Managing Latin America

Introduction: US Power, North American Knowledge and the Cold War There is now a substantial literature which seeks to situate the influential Latin American theories of development which emerged during the Cold War in their wider political and historical context. And there is a large number of articles which look at the North American historiography of Latin America and at the study of inter-American relations. Unlike most of these studies, however, this article focuses more directly on the relationship between US power in, and the production of a professional North American knowledge about, Latin America during the Cold War. Building on imperial state theory, recent international relations theory derived from Gramsci, and discourse theory, it emphasises the need to locate the emergence and subsequent consolidation of Latin American studies at the height of the Cold War, in the context of the rise of the historical and social science professions and the vicissitudes of US foreign policy in Latin America. A brief discussion of theories of imperialism and the role ofthe imperial state in the projection of US hegemony will be followed by a critical examination of the structures and discourses of North American social science generally and Latin American studies more specifically. The centrality ofliberalism to North American academic and political activity throughout the twentieth century will be addressed, and the discursive creation of Latin America, with particular reference to the period from 1945 to the early 1990s, will be examined. It will be argued that Latin American studies, as a set of professional discourses and practices which emerged in North America during the first half of the twentieth century, and was consolidated during the Cold War, has facilitated the creation and maintenance of the institutions, inter-state relations, politico-economic structures and technologies that underpin the US hegemonic position in the Americas. In short the professional study of Latin America has been instrumental to the wider US effort to manage the interAmerican system

Archaeology · Economic history · Hegemony · Historiography · Latin Americans · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · History · International Relations in Latin America · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Politics and Society in Latin America

• What We Now Know and Should Know

  Open Access•Gilbert M Joseph•In from the Cold•2008

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• Reliving the past

  Olivier Zunz•Reliving the past•1985

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• Imperial State and Revolution

  Open Access•Morris Morley, Morris H Morley•Imperial State and Revolution•1988

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• Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations

  Open Access•Robert W Cox•Millennium Journal of International…•1983

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• The U.S. Imperial State in Cuba 1952–1958

  Open Access•Morris Morley, Morris H Morley•Journal of Latin American Studies•1982

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• Civilising the South

  Mark T Berger•Bulletin of Latin American Research•1993

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• The Latin-American Policy of the United States

  Arthur P Whitaker, Samuel Flagg Bemi et al.•Hispanic American Historical Review•1943

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