A History of the Development of academic sociology in Ecuador during the 20th Century

What is it about?

Academic sociology in Ecuador started with the first courses taught at the country's universities in 1915. Using European and US American sociologists of the second half of the 19th century, the early Ecuadorian sociologists tried to explain Ecuadorian society historically and abstractly. Since the 1930s, their former students have included ethnographical methods to understand the situation of the country's indigenous population. However, only in the 1950s a modernization of the universities as such and sociology in concrete was attempted, including, in the 1960s, a collaboration with US American universities. New professors should teach new methods and theories. However, this attempt failed. As a result, a new type of sociology developed around young professors in the late 1960s. This Marxist critical sociology proposed a historical reading of the formation of Ecuadorian society, class structure, and state and is influential until today.

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Photo by Kiyoshi on Unsplash

Photo by Kiyoshi on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This is the first comprehensive and systematic study of academic sociology in Ecuador. It allows us to understand the variety of understandings of the discipline of sociology, as well as the sociologically informed accounts of society outside the Global North. This highlights the diversity of sociological approaches and their historical development. Furthermore, this allows us to understand the history of sociology as a global history that also happens outside of the US and Europe.

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