Language and organizational culture in the Oswaldo Cruz institute 1900-1930

Abstract

The medical literature consumed and produced by the Oswaldo Cruz Institute and the circulation of its personnel in foreign institutions from its beginnings in 1900 through the Vargas coup d’état in Brazil in 1930 testify to the complex, multilingual and international nature of scientific networking in and beyond the belle époque and challenge notions of behavior associated with colonial economic models. To explore the parameters of the Institute’s early organizational culture with respect to language, three of its publications from this period will be examined: a 1911 promotional booklet in German, which details the Institute’s journal holdings and the publications of its researchers; a 1929 English-language travelogue of leprosy treatment centers worldwide; and the journal Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (1909-), which published articles in five languages during this period. The results indicate that the Institute’s flexible, avidly multilingual language policy, partially the result of Brazil’s peripheral, neutral political situation, led to a very strong multilateral position in the scientific community that provided both visibility and recognition as a full peer in the then-internationally emerging field of Tropical Medicine.