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Title: The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines

Author: Szanton, David L, University of California, Berkeley

Publication Date: 01-01-2002

Series: GAIA Books

Publication Info: GAIA Books, Global, Area, and International Archive, UC Berkeley

Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/59n2d2n1

Keywords: Comparative Studies

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The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines

Edited by David L. Szanton

Published in association with University of California Press

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: THEORY AND PRACTICE by

Paul W. Drake and Lisa Hilbink1

Introduction

Latin Americanists have developed and/or contributed to some of the most important and influential theories and debates in the social sciences and humanities in recent history2. From dependency to democratization, from studies on the state to research on social movements, scholars of Latin America have been at the forefront of theoretical development in a variety of disciplines. Despite these achievements, Latin American studies in the United States, along with all foreign-area studies, is suffering from a decline in intellectual and material support. The possibility of specialization in the region, which demands field work and sustained dialogue with Latin American scholars, is threatened. It has therefore become necessary to turn our analytical lenses inward to examine critically the past and future trajectory of Latin American studies and to evaluate and respond to criticisms of the field.

As a contribution to this effort, this essay traces the institutional and intellectual history of Latin American studies, principally in the United States, and, with this in mind, addresses contemporary criticisms of area studies. It contends that scholarly work under the umbrella of Latin American studies has been and will be innovative and important in a variety of disciplines. The mid-level theorizing which has been the hallmark of Latin American studies offers a healthy balance between problem-driven research and causal analysis. Moreover, the crossnational collaboration and inter-disciplinary cross-fertilization which characterize Latin American studies are precisely the sorts of practices which should be encouraged in the emerging era of global cooperation and production.

Institutional History of Latin American Studies

The origins and characteristics of Latin American studies differ somewhat from those of other world areas. To begin, the study of Latin America did not originate in an "Orientalist" tradition, such as that which initiated the study of Asia and the Middle East. In other words, present-day Latin American studies is not rooted in colonial scholarship, heavily oriented toward ancient history and language.3 While some scholars of the region have always

1For comments o n earlier drafts o f this e ssay, we are grateful to Sonia Alvarez, Victor Bulmer-Thomas, David Collier, Carlos I van De Gregori, Eric Hershberg, Evelyne Huber, Elizabeth Jelín, Gilbert Joseph, Ira Katznelson, Gwen Kirkpatrick, Gerardo Munck, Peter Smith, Doris S ommer, Carlos W aisman, and two anonymous r eviewers.

2 The authors, two political scientists, acknowledge the emphasis, perhaps i nescapable, placed on the s ocial sciences, and especially political science, in this c hapter. A reasonable attempt was m ade to discuss t he increasingly important contributions o f scholars i n the humanities t o debates i n Latin American Studies, but the authors r ecognize that there remain many worthy ideas a nd works t hat they were unable to cover in this s hort essay.

3As R ichard Lambert explains, "for a scholar studying China or India, the classical civilization is p art of everyday life. Serious s cholars, even social scientists, must master it to make sense of the contemporary society." See Richard Lambert, "Blurring the Disciplinary Boundaries: Area Studies i n the United States," American Behavioral Scientist 33:6 (July/August 1990): 712-732, at 724.

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focused on Amer-Indian cultures and institutions, and while the influence of postmodernism has brought the region's cultural heterogeneity to the forefront of contemporary concerns, most U.S. researchers have traditionally followed the Latin American lead in defining the region as primarily New World and predominantly mestizo (mixed-race peoples exercising some combination of indigenous and European cultural practices). Partly because of this mixing of peoples and cultures, claims of uniqueness or exceptionalism — e.g., Ecuador is so unusual that it can be understood only on its own terms and only by Ecuadoreans or by those deeply immersed in Ecuadorean culture — have been less common in Latin American studies than in studies of some other areas, such as the United States, China, Japan, India, etc.4

Secondly, and relatedly, Latin American studies has become a cooperative endeavor between U.S. scholars and their counterparts south of the border. That is, Latin American studies is something that North Americans do with Latin Americans, not to Latin Americans. Indeed, much of the knowledge production about the region has always come from the Latin Americans. This is as it should be, since the internationalization of knowledge production through dialogue with researchers around the globe is today a keystone of not only the social sciences and humanities but also the natural sciences and all scholarly pursuits. A reciprocal and free flow of questions, ideas, and information is essential to all scientific inquiries, whether in physics or anthropology. Perhaps due to the geographic, linguistic, religious, and historico-political ties between the United States and Latin America, there have been fewer cultural barriers to such scholarly collaboration than there might be between U.S. and African or East Asian scholars. Moreover, many Latin American scholars have come to the United States either in exile or for education, and political obstacles have diminished over the years.5

Interactions between national and foreign analysts of Latin America have been beneficial to both sides. Fruitful interdisciplinary work has been fostered, partly because disciplinary boundaries are less rigid in Latin America, and new questions have been generated. For example, the content of scholarly debate in Latin America compelled North American scholarship to address issues such as class inequality and class conflict, both domestically and internationally, while North Americans have brought to the table concerns about democratic stability and gender inequities.

Cross-fertilization occurred between the approaches of the generally more qualitative, theoretical, often Marxist Latin Americans and the frequently more quantitative, empirical, often liberal North Americans. Such interchange tested theories, whether modernization from the north or dependency from the south. Both sides helped each other see beyond their biases. These interactions also produced some unfortunate intellectual distortions, including the imposition of U.S. Cold War research concerns on Latin America, the uninhibited imbibing of U.S. economic models by some Latin Americans, and the uncritical consumption of dependency

4This i s n ot to say that claims o f exceptionalism are completely absent in Latin America.

5Two caveats t o this g enerally positive cooperative scenario are in order. First, there have always b een huge inequalities b etween U.S. and Latin American scholars i n terms o f the resources, both financial and scholarly, to which they have access. These inequalities h ave worsened since the continent-wide depression of the 1980s i n Latin America. Second, the developmental heterogeneity of the region has a lso produced inequalities a mong Latin American scholars t hemselves, such that scholars f rom the larger, middle-income countries, particularly Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, have always a ssumed a larger role in the field of Latin American Studies t han their counterparts i n poorer countries s uch as B olivia, Paraguay, or the Caribbean states.

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theory by many North Americans.6 Yet gradually, the two sides have converged around key issues, methods, theories, and even policies, especially with the end of the Cold War and the seeming triumph of classic liberal economics and politics in the 1980s.

Although relations between the colossus of the north and its neighbors to the south have long been asymmetrical, examples of inter-American scholarly cooperation abound. From 1969 to 1989, nearly half of all of the Social Science Research Council's Joint Committee on Latin American Studies (JCLAS, jointly sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies) advanced research grants were awarded to Latin American investigators. In addition, before its closure, Latin American researchers came to constitute approximately half of the membership of the JCLAS,7 and Argentine sociologist Jorge Balan once served as Chair of the Committee. Heavy Latin American participation has also been the norm at conventions and on committees of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), as well as on the editorial boards of the major area journals.8 Thus, while there have always been segments of Latin American populations suspicious of the yanquis, and while there are certainly some very real reasons justifying these suspicions, the production of knowledge about Latin America has been a transnational enterprise for at least three decades.9

Of course, this is not to dispute that Latin American studies, as all area studies in the United States, acquired its present-day stature as the result, at least in part, of U.S. foreign policy and especially Cold War reasoning.10 While programs on Latin America developed in the 1920s, they got their first big boost with the announcement of Franklin Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy" in the late 1930s, the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (headed by Nelson D. Rockefeller) in 1940, and the founding of the SSRC's Joint Committee on Latin American Studies in 1942.11 However, because policy-makers did not deem Latin America a national security priority, and because they viewed Spanish as an "easy" language

6Fernando Henrique Cardoso, "The Consumption of Dependency Theory in the United States," Latin American Research Review 12:3 (Fall 1977): 7-24.

7John H. Coatsworth, "International Collaboration in the Social Sciences: The ACLS/SSRC Joint Committee on Latin American Studies" (Paper presented at the SSRC/CLACSO conference on "International Scholarly Relations i n the Social Sciences," Montevideo, Uruguay, August 15-17, 1989), 31.

8 Europeans h ave also been active in the programs o f the JCLAS and LASA.

9On Latin American attitudes t oward the United States, see Carlos R angel, Latin Americans: Their L ove- Hate Relationship with the U.S. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977).

10See Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Unintended Consequences o f Cold War Area Studies," in Noam Chomsky et al., The Cold War a nd the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Y ears (New York: The New Press, 1997),esp. p. 202; Vicente L. Rafael, "The Cultures o f Area Studies i n the United States," Social Text (Winter 1994): 91-111; Paul Drake, "From Retrogression to Resurgence: International Scholarly Relations w ith Latin America in U.S. Universities, 1970s-1980s" (Paper presented at the SSRC/CLACSO conference on "International Scholarly Relations i n the Social Sciences," Montevideo, Uruguay, August 15-17, 1989).

11See Charles W agley, ed., Social Science Research on Latin America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).

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with bountiful practitioners, they did not see specialized knowledge of Latin America as a major investment in the late forties and early fifties.12

Only with the Cuban Revolution of 1959 did Latin America once again become a strategic priority, and it remained so through the end of the Cold War.13 From 1959 to 1989, the JCLAS funded the research for 488 dissertations, provided advanced research grants to 762 U.S., Latin American, and west European scholars, and sponsored nearly 80 workshops and conferences involving more than 2,000 leading researchers (50% of them Latin American). In addition, between 1949 and 1985, the Fulbright and USIA faculty exchange programs brought 12,881 Latin Americans to the United States and sponsored 4, 589 North Americans in Latin America.14

Meanwhile, area studies centers throughout the United States benefited from federal government grants given under Title VI of the National Defense Education Act, created in response to the launching of the first Sputnik in October of 1957.15 "By the 1970s, more than 150 organized Latin American studies programs were offering courses and enrolling students at U.S. colleges and universities."16 A significant number of research projects were also funded over the years by the Ford Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Tinker Foundation, the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation, Inc., the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Hewlett and Mellon foundations, and the MacArthur Foundation.171 As a result of this support, Latin American studies became arguably "the largest, most intellectually vibrant, and influential of the area studies communities in the United States."18

12In fact, the JCLAS was d isbanded from 1947-1959. Nonetheless, during this p eriod some Latin Americanists d id serve as c onsultants t o the U.S. State Department. See Michael Jiménez, "In the Middle of the Mess: Rereading John J. Johnson's Political Change in Latin America Thirty Years L ater" (Paper presented at the Latin American Studies A ssociation XV Annual Conference, Miami, Florida, December 6, 1989).

13See Thomas C . Wright, Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1991).

14Thus, in cumulative totals, Latin America outranked Africa (5,066), Eastern Europe (6,638), and Near East and South Asia (13,873), but not East Asia and Pacific (20,487) or Western Europe (88,837). Board of Foreign Scholarships, Fulbright Program Exchanges, 1984-85 (Washington, DC, 1985).

15Wallerstein , "Unintended Consequences," p. 209 . Latin America was i ncorporated into the Title VI mission in 1960. It should be noted, however, that "The legislative debate [over the NDEA] had less t o do with the cold war than with whether the federal government should fund higher education. … The bill was strongly contested by conservatives w ho argued that the NDEA would open the floodgates o f federal assistance to higher education" (Gilbert Merkx, "Editor's F oreword," Latin American Research Review 30:1 (1995), 4).

16Gilbert Merkx, "Editor's F oreword," Latin American Research Review 29:1 (1994), 4-5.

17Coatsworth, "International Collaboration," 2.

18Ibid. As M erkx ("Editor's F oreword," 1994) notes, "in 1985, the Library of Congress's National Directory of Latin Americanists identified some 5,000 professionals w orking as s pecialists o n the region" and judging by student enrollments, subscriptions t o LARR , and attendance at LASA conferences, the field is n ow even larger (p. 5).

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Notwithstanding the Cold War "national interest" incentives for funding U.S. scholarship on Latin American, many tensions arose over the years between the Latin American Studies community and the foreign policy, defense, and intelligence circles of the U.S. government.19 Interestingly, and perhaps somewhat ironically, "Title VI programs actually resulted in a democratization of foreign area intelligence that fueled opposition to cold war policies of the government."20 The first serious conflict emerged around the "Operation Camelot" scandal in 1964. Project Camelot was a U.S. Army-funded initiative of the Special Operations Research Office of American University that sought to use area scholars to gather information relevant to the counterinsurgency program of the U.S. government. The operation turned scandal when a Norwegian sociologist working in Chile was invited to participate, but instead publicized the goals of the project to his Chilean colleagues. This was "enough to arouse considerable discussion in Chile, an intervention by the president of Chile with the U.S. State Department, debate in the U.S. Congress, and cancellation of the project worldwide."21 It also led to fear on the part of the Latin American studies community that their scholarship would be tainted, appropriated for improper purposes, and even made impossible by anti-U.S. security agency suspicions on the part of Latin Americans.22

In the years that followed, scholars of the hemisphere criticized a wide array of U.S. policies, including those toward Cuba, multinational corporations, Brazil, Central America, and especially Chile.23 As Gilbert Merkx explains, "U.S. Latin Americanists of all persuasions felt deep sympathy and support for professional colleagues suffering under dictatorship. [The] Latin American Studies Association achieved a certain fame (or notoriety) for the frequency and rigor of its criticisms of U.S. actions in the hemisphere."24 This passionate engagement of U.S. Latin Americanists with policy issues in the region was one outcome of their collaboration with their counterparts to the south, most of whom were sharply critical of U.S. imperialism, interventionism, capitalism, conservatism, and association with dictators.

19Coatsworth, "International Collaboration," 15. See also Mark T. Berger, Under N orthern Eyes: Latin American Studies a nd U.S. Hegemony in the Americas, 1898-1990 (Bloominton, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995).

20Merkx, "Editor's F oreword," 1995, 4.

21Wallerstein, "Unintended Consequences," p.223.

22On this i ssue see Irving Louis H orowitz, The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot: Studies i n the Relationship between Social Science and Practical Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967); and Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities w ith the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

23Christopher Mitchell, "Introduction," Changing Perspectives i n Latin American Studies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 10-11. See also Robert Packenham, The Dependency Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

24Merkx, "Editor's F oreword," 1994, 4. Indeed, in his c ontribution to Samuels a nd Weiner's ( 1992) edited volume on the political culture of area studies, Gabriel Almond notes t hat the politicization of area studies, which the volume discusses a s a general problem, has b een "the most marked in Latin American studies." See Gabriel A. Almond, "The Political Culture of Foreign Area Research: Methodological Reflections," in Richard J. Samuels a nd Myron Weiner, eds., The Political Culture of Foreign Area and International Studies (New York: Brassey's, 1992).

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The conservative drift of U.S. public opinion and Capitol Hill politics in the 1980s and 1990s is one of the factors contributing to the present decline in support for area studies. Yet cuts to area studies programs began even earlier — in the 1970s — due to economic recessions and stagflation, the contraction of the academic market in the United States, the war in Vietnam, and the turn from revolutionary expectations to right-wing authoritarianism in Latin America, where repression severely damaged the social sciences. Total Title VI Fellowships for Latin Americanist graduate students plunged from an average of around 170 per year in the 1960s to a low of 54 in 1975, and by 1979, U.S. government investment in exchange programs had fallen proportionately beneath that of France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, China, and the Soviet Union.25

At the same time, previous foundation support for Latin American studies dried up. Some, like Rockefeller, withdrew almost completely. Most importantly, Ford Foundation funding for advanced training and research in international affairs and foreign areas fell from approximately $27 million per year in the 1960s to $4 million per annum in the 1970s. Its direct grants to U.S. area studies centers faded away and its Foreign Area Fellowship Program for graduate students was passed on a smaller scale to the JCLAS. Nevertheless, Ford continued to have a smaller, less direct impact through its crucial support for thematic U.S. university programs, for the Latin American Studies Association, for conferences, and, above all, for Latin American social scientists, whether at home or in exile.26

The 1980s witnessed a resurgence of course enrollments, graduate training, and public interest in Latin America. As always, many trends in Latin American studies followed international events. Several factors were at work: turmoil in Central America, the movement of migrants and narcotics across borders, the wave of democratization throughout the hemisphere, the international debt crisis, the revival of the U.S. economy and the decline of inflation, and the reawakening of the academic marketplace in the United States. However, funding continued to lag behind the swelling need for new researchers and research, despite the emergence of some new — albeit small — private benefactors of Latin American studies (e.g., the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame, the Howard Heinz Endowment, and the Gildred Foundation). In 1987, the Tinker Foundation terminated its Postdoctoral Fellowships, and the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation, Inc., which had produced the dissertations of many of the leaders in the field, shut down. Consequently, by 1989 the total available awards per year for U.S. faculty to conduct extended research in Latin America were only sufficient to cover 7% of the existing pool of approximately 1,800 active researchers.27

As historian John Coatsworth noted in 1989, this lack of institutional support means that the number of active researchers working on Latin America has stagnated since the 1970s, that graduate students increasingly find themselves unable to obtain funding for research in the region, and that young scholars in both Latin America and the United States have become isolated from one another, and hence less able to benefit from the collaboration which has been so fruitful in the past.28 In the 1990s, this disturbing trend has continued. In 1993, the Ford and

25Drake, "Retrogression to Resurgence," 3.

26President's C ommission on Foreign Language and International Studies, Strength through Wisdom (Washington , D.C., 1979), 8-9, 101-103.

27Drake, "Retrogression to Resurgence," 28.

28Coatsworth, "International Collaboration," 8-9.

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Mellon foundations reduced their funding of regionally-focused scholars and projects and inaugurated a joint "globalization" project.29 In 1997, the Social Science Research Council terminated its area studies committees, the JCLAS among them, replacing them with less powerful "regional advisory panels." These panels no longer control significant funds for fellowships or research projects. This comes at a time when restricted public funds for education and general economic hardship have made it extremely difficult for most Latin Americans to pursue academic careers in their own countries. Given the past success of Latin American studies in terms of the strengthening of ties between scholars in North and South America and the advancement of research agendas in both hemispheres, this weakening of support should be of great concern to all those interested in the future terms and quality of intellectual inquiry.

Intellectual History of Latin American Studies

As discussed above, the collaborative research fostered under the umbrella of Latin American studies has had many general benefits for scholarly work, including the generation of new questions, the testing of theories, and the challenging of national biases. This section discusses the evolution of particular topics, theories, and approaches which have tied the field of Latin American studies together, and which have contributed to the understanding of issues of common concern to scholars in different academic disciplines. The emphasis is on transdisciplinary trends, especially in the United States. No attempt is made to map all the key intradisciplinary debates and patterns, although Political Science receives some extra attention.30

The earliest U.S. works on Latin America were concentrated in History and Literature.31 The first journal specific to the area, the Hispanic-American Historical Review, began publication in 1918.32 In Language and Literature, journals such as Hispania, the Hispanic

29Jacob Heilbrunn, "The News f rom Everywhere: Does G lobal Thinking Threaten Local Knowledge?", Lingua Franca, May/June 1996, 49-56 at 52.

30Because the study of Latin American Literature followed a slightly different path, we do not treat developments i n that discipline below. However, interested readers c an consult the following essays for discussions o f the developments i n the region's L iterature and Literary Criticism during the same period: Jean Franco, "From Modernism to Resistance: Latin American Literature 1959-1976," Latin American Perspectives 5:1 (Winter 1978): 77-97; Saúl Sosnowski, "Spanish-American Literary Criticism: The State of the Art," in Christopher Mitchell, ed., Changing Perspectives i n Latin American Studies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988): 163-182; Paul B. Dixon, "'Decentering' a Discipline: Recent Trends i n Latin American Literary Studies," Latin American Research Review 31:3 (1996): 203-217; and essays i n Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America Vol. X (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

31See Wagley, Social Science Research. For other surveys o f work done under the umbrella of Latin American studies s ee Bryce Wood and Manuel Diegues J unior, eds., Social Science in Latin America: Papers P resented at the Conference on Latin American Studies H eld at Rio de Janeiro, March 29-31, 1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967); Roberto Esquenazi-Mayo and Michael C. Mayer, Latin American Scholarship since WWII (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1971); and Gláucio Ary Dillon Soares, "Latin American Studies i n the United States," LARR 11:2 (1976): 51-69.

32Howard F. Cline, "Latin American History: Development of Its S tudy and Teaching in the United States Since 1898," in Howard Cline, ed., Latin American History Vol. I (Austin: University of Texas P ress, 1967), pp. 6-16. The Handbook of Latin American Studies began publication in 1936.

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Review, and the Revista Hispánica Moderna, appeared on the scene. Anthropologists and archaeologists also became early leaders in Latin American …

Does Latin America Have a Common History? Marshall C. Eakin Vanderbilt University

“Nothing more than a geographical reality? And yet it moves. In actions, unimportant at times, Latin America reveals each day its fellowship as well as its contradictions; we Latin Americans share a common space, and not only on the map. . . Whatever our skin color or language, aren’t we all made of assorted clays from the same multiple earth?” Eduardo Galeano1

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