The Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at USP was inaugurated in 1972, a period in which graduate courses began to be integrated into the university structure. In 1969, following the principles of the university reform implemented by the federal government, the University of São Paulo (USP) had to adapt to the new graduate courses regulations, when the chairs were extinguished (Federal Law 5540 of 11/28/1968).
In this sense, following the restructuring of the graduate studies that already existed at USP, the proposal to create the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (PPGAS) was submitted in 1970 and approved in 1972, based on a concentration area with the master's and doctoral levels.
The Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at USP benefited, on the one hand, from the rich academic and institutional tradition stemming from the now-defunct Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages. On the other hand, its organization in the model of the University Reform, in the context of the political repression of the military dictatorship, was marked by two central aspects: the complex transition from the chair system and the political removal of several of its collaborators. Thus, the process of adapting the existing graduate program to the model established from the 1970s followed different rhythms, affected by successive internal reforms. At USP, the training in Anthropology, as well as in Philosophy, Sociology, History, and Geography, was initially linked to the influence of the French Mission, which included, among others, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roger Bastide. It is worth noting that Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira, a central figure in the later establishment of the programs at the National Museum-UFRJ and University of Brasília (UnB), was a former Philosophy student at USP, perhaps the course most strongly influenced by the French model.
However, in the Department of Anthropology at USP, diverse traditions also played an important role. Institutionally, Anthropology was established at USP with two parallel chairs: Brazilian Ethnography and Tupi-Guarani Language, created in 1935; and Anthropology, created in 1941. The first, headed by Plínio Ayrosa, was extinguished in 1962 and replaced by Indigenous Languages of Brazil, already in the area of Languages. The Anthropology chair was first occupied by Emílio Willems, who graduated in Germany and also taught at the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo. In 1949, Willems was replaced by his assistant Egon Schaden, who remained at the head of the chair until 1967, being replaced on the eve of the extinction of the chair system by João Baptista Borges Pereira, who first graduated from the same School of Sociology and Politics where Willems had been. Willems and Schaden's oldest assistant in the chair, Gioconda Mussolini, who died in 1969, had worked with Herbert Baldus, another ethnologist of German origin, and was responsible for the Anthropology chair in the night course, with Eunice Durham and Ruth Cardoso as assistants.
From these lineages in the Anthropology chair, which followed distinct theoretical orientations, emerged the main research lines that constituted the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at USP in the format assumed from the 1970s. Under the guidance of Schaden and later of João Baptista Borges Pereira, already under the new format of the University Reform, researchers in indigenous ethnology earned their doctorates, such as Thekla Hartman and Lux Vidal, who, in turn, later guided Aracy Lopes da Silva, Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, and Dominique Gallois. Through the collaboration of João Baptista Borges Pereira with researchers who worked in the area of Sociology, such as Fernando Mourão and Ruy Coelho, researchers on racial relations and African studies also earned their doctorates, such as Kabengele Munanga, Teófilo de Queiroz Jr., and Carlos Serrano, each with distinct academic paths.
The mark of Florestan Fernandes' Sociology - important in the training of some deans of the Anthropology programs of UnB, such as Julio Cesar Melatti and Roque Laraia, in addition to Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira himself - was also present in the training of Eunice Durham and Ruth Corrêa Leite Cardoso, who, in the 1970s and 1980s, became the main trainers in the broad area of urban anthropology in Brazil - although, for institutional reasons, they worked at that time in the area of political science. Under the guidance of Ruth Cardoso, important names from the programs of the National Museum-UFRJ, such as Gilberto Velho, Lygia Sigaud and Giralda Seyferth, were trained; from Unicamp, names such as Mariza Corrêa, Guita Debert and Maria Filomena Gregori; and from USP itself, names such as José Guilherme Magnani. Eunice Durham was the advisor, among others, of Maria Suely Kofes, Alba Zaluar (then at Unicamp), Paula Montero (then at Unicamp, later at USP) and Carmen Cinira Macedo (then at PUCSP, later at USP).
Throughout the 1980s, the Social Anthropology Program at USP experienced an expansion and renewal of its staff in its three main research areas. There was an enrichment in indigenous ethnology studies, with Manuela Carneiro da Cunha and Dominique Gallois joining the work of Aracy Lopes da Silva and Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, contributing significantly to the academic and political strengthening of this area of studies in the broader context of the country's redemocratization. There was also a thematic diversification of urban anthropology, especially for issues related to cultural and religious practices, with Maria Lúcia Montes, José Guilherme Magnani, Carmen Cinira Macedo, and Paula Montero, while Lilia Schwarcz reinforced the theme of racial relations. At the same time, the second half of the 1980s was marked by the process of splitting the large area of Social Sciences at USP into separate departments and programs of Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science. In the following decade, the Program dealt with the impacts of this change and the progressive narrowing of its number of professors and researchers, due to losses, departures, retirements, and the relatively low number of recruitment of new staff.
A major renewal took place throughout the 2000s, when several new staff members were incorporated, allowing not only an important revitalization of the already established research areas, but also the consolidation and creation of new thematic axes. It was in the midst of this process that the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology (PPGAS) entered PROEX-CAPES, in the triennial evaluation of 2010, with a score of 6 (the maximum score is 7).
The PPGAS was the first graduate program of USP to adopt an affirmative action policy, in 2017, which stemmed from the need to recognize forms of knowledge and epistemologies that have suffered a continuous process of invisibility. This mobilization began in October 2013, through an ongoing debate between students and faculty, with the goal of implementing Affirmative Actions for admission to our Master's and Doctoral courses, and resulted in the approval of a proposal for affirmative actions in 2014. The project faced an arduous process of institutional processing, and its implementation could only occur in 2017. Throughout this process, students and faculty of the Program were able to contribute to the discussion on affirmative actions and their implementation in other graduate programs, in addition to participating in the debate on the adoption of quotas in the undergraduate courses of the University of São Paulo.