Book Review: Fernanda Beigel (ed.),The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America

In recent years, several authors have questioned the hypothetical universalism of the social sciences, highlighting how they were constructed within a specific context – European – and later generalized to other parts of the world, especially ‘peripheral’ countries (Alatas, 2003; Connell, 2007; Mignolo, 2000). Despite differences among these authors, they share the Eurocentric criticism of the social sciences and advocate the need to value other ‘sociological traditions’, especially those located in the ‘Global South’ (Patel, 2010). The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America, edited by Fernanda Beigel, is an essential contribution to this debate, drawing attention to the vitality of the sociological traditions of Latin America. The result of a collective research project, this book presents a historical and structural analysis of the formation and consolidation of the social sciences in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century, focusing particularly on the changes in ‘the politics of academic autonomy’ in the region. In order to do so, as highlighted in Beigel’s introduction, the chapters in the book engage in a dialogue with a theoretical orientation that seeks to combine the tradition of Latin America dependency analyses with Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexivity.

As a whole, one can say that Beigel’s book expands our understanding of the construction of academia in Latin America in general and the social sciences in particular, considering the broader transformations in society and politics that occurred in the continent in the second half of the 20th century. The authors highlight the role played by democratic or authoritarian governments in boosting or creating obstacles to the development of the social sciences in Latin America, as well as the different agencies and research foundations, e.g. the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) – that played a part in sponsoring the institutionalization and internationalization of academia. In order to empirically analyse these changes, using research on the migration of intellectuals, theories and resources among national, regional and international communities, the authors of the chapters build a methodological approach based on ‘three empirical paths: a) an ethnographic access (life stories); b) the historiographical input (prosopography, quantitative history, and institutional corpus); and c) statistical analysis, using secondary or primary data and Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA)’ (p. 21).

The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America is divided into four sections and 13 chapters, with the participation of 12 authors from Argentine universities. The first section, ‘The Institutionalization of Research and Professional Training in Latin America: Peripheral Centers, Academic and Scientific Missions Diplomacy’, has chapters written by Fernanda Beigel, Anabella Abarzúa Cutroni and Natalia Rizzo. These chapters provide a historical reconstruction of the process of the institutionalization of the social sciences in Latin America, especially from the 1950s on, stressing the importance of ‘peripheral centers’ – particularly in Chile – for the creation of an academic regional circuit of social scientists that enabled the movement and circulation of researchers and theories. The formation of academia is analysed, and the contributors consider the political changes that took place on the continent in the 1960s, which was marked by military coups – e.g. Brazil in 1964, which led to the forced exile of many social scientists, followed by the election of progressive politicians (e.g. Salvador Allende in Chile) – followed by new military coups.

Chapters in this section seek to understand two interconnected movements that took place in Latin America starting in the 1950s and 1960s: the analysis of the process of institutional integration of social sciences, and the investigation of theoretical innovations that occurred in this context. With regard to the institutional question, there was, according to the authors, an emergence of ‘peripheral centers’ of teaching and research in the social sciences, particularly in Chile, that was driven by an ‘academic diplomacy’ with the decisive participation of several national, regional and international research agencies, e.g. UNESCO and the Institute of National Foreign Service. At the same time, we saw the advent of innovative theoretical formulations, especially the so-called ‘dependency theory’, which sought to analyse specific examples of dependency in underdeveloped societies.

In Section 2, ‘International Cooperation, Foreign Aid and Academic Mobility’, Juan José Navarro, Gonzalo Navarro Sanz and Lucila Voloschin continue the analyses begun in the previous section. In general, these chapters attempt to understand the importance of different institutions as well as the efforts undertaken by individual and collective actors to boost movements that contributed to the expansion and consolidation of an academic regional circuit. The section includes a highly systematic study of the Fulbright Program, which aimed to support the academic mobility of social scientists in Latin America between 1955 and 1973 (Navarro); an analysis of the consequences of the modernization and professionalization of the Catholic Church on the Latin American academic field (Sanz); and an investigation of international academic mobility at the National University of Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina) from the mid-20th century to 2010, which focuses on understanding the process of internationalization ‘from the Margins’ (Voloschin). These contributions highlight the crucial role of international cooperation and foreign aid in the establishment of the academic field in Latin America.

The chapters comprising Section 3, ‘Politicization versus Professionalization?’, seek to understand the complex relationship between the professionalization of social science in South America and the politicization of many academics in a context characterized by mounting repression by military dictatorships. As highlighted by Fernanda Quesada, Jorgelina Lazzaro Jam and Maria Augustina Diez in chapters focusing on distinct themes – the role of the Rockefeller Foundation at the University of Chile (Quesada), the ‘second-generation’ of university reforms (Jam) and the construction of academic careers of Argentine social scientists in a politicized period (Diez) – in the 1960s, academia in Latin America witnessed different processes of politicization and social science became increasingly concerned with politics.

In Section 4, ‘The Contraction of Academic Autonomy’, Paola Bayle, Fabiana Bekerman and Victor Hugo Soria Algañaraz shed light on the ‘contraction of academic autonomy’ in Chile and Argentina as a result of the military regimes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bayle focuses on the return of exiled Chileans from the United Kingdom and the challenges that they faced trying to reintegrate themselves into the Chilean academic market in the context of democratization; Bekerman and Algañaraz delve into the controversial process characterized, on the one hand, by the contraction of higher education under the military dictatorship, and, on the other hand, by the expansion of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET). These chapters draw attention to the tensions that pit academic autonomy against the dependence of social scientists in both contexts of military dictatorships and re-democratization processes.

The main contribution of The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America is that it raises relevant issues concerning the formation and consolidation of the social sciences in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century and relates these processes to a wider debate on academic autonomy. In this sense, its most praiseworthy accomplishment is a well-executed connection between empirical sources and the theoretical debate, which supports a robust analysis not only of internal aspects of academia, but relevant external issues as well. In contrast, the main shortcoming of the book has to do with two interrelated issues. First, although the authors address the development of the social sciences in different Latin American countries, most of the analysis focuses on Argentina and, to a lesser extent, Chile. Hence, important national experiences, such as in Brazil – which developed one of the most important systems of social sciences in Latin America – are not fully analysed. Second, the chapters in the book on many occasions treat Latin America as a homogeneous region. As much as this analytical approach might offer benefits in comparisons with other contexts, it is insufficient in understanding the differences and particularities of the development of social sciences and academia in each country.

These criticisms, however, do not diminish the importance of The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. Despite the aforementioned problems, the book provides a clearer understanding of the historical trajectory of Latin American social sciences and the challenges for the construction of academic autonomy in this region. If Raewyn Connell is right that the ‘development of social science involves a collective learning process on a world scale . . . which will take different shapes in different parts of world society’ (Connell, 2010: 48), this book provides an important overview of a peripheral experience – one of great vitality that could contribute to the construction of a global social science.