A Space for Science - The Development of the Scientific Community in Brazil
Simon Schwartzman
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991
Chapter 10
EPILOGUE
Freshness and Decay
Politics: From Military to Civilian Rule
Mass Higher Education
Techology and Economics
The Demon
Notes
Freshness and Decay
Cities in the New World, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss, go from freshness to decrepitude
without ever maturing.(1) He might have withdrawn
the statement during his 1984 visit to the city on the occasion of the Universidade
de Sáo Paulo's fiftieth anniversary. As one of the largest and busiest industrial
cities in the world, Sáo Paulo does not seem to have grown in the directions he
may have sensed on his first visit, for the inauguration of the Faculdade de Filosofia.
And yet he was probably right in a deeper and unexpected sense.
The creation of new universities, the quest for excellence, the organization of
research programs, the drive for technological self-reliance, the concern with
practical utilization of scientific knowledge to meet social and economic needs
- all suggest an element of freshness, youth, and dynamism that have always been
present in the growing scientific community in Brazil since Bonifácio de Andrada.
Maturity, however, does not follow naturally from youth, just as reality does
not follow easily from wishes or ideology.
There is much more science and technology in Brazil today than only twenty years
ago, but it is clear that a space for science, in terms of socially defined, accepted,
and institutionalized scientific roles, is barely there. At most there are islands
of competence, niches where science could develop for some time, but always precariously
and threatened by an unfriendly environment.(2) In social life, decrepitude rather than maturity
usually follows failed institutionalization. Decay occurs when founders of scientific
institutions get older and are unable or unwilling to open space to new ideas,
new generations, new leadership; when generous and ambitious projects of social
reform, like the scientistic movements of the past, are gradually transformed
into barely disguised ideologies for the protection of narrow interests; when
education loses its role of expanding opportunities and competence and becomes
a mechanism for social inequality and privilege. The passage from freshness to
decay is ambiguous and often difficult to grasp, since nothing changes - the persons,
the institutions, their discourse - except their contact with reality and their
premature aging.
The crucial question about the Brazilian scientific community today is whether
it is heading toward maturity or whether the bleak prediction of Lévi-Strauss
is coming true. As of this writing the ghost of premature decay is very present
in Brazilian society in a context of acute economic crisis, a shaky institutional
order; and a society marked by the entrenchment of narrow interest groups and
lack of consensus on basic values. This situation affects the scientific community
as it affects all organized sectors in Brazil. It is very difficult, but necessary,
to try to understand whether the present malaise affecting the scientific community
is due only to circumstantial and external factors, such as the debt crisis and
the political instability generated by the political transition to democracy,
or whether it is more structural and therefore less likely to go away.
The uncertainties of the present dramatize the fact that, in spite of the achievements
of Brazilian science in the last fifty years, its place in society is still far
from recognized. We have seen how, in the past, Brazilian science flourished only
under the protection of the powerful, whether Emperor Pedro II or Planning Minister
Reis Velloso; under the guise of applied technology, as in the Instituto Manguinhos;
or in atypical institutions, such as the Faculdade de Filosofia e Letras of the
Universidade de Sáo Paulo. From 1945 to 1964, the last time Brazil enjoyed an
open political system, the scientific community was too small to have any socially
significant presence, and its main institutional achievement of the period, the
creation of the Conselho Nacional de Pesquisas, was in fact the outcome of an
extremely elitist and frustrated project of nuclear development.
Brazilian scientists have always sensed the weak links they had with the broader
society, and they often looked for escape routes in politics, education, and the
economy. Almost all, and many of the brightest, looked for political participation
outside their laboratories, taking part in movements for university reform or
looking for applied subjects for their work. In an open political regime these
tendencies are likely to reappear and intensify. We can conclude this journey
through the formation of the scientific community in Brazil by looking briefly
at these broader contexts as they stand today.
Politics: From Military to Civilian Rule
Political scientists still discuss why the Brazilian military stepped down in
1985 in favor of civilian rule. They still ponder the broad consequences of this
peculiar type of transition.
Transition to civilian rule was, from the beginning, part of the stated purposes
of the Brazilian military elite, the group of high-ranking officers that came
to be known as the "Sorbonne." They had a task to perform, modernization of the
country, and then a period of "slow, gradual, and secure" transition to democracy
was to take place. What happened can be better described as an example of strategic
retreat. Some of their ambitious projects did come to fruition-typically those
physically isolated from the large urban centers, endowed with heavy investments,
based on established technologies, and often related to powerful interest groups-such
as the Itaipu hydroelectric plant in the South, the Carajás mining complex in
the North, the development of an industry of military equipment for export, the
alcohol program for engine combustion, and the military project of uranium enrichment.
Some of these projects are questionable in terms of their cost, environmental
impact, and sheer morality, but at least they do exist. They are, in any case,
exceptions. From 1978 on, as the availability of foreign loans dwindled, the price
of foreign oil soared, and the political basis of the military regime narrowed,
most of the big projects of the previous years collapsed: the nuclear energy program,
the steel railroad in Minas Gerais, the big trans-Amazon and Rio-Santos roads,
the beginnings of a Brazilian naval industry, and, more markedly, all promises
of urban renewal, social assistance to the poor, rural modernization, and reform.
We have seen how Brazilian science also grew in the wake of the 1970s. In terms
of scientific production reflected in the Science Citation Index, Brazil was thirty-first
in the world and fourth in the Third World in 1973, with about 0.25 percent of
the articles published worldwide. By 1978 Brazil was already second in the Third
World, after India, and twenty-fifth worldwide. The number of articles published
in the international literature went from 812 in 1973 to 1,060 in 1978 and 1,551
in 1980. This was a significant increase in national and regional terms, but it
did not change much in terms of international weight. The worldwide pattern of
concentration of scientific production is reproduced within Brazil. Five institutions
- the Universidade de Sáo Paulo, the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, the Universidade
de Campinas, the Universidade Estadual Julio de Mesquita (Sáo Paulo) and the Escola
Paulista de Medicina-produced in 1982 some 43 percent of all articles, books,
and scientific communications surveyed by CAPES; 43.6 percent of all articles
published in international journals; and 70 percent of all articles listed in
the Science Citation Index for 1973-78.(3)
After the expansion period, Brazilian science was like the rest of the country:
there were many significant achievements, many halted initiatives and projects,
and a pervasive uncertainty about the future. The failure of the great leap forward
is usually explained away by an array of unfortunate circumstances. The standard
reasoning is still that Brazil was just unlucky, victimized by the increase in
oil prices, soaring interest rates, and the fall in international commodity prices.
The military is also blamed. They are accused of being clumsy and authoritarian
and of not taking advice and direction from the scientists. The lack of an open
political regime precluded close public scrutiny of how well and for what purposes
resources were being spent. As the opposition to the military regime mounted,
so did hopes for civilian rule: the new regime would be open and attend to the
needs of the people, would not submit to the whims of the International Monetary
Fund, would shut down the purely military and technocratic projects, would place
the science and technology agencies under the control of the scientific community,
and would make space for a real reform of Brazilian universities. Brazilian scientists
have always longed for a Ministry of Science and Technology, and so the ministry
was created. Those in theater, movies, and the performing arts complained about
the lack of support for cultural activities and were also granted their minister.
Because people complained that the military had spoiled the universities, a national
commission to examine what was wrong and to decide what to do was to be created.
The new regime would be open to all, and nobody would be left out.
In hindsight, it is obvious that the establishment of a Ministry of Science and
Technology and the occasional statements by public authorities about their commitment
to science, technology, and higher education were not enough to provide the Brazilian
scientific community with the space, recognition, and support it expected to receive
from the new regime. The newly created Ministry of Science and Technology did
not make any contribution to changing this picture in any significant way. In
terms of orientation, as in terms of many of its key figures, the new ministry
tried to be a carrier of the old ideals of science planning, technological nationalism,
and self-sufficiency. But it was born very weak and brought together under its
umbrella only previously existing institutions, such as the Conselho Nacional
de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and FINEP, to which was added the
Secretaria Especial de Informática. Most of its resources went to space research,
computer science, and biotechnology.(4) Nuclear
research, agriculture, industrial technology, military research, and university
research all remained outside its scope. The ministry was perceived as a government's
political concession to some sectors of the PMDB party and the scientific community,
and the split that existed in the past between technological and economic policies
or decisions was reproduced now amid fewer resources and more isolation than during
Reis Velloso's tenure at the Ministry of Planning.
The main traits of President José Sarney's government are its lack of any long-term
project or commitment (except to its own survival as a political arrangement)
and its extreme susceptibility to pressures of well organized and vocal interest
groups. More to the point, it is now clear that the political enlightenment inherent
in an open political regime does not necessarily imply an equally progressive
approach to matters of science, technology, and education. Openness to interest
groups and public opinion is of course a desirable feature in any democracy, but
it creates special problems for a scientific community not used to fighting for
its own space. It is only natural, under the circumstances, for scientific groups
to approach the political parties and attempt to bring to the parties' programs
and projects a proper evaluation and acknowledgment of their work. The risk is
the over politicization of scientific life, with the prevalence of political and
ideological criteria over those of scientific and intellectual competence in the
scientific community's leadership.
Mass Higher Education
We have seen that science in Brazil developed mostly around a few academic institutions.
In spite of emphasis given to technology in the last twenty years, most of the
research that exists today is carried on in Brazil's best universities and academic
centers. Yet recent developments suggest that this space, conquered with difficulty
in a few decades, is far from secure.
In the 1970s, higher education in Brazil drifted further and further away from
the unified university research model prescribed by the 1968 reform. In 1985 it
became an extended, complex, and highly differentiated system with the following
main features:(5)
A small elite of about 14,000 faculty with doctoral degrees or equivalent
titles (sometimes known as the "high clergy" of Brazilian education) and about
40,000 students in master's and Ph.D. programs in the best public universities,
mostly in the southern part of the country. Professors are endowed with reasonable
salaries and can complement them with fellowships, research money, and better
working conditions (in spite of declining resources in the 1980s). Students
are selected from the best coming out of the public universities, do not pay
tuition, and get fellowships for two or more years.
About 45,000 full-time teachers with relatively low academic status (sometimes
known as the "low clergy") serving about 450,000 students in free, public universities
throughout the country. Hired initially on a provisional basis, without formal
procedures or evaluation, most of these teachers are now tenured and can be
promoted up to the assistant professor level by seniority. Courses and facilities
at this level are uneven, with the best in the center-South and in the traditional
professions, and the worst in public universities of the Northeast. Faculty
is mostly full-time (or at least paid on a full-time basis), and members seldom
have more than a bachelor's degree. Students have access to almost-free restaurants
and a few other facilities, but lodging is rarely provided, and physical installations,
laboratories, research materials, and teaching aids are scarce. Students usually
come from the best private secondary schools-which means they are from middle
to high-income families - and often go through cramming courses to prepare for
the university's entrance examinations. These courses are provided by private,
profit-oriented firms outside any kind of government supervision and tend to
be very efficient for their purposes. Thanks to loans provided by the Inter-American
Development Bank, most federal universities built their brand-new campuses on
the outskirts of the cities where they are located. There were few provisions
for housing, since the government was afraid of too much student concentration,
and in any case Brazil lacks the tradition and resources to move students to
different locations to study on a large scale. Today most of these campuses
are poorly maintained and inconvenient to use. Those that can, try to remain
in their old seats in central urban areas. As education opportunities expand,
students face increasingly serious problems of unemployment, in spite of the
relative quality of their education.
Around 60,000 teachers serve about 600,000 students in private institutions.
Most of these teachers work part-time, are not well qualified, and must carry
a large teaching load in several institutions - or a combination of jobs - in
order to survive. Some have full-time appointments in public universities and
moonlight in private schools, where courses are usually taught in the evening.
They are not organized and do not have the same teachers' associations prevalent
in the public sector. Tuition is low and government-controlled, but students
can barely afford it. Facilities and teaching materials are minimal or nonexistent.
Students tend to be poorer and older; courses are mostly in the "soft" fields.
Most students are already employed in lower middle class or white-collar jobs
and look for education as a means to job improvement or promotion; they are
usually more interested in credentials than knowledge or skills.
A profound regional imbalance exists, contrasting the southern states, and more
specifically the state of São Paulo, with the rest of the country. São Paulo
is Brazil's biggest and most industrialized state, encompassing about one-fifth
of the national population and one-third of the national graduate enrollment.
This is also the region where the dual nature of the Brazilian higher education
developed more fully. There is proportionally less enrollment in universities
than in other regions, but the state universities are better than in the rest
of the country, while the private sector is much more complex and differentiated
than elsewhere. There are just three federal institutions in Sao Paulo, a small
university in the city of Sao Carlos, the Escola Paulista de Medicina, and the
Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica in Sao José dos Campos. This is in contrast
to the country's poorest region, the Northeast, where more than 70 percent of
the students are enrolled in federal universities, whose academic standards
are usually lower than those in the South.
In 1985 the new government formed a national commission to make recommendations
for a new reform of higher education institutions. The commission's suggestions
included the establishment of higher 1evels of differentiation, autonomy, and
accountability among public institutions; public support for private, high-quality
schools and universities; the introduction of new modalities of public education
for older and working students; and increased support for scientific research
from within the Ministry of Education on a competitive basis.
These recommendations were never put into effect, mostly because of opposition
from teachers' associations. In last analysis, demands for accountability, effective
autonomy, and quality come mostly from the more academic groups in higher education
institutions, which feel they are losing their space in an increasingly unionized
and politicized university environment. These groups, however, can look for support
elsewhere in research funding agencies or in the private sector-and are not likely
to carry their demands for academic improvement too far. The only sectors completely
locked into the higher education institutions are the so-called low clergy and
the university bureaucrats in public institutions. Their professional qualifications
are usually not good enough to allow them to move easily to comparable jobs in
the private sector; they have no way to raise additional resources through research
projects; and they are often located in regions with very limited middle-class
job opportunities. Well organized and politicized, this sector has been able to
get the government to provide job tenure, promotions based on seniority, and fixed
and homogeneous salary scales.
This scenario points to the threat of a progressive "Latin-Americanization" of
Brazilian federal universities, with the alienation of its more competent sectors,
and the progressive politicization of its daily life. One possible trend to be
expected is the continuous lowering of admission standards and spreading of night
courses in the public institutions, followed by migration of the richer and better-educated
population to private institutions. Research money can follow the same path or
remain concentrated in non university government institutions.
The expansion of higher education into a highly stratified mass system brings
additional tensions and difficulties to the scientific community. The high salaries
paid, the facilities for travel abroad, the use of English as a language for publication,
the preferences for research over teaching, and the choice of research topics
that are intellectually attractive and prestigious, rather than useful and practical,
are often seen by the scientists themselves as unjustified privileges that reinforce
the scientists' elitism and help maintain the present patterns of regional imbalance,
underdevelopment, and economic dependence. These feelings of inadequacy and social
inequity are compounded by the difficulties of carrying on successful scientific
lives in an unfavorable environment. Not surprisingly, this combination often
leads to futile attempts to abandon the enterprise of modern science altogether
and to look for different paths. Would it not be possible to find a science that
is closer to the poor, expressed in ways and in a language that all can understand?
Shouldn't we distribute research resources in a more equitable and regionally
balanced way, rather than following the always questionable standards of merit?
Shouldn't scientists renounce the intellectual games ,of the rich and look only
for knowledge that is obviously useful, cost-effective, and practical?
Technology and Economics
In developed countries most of the resources for scientific and technological
research are spent on applications; in developing countries the opposite seems
to be the rule.(6) Brazilian plans for science and technology, and
the behavior of its science and technology agencies through time, show an attempt
to approach the pattern of expenditures of developed countries. So far there is
no clear evidence that these efforts to develop applied knowledge and bring it
to industry have produced substantial benefits. Brazilian industrial firms, public
and private, have usually shown little interest in original research and development.
The Brazilian pattern of economic growth has always emphasized the free admission
of foreign capital, enterprises, and technology. Given this situation, it is reasonable
to ask whether all efforts to develop indigenous technology are not being wasted.
An implicit assumption of many investments in technology is that if good products
or processes can be obtained they will somehow become socially or economically
beneficial. Experience seems to show that this is not always the case. Technological
research within a university or a research institute is relatively inexpensive
and inconsequential. Adoption of a product in the marketplace is an altogether
different matter, requiring much higher investments and serious consideration
of the underlying and expected market conditions. However, the presence of competent
technologists and a reservoir of technical expertise may open alternatives that
would not otherwise exist; the strengthening of scientific and technological staffs
at the universities might lead to creation of institutional bridges between academic
research centers and industry, and they can always improve the country's pool
of educated workers, an important asset in itself.
The reasons behind the efforts toward indigenous technology are far from simply
economic; they include such considerations as national pride, employment for technologists,
development of skills and technological confidence, creation of demand for suppliers
of parts, and strengthening of sectors in the public bureaucracy.(7)
Political motives include the desire to keep all aspects of technology that are
important for national security and independence - including communications, energy,
computers, and military equipment - within the country. Economic considerations
are usually long-range and roundabout; they are based on the hope that, in the
long run, the costs of technological licensing will be higher than the costs of
technological self-sufficiency.
These social and political considerations are based on the view that market mechanisms
cannot bring an underdeveloped country to a state of satisfactory economic development
and social justice. Foreign firms operating in underdeveloped economies usually
come with their technologies fully developed and train their workers only in routine
procedures of operation and maintenance. Indigenous firms prefer to buy well-tested
machines and processes abroad, which usually include contracts covering replacements
and technical assistance. Imported technology is also usually laborsaving and
produces sophisticated goods for the wealthier classes, leaving large sectors
of the population without provision.
The solutions to these problems are not obvious. Policies that aim at technological
self-reliance easily lead to the protection of inefficient industries; to the
maintenance of expensive, unproductive, and poor research; and to the growth of
costly and sluggish bureaucracies.(8) The inefficiency
of the state, in contrast to the economic rationality of private corporations,
is often cited as the reason behind the difficulties of the projects of technological
self-reliance in countries like Brazil or India, in contrast to the achievements
of market-oriented economies like South Korea or Taiwan. These, however, are clear
examples of garrison states that have much broader powers than the extended, amorphous,
and contradictory state bureaucracies of the former and that developed comprehensive
policies in which technology is fostered not in a free market but with full consideration
of its market and long-term implications.(9) These
countries also had a pool of well-educated and disciplined workers that does not
exist in other societies.
The Demon
This pessimistic overview, following a long survey of the efforts to build an
effective space for science in Brazil, brings into question the effective value
of this whole drive. And yet it is the very existence of this effort and its constant
renewal through the years, rather than the eventual success or failure of specific
projects and undertakings, that opens the space for hope.
I began with the myth of Sisyphus, and I may as well end with a similar image.
To find its space, scientific research must assert its own worthiness, independent
of its broader implications and consequences for Brazil's educational, technological,
and economic institutions. Ultimately, the question is not whether science is
accessible or inaccessible to the people, useful or not for technology, pertinent
or not for national pride and grandeur. The question is whether there is a consensus,
at least among a significant number of people, that Brazil should become a modern
country and participate in the common fate of our time, which requires a systematic
effort of self-clarification and knowledge in an increasingly rationalized and
intellectualized world-and whether this consensus can be maintained and expanded.
The history of the scientific community in Brazil shows that, in spite of all
the difficulties, there is today in the country a sizable and growing group of
people committed to these values, which is a reason for optimism. The commitment
to the expansion of human knowledge and competence, as Max Weber said many years
ago, is ultimately a matter of choice, a value judgment that cannot be either
demonstrated or refuted by its practical utility or short-term consequences -
even if we believe, as we do, that these consequences can be of great significance
for all. If we agree on these values, "we shall set to work and meet the 'demands
of the day,' in human relations as well as in our vocation. This, however, is
plain and simple if each finds and obeys the demon who holds the fibers of his
very life."(10)
Notes
1. Lévi-Strauss 1955, opening chapter on São Paulo.
2. J. B. A. Oliveira 1984.
3. C. de M. Castro 1986a; Morel and Morel 1977; Garfield 1983.
4. Ministério de Ciência e Teenologia 1985.
5. Schwartzman 1988a.
6. Moravesik 1975:108.
7. Erber 1977.
8. Wade 1985; Bauer 1977.
9. Nau 1986:14.
10. Weber 1958:156.