• 1. Historical, Sociological, Political and Cultural Context
• 2. Scientific Production and its Context

1. Historical, Sociological, Political and Cultural Context

Portugal is a country located in far Southwest Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula. It has borders with Spain to the North and East and with the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South.

Portugal is a heterogeneous territorial, demographic and cultural formation, blending influences from a diversity of settling populations, ranging from Celts, Iberians, Phoenicians or Romans to Arabs, and with a strong Jewish presence.

One language and one dominant religion - Roman Catholic - contrast with the considerable internal diversity in geography, demography, culture and social structure.

Between 1139-1143, Portugal grew out of Leon and Castille as an independent kingdom. By the mid-13th Century, the territory of Portugal covered approximately the same area as today, through conquest of Southern regions settled by Arabs.

The medieval economy was mostly based on agriculture and fishing, and some trade, extending to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe, which rose to considerable importance from the 14th Century onwards, and particularly with overseas expansion and the assumption, by Portugal, of an intermediary role in North-South and West-East trade.

The Portuguese monarchy tried to centralize power from the 14th century onwards. By the late 15th Century, the foundations of absolute monarchy were established.

Both the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies followed a strategy of unifying the two crowns through alliances based on marriage, but only in 1580 was this achieved, with Philip II of Spain becoming king of Portugal. The Iberian Union lasted 60 years, till 1640.

In 1415, Portugal started military and commercial expansion towards North Africa, then the Atlantic and several areas on West Africa.

By 1488, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal opened a maritime path to East Africa and to the Indian Ocean, reaching India, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Japan. Portuguese presence was mostly military and commercial, with generally shallow settlement.

From 1500 onwards, expansion turned to the Atlantic to Brazil, settled and colonized over the next three centuries. The Brazilian economy, mostly based on plantations and mining, was dependent on trade with Europe through Portugal and on the supply of slaves from Africa.

In the 18th century, Brazil became a source of diamonds and gold, and a crucial foundation of state power. Throughout the period of overseas expansion, the state had a source of income, which was not dependent on the taxation of the land and wealth within Portugal.

For a brief period of time, in the early 19th Century, Rio de Janeiro became the capital of the Empire, as the royal family fled the Napoleonic invasions.

Portugal was both the head of a colonial empire and a country dependent on England, both politically and economically, particularly after several treatises signed in the 17th and early 18th Centuries, of which the Methuen treaty (1703) stands as the expression of how England imposed a pattern of economic specialization and terms of trade which, in the long run, were responsible for the economic peripheralization of Portugal.

In 1820, in the aftermath of the French invasions, with the British actually ruling the country (the royal family was in Brazil) and the independence of Brazil, a liberal Revolution took place.

A new constitution was drafted in 1822, drastically reducing the power of the crown, defining the constitutional rights of the people and proclaiming a parliamentary system of government.

After a period of political instability and a civil war, the liberal regime was finally established in 1834, on the basis of a Constitutional Charter granting some powers to the king.

In spite of political unrest and conflict that lasted over most of the first half of the Century, the system stayed in place until 1910, when the Republic was proclaimed, again in the aftermath of a crisis triggered by what was felt as the humiliation of Portugal in the face of other colonial powers concerning the distribution of territories in Africa.

The Republic lasted until 1926, when a military coup started one of the longest dictatorships in European history, lead by Salazar after 1933. The right-wing dictatorship lasted for 48 years, with an attempt at limited "opening" and reform after Salazar's replacement by Marcelo Caetano. The colonial wars, fought against the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, were, however, an obstacle impossible to overcome by the regime.

From the 17th century onwards, several attempts at industrialization were launched, alternating with periods of commercial development. A sustained effort at creating an industrial sector was made only after World War II, and it entailed a slow and limited but nonetheless significant transformation of the social structure, with an increase in the proportion of industrial workers in the working population. In the 1960's, migratory flows to Western Europe intensified, in the wake of economic expansion. This was also the period when flows of Portuguese settlers were directed to the African colonies, in a move that was clearly against the historical wave of decolonization. In 1961, liberation wars were initiated by movements in the African colonies, first in Angola, then in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.

The dictatorship was overthrown by a military coup in 1974. The coup opened up an unprecedented situation in Portuguese history, a revolutionary crisis which lasted for about 18 months.

To the incapacity of the state to "normalize" the political situation through the setting up and consolidation of a parliamentary democracy after the model of Western Europe - an assembly came out of the first free elections, in 1975, to draft a new Constitution -, and to the internal divisions of the Armed Forces Movement was added a vigorous and multifaceted popular movement, supported by the left-wing factions of the military, in areas like housing, the cooperative organization of production and consumption, worker's control in industry, agrarian reform, among others, a movement which tried to create innovative forms of participatory democracy. The key sectors of the economy (banks and insurance, mainly, but also several industries) were nationalized.

The colonial war came to an end with the recognition of the independence of the former colonies, with the exception of East Timor, invaded by the Indonesian army in late 1975.

In November 1975, the situation was "normalized" through a military intervention of the social-democratic and conservative factions. In April 1976, a constitution was voted which defined an articulation of forms of representative democracy with forms of participatory democracy (these would later be either eliminated or their scope considerably reduced through successive revisions of the Constitution).

Many of the experiences of social movements and participatory democracy faded away or were just brought to an end during the period of political "normalization" following the promulgation of the Constitution and the first elections for the Presidency, for Parliament and for local government, all held in 1976. Since then, elections were held regularly, with occasional intermediate elections due to the instability of minority or coalition governments. A re-privatization of the nationalized sectors of the economy would lead to the reconstitution of large corporate groups in the financial sectors and in and in several areas of industry, a process which is going on.

In 1986, after several years of economic crisis and some governmental instability, Portugal joined the then European Economic Community. The ensuing years witnessed a considerable flow of funds of from Europe, which allowed governments to build infrastructures like motorways and roads, mostly. After a period of 10 years dominated by liberal-conservative governments, the socialist party won the 1995 election.

The population of Portugal grew from 7.92 million in 1950 to 9.37 million in 1991. The pattern of distribution of the population has been one of high concentration on coastal regions, especially to the North of Lisbon and in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon. The overall percentage of the population living in towns with more than 5 000 inhabitants increased from 22.4% in 1950 to 40.4% in 1991, a trend identifiable at the regional scale, too.

• Table 1. Inhabitants per Region (1950-1991)
• Table 2. Population Density per Region (1950-1991)
• Table 3. Urban Population (1950-1991)

The last five decades have witnessed significant changes in the economic structure and in the distribution of the working population, with a rise in the industrial workforce – from 25% in 1950 to 38% in 1991 - and a decrease in the percentage of the working population in agriculture and fishing during the same period (from 49% to 11%) - although the latter is still larger than in other countries of the European Union. More recently, there have been considerable increases in the proportion of people active in the service sector (26% in 1950, 51% in 1991), as well as significant changes in its structure, with a decrease of the more "traditional" types of services (like personal services) and an increase in "modern" activities linked to finance, insurance communications or education, tourism and health.

Industry developed according to two different patterns: one was the creation of heavy industries in the regions of Lisbon-Setúbal and Oporto, the other one was a pattern of smaller units located in areas all over the Western coastal area, from Braga to Leiria. These were strongly connected to the territory, and its workers used to have strong links to small-scale agriculture. This allowed a specific pattern of non-coincidence between levels of capitalist production and levels of reproduction. The pattern, however, is under severe strain due to the disappearance of many small agricultural units.

• Table 4. Distribution of the Working Population (1950-1991)

Portugal has long been a country of emigration. Before World War II, transatlantic emigration, especially to Brazil, was dominant. From the 1960's on, migrants increasingly chose the route of the core countries of Europe (France, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and, to a lesser extent, the United States and South Africa. In 1975, in the aftermath of decolonization, half a million Portuguese returned to Portugal from the African colonies, and they were rapidly integrated into Portuguese society. During the 1980’s, a new trend set in: the immigration of workers and citizens from Portuguese-speaking African countries, starting in the 1980's, most of them working in construction, as well as from Eastern European countries, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Another recent trend is that of Brazilians who often use Portugal as a platform to migrate to the European Union.

For centuries, Portugal has been a society with an intermediary level of development - somewhere between the peripheral countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America - and the core countries of Europe and North America, as can be seen, today, from selected indicators drawn from UN documents, like the UN Human Development Index. It has also played an intermediary role between core and periphery and between Europe and other parts of the world - mainly Africa and Latin America -, first as the head of a colonial empire and, at the same time, a country dominated by core countries, now as part of the "periphery of the core" region of the European Union. This semiperipheral condition allows Portugal to maintain historically densified links with Africa and Latin America, and provides opportunities for the development of new modes of cooperation based on a non-hegemonic or anti-hegemonic approach.

Historically, modern science had to overcome many obstacles in order to find its way into Portuguese culture and society. Both opposition to science from the Catholic Church - enforced by the Inquisition from the late 15th Century to the early 19th Century - and the predominantly literary orientation of Portuguese cultural elites conspired to turn science into a marginal phenomenon, despite the contributions to knowledge brought about by overseas expansion.

Most of those who tried to promote modern science and introduce it into the University - particularly from the 18th Century onwards - were the targets of religious or political persecution, a situation extended, under different forms, to the Salazar dictatorship in this century. Scientific and philosophical elites were known as "estrangeirados", living abroad and trying, with limited success, to bring the "Lights" of modern science and thought into Portugal. The social sciences were, of course, one of the casualties of this situation, particularly under the Salazar dictatorship. Many prominent members of the political opposition to the dictatorship saw science and critical thinking and its diffusion as a precondition for the emergence of an enlightened citizenship and of democracy.

Attempts at drawing science to the centre stage of Portuguese society and culture are recent, and a sustained effort towards the creation and consolidation of a scientific research and development system based on stable and organized research units, on stable sources of funding and on peer-review of both research units and research projects was started in 1988, during the short-lived direction of the Junta Nacional de Investigação Científica e Tecnológica by José Mariano Gago. But this was turned into a consistent effort only after the creation of the Ministry of Science and Technology, under Mariano Gago, which was set up as pat of the new socialist government in 1995. The program of the Ministry was ambitious. It included a full-scale restructuration of the Ministry, with the extinction of JNICT and the creation of three new institutions dealing, respectively, with the funding of research units and research projects and their evaluation by international teams (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia), with the production and diffusion of updated infomation on the science and technology system (Observatório das Ciências e das Tecnologias) and with international cooperation in the fields of science and technology (Instituto de Cooperação Científica Internacional). Interestingly, the two latter institutions are chaired by two sociologists.

Other aims of science and technology policy were to create a culture of evaluation and peer-review among Portuguese scientists; to foster the internationalization of Portuguese research, through the increase in cooperative endeavours and in publications in international journals, and through the inclusion of a majority of non-Portuguese scientists in evaluation panels. Specific programs were devoted to the promotion of scientific culture and to the introduction of experimental approaches in science teaching, as well as to the introduction of computers and of the Internet in Portuguese schools and, more generally, to the development and diffusion of information technologies.

A positive feature of science and technology policies was the recognition, on an equal basis of the importance and of the opportunities for funding for the natural and social sciences. The volume of funding for the latter has reached unprecedented levels in Portugal, although the absolute levels are still below what would be needed and desirable.

The success of these different programs and policies was uneven. Although there were some improvements in the overall level of funding for research, this is still below the desired amount (1% of the GDP by the year 2 000).

The institutional basis of the system still exhibits weaknesses, and the increase in the number of new Masters and PhD’s (over the last 4 years the number of new PhD's has been growing at a rate of 10% per annum) is not matched by the opportunities for jobs, besides short-term contracts for the duration of specific projects. The creation of autonomous research units, not dependent, financially or administratively, from Universities, was an effective response to some of the bottlenecks in research funding and performance arising from the difficulty most universities still have in integrating research activities as a central part of their mission. This, however, has led to a difficult relationship between research units - most of them staffed by University teachers whose salaries are paid by the University - and Universities.

Turning now to the social sciences, I shall start with a focus on the disciplines, which will be more central to this project. It should be stressed, however, that disciplinary approaches do not capture much of the more innovative work currently under way in Portugal, particularly some of the work that will appear as more relevant to the current project.

Like most colonial empires, Portugal has had a tradition of research in Anthropology, based on descriptive and classificatory approaches of colonial populations, in order to provide information usable for colonial politics and administration. Other orientations in Anthropology did exist, linked to an ethnography of "traditions" approach, and a descriptive ethnological tradition in the anthropology or rural populations.

History, in turn, was largely subordinated to a nationalistic approach consonant with the ideological orientations of the dictatorship, with an almost total ban on Modern and Contemporary History and on research in areas like economic and social history. The most innovative historians, who kept pace with changes in historiographical practice in core countries, were either in exile or were kept away from the University, since most of them opposed the dictatorship.

As for sociology, it was regarded by the regime with suspicion - it was often confused with socialism -, even though there was an attempt, in the 1930's, to develop a sociological school linked to the regime, based on the work of some followers of Frédéric Le Play, like Paul Descamps, who were outspoken in their sympathies towards Salazar's regime.

In the 1960's, some research on Portuguese society was carried out by a group of people with different disciplinary origins, mostly law and economics, who gathered around Adérito Sedas Nunes and the Gabinete de Investigações Sociais, and who started the journal Análise Social, which is still published. This group was responsible for the first studies of the social structure of Portugal, with systematic comparisons with other countries, showing that, according to all available information - and this was mostly official information -, Portugal displayed indicators comparable only to the two least developed countries of Europe, Turkey and Greece.

After 1974, the first undergraduate programs in sociology were created at Portuguese higher education institutions, and a first generation of sociologists, most of them having got their degrees abroad or having come from another discipline, created the ground on which the discipline developed very rapidly.

Anthropology and history also underwent important changes and developments, incorporating innovative trends and debates, and training new generations of researchers.

After joining the EEC, there seems to be a trend towards an increasing weight of research oriented towards the demand of business and government, with a corresponding decline in more critical orientations in the social sciences and a weakening of theoretical production.

This has led to some conspicuous absences in the subjects dealt with by social scientists in Portugal: social movements, participatory democracy, women's studies or studies on sexual minorities have thus been neglected issues. Other areas, like ethnicity, have been just recently got the attention they deserve. As for the internationalization of research, most of it is based on European networks responding to research defined as significant from the point of view of EU policy-making. Little has been achieved so far in the field of cooperation with countries in the South.

The Center for Social Studies (CES) has been trying to respond to some of these perceived absences by developing interdisciplinary work in these areas, with a strong commitment to internationalization, particularly through projects involving joint work with researchers from Southern hemisphere countries. It is expected that the current project will make a lasting contribution to this orientation.