The Transformative Vocation of Sociology: "Sociology: Theory and Technique" by José Medina Echavarría

Abstract

What is the point of returning to the classic authors of a discipline - a purely historiographical or identity reconstruction effort, an interest in identifying the changes between the dominant ideas of the past and their inadequacy to the conditions of the present, or perhaps the desire to identify the traces that have remained inscribed and crystallized in institutions, organizational forms and practices that are maintained over the long term? To reread Sociology: Theory and Technique by José Medina Echavarría is to recover the work of an author who contributed decisively to defining the trajectories that sociology would exhibit once institutionalized as a scientific-professional activity in Latin America towards the middle of the twentieth century.