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On Paradigms and the Pursuit of the Practical: A Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Frank Safford
Frank Safford*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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I am grateful to Charles Bergquist for his consideration in sending me a draft of his review essay, thus giving me an opportunity to reply in the same issue of LARR. It is in many respects a perceptive commentary that raises some useful questions about the book. Nevertheless, some of the comments suggest an imperfect grasp of my intended message, perhaps because of a failure on my part to make it sufficiently clear. On some important points he reads things into the book that are not there; and other points that are in the book seem to be missed in Bergquist's reading of it. I therefore would like to clarify some of these matters, both for those who may read the book as Bergquist has and for those who may choose to rely upon his commentary for their knowledge of the book's contents. I also will attempt to say something about some of the general issues he raises.

Type
Communications
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 1978 , pp. 252 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. In an earlier contribution (LARR 7, no. 2 [Summer 1973]:59), Charles Hale interpreted my effort at a behaviorally organized analysis of the Liberal-Conservative split in New Granada as implying “that these terms had little ideological content.” (Actually, I made no such implication but simply put ideology to one side in order to focus on a social analysis of behaviorally defined groups.) Now, Bergquist perceives me to adhere to a much sharper ideological division than I would accept. One can distinguish a number of different ideological tendencies in nineteenth-century Conservatives and Liberals—some of them admirably stated by Bergquist. But it is important to recognize that individuals in both bands did not always behave consistently with the dominant ideological framework usually ascribed to each group. In particular, the views of both Conservatives and Liberals altered over time and according to circumstance, with members of both groups often expressing similar attitudes or adopting similar positions at given points in time. Thus, for example, on the question of labor discipline, discussed in The Ideal of the Practical, a number of Liberals adopted the “conservative” stance during the economic stagnation of the 1830s, while many Conservatives gravitated to liberal free market views on other matters during the post-1845 export expansion.

2. See Seymour Martin Lipset, “Values, Education, and Entrepreneurship,” in Lipset and Aldo Solari, Elites in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 3–60.

3. Chapter two ends on the following note: “Few of the nineteenth-century elite's efforts to instill a work ethic and practical skills in upper- and lower-class youths were successful. … The elite could not prevail against the values inherent in the structure of the society, particularly as they fundamentally believed in the continuance of that structure and many of its values” (p. 79).

4. It should be noted that the passage quoted by Bergquist also firmly ties the persistence of aristocratic social values to the continuance of a markedly hierarchic social structure. One would not guess this from the segment he quoted, however, as he has omitted the preceding references to social structure. The complete passage is as follows (pp. 241–42): Colombian values have shifted as the country has moved toward industrialization, but they have not changed fundamentally. Industry has become much more important in the economy and in Colombian conceptions of the nation's future. … But while industrialists and university-educated technical experts are highly respected, they continue to operate in a society marked by deep class cleavages. Lower-level technicians and manual workers still lack status. Consequently, the high-level experts remain rather distant from the processes of production. Many manufacturing enterprises are weakened by lack of close direction from their elegant administrators, who form part of a bureaucratic culture rather than a shop culture. And it is doubtful that any member of the upper class or of the struggling white-collar group would consider overhauling a motor even as a hobby. As mandarinism persists, so too does its corollary, technical weakness at the middle and lower levels. Much of Colombia's upper class is now technically trained but still affected by aristocratic values.

5. See particularly “Commerce and Enterprise in Central Colombia, 1820–1870” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965); “Foreign and National Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century Colombia,” Business History Review (Winter 1965); and “Significación de los antiqueños en el desarrollo económico colombiano: un examen crítico de las tesis de Everett Hagen,” Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura (1967).

6. The problem of confusing my views with those of the elite appears in another way. In this case Bergquist attributes to the elite a conclusion that I intended to be understood as my own. In his summary of elite motivations Bergquist says “concerned Colombians … recognized the geographic and social obstacles to technological progress and sought to attack the problem of what we today call underdevelopment through the only feasible means at their disposal, through fostering technical education for workers and elites.” The words “recognized” and “only feasible means at their disposal” imply a degree of consciousness that I did not intend to convey. In saying that technical education appealed to upper-class Colombians as a relatively cheap and manageable way to break out of economic backwardness, as contrasted with more difficult tasks such as road building, I was making essentially the same point as that made by Tulio Halperin Donghi with regard to the construction of fancy cemeteries in post-Independence Spanish America (The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America [New York: Harper and Row, 1973], p. 91): that limited financial resources tended to make such cheaper gestures toward “modernization” especially appealing. In making this point I did not intend to imply, nor do I think Halperin did, that the elites were necessarily conscious of having made a choice of this kind.

7. The McClelland-Hagen school places excessive weight on psycho-cultural factors; the Rostow approach gives insufficient attention to institutional (political, social, cultural) problems and in general suffers from a notorious excess of optimism.