Validity, Change, and the Reinvention of Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America”: Debate over the Pursuit of Modernity
by Arturo Alvarado
In June 2015 we held an international seminar at the Centro de Estudios Sociológicos of the Colegio de México commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rodolfo Stavenhagen’s “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America.” The event was a success at the continental level; the response to the call for papers was broad and diverse, with 134 proposals from various countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, and Uruguay) and various disciplines and the participation of social activists and government officials as well as academics. Notably, new generations of students and professionals were enthusiastic about discussing the usefulness of Stavenhagen’s work in interpreting new phenomena occurring in our societies. The colloquium produced intense debate over the theoretical foundations of his essay, its historical context, and its continued relevance in explaining Latin American reality. The closing session of the event was an opportunity for the great founders of Mexican sociology, Pablo González Casanova and Rodolfo Stavenhagen, to engage in dialogue about the region’s current problems. The essays that appear in this issue represent this process of collective reflection.
The seminar also offered the opportunity to reiterate why “Seven Erroneous Theses” continues to be one of sociological theory’s most important and widely read texts. It allowed the evaluation of this manuscript in light of the theoretical reflections and critical perspectives of leading figures in contemporary sociology such as González Casanova, Gino Germani, Helio Jaguaribe, Andre Gunder Frank, Florestan Fernándes, and José Medina Echavarría, the structural analysts of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Planificación Económica y Social and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the founders of the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales and the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. New ways of thinking about social issues emerged both from debates within the institutions and from the influence of U.S. economic and social developmentalist theory. These regional organizations became important for the creation and diffusion of the concept of development and contributed to the emergence of dualist, structuralist, and dependency theories (with Cardoso and Faletto’s being the book best known). This thinking took shape in the mid-1960s with the consolidation of theses and proposals about modernization, change, and the possibilities for development and political debate about development and the future of these countries.
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