Against the one size fits all: On "Culture and Modernization in Latin America", by Pedro Morandé

Abstract

The review focuses on Pedro Morandé's best known work, Culture and Modernization in Latin America (1984). Written when Chilean sociology was cornered by the Pinochet dictatorship's project of depoliticization of universities, the book questions the acceptance of developmentalism as the theoretical model and political horizon of Latin American sociology. The text highlights the critique Morandé offers of the growing technocratization of society - to which developmentalism contributes - and the commitment to the reconstruction of the cultural substratum of sociology to which the book invites. On this basis, it discusses the validity of Morandé's thesis in the light of contemporary critiques of the neoliberal model