Search

This book presents an original proposal through a social history of ideas on Latin American economic development: although its structure addresses the life trajectory of each of the main representatives of the first generation of development theorists in the region, in itineraries that unfold from the first decades of the 20th century to the present, it shows an intellectual and ideological plot that goes beyond the individual paths and ties them to a historical moment in the evolution of ideas and to a certain context of social, cultural and material conditions in which they were developed. We consider that (economic) ideas are discernible structures of meaning, perspective and fidelity to a purpose and, like institutions, have their own relationships, tensions and continuities. It evolves independently in a dialogue and in a cultural fabric that each intellectual has with other thinkers who preceded and accompany him in a specific historical moment. This snippet of reality -the reality of ideas- contains explanatory force in its relative autonomy. Without ideas, without thought, without mentalities, there is no possibility of entering the field of social history. Therefore, on a general level, the book's proposal converges, in research practice and historiographic theorizing, economic and social history with the history of ideas. In this way, each chapter illuminates fundamental aspects of the biographical trajectory of ten great intellectuals of 20th century Latin American economic thought: Raúl Prebisch, Aníbal Pinto, Víctor Urquidi, Celso Furtado, Juan Noyola Vázquez, Horacio Flores de la Peña, Helio Jaguaribe, Aldo Ferrer, Osvaldo Sunkel and María Maria Maria da Conceição Tavares. The collection enables an approach to the analysis of the economic and social potentialities and limitations of the countries in the region, as well as the public policies implemented and the debates that arose regarding the possibilities of accelerating their economic development. It also provides an important part of the history of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the UN agency to which most of them were linked. The intellectuals discussed here have been chosen for the relevance and transcendence of their original contributions to the analysis of the problems of Latin American development, respecting a sufficiently wide range of national origins so as to cover different traditions and experiences. The studies are arranged chronologically according to the date of birth of each thinker, as this gives a first idea of the historical place of their actions and theoretical formulation. In sum, this book constitutes an important step from the perspective of the history of ideas by allowing us to identify a clear "epistemic community"; that is, the functioning of a network of actors with experience and competence in a particular professional domain from which we can distinguish an organizing problem-area, Latin American development.

International audience

A partir de la obra de Sunkel, se aborda la ambigüedad de la acepción neoestructuralismo; paralelamente, se examinan autores primigenios y el vocabulario que manejan en torno a esa temática. Esto último no armoniza del todo con lo expuesto por Sunkel ni tampoco con Prebisch, antes del primer lustro de la década de 1970 hasta su culminación en Capitalismo periférico, crisis y transformación. En ese sentido, según la excursión conceptual realizada, se trata de uno de los frutos del progreso teórico del pensamiento latinoamericano, bajo la singularidad con la que Sunkel se integró a él. A lo largo del artículo se tratan diversos aspectos: a) vocabulario y postura del estructuralismo como posible alternativa ante los embates del neoliberalismo; b) evolución de la perspectiva de Sunkel; c) transición y debates contemporáneos, así como su postura teórica; d) elementos teóricos sobre el estructuralismo latinoamericano que pese a su preponderancia se han olvidado en la actualidad.

The article offers a synthesis of Latin American economic thought post-second world war, underlining in particular the specificity of the regional perspective. The idea is to describe their beginnings and key regional authors, which is generally unknown in Anglo-Saxon academic circles. The reading that guides the presentation questions Eurocentric interpretations. Since the 1980 economic discourse in Latin America has lost its sui generis characteristics, its vocabulary today has been lost to the new generations, given the pre-eminence of orthodox neoliberal ideas and policies which certainly have not improved the living standards of the region.