Latin Americans Turn Again

In: Worldview, Band 17, Heft 3, S. 36-42

Abstract

One of the most rapid and thorough intellectual revolutions in recent times took place in Latin America during the last decade. In the early 1960's the notion of "development" (desarrollo) still had an almost religious connotation to it, among intellectuals as well as politicians in Latin America. Today it is overwhelmingly decried as "developmentalism" (desarrollismo), an ideology-serving the interests of U.S. imperialism and serving to obfuscate the realities of exploitation. This dramatic change has far-reaching political implications. The present article, which Dr. Kahl, Professor of Sociology at Cornell, has adapted from his book Modernization, Exploitation and Dependency (soon to be published by Transaction Books), traces the change in sociology, a strategically important field for Latin Americans' self-interpretation. Its focus is on the work of two men who today are the most important Latin American sociologists, Pablo Gonzalez Casanova of Mexico and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil.