Cosmopolitan sociology with a Latin American accent

Abstract

He is a world traveler, always willing to learn new things, and was interviewed by three former students who met in the 1990s in room 210 of the Vale Campus of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre. José Vicente Tavares dos Santos is a retired full professor at that university, where he continues to collaborate with the postgraduate programs in Sociology and Citizen Security. “There are nine (master’s) programs in public security in Brazil, but ours is the only one with this name,” he boasts. In this interview, in the form of a chat with professors Luciane Soares da Silva (Uenf), Rosimeri Aquino da Silva (UFRGS) and Alex Niche Teixeira (UFRGS), José Vicente Tavares dos Santos talks about his academic career, the dilemmas of public security and historical facts of the present and past. Regarding the future, he tempers anxieties and uncertainties with a pinch of thoughtfulness and optimism. By the age of 14, he had already read the 19th-century Brazilian literature. He hitchhiked to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, Machu Picchu, La Paz, Lima and Santiago, Chile, always buying books. As a young student, he was selected to spend a month and a half at Harvard University, in the United States. Despite his experience and retirement, he sees himself as an apprentice: “We need to seek out something new, otherwise we think we already know about the subject, and that is a great illusion.” Check out the interview, transcribed with a minimum of editing interventions and approved by the participants.