Latin American Perspectives

A Progressive Collective Intellectual and Its Social Knowledge

Bibliographic Data

ID3135379
AuthorsJawdat Abu-El-Haj, Jawdat Abu‐el‐haj (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume40
Issue6
Pages11-55
Publication date2013-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x13505447
OpenAlexW2126438870
LanguageEN
Citations received47
References cited40

In the mid-1960s a new forum for progressive work in Latin American studies was born in Southern California. It was initiated by junior faculty and graduate students who questioned the mainstream emphasis on institutional stability in modern capitalism. Negative effects of the market economy in Latin America such as social inequality, political repression, and external dependence, they protested, were absent from the agenda of mainstream research. Too often, concerns central to Latin American intellectuals were sidelined by traditional U.S. journals. To counter this tendency, the Southern California progressive Latin Americanists, many of them educated at the prestigious but rather conservative Stanford University, launched initiatives such as Union of Radical Latin Americanists (URLA), the Los Angeles Group for Latin American Solidarity (LAGLAS), Non-Intervention in Chile (NICH), and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). In 1974 they converged in a new academic journal, Latin American Perspectives (LAP). During its founding meeting in Laguna Beach, LAP was conceived to be on the cutting edge of studies on capitalism, socialism, and imperialism and in tune with popular struggles and debates within the Latin American left. The founders’ intention was to unite intellectuals North and South and be open to new thinking and debates. They adopted a participatory editorial culture accompanied by a critique of both mainstream positivism and the orthodox Marxist politicization of social research while seeking theoretical innovations and concrete analyses of capitalism. During four decades, debates appeared in the journal’s pages, initially with pioneering issues on dependency, Cuban socialism, gender, democratic class struggle, and imperialism. Later, when

Latin Americans · Political science · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Politics and Society in Latin America · Social and Cultural Dynamics