ABSTRACT
One of the crucial issues addressed by sociology is the question of method, or how scholarly knowledge of the social reality may be acquired. For Germani, too, the topics of epistemology and methodology of the social sciences—with two other thematic axes, like descriptive analyses of contemporary Argentina and the development of a relative theory of modern society (Bechelloni 1981, 14; Horowitz 2008; Mera and Rebon 2010)—remain, in brief, the essential bases of his scholarly project. Attention to method, however, assumes strategic relevance for Germani as one of fundamental importance to the development and consolidation of scholarly sociology. According to what Bechelloni wrote in an essay, “of concerning this grandiose scholarly project, Germani was one of the protagonists of the Argentineans, Latin American and international associations” (ivi, 8; Blanco 2006a, 2006b). It is not by chance that the name Germani, Bechelloni continues, in a relatively short time (the years 1955–66) began to be closely associated with the internationalization of sociology (ibid.). This project, writes Ana Alejandra Germani, saw the Italian sociologist deeply committed in the battle against that intellectual, spiritual, and speculative tradition that in Argentina represented the dominant paradigm and hindered the true development of social science (Germani 2008).
