Studies on the liberal professions conducted within the brazilian social sciences

Abstract

The article surveys studies on liberal professionals conducted in the Brazilian social sciences over the past thirty years and draws a relationship between the changes in how this topic has been approached and B razil’s increasing social stratification. T w elve o f the one hundred and forty-four catalogued studies are sum m arized and analyzed here. These studies illustrate different m om ents in the history o f this research down through the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. They focus on such professionals as attorneys, physicians, engineers, social scientists, university professors, and architects and also explore more general questions related to the issue o f professionalization.