Personal report or primacy of structure? From oral history to structural history as a model for historical sociology - the case of USP'S institutional history

The present article intends to analyze, sociologically, the historiography about the University of Sao Paulo, highlighting the writing and publication patterns of the different "use's history" that corresponds to a different social position within the institution. In this sense, the "official history" of use, written from privileged positions and marked by the primacy of personal and finalist reports, is contrasts with the "history of losers" of a philosophical nature, marked by the defense of use's "original" project, anchored at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters. Finally, we show how the structural history, which allows the central analytical operation of the present article, also corresponds to a specific historiographical tradition, linked to the social sciences, especially sociology, which also has its own place in the institution.