Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
At the beginning of the 1950s, Chile prided herself on a century-old tradition of social studies. Beginning with the so-called generation of 1842 and with the support of the University of Chile (established in 1843), some of the most distinguished Chilean minds devoted themselves to the study of Chilean society and its evolution. Hernán Godoy Urzua (1967) classifies this intellectual production in six groups: social thinking of the nineteenth century, studies belonging to traditional social disciplines, writings on the “social question,” novels with social content, modern social essays, and writings with sociological intent.
This essay was first presented at the Conference on the Origins and Operations of Educational Systems, organized by the Research Committee on Sociology of Education of the International Sociological Association in Paris in August 1980. The essay is part of a project on Chilean development since 1950 being prepared by the author, Osvaldo Sunkel, and Arturo Valenzuela, with the financial support of the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with the Developing Countries (SAREC). Initial support for this project was provided by the Social Sciences Research Council and the Institut fur Iberoamerikakunde in Hamburg. Funds were provided by the Volkswagen Foundation and the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex in England.