Classics of social thought

Classics of Social Thought is a collection of texts by eight thinkers, from different locations, between the 19th and 20th centuries, which had little or no circulation in Brazil.

Classics of Social Thought responds, first and foremost, to a historical need: to restore to the canon of the social sciences the ideas, critical vision, and theoretical elaborations of women who have not entered the history of social thought, whose bibliography, as in so many other fields of knowledge, is comprised solely of men. In a provocative (and somewhat ironic) way, organizers Verônica Toste Daflon and Bila Sorj offer commentary and, at the same time, question what defines a "classic," bringing from the margins women social scientists who are still highly relevant today.

The authors featured here—Harriet Martineau, Anna Julia Cooper, Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Olive Schreiner, Alexandra Kollontai, Ercília Nogueira Cobra, and Alfonsina Storni—lived between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They are heirs to the ideals of the women who fought for citizenship during the French Revolution and were precursors to the suffragettes who won the right to vote.

Classics of social thought masterfully perform a kind of epistemic archaeology of these women who, even though they worked on the periphery of knowledge, managed to face the immense obstacles of their time, but remained on the margins.