The Philanthropic Domination. Adaptions, Organizations and Intermediaries in the Latin American Reception of Weber, 1939-1979

Álvaro Morcillo analyses the role played by US foundations in Latin American social sciences during the Cold War. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and the Social Science Research Council decisively contributed to make US ideas about social science extremely influential, if not outright predominant. In particular, the reception of Weber’s oeuvre in Spanish was shaped by them. Parsons´s Modernization Theory superseded local, preexisting interpretations of Weber because the foundations empowered intermediaries like Gino Germani and wielded through them enormous influence locally, if not an outright – philanthropic – domination.

Álvaro Morcillo, Assistant Professor at CIDE in Mexico City, is a DAAD-grantee and a guest at Global Governance Unit of the WZB. His current research explores the local effects of international rule. His evidence stems from case studies on how Rockefeller and Ford Foundations promoted certain conceptions of social science in the US and then in Mexico and Argentina during the Cold War. Until mid-August, he will be working on a Weberian explanation of “norm diffusion”.

The lecture takes place at the Ibero-American Institute (IAI), Simón-Bolívar-Saal.