A club for “us” in the 1918 reform. Meaning of university and nation for young non-reformist undergraduates

Abstract

This article analyzes the social aspect of university youth groups  in Argentina in 1918 to describe the positions of a group of young university students who founded a social and sports club that keeps its distance from the politisation of university institutions. They belonged to upper middle class and high class groups for whom university no longer suffices to create a differentiated social space defined by their rules and values. Young students conceive education, society and their role by postioning and differentiating themselves around a social and political process —reformism— that indicates the heterogeneisation of upper middle and high classes in Buenos Aires, as well as an explicit positioning as a leading group that gives shape to and recruits within a social space whose rules they control.