Knowledge production in the Humanities in Argentinaand its link with society: how do researchears conptualize contribution, intervention an social utlily based on their own academic practices?

The purpose of this article is to reflect on how researchers from different humanistic disciplines conceptualize the ways in which their research contributes to society, within the framework of debates on the social function of science. In this way, the article allows us to account for the meanings of the utility of humanistic knowledge assumed by researchers based on their own practices as a topic-problem that is infrequently addressed and not associated with these disciplines. To this end, two levels of analysis are proposed: the first presents the meanings attributed to the ways in which humanistic knowledge contributes to and intervenes in society, which allow for the description of concrete and specific scientific practices; the second systematizes the meanings of utility that emerge from this. The methodology adopted is qualitative in nature, as it allows for the description of the complex conceptual structures on which the practices, ideas, and beliefs of the actors investigated in the research are based. The results of an empirical study ared based on interviews with 43 humanities researchers from the Argentine science and technology complex, conducted during the period 2022–2024. The sample is an intentional non-probabilistic selection of researchers and contains parity in terms of academic age and gender. The article's findings and results highlight the suspended category of symbolic-cultural intervention of the humanities based on specific forms of articulation to intervene concretely in society through different practices. Likewise, they uphold the potential social value of the concept of utility as a suspended meaning that may or may not generate concrete uses in ways that are not necessarily identifiable in the process of knowledge production and that is sustained in clear opposition to purely economic and instrumental logics.