Search

A conference paper about the difficulties in reaching Latin American consumers through advertising is presented. The author believes that advertisers in the United States must be careful not to group Latin American countries together. He believes that in terms of advertising, countries should be dealt with on an individual basis due to differences in the availability of marketing information.

A conference paper about the history of marketing in Latin America is presented. The author gives a brief account of race and nationality distribution in the region, followed by the effects of the World War I on the area. According to the author, Latin America faces difficulties in industrializing due to its inability to import the necessary machinery.

A conference paper about the transportation of goods and of raw materials in Latin America is presented. The author believes that countries such as Brazil need to build railroads in order to transport materials to seaports for trade purposes. Also discussed is the role of fast traveling ships and loading and storage facilities in the transport of goods.

A conference paper about the role of coffee in Latin American trade is presented. The author notes the importance of the mutually beneficial relationship between the United States and Latin American countries who sell coffee to the U.S. Also discussed is the effect of overproduction of coffee on selling prices.

The article presents news regarding publications in sociology. "The Handbook of Latin American Studies," invites members of the American Sociological Association to submit reprints of their current articles dealing with Latin America for possible review purposes in forthcoming volumes of this annual selected bibliography on the social sciences and the humanities. The Section on Methodology announces the publication of "Sociological Methodology," for the year 1968. The publication will be initially biennial; with each subsequent publication, the title will alter only with regard to the year. In the first issue some attempts will be made to feature articles which assess the current status of the arts in certain broad topics related to analysis and interpretation of data. The publication will include research papers, but the criterion of methodological importance will apply. There is no implication, however that merely the technical level of a paper makes it relevant to this publication.

This paper has two principal aims: (1) to analyze and measure how the demographic variables-mortality, fertility, and immigration- affect the cost of education; (2) to evaluate what possibilities developing countries, such as those of Latin America, have for a rapid educational improvement. The paper relates demographic and educational variables of three different populations: Sweden, 1840-1965; the United States, 1850-1960; and Latin America, 1930-2000. Three educational variables are also cone sidered: (a) school attendance rates by sex and age; (b) distribution of students of same age by grade; and (c) cost of student by grade. Demographic changes in countries such as Sweden and the United States were favorable for the development of education. For the future, unless an increase of fertility occurs, mortality and fertility changes will not have a significant effect on the cost of education in these countries. In current less developed countries the demographic changes during the past were less favorable to educational development. A future reduction of fertility will significantly help them to achieve a higher educational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Demography (Springer Nature) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents information on the preliminary program of the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. The meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Sociological Society will be held in the evening of December 29, 1944, while the registration will be allowed only in the morning of December 29, 1944. In conjunction with the American Anthropological Society. Dean Robert R. Redfield, University of Chicago, President of the American Anthropological Association is presiding over the meeting. The general topic of the meeting is "Culture of the Masses and Classes in Latin America." The following people are expected to write about the information- Eliseo Vivas, Carl C. Taylor and Sol Tax. The various discussion leaders will be announced then and there. Finally, the meeting of the executive committee will be held on December 30, 1944 at around 4:30 p.m. The programs and the respective papers will be announced there itself.

This paper tells the story of how and why five rural sociologists were invited to spend a year attached to an American embassy "to study the rural life" in five different Latin-American countries. This paper attempts to report what the sociologists planned to do, to what extent they were able to carry out their plans, and why they could not always do so. The value of such broad types of studies is appraised by the rural sociologists who participated in this enterprise, and their knowledge of the sociologically significant carryovers resulting from their work is reported. The author conferred or corresponded with all who participated in the studies and feels confident that he has faithfully reflected or reported all of the ideas which space has permitted him to present. For the appraisal of limitations of the methods used and the special emphasis given by the different analysts, he accepts sole responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's work on documentation of certain traits of the rural Latin American culture. This documentation is necessarily preliminary. For the reason that modern Latin American communities have not been subject to anthropological study on a large scale and the number of sources is therefore limited. Also, this article is intended more as a demonstration of a type of work which may be carried on intensively for the purpose of analyzing the content and organization of what is postulated as a new and emergent culture throughout Latin America. This study will be limited to the rural phase of culture. And, it is stressed that this paper represents a tentative study that cannot in any way be considered complete. The Latin American community is almost invariably situated about a central plaza. Facing this plaza are the church, the government buildings, and the homes of the more prominent members of the community. The basic land unit in rural communities is a small plot usually having irregular boundaries. These are generally individually owned and also are worked by their owners. The existence of ceremonial kinship is common to most all groups. In some areas it is more highly developed than in others. As far as the religious organizations are concerned, each community has its own group of images representing various saints. Each saint has special powers that cover some particular field of needs. Furthermore, this study is pushed further many elements of acculturation process, culture development, and the psychology of culture.

This article presents several books related to sociology. "Hacia una sociologia del surco: Resultados del Sexto Congreso Nacional de Sociologia de Morelia," by Roberto Agramonte. In this small volume the distinguished professor of sociology and director of the Department of Cultural Interchange at the University of Havana summarizes succinctly the program of Mexico's Sixth National Sociological Congress and appraises with keen insight most of the major papers presented at it. "El hombre y Ia tierra en Boyacd: Bases socio-históricas para una ref orma agraria," by Orlando Fals Borda. This volume contains an intensive study of the institutionalized relations between man and the land in the Department of Boyacá, Colombia. The study was done with the aid of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the English version was presented as a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Florida. "Migraciones internas en Costa Rica," by Wilburg Jimenez Castro. Based largely upon materials gathered in the 1950 census of population, this volume contains the results of one of the most thorough going studies of rural-urban and interregional migration ever done in Latin America.

The authors discuss articles that focus on the discipline of the balance of payments as it may operate in Western Europe, Latin America and the United States. The authors explain that the balance-of-payments discipline does not arise from the actions and interactions of the economic processes themselves but rather from the ability of public policy to exercise greater or lesser self-restraint, depending on the trends of the balance of payments and the causes of the imbalance. It is suggested that the true meaning of the balance-of-payments discipline relates largely to the question of how far a country could or should deflate or inflate in order to maintain external balance at given exchange rates.

Past economic development efforts have over-emphasized production problems and neglected marketing problems. The thesis of this article is that marketing "barriers" exist which impede economic growth in developing Latin American societies. The author describes a systems approach for inducing national market development and facilitating economic progress through selective reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the reasons for the paucity of vasectomy programs in Latin America and some considerations which should be taken into account before such programs are implemented. Social constraints, the structure of the Latin American family, and the ‘machismo’ cult are discussed. The authors conclude that if the processes of self-selection, screening and counseling are employed, vasectomy programs can be just as successful in Latin America as in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes results of an empirical test of a model which seeks to identify causes of high rates of rural emigration in Latin America. Briefly, the model applies to Latin American economies with high rates of rural natural increase, a large proportion of the rural-agricultural population in the minifundio and/or landless employee class, and a large share of the agricultural land held by latifundistas. A basic premise is that the nature of productive organization on latifundios has "conditioned" the cost, use, availability, and development of land to the extent that social and economic opportunities for the majority of the rural-agricultural population have been stifled. Accordingly, it is argued that a large proportion of rural-agricultural labor is likely to be subjected to limited employment opportunities owing to the institutional system of land tenure, and, in combination with rapid population growth, conditions of economic stress are likely to evolve followed by high rates of rural emigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section provides information on congresses and conventions related to sociology in 1963 and 1964. The Seventh Latin American Congress of sociology will be held in Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota, Colombia on July 14-19, 1964. The congress will be sponsored by the Colombian sociological association. Four specific themes will be discussed: sociology and the national planning; sociology of the agrarian transformations; sociology of the urban and industrial transformations and sociology of education. This section also presents abstracts of papers presented at the Fifty-Eight Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Los Angeles, California on August 26-29, 1963. The papers included were Roman Catholicism and Social Change in Latin America: From Church to Sect, by Ivan A. Vallier, and Religion and Social Change: The Third State in the Application of the Weber Thesis, by Milton Singer. Abstracts of papers delivered at the Twenty-third Annual meeting of the Sociology for the Scientific Study of Religion held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 25-26, 1963, are also presented in this section. The theme of the annual meeting was New Knowledge on Moral and Mystical Dimensions of Religion.

The economist and the planner in Latin America are repeatedly confronted with problems related to land-use planning in peasant cultures. This paper is a partial response to some of them. In particular, however, the paper is concerned with a few of the more important aspects of land-use planning for agrarian reforms and colonization projects in Latin America in which forestry is one of the viable alternatives. Even in the most favorable cases, the odds working against the sustained and long-run success of agrarian reform and colonization projects are formidable. With a few notable exceptions, the record to date is not overly encouraging and the tragic remnants of projects that once offered hope to the rural dispossessed and impoverished are found throughout the world. Much more thought and planning in dealing with the long-run consequences of policy alternatives, as well at the introduction of new and bold ideas, is necessary in this area. It is hoped that the concepts discussed in this paper will contribute to this end.

Major land tenure adjustments are necessary in the years ahead in many newly developing countries of the world. The existing feudalistic system throughout much of Latin America cannot endure. There and elsewhere the peasants are seeking a change in land tenure arrangements and this explosive desire must be recognized. The demand of millions of landless rural people is that agricultural land—whether in private or public ownership—be made available to them in much greater quantities. This calls for some type of land reform. In this paper we are concerned with the significance of land ownership in land reform, and particularly land ownership that makes for family farms. The treatment of such a broad subject must necessarily be general in nature in a short paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this brief paper has been to describe a Spanish adjectival check list adjustment index which might be employed on a cross-sectional basis. The check list clearly discriminated between the neurotic experimental subjects and the healthier controls for all four scoring indices employed: the indices of self-criticality, proportional differences, self-acceptance, and the ideal self-actual self discrepancy index. From our theoretical position, the IICL method appears to meet the criterion of relevance. In addition, the adjectival checking method possesses rational or logical validity. If linguistic pre-tests are made to compensate for colloquial usage and to adjust for the local psychological implications of the terms as employed in other societies, we would propose that the adjectival check list may be validly applied as an adjustment index to other Latin American societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent studies have described in some detail the factors limiting development in major countries.[3] Each shows the external sector to have been a critical element in explaining past difficulties and in determining future prospects. In addition, each points to a number of internal limitations and gives some analysis of the interaction between the two sets of factors. The present paper will utilize some of the insights from these studies to develop an aggregative model that brings out the relations between the internal and external factors in economic development. The model will be used for three purposes: (1) to interpret recent development performance, (2) to indicate in quantitative terms some of the requirements of accelerated growth, and (3) to provide a framework for the discussion of alternatives facing the United States and the Latin American countries. One section of the paper is devoted to each of these topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foreign observer reaches a sharp but slippery peak of expertise after a few days in a country--then gradually slips off into a valley of confusion as he learns facts that do not fit into his first synthesis and unlearns prejudices that misled him at first. For some observers, there is a second peak of expertise--not so sharp but not necessarily less slippery--often after an interruption of field work cuts off for awhile the inflow of awkward new facts. I am writing this paper from such a second peak. A certain clarity results: but none of us should be surprised if major corrections turn out to be necessary. Looking specifically at the models popular in the area of fiscal policy, I feel that not only economists from industrial countries but also those from the underdeveloped countries themselves tend to overrate the applicability of Keynesian underemployment models, of Robertsonian forced-saving models, and of tax-incidence models which are loaded with implicit assumptions both of pure competition and of the perfect enforceability of tax legislation. Despite the general orthodoxy of my position on economics and on fiscal policy, I arrive at views on underdeveloped country fiscal policy which I feel will shock and annoy many of my colleagues, through the correction of the biases I sense in our choice, of models. There are two main sections of this paper. The fist diagnoses the fiscal problem--trying to use institutional information to guide the choice of analytical models. The second .is more in the nature of prescription--it focuses on problems of tax information and takes a rather pessimistic view of the prospects of moving at once to a. rationalization of fiscal policy in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish-American republics are by and large fairly democratic on paper; for their constitutions call for representative forms of government in which the citizens are supposed to have an effective control of their own destiny. But in fact the countries of Spanish America are governed by techniques which are the very opposite of democratic, and which veil more or less successfully variants of class dictatorship. Evidences showed that in Mexico, elections have little to do with the selection of the chief magistrate, and in Mexico he has much more power than he has in the United States. The reason for this condition of affairs are many and complex, however, the factor that has been selected for discussion in this article is the Spanish character. The truth is that neither letters nor the ways of peace nor the ways of industry ever really competed successfully with the forces of war which determined the national character and molded the values of the Spaniard. Nor has the Spaniard altogether outgrown even yet the heroic values of a feudal society.

This paper reports the results of an exploratory survey of higher agricultural education in Latin America and relates these and other findings to "development." Education in general and agricultural education in particular are placed in a cultural context, which in turn is utilized to explain the current situation with regard to education in Latin America. Attention is also given to future trends and the probable increase in social science training throughout Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private and public programs designed for rapid industrialization and for raising living standards have caused a growing demand in Latin America for persons trained in management science. Current sources for such training include special "productivity centers," departments or institutes of management science at various Latin American universities, technical personnel of North American firms, and professional academicians of North American educational institutions. If the level of private business between North and South America increases, it would be quite reasonable for North American firms to assume a greater responsibility for the transfer of management science techniques to Latin America. This paper describes an actual case study of the application of management science to the business and operational problems of a Latin American meat processing firm. Located in Paraguay, the firm is a subsidiary of a large multimanagement company—Ogden Corporation. In conjunction with the local management, the study was conducted by Ogden's department of Operations Research. The following aspects of the Latin American firm were analysed for possible application of management science techniques: (1) organization structure, (2) ranch operations, (3) product mix problems, (4) investment analysis, and (5) inventory control. Based on Ogden's experiences in a typical Latin American business setting, we attempt here to describe some of the present problems and the future potential for management science applications in Latin America. Major problems of implementation identified in this ease and considered typical to Latin America are: (1) lack of qualified personnel, (2) lack of EDP facilities, and (3) existence of traditional cultural and political barriers to scientific approaches. However, because of a rising technological function, management science application offers a fertile territory in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a research regarding foreign trade of Latin America during the World War I. Foreign exchange fluctuations have occurred in response to commercial and financial exchanges in Latin American countries during the war. Many countries started credit exchange conventions with a purpose of exchange stabilization without resorting to gold shipments. Argentina made such an arrangement with the U.S. Most of the Latin American nations including Brazil showed a low level of exchange rate during the war than the levels of pre-war years.

This paper discusses social change in Latin America and its implications. Between 1900 and 1925 population increase in both Northern and Latin America was approximately 50 per cent. In the next quarter century Northern America's population grew by 33 per cent but that of Latin America by 65 per cent. Birth rates fluctuate between 35 and 50 per thousand population in most countries. The average fertility ratio in 1950 was 68.8 children under five for every hundred women of child-bearing age. A good indication of the long-term decline in mortality in Latin America is the fact that death rates, as registered, continue to go down. The implications for education, as well as for balance between working and non-working population, are evident. In regard to urbanization, historical factors should be taken into account. Except in Brazil and Colombia, the largest city outstrips the combined population of all other cities with 100,000 or more people. In parts of Colombia, for instance, political strife and unrest has caused people to migrate to cities. Industrialization requires an increasing labor force, which is for the most part recruited from the rural population. There is little or no surplus for the large savings needed in widescale development. Education, a key factor in economic development, is also affected. The large proportions in the young population may well be a factor in the lack of stability evident in certain areas of Latin America.

This book consists of ten papers presented at a conference on the role of religion for social change in Latin America held at the University of Notre Dame in April 1963. Pike opens the book by establishing the existence of considerable change throughout Latin American and asking what role religion is likely to take in either helping or inhibiting the changes. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America over presumed Catholics is pictured as weak. The Church is seen as lacking material and human resources. Pike asserts that Catholic leaders are in disagreement over the nature and speed of the changes required to bolster the Church's position and are trying to change the view that the Church opposes democracy by advocating sweeping reforms, particularly changes in lower-income groups. Latin American churchmen are said to be viewed with (presumably unnecessary or unwarranted) suspicion when they seek to change economic and social injustices. The suspicion is said to be increased when labor movements use the term "Christian" in their titles and stated goals. Pike states that many groups using the term "Christian" do not see themselves as obligated to Church interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Latin America today, there exist two regional marketing arrangements, the Latin American Free Trade Association and the Central American Common Market. Neither is the kind of stop-gap, hurried measure so often used in underdeveloped countries for the correction of temporary but recurrent crises. Instead, the two trading arrangements constitute an integral part of Latin America's long run efforts to further development on the basis, to the greatest extent possible, of self-help. It is the purpose of this paper to describe these regional integration programs and to evaluate them in the light of existing controversies at the theoretical level. By Latin America we mean the 20 independent nations south of the Rio Grande. The population is some 200 millions, and it is sometimes overlooked that Latin America has the highest rate of population growth in the world. Average per capita income is difficult to estimate but certainly does not exceed $300 a year. Central America is the area lying geographically between Mexico and Panama and contains five of the 20 Latin American countries. Here live some 11 million people, with a birth rate exceeding that of the region as a whole, but with per capita income approximating only $200 a year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a paper which examines the role that one external actor, the United States, has played in the process of integration among the LAFTA countries. Role played by US President Lyndon Johnson.

To date, two regional economic organizations exist in Latin America: the Latin American Free Trade Area (LAFTA) and the Central American Common Market (CACEM). Ten countries belong to the former (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) and five belong to the latter (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala). These organizations have a number of points in common and a number of differences, mainly the result of their respective stages of industrialization. In both organizations, however, it is necessary for each country to have a national policy for regional economic integration. Such policies in most cases exist only in the weakest explicit form and the process of policy forming is often almost a random one in which concrete information and rational evaluation of alternatives have a minimal part. This situation is due to several causes. The first of these is the lack of policy orientation in the theoretical literature on custom unions. As a consequence no ready and existing framework is available to policy-makers. The second reason is a serious lack of information of a detailed nature. Whereas the second difficulty is gradually being remedied by the secretariats of the regional organizations themselves, little progress has been apparent in the formulation of analytical approaches to policymaking for integration. This paper aspires to be a step in that direction: starting from the ideas underlying classic comparative advantage, it attempts to develop an explicit calculus appropriate to national decisionmaking on tariff cutting and other integration agreements in Latin America. In addition, some of the data problems involved in such a calculus are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper has focused attention on a number of concrete proposals suggested by these developments and susceptible of early negotiation and implementation. The steps proposed in the first two Sections involve no mutual credit commitments whatsoever and should, therefore, prove acceptable to most, or even all, countries of Latin America. They aim: 1. in Section I: at diversifying the present pattern of reserves investment abroad, and at maximizing earnings on such investments; 2. in Section II: at reducing the recently increasing net outflows of expatriate capital from Latin America, at stimulating partial repatriation of such funds and, more generally, at exploring more systematically the new opportunities for foreign borrowings arising from the reactivation of European capital markets (Eurocurrency markets, security flotations in foreign currencies and in units of account, etc.). The intra-regional credit commitments and inseparable measures of policy harmonization involved in the last two Sections are not likely to prove immediately negotiable among all Latin American countries, and have been explored primarily in the context of the Caribbean area. They could, however, be adjusted to similar sub-regional agreements among other countries, and should, in any case, preserve opportunities both: (a) for later linkages or mergers between such sub-regional groups; and (b) for closer monetary integration, or even monetary unions, among countries where such ambitious sovereignty mergers appear politically feasible and desirable. This is the main reason for preserving the identity of the present Central American group in a broader Caribbean payments agreement. While Section III focuses on local currency credit lines in support of mutual trade only, Section IV envisages broader forms of co-operation involving foreign exchange credits, offsetting national fluctuations in monetary reserves and bolstering mutually acceptable policies of economic development,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the paper "Explaining the National Propensity to Expropriate," by Harald Knudsen. In his paper, Knudsen has constructed a conceptual scheme for predicting adverse actions against foreign investments based on a combination of socioeconomic data and political analysis. The scheme is tested on Latin American data. The basic logic of the scheme is that the political conditions, which lead to anti-foreign investment actions, stem from environmental variables that can be identified at earlier stages. According to the author, political frustration is a result of low welfare for the masses of people, relative to their social and economic aspirations. Revolutionary political activity, unrest, or political and military external aggression takes place where want formation factors are relatively stronger than the want satisfaction factors. Knudsen adds to these concepts the proposition that when frustration is combined with significant and visible foreign investments, the foreign enterprises will suffer a `scapegoat role'. The national leaders may find an outlet for the frustration by taking action against the foreign enterprises, that is, through expropriation or similar action.

The article presents the report of American Economic Association (AEA) to the International Economic Association (IEA). Since the last report, made to the Executive Committee of the AEA at its spring meeting, 1957, the chief activities of IEA have been the conduct of two major round tables. The first of these was held in Rio de Janeiro from August 19 to 28, and the second in Lisbon, September 11 to 18, 1957. The second round table of the past year resulted from an impetus given to the various international social science organizations by the Social Science Council of UNESCO to study the consequences of the contrasting size of nations. Plans for future activities of the IEA include a round table on capital theory in 1958, and, in the near future, a refresher course in Pakistan arid a conference in Africa on the economic development of Africa south of the equator. Applications for membership in the IEA have been received from associations in Bolivia, Mexico, Spain, and the USSR. Exclusive of these, not yet acted upon, the membership of the IEA includes twenty-seven associations.