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Research on work in Latin America has in many ways followed the region's struggles with economic development. As countries deal with globalization pressures, switching from import substitution state-driven development to export policies sustained by privatization, much has changed in the workplace of Latin Americans. Recently, that has translated into a growing body of literature on work in the region, with much of it reflecting the efforts of a new generation of Latin American scholars. Unfortunately, most of their work is yet to be circulated among scholarly circles in the United States. This article is an effort to provide U.S. researchers in the area with an overview of what is being done in sociology of work in Latin America, especially the research lines that have developed in the past 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article on the development of the sociology of work in Latin America addresses changes in the main themes, interdisciplinary relationships, and research methodologies during three periods, beginning in the 1950s. During this era, the themes shifted from modernization, to working-class organization under democracy and dictatorship, and, most recently, to structural adjustment and economic globalization. The sociology of work has become increasingly linked to other social sciences, history, management, and industrial engineering. Researchers use an array of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Current challenges for the discipline in Latin America include the relationships between the labor process and labor markets, and between intrafirm processes and interfirm connections, and the introduction of gender and labor culture perspectives into the analysis of new production paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This overview of the recent intellectual history of the sociology of work in Latin America contextualizes this history in economic globalization and restructuring and political institutions in Latin America. The three-stage intellectual history addresses the development of a Latin American discipline whose theoretical models and empirical research strategies reflect cross- national similarities and variations in work, workers, and workplaces within Latin America and questions the acritical application of European and North American theoretical and research approaches. The analysis also describes the important role of social networks in the institutionalization of the discipline, including the establishment of the Latin American Sociology of Work Association in 1993. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]