisites established in distinct social realities and dictated by the experience of countries in the center of capitalism, politicians and administrators in peripheral countries are tempted to adopt hypercorrect solutions for the real problems of these nations. Instead of seeking hypercorrect solutions, which reproduce the paths adopted by countries in the center of capitalism, peripheral countries must seek appropriate solutions, which require a strategic point of view” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 358).
Finally, we have the law of phases: the reason for the problems of a particular society is always given by the phase in which such society finds itself. Thinking in terms of phase is based on the category of totality. The phase is a historical-social totality, whose parts are dialectically related (Ramos, 2024, p.125). “Thus, the fourth law concerns the impossibility of understanding facts without referring them to the reality (phase), to the life or history in which they are integrated” (Capelari et al., 2014, p. 10).
The delimitation of phases is defined in a comparative and a posteriori manner, through empirical observation of selected facts, in order to order historical events into relevant categories. As an example of the law of phases, Ramos (2024, p.124–125) gives Marx's analysis of the historical-social process of the modes of production (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, etc.). In this analysis, each stage has its specific laws and, therefore, particular problems.
However, the idea of phase does not correspond to the existence of linear thinking in terms of cause and effect, “but to the understanding of historical moments that form the central problems with which societies struggle” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 356). Reinforcing once again, if science is made to resolve an imposition, this imposition is conditioned by the phase in which such society finds itself. Therefore, to understand the scientific character, it is necessary to consider the totality of the relationships of the phase in which it finds itself.
The law of phases also grants the historical character that constitutes scientific objects. “The sciences constitute, in each period, an aspect integrated into a totality of meaning. They are tributaries of the worldview of each historical period and, consequently, cannot claim to be permanently valid” (Ramos, 2024, p.146).
As Guerreiro Ramos argues, no scientific postulate can claim to be permanently valid. In the case of sociological reduction, decades later, it is easy to see the marks of time and of a situation that is, in certain aspects, radically different today.
The aspect of nationalism, industrialism and progress has already accumulated a lot of mold, denouncing the senility of a vision that defended a circumscribed autonomy and a national-bourgeois direction for the development of capitalism in the periphery (Bariani, 2015, p. 23)
It would be convenient to argue that the erasure of The sociological reduction of the canon of Brazilian sociology is the result of a country that had its development project interrupted decades ago, undergoing deindustrialization and its consolidation in the international division of labor as an exporter of commodities.
However, its recent rescue by several researchers indicates that there is something relevant in the sociological reduction, and that the intellectual from Bahia achieved it, just like Wright Mills in the sociological imagination, produce a great work of sociology of knowledge.
Ramos, above all, was a great exponent of sociological reduction, and it is possible to see in him the work of Karl Mannheim, Heidegger, Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Weber, Marx and Edmund Husserl. From the latter, he even took the notion of phenomenological reduction or epoche, as a parenthetical attitude – of putting in parentheses the effective existence of (or in) the world – and those of intentionality and perspectivism of consciousness” (Bariani, 2015, p. 18).
But this is not a mere transposition of the phenomenological reduction to the field of sociology; it is a unique elaboration. “What we took from Husserl was less the philosophical content of his method than a fragment of his terminology” (p.44). Guerreiro Ramos does not consider himself a phenomenologist either.
It is also worth noting that sociological reduction is not limited to the field of sociology, but is applied to other areas of knowledge. Guerreiro Ramos points out that before sociological reduction, “technical reduction” already existed in colonial Brazil, where farmers, faced with direct work with nature, became aware that foreign farming processes were not always suitable for our conditions, and adopted a reductive attitude.
In archaic societies, he says, reduction was a sectoral requirement. Reduction, when in other areas, such as hard sciences, tends to be more easily adopted. The tendency to resist reduction tends to be smaller the lower the “ideological content” of the problem (p.47).
As such, the sociological reduction was never accepted without facing resistance from peers. Since it was presented at the II Congress of the Latin American Sociology Association in 1953, Guerreiro Ramos has been involved in academic discussions with figures such as Florestan Fernandes and Darcy Ribeiro.
Florestan, in particular, advocated that science should follow rigorous universal institutionalized standards, regardless of the historical and social particularities of a society, for the execution of sociological work. The social sciences needed to abandon the essayistic character, characteristic of the first Brazilian interpreters, and institutionalize the sociologist's profession with universal scientific standards.
For Guerreiro Ramos, on the other hand, “the work of sociology in Brazil should seek a perspective of consciousness emergence. The primary task of sociology in Brazil, observing the historical-social conditions of the Nation, would be the search for an existential condition of society, making it aware of its conditions and enabling it to review its trajectories and ends” (Filgueiras, 2012, p. 350).
As Bariani (2015, p.23) rightly concludes: “despite the problems, with The sociological reduction, we have never been so cosmopolitan in our localized situation and, at the same time, we have never been so local in our cosmopolitanism.”
*Bruno Galvao is a researcher linked to the Center for Research, Innovation and Diffusion in Neuromathematics at the University of São Paulo.
Reference
Alberto Warrior Ramos. The sociological reduction. New York, New York, 2024, 256 pages.https://amzn.to/4kkPU9h]
REFERENCES
BARIANI, E. Birth certificate: the sociological reduction in its publication context. CRH notebook, v. 28, no. 73, p. 15–25, apr. 2015.
BERGUE, ST; KLERING, LR Sociological reduction in the process of transposition of managerial technologies. Organizations & Society, v. 17, no. 52, p. 137–155, 2010.
CAPELARI, MGM; AFONSO, YBGDADDCSS; GONÇALVES, ADO Alberto Guerreiro Ramos: Contributions of sociological reduction to the scientific field of public administration in Brazil. RAM. Mackenzie Management Journal, v. 15, p. 98–121, Dec. 2014.
FILGUEIRAS, F. DE B. Guerreiro Ramos, sociological reduction and the post-colonial imaginary. CRH notebook, v. 25, p. 347–363, Aug. 2012.
LEITE, JC DO P. Guerreiro Ramos and the importance of the concept of sociological reduction in Brazilian development. Public Administration Magazine, v. 17, no. 1, p. 77 to 83–77 83, 18 Sept. 1983.
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