Treves sociologo in Argentina : Dal pensiero sociale alla ricerca empirica sui conventillos di Tucumán

This year, the celebration of the Sixtieth anniversary of the first course ever of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina takes place. To its foundation contributed some leading Italian sociologists of that epoch, such as Gino Germani and Renato Treves, who, in 1940, started to teach Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Tucumán. In this essay, the author shows, on the one side, the importance of the first empirical work written by Treves, i.e., the research about the conventillos of Tucumán and, on the other side, of the essays of social theory. In this last work, Treves clarifies the meaning of modern sociology that he conceived of as a science in which the knowledge of the social reality where we live is always inspired by concrete necessity, and that is rather a way to prepare action than an end in itself. [Publishers' text].