Scielo RSS http://socialsciences.scielo.org/rss.php?pid=0327-771220060001&lang=pt vol. 1 num. SE lang. pt http://socialsciences.scielo.org/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://socialsciences.scielo.org http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100001&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt Through an analysis of football, this paper explores the use of stereotypes in narratives dealing with national identity in Argentina and Brazil, on the basis of an earlier study authored by Simoni Lahud Guedes. While the construction of a football identity seems to have been similar to the one achieved by the English, who created the game mastered the field, this paper intends to focus on the border areas, i.e. on the way in which the differences between Argentineans and Brazilians was narrated, and on the use of such stereotypes as tropicalism and Europeism. The said stereotypes -resulting from a colonial look that intends to reduce heterogeneity in order to gain symbolic power, as Edward Said writes regarding orientalism- appear to be pregnant and effective, although they need to be deconstructed by the social sciences or else by parodic humor. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100002&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt In this paper, the author explores the survival of religion in the world after the modern historical process known as "disillusionment with the world". In that context, the paper poses questions about the present relations between religion and the social sciences, bearing in mind religion’s ideological plasticity. An interest in various sociological traditions that have dealt with religious issues reveals that a purely rational approach to the problem is bound to frustrate hermeneutic power. Perhaps what is being called into question is man’s "presence" in the world. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100003&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt Over the last few years, the collective, artistic-and-political performance "Tucumán Arde", carried out by avant-garde artists from Rosario and Buenos Aires in late 1968, has become the most frequently revisited work in Argentinean art. It has also given rise to countless pieces of writing from the pen of historians, curators, art critics and political activists. On the face of such renewed interest, this paper poses a question about the ways in which Tucumán Arde is read by the activists-artists that opted for street actions in the last decade, and what has remained from the original experience in present artistic-and-political practices. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100004&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt Through a philosophical revision of concepts pertaining to the fields of hermeneutics and translation, this text brings to question the logic that rules the production of the contemporary essay. Its central hypothesis posits that in our days the hypostasis of the essay is a translation from one language into that same language, and is divided into two sections. The former establishes a connection between translation and interpretation, while the latter focuses on the relation between interpreting an essay and producing one. The third basal connection explored in this text deals with translating and writing in the same language and serves as metadiscourse on the other two. This threefold pattern hinges in two directions, for the current essay is questioned in its form and its background, under a specular dynamics in which whatever is said can be refuted by the very format of the essay; of this essay. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100005&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt Twenty years after Foucault’s death, special emphasis is made on his contributions to the field of social sciences. Firstly, the practice of the sort of criticism that implies reflecting about knowledge from some place where action is possible, in post-modern times. Foucault’s elucidation of the human sciences, whose theoretical genealogy he traces back to Kant’s Was ist der Mensch? sheds light on a question whose historical answer has been provided from an anthropological standpoint that led the way to the so-called human sciences. He also shows the social demands that are, concurrently, their condition of possibility. And, last but not least, this paper speaks of his standing and lucidity to point to ways without turning them into recipes, inviting us to find the courage of thinking by ourselves. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122006000100006&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt There has been a generalized acknowledgement of the crisis undergone by the textual world of poetics in scientific writing. Some of the strongest assumptions of this kind of prose, such as its natural condition of objectivity, have collapsed. In "the discourse of social science", its frequent opacity can be descried; an opacity that was already visible from Barthes’ rebellious attitude in the 60s, when he denounced those who wanted "research to be shown but not written." However, a look at the essays produced in our times tells us that we are still confronted with the sometimes tragic option of participating in or standing aside from the searches that involve the creation of a new subject of writing; in other words, we need to choose whether or not to cross the boundaries that mark the differences among discursive genres.