Based since 2011 in the country's capital (Ciudad de México), the center is based in the facilities of the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (CEMCA - UMIFRE N ° 16 / USR Latin America N ° 3337 - MEAE / CNRS). An important event, organized by the CEMCA since 2010 and since 2015, alternating with the IFEA and the Andean Lima Center are the Jornadas de Jóvenes Americanistas (JJA), « Graduate Student Symposium ». These days are organized for and by doctoral students from the two institutes, and in collaboration with American institutions.
Discover in 180 the thesis of Arthur PONS, coordinator of the Mexico Center (2023-2026), PhD student at the EHESS (ED 286)
PhD dissertation topic : "From the Porfiriat to the Mexican Revolution: Científicos, province and power. Prosopographical essay (1876-1920)" under the supervision of Clément THIBAUD
The aim of Arthur Pons' research project is to produce a sociohistory of the Científicos group, from its crystallization under the regime of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911) to its dislocation during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). At the end of a 19th century marked by civil wars and foreign annexations, this generation of technocrats, closely linked to positivist ideology, was sent to the provinces by the dictator to control the local caudillos who preceded him. Although the group's sociological coherence is not always obvious, a common historical denominator seems to unite its members: neither they nor their families took part in the War of Reform (1857-1861) between liberals and conservatives. We can therefore hypothesize that they served as neutral substitutes for Díaz's authority in a hinterland on which a fragile peace continually rested. Revolutionary events, however, transformed the cohort: while some placed themselves at the service of the rebel regime, others were disgraced or forced into exile. In other words, the Científicos are a labile group, not to be defined once and for all by fixed criteria that would simply reify them. Arthur Pons employs the methods of sociohistory, such as prosopography and social network analysis, to avoid essentializing the Científicos group, while at the same time providing the tools to better define its contours and dynamics. He believes that it will then be possible to understand what this conjunction of trajectories reveals about the way in which Porfirio Díaz's authority was made and defeated, and about the recomposition of elites within revolutionary society. In historiographical terms, the main contribution of his work will be, contrary to a common view, to shift his gaze to areas far from the capital, this time hypothesizing that local sociabilities, divided between official events and more intimate ties, do not respond to codes distinct from those that can simultaneously be observed in Mexico City. Arthur Pons expects to find that the Científicos created for themselves, as soon as they could, margins of autonomy vis-à-vis the tutelage of the state and the ideology they were supposed to serve, and that they especially rebalanced their links with the revolutionary clan as the period reached its political point of no return.
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