Resumen

TURNER, Stephen. Foundations, Foreign Funding and the Social Sciences: What We Know. Estud. sociol [online]. 2023, vol.41, n.spe, pp.369-383.  Epub 11-Mar-2024. ISSN 2448-6442.  https://doi.org/10.24201/es.2023v41nespecial.2458.

Through a series of historical cases and quantitative analysis, the papers presented in this issue of Sociological Studies address fundamental questions about the political consequences of foreign funding of the social sciences. Taken together, these works illustrate the paradox inherent in the financing of intellectual life: the power of donors depends on the legitimacy and therefore the independence of the grantees. The issue is complex because the recipients, who can operate as “buffer states”, have different objectives from those of the donors. Within this framework, donors who financed projects in Latin America had difficulties finding partners they considered reliable, as well as attracting influential institutions. They also met with various resistances. Donors therefore practiced two basic strategies to adapt to local circumstances: the support for existing institutions preferred by the Rockefeller Foundation, on the one hand, and the development of think tanks chosen by the Ford Foundation, on the other. Although the donors’ objectives reflected, in part, Cold War concerns, the result of their actions was a certain intellectual pluralism.

Palabras llave : Rockefeller Foundation; Ford Foundation; social sciences; Latin America; development studies; science during the Cold War.