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La gran dama: Science Patronage, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Social Sciences in the 1940s
[journal article]
Abstract If Latin America's public universities are considered part of the state, then it seems plausible to characterise them as similar to the state, i.e. as clientelistic. However, this plausible hypothesis has never been examined by the literature on twentieth-century Mexican social sciences. Just like c... view more
If Latin America's public universities are considered part of the state, then it seems plausible to characterise them as similar to the state, i.e. as clientelistic. However, this plausible hypothesis has never been examined by the literature on twentieth-century Mexican social sciences. Just like clientelism, science patrons such as US philanthropic foundations have similarly been neglected. In this article I argue that, as an alternative to what the Rockefeller Foundation perceived as clientelism and amateurism at Latin American universities, it claimed to patronise liberal scholarship, practised according to formal rational criteria. While foundations have been frequently considered part of a US imperialistic drive towards cultural hegemony in Latin America, they were not unitary actors and frequently failed to predict the actual impact of their grants. In Mexico in the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation boosted the humanities, but missed the opportunity to support a local take on social science teaching and research.... view less
Keywords
Mexico; Latin America; social science; science policy; science; promotion; United States of America; international relations; clientelism; sociology; historical development
Classification
Basic Research in the Social Sciences
Free Keywords
cultural diplomacy; intellectual history
Document language
English
Publication Year
2019
Page/Pages
p. 1-26
Journal
Journal of Latin American Studies, 51 (2019)
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10419/202465
ISSN
1469-767X
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed