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ABSTRACT
José Medina Echavarría is known as one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century in Latin America. During his exile in México, Puerto Rico, and Chile, he developed vast intellectual networks that contributed to the complex process of institutionalization of sociology in our countries. In this paper, we explain how this was possible through new editorials, translations on social science topics, seminars, debates, and the foundation of important departments of Sociology. These included a double contribution of Medina Echavarría: a reflection on sociology that required a precise conceptual language, and what he called vertical and horizontal theories. And second, his guiding efforts with the critical analysis of the modernization processes in this continent, after the Second World War. We analyze in both these contributions the clear legacy of Weber’s theory of action and his economic sociology.
RESUMO
José Medina Echavarría é conhecido como um dos sociólogos mais importantes do século XX na América Latina. Durante seu exílio no México, Porto Rico e Chile, desenvolveu amplas redes intelectuais que contribuíram para o complexo processo de institucionalização da sociologia. Neste artigo, explicamos como isso foi possível por meio de novos editoriais, traduções em ciências sociais, seminários, debates e a criação de importantes Faculdades de Sociologia. Neste texto, analisa-se a dupla contribuição de Medina Echavarría: sua reflexão sobre a importância dos conceitos e teorias verticais e horizontais. Em segundo lugar, são analisadas as críticas aos processos de modernização neste continente após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Em ambos os temas, será examinado o claro legado da teoria de ação e da sociologia econômica de Max Weber.
RESUMEN
José Medina Echavarría es conocido como uno de los sociólogos más importantes del siglo XX en América Latina. Durante su exilio en México, Puerto Rico y Chile, desarrolló redes intelectuales amplias que contribuyeron en el complejo proceso de institucionalización de la sociología. Lo anterior tuvo lugar a través de nuevas editoriales, traducciones en ciencias sociales, seminarios, debates y la creación de importantes Facultades de Sociología. En este texto se analiza la doble aportación de Medina Echavarría: su reflexión sobre la importancia de los conceptos y las teorías verticales y horizontales. En segundo lugar se analizan las críticas a los procesos de modernización en este continente, después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En ambos temas se analizará el claro legado de la teoría de acción y la sociología económica de Max Weber.
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Notes
1 Adolfo Posada founded the Revista de Derecho Privado where he started the translation of seminal authors such as Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim. This editorial project was continued by Medina Echavarría in Mexico in Fondo de Cultura Económica.
2 During the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, the refuge of more than 25,000 Republican Spaniards was possible, and included scientists, intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, philosophers, workers, farm workers, and the middle class. They had a great impact on the cultural life and scientific development of the country. The Casa de España en México gave way in 1940 to El Colegio de México, created to accommodate a part of this elite and thus enriched various fields of knowledge such as philosophy, sociology, law, medicine, poetry, and literature, among many others (Lida, Matesanz, and Vázquez Citation2000).
3 The Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) contributed to the institutionalization of economic science in Mexico. There was a great urgency to train specialists who would solve problems after the Mexican Revolution, such as land distribution, population growth or its distribution in the territory. This urgency was added to other factors that laid the foundations for the institutionalization of the social sciences, among them: the founding of early publications in economics and other social sciences such as the Revista Mexicana de Economía (1928), El Trimestre Económico (1936) Cuadernos Americanos (1942), the creation of the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales (1930), and the legacy of anthropological research and positive law. The FCE published not only seminal works but also fundamental manuals, current affairs, monographs, brochures, and documentary collections (Moya López Citation2007, 765–803).
4 It is important to point out that in Mexico, sociology had as precursor fields law, anthropology, and ethnographic research. The need to have a first overview of Mexican society after the revolution (1910–1917) led to the creation of the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales at UNAM in 1930. Among its founders are Lucio Mendieta y Núñez, Alfonso Caso, Miguel Othón de Mendizábal, Vicente Lombardo Toledano, and Narciso Bassols. In 1939, Mendieta founded the Revista mexicana de sociología, one of the oldest in Latin America (Olvera Serrano Citation2004).
5 The integration of sociology as part of higher secondary education, took place from the last third of the nineteenth century when the liberal intelligentsia formed its educational plan based on the positivist tradition of Comte, the organicism of Herbert Spencer, and the social evolutionist traditions, also dominant in Europe. Among the most representative authors of this tradition were Justo Sierra, Agustín Aragón, Porfirio Parra, and Ezequiel Chávez, among many others (Moya López Citation2003).
6 The legacy of José Medina Echavarría has been analyzed by different points of view. Juan Jesús Morales wrote José Medina Echavarría. Vida y Sociología, an important biography on the spaniard sociologist; Alberto Ribes published in 2007 some interesting texts about sociology in Spain, and the role of Medina Echavarría, among other intellectuals including Luis Recaséns and Francisco Ayala. Finally, Laura Angélica Moya López studied Medina Echevarría’s legacy drawing from the point of view of the intellectual and conceptual history of Reinhart Koselleck.
7 In 1923, the ratiovitalism of José Ortega y Gasset consisted in rejecting the philosophical extremes of rationalism and relativism, to focus true knowledge on analyzing the spontaneity of life, and at the same time on the importance of reason and our beliefs as vital functions of the human condition. Beliefs were not just ideas, but a way of being in the world to integrate circumstances and lived experiences. This was the starting point for a “theory of reasoned life and vitalized reason.” This perspective was based on a diagnosis of Europe as a tired continent, lacking vital energy, sunk in obsolete forms and social norms in the face of new phenomena, drives, and spontaneous efforts for change (Ortega and Gasset Citation1980).
8 Vertical theories referred to very general, abstract, and temporally oriented reflections on the future. They were great models of sociological reflection, validation of which was not necessarily found in empirical contrast. This was the case, for example, of structural functionalism (Mannheim Citation1940 and The relations in theory and in teaching, first published in 1936).
9 For example, a sociological ideal type was a concept like capitalism and a historical ideal type was capitalism developed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, as an effect of protestant ethics.
10 Medina Echavarría developed this agenda when he wrote several essays published posthumously in his book, La sociología como ciencia social concreta (Citation1980).
11 It should be remembered that Robert Merton considered middle range theories as intermediate theoretical elaborations between the great abstract paradigms (such as the Parsonian one) and the generalizations derived from the analysis of a limited set of particular cases. It is important to note that the purpose of middle range theories would contribute in the long term to the consolidation of the general systemic theory.
12 Without losing sight of the fact that any concept is part of broad theoretical networks in which they are stated and in which they acquire a certain semantic load (Koselleck and Richter Citation2011).
13 Jorge Graciarena compiled some of the reflections of Medina Echavarría in La sociología como ciencia social concreta, in which the Spaniard sociologist matured concepts and reflections on social theory. His writing had as its starting point the sociology lessons given in Puerto Rico between 1946 and 1952. During his long stay at ECLAC (1952–1977) and until his death in 1977, he worked on social theory. The reason for his efforts was to question the predominance of middle-range and functionalist theories in the Schools of Social Sciences and Sociology, and the exclusion of other social theories. This was the case in FLACSO (Brazil, Argentina, and Chile). The criticism of this approach has a clear Weberian lineage, if we remember the methodological differences established between historical ideal types and sociological ideal types.
14 Within the framework of Koselleck’s conceptual history, there are various gaps in the relationship between a concept and the social phenomenon. This means that there are relationships of correspondence and simultaneous transformation between both; another is where the concepts do not change the historical reality, so that it is conceptualized in a new form. Finally, it is also possible that reality changes while the concepts remain stable. For the German thinker, the last two cases are representative of a lack of synchronicity between language and reality, between concepts and history. If concepts and reality change at different speeds, sometimes it is the conceptualization of reality that is ahead of time and at, other times, reality is ahead of conceptualization (Koselleck Citation2012).
15 Medina Echavarría had clear differences with the analytical universalism of Parsons and Merton and with Learfield’s empirical research because of his intellectual trajectory in historicism, ratiovitalism, pragmatism, and Weberian sociology. He recognized how useful these perspectives were. But most important was the exclusion of more plural and complex theoretical and methodological perspectives at Flacso. The problem was also to reduce sociological research to functionalism as the main and dominant perspective at ECLAC and in social scientist formation in Latin America. One of the effects of this predominant academic formation was the exclusion of theories of rational social action (Moya López Citation2013, 159–218).
16 It is widely known that various currents of modernization theory coincided in taking up some very specific aspects of Parsonian structural functionalism. We refer, for example, to the pattern variables as criteria for classifying societies into traditional and modern, and the systemic imperatives: adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and latency, with which Parsons explained the feedback process of energy and information between subsystems and the functional balance between them (Almond and Coleman Citation1960).
17 Medina Echavarría advanced important ideas in texts such as Sociología: Teoría y Técnica (Citation1946), and “Reconstrucción de la Ciencia Social,” (Citation1941, 35–56).
18 See the two volumes entitled Aspectos Sociales del Desarrollo Económico en América Latina, coordinated by Medina Echavarría and de Vries. Volume I was published in Citation1962 and the second in Citation1963. The latter was edited with Benjamin Higgins. Among the first texts by Medina Echavarría related to development were: “Las condiciones sociales del desarrollo económico” and “Tres aspectos sociológicos del desarrollo económico,” both published in the first volume. In 1958, he published “El papel del sociólogo en las tareas del desarrollo económico.”
19 The influence of Max Weber’s economic sociology was notable in the thought of Medina Echavarría, who grouped it under four fundamental themes: the different types of economic action, the role of rationality in economic life, the social structure of the organizations of economic institutions such as property, organizations, the market, and money. Finally, he studied the social macrostructures linked to the different types of capitalism: rational, political, and traditional commerce (Swedberg Citation2003). He also recognized Rostow’s contributions on the stages of economic development and Moore’s reflections on social change, modernization processes, and development (Medina Echavarría Citation1962b, 23–53).
20 The concept of an economically relevant phenomenon was defined by Weber as one that did not have the material struggle for existence as an end in itself, but the consequences of which were of interest to this end. For their part, economic phenomena corresponded to those situations in which the actor’s primary interest referred to the material struggle for existence. Finally, economically conditioned phenomena were those that in themselves were not of interest in terms of the material struggle for survival but were partially caused by economic factors (Weber Citation2014, 5–45 and 46–165).
21 Medina Echavarría noted three problems in planning strategies: first, the internal tension between the possible purposes of planning as an instrument of change and as a means of accelerating the growth rate. The second referred to the scarce parallelism between the decisions of the political powers and the guidelines and advice of the planner. Finally, he pointed out the difficulties encountered with the existing administrators at the time they introduced new techniques and instruments that, in the bureaucratic environment, altered the routines of their performance (Medina Echavarría Citation1972a).
22 Medina Echavarría’s most outstanding texts on these topics were: “La planeación en las formas de racionalidad (Citation1969)” and “Desengaño sobre el desarrollo (1970),” both integrated in the book Discurso sobre política y planeación (Citation1972a). Another text was: “Las relaciones entre instituciones sociales y las económicas: un modelo para América Latina” (Citation1961, pp. 311–344).
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Laura Angélica Moya López
Laura Angélica Moya López is a mexican sociologíst and PH.D historian, lecturer at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Azcapotzalco), since 1990. Her academic research includes social memory studies, intellectual history, and the Republican Spanish Exile in Mexico. She has published several studies, among them: José Medina Echavarría y la sociología como ciencia social, 1939–1980, México, EL Colegio de México, 2013.