El 1° de abril de 1967 comienza a funcionar el Departamento de Sociología de la Fundación Bariloche, creado sobre la base de un grupo de trabajo en Sociología. En 1974 se transforma en Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, con el ingreso de un grupo de trabajo en Ciencia Política. En sus inicios el Departamento contó con tres investigadores de planta. Actualmente su número es de once. Computando el número de estudiantes realizando trabajo de posgrado, se llega a veinticuatro miembros académicos en el Departamento. Siete miembros no académicos cumplen funciones de apoyo técnico-administrativo.

Most economic historians are probably familiar with Ernest Labrousse's model of the “Crisis of the Old Regime,” although it remains largely unknown to economists, sociologists, and other specialists in the social sciences. Yet Pierre Vilar feels that it is one of Labrousse's most important contributions to the “development of a science of history,” and considers that as an “instrument of analysis,” it can shed light not only on the “old style” crises of Western Europe but also on many essential aspects of the agrarian history of “underdeveloped” countries. We do not mean that contemporary “underdevelopment” and the “economy of the old regime” are one and the same. Rather, our intent is only to emphasize with Vilar that the “historical roles played in most of the world by meteorological abnormalities and agricultural cycles in the recent past have not been subjected to sufficiently methodological and reasoned study.”

The history of the Argentine interior during the nineteenth century has often escaped the attention of researchers attracted to the dramatic economic and political growth of the eastern riverine provinces. Included in this oversight has been the plight of the rural laboring classes, unless associated with studies of immigrants. It has been easier to trace the impact and lifestyles of coastal elites—the estanciero, the merchant, the caudillo, and the politician—and the urban working class, than to reconstruct the life of the provincial peon. The study of the lower classes in general has been further impeded by the dramatic but stereotyped visions of the gaucho and other rural characters immortalized by writers such as Sarmiento, Hernández, Güiraldes, and Martínez Estrada. Finally, the illteracy of creole workers has left us with limited personal records of their existence. Yet despite all the inconveniences involved in the study of the rural working class, it is still possible to reconstruct aspects of its social, political, and economic conditions.

It is generally agreed that the artistic world of eighteenth-century Brazil was dominated by the sculptor/architect, Antônio Francisco Lisboa—“O Aleijadinho” (“the little cripple”)—who has been called one of the most important artists ever to develop in Latin America. The peculiar circumstances of his life, combined with his obvious artistic genius, have resulted in considerable scholarly interest and study. The annotated bibliography that brought Aleijadinho scholarship from 1940 through 1973, in combination with the earlier bibliographies of Martins and Smith-Wilder, provides a relatively complete chronicling of works dealing exclusively with A. F. Lisboa.

Following their particular doctrinary inclinations, students of the social and the political situation have utilized diverse designations to identify the various segments into which they divide the world. These designations have always tended to present a tripartite division, based frequently on economic or politico-social organizations. They have thus used terms such as “free,” communist and uncommitted, capitalist, socialist, “third world,” imperialistic, colonial or marxist.