23 - The Social Sciences in Latin America during the Twentieth Century

Summary

This chapter is a selective overview of the development of sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics as defined in several Latin American countries. After reviewing the liberal heritage and the influence of positivism and social evolutionism at the turn of the century, the chapter discusses the emergence of sociology and cultural anthropology in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, with public education as a central theme. A recently established discipline in Europe and North America, sociology was adopted by learned groups for its promise of a scientific synthesis. Anthropology carried the legitimacy of its links with natural science, although it was the discovery of culture that lent it utility. From the 1940s through the 1970s, as development became the panacea, economics was in the ascendancy in Latin America. Modernization was to follow economic growth, although the relationship was understood to be far from necessary. The economic dependency argument, a dominant framework during the 1970s, was the outgrowth of a theoretical movement that relied on a Marxist third world perspective in rejecting the left-of-center reformist policies then in vogue. From the 1980s until the end of the century, the social sciences became associated with the expansion of higher education. The renewal of political science (grounded in a fresh look at state and society issues), the concern about cultural identity in anthropology and among students of communication, and the hegemony of the neoclassical economic framework were outstanding features of this period of theoretical and thematic diversity. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the Latin American social sciences in a globalized world.