Search

This paper takes very briefly on six decades of the history of psychology in the city of La Plata (Argentina), from the creation of the Pedagogic Department in the National University, in 1906, until the coup d'état of 1966, that put an end to the expansion of psychological studies that had started in 1958, after the creation of the psychology program. In that period, psychology would go through different phases, marked by oppositions such us “positivist naturalism"/ “anti-positivist humanism", “theoretical training" / “professional training", “scientific psychology" / “psychoanalytic psychology", etc. The goal of this work is to make an account of what happened at the time, giving as much importance to the individual actors as to the institutional and political factors that were present in the context. The methods are the traditional ones for history (mainly de gathering of oral, documentary and bibliographic sources. However, they have been interpreted from a critical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous authors have pointed out the importance of recuperating and giving its due worth to peasant and aboriginal knowledge when rural development initiatives emerge. Nevertheless the problem area related to the local knowledge concept continues presenting some dark points. Therefore, with the purpose of contributing to the topic, this paper analyzes local knowledge dynamics, particularly its value increase and reconfiguration based on the involvement of technical advancement and scientific knowledge. Keeping in mind the said purpose, this article presents the results of a research curried out in a peasant community of the Northeastern part of Argentina, where small producers' knowledge and lack of it were studied, as well as local knowledge invention, circulation, and consolidation processes from a historical perspective. Thus the dynamics involved are conceptualized with the support of frames of reference originated in social psychology, and a comprehensive model destined to describe and explain communal processes for inventing knowledge and the relationship between local knowledge and scientific knowledge has been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]