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Sociology in Latin America, edited by Roberto Briceno-Leon and Heinz Sonnag Madrid: International Sociological Association, 1998. Proceedings of the ISA Regional Conference for Latin America, Colonia Tovar, Venezuela, July 7-9, 1997.
Sociology in Latin America contains 11 papers plus a comprehensive introduction by the editors. The authors come from various regions of Latin America: Mexico, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil. They cover three major issues: the development of sociology in Latin America; theoretical, methodological, and institutional problems; and strategies for the future development of the social sciences. This program closely follows the themes suggested by the organizers of the 14th World Congress of Sociology: "Social Knowledge, Heritage, Challenges, and Perspectives."
In Latin America, sociology emerged as an independent discipline in the 1950s. Those were the years in which sociology departments were created, professional journals launched, and the first sociologists' associations established. In addition, publishing houses also began to circulate the European classics and the writings of some North American writers in Spanish. Following the model of U.S. universities, sociology departments were organized around the belief in sociology as an objective science, with theories, methods, and research techniques, applied in the study of a proper and specific subject.
But these academic institutions were neither European nor North American. They operated, instead, in poor and politically unstable societies, with acute ideological rifts and profound social inequalities. From the start, sociological investigation-even of the most positivist or functionalist...