This field guide was written by a group of recently returned graduate students for the enlightenment of those who will follow them to Brazil. It contains discussions of the current state of research in the social sciences and suggestions for further research, information on the availability and accessibility of primary materials, and intimations concerning working and living conditions as of the middle of 1965. Appendices provide the addresses of research organizations, current Brazilian periodicals, current and recently completed research by Americans, and data on exchange rates and costs of living. Students who have not yet been to Brazil will find it a valuable guide, even though it is discouragingly repetitious and covers much material presented more systematically in other publications. The experienced researcher will want to read it through with care for the occasional fact, viewpoint, or bibliographical reference that had escaped his attention. Both will be engaged by the qualities of the essays which range from jejune instructions to master a discipline and learn Portuguese to extremely insightful commentary, such as Shepard Forman’s remarks on reciprocal influences of social setting and social scientist in the Northeast.
In the preface Kempton Webb states that the “half life” of this collection will be brief because of the rapid obsolescence of much of the material in it. In a sense it was obsolete before it was written. The scholars who put it together acquired their expertise independently at great cost in time and effort. The content and organization of this book suggest that they expect those students who come after them to operate in the same manner as they did, beginning with little more than the sort of hints to be found in this guide. It is not likely, however, that such a procedure would be tolerable. First of all, a great improvement is already evident in the language preparation, acquaintance with secondary sources, and general background knowledge of those graduate students who are now being sent to Brazil. The investments already made in library acquisitions, in appointments of Brazilian social scientists to American universities, and in the very fellowships that sent the contributors of this volume to Brazil have all paid dividends in a much clearer idea of what research is valuable and feasible. The next wave of scholars to be sent to Brazil should therefore be much more knowledgeable than this guide assumes.
The contributors themselves supply evidence of another reason to suppose that in the future social science research in Brazil will be less individualistic. The greater number of foreign scholars in Brazil—most of them living in the same place and asking the same questions of the same people, the Machiavellian antics of Project Camelot, and the undoubted impact of social science research upon its subjects are all tending to reduce the boundless cordiality of the Brazilians. Americans will have to devise new ways of engaging the cooperation of Brazilian scholars, perhaps through increased support of their research organizations or through coordination of research programs.
