Between Capitalism and Democracy: A Study in the Political Economy of Ideas in Latin America, 1968–1980

Abstract

This article tells the story of how an important group of social scientists in Latin America turned away from the problems of underdevelopment to the possibilities for democracy. It focuses on a network of leading Latin American intellectuals and their North American counterparts brought together by material stringencies as well as intellectual and political concerns arising from the sweeping wave of authoritarianism in the region. Brokered by private institutions and mediated by personal encounters, the decade-long endeavors of the network reveal the mechanisms through which social scientific paradigms are undone and refashioned.