Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T06:43:56.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Latin American Studies in the United States: A Critique and A Proposal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Gláucio Ary Dillon Soares
Gláucio Ary Dillon Soares*
Affiliation:
University of Florida and Universidade de Brasilia
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In this paper I present the views of a Latin American sociologist, partly trained in the United States, on Latin American Studies in this country. This is not a research paper but a frank and open presentation of my impressions, however opinionated. The aim is to stimulate reflection and debate, not to appease or to compromise. Implicit in all this are the following beliefs: (a) The training of Latin Americanists in the United States today is generally poor; (b) much of the research on Latin America carried out in the United States today is second-rate; (c) this situation can be improved; and, most important, (d) it is to Latin America's advantage, and not to its disadvantage, that such improvement take place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , 1976 , pp. 51 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Paper presented to the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Council on Higher Education in the American Republics, Mexico, 9-14 March 1975.

References

Notes

1. Several Latin Americans have insisted on the specificity of the Latin American experience and have openly rejected the plain extrapolation of “universal” theories and methodology to Latin America. Among them are Anibal Pinto and Oswaldo Sunkel, “Latin American Economists in the United States,” in Economic Development and Cultural Change 15 (October 1966):79-86; and Antonio García, Atraso y dependencia en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Editorial El Ateneo, 1972), especially chap. 1. Theotonio dos Santos, although keeping himself within the Marxist framework, has also voiced similar criticisms in “El nuevo carácter de la dependencia,” in La crisis del desarrollismo y el nuevo carácter de la dependencia, ed. José Matos Mar (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 1972), pp. 11-13, as does Marcos Kaplan in the introductory pages of Formación del estado nacional en América Latina (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1969). See also my “La nueva industrialización y el sistema politíco Brasileño,” in América Latina: Ensayos de interpretación sociológico-politíca, eds. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Francisco Weffort (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1970), pp. 363-85.

2. Evidence of this is given by the fact that 84.5 percent of the United States anthropologists included in a study claimed an area of specialization, as opposed to only 5.5 percent of the economists. See Richerd D. Lambert, Language and Area Studies Review, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Monograph 17 (Philadelphia: October 1973).

3. This explains why, in 1970, The National Directory of Latin Americanists (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Reference Department, 1971) considered that there were “2,695 persons in the United States whose experience and professional training qualify them as specialists in the Latin American field.” These figures include only permanent residents of the United States.

4. The well-trained Latin American, who also knows a great deal about other Latin American countries is a phenomenon of the past fifteen years.

5. As of 1972, there were the following groups: Science, technology, and development; urban and regional development; education and development; dependency studies; rural studies; economic history, national development, and integration; development and population; special regional program in the social sciences; cultural development; labor movements; and employment and unemployment.

6. Their unchallenged leadership in scientific accomplishment has led many observers to believe that United States universities are extremely efficient. I challenge this belief: When one takes into account the differences in overall expenditures, universities in the United States may turn out to be rather inefficient.

7. By secondary I mean universities that are not ranked among the top twenty in overall academic and scientific achievement.

8. Several informative papers on the state of graduate teaching and research in the social sciences in Latin America were published recently in vol. 34 of the Revista mexicana de sociología (1972).

9. The difference in scale is impressive. For instance, Cornell University libraries add yearly to their collections approximately the total number of volumes in existence at the University of Brasilia's library.

10. There are suggestions, however, that consultation with and use of these human resources are far less extensive than they were in Santiago. Furthermore, the closed character of several Mexican academic institutions and the country's ethnocentrism and restrictive immigration laws place narrow limits on its role as an academic center for the region.

11. It is important to realize that the benign image that the critical Latin American scholar had of his North American colleague as “a good and serious scholar with the wrong theory” is being replaced by a deprecatory view.

12. Academic institutions in these countries are not without serious problems, and this is not the place to elaborate on them. But, given the state of Latin American studies in the United States, if it were not for these problems and financing difficulties (there is far more abundant financing for study in the United States), there probably would be a massive shift of Latin American students from the United States to Europe.

13. Obviously, I am referring here to students who graduated from a relatively small number of serious institutions in a few Latin American countries.

14. The well known instability of Latin American academic institutions, particularly those concerned with the behavioral sciences, has been the focus of much concern. Several years ago some Latin American social scientists, myself included, were trying to build a permanent “emergency” fund that would allow any researcher subject to political prosecution and harassment simply to pack his materials and continue his work in another country and institution of his choice. The problem of academic instability in Latin America has been analyzed by Marcos Kaplan in “Vulnerabilidad de los centros de investigación en ciencias sociales: El caso de América Latina” (Working paper presented to the General Assembly of CLACSO, Mexico, November 1972).

15. See Sonia Naves Amorim and Ivany Neiva Gonzalez “Comparação entre duas revistas de ciência política: Dados e RLCP,” (Unpublished paper, University of Brasilia, 1973).

16. Obviously, there is not a “Latin American methodology,” but the research methods that are of greater use in analyzing the problems that Latin American scholars deem more important are definitely different from those that are popular in the United States. To provide a few examples: One cannot use telephone inquiries or mail questionnaires in countries where only a few have telephones and the majority of the population is illiterate, if the purpose is to reach a representative sample of the national population; given that Latin American social science is historically inclined, techniques for handling archival and documentary evidence are very important; since most historical series are incomplete, techniques for handling missing data become crucial.

17. See E. R. Herrera, “Cinco revistas de sociología: Un estudio comparativo,” Revista latinoamericana de sociología 70/1-6 (March 1970).

18. Carlos Eduardo Baesse de Souza, Contribuição a uma sociología de ciencia política no Brasil (Master's thesis, Brasilia, 1973).

19. See International Council for Educational Development, Area Studies on U.S. and Canadian Campuses: A Directory (New York, 1972).

20. This program would operate best under an interuniversity agreement. Extended visits may hinder the visiting scholar under present circumstances: Pension plans, residence for sabbatical leaves, and continuing insurance are some of the problems involved.