Minuciosa crítica del legado de las ciencias sociales del siglo XIX al pensamiento social de finales del siglo XX. En vez de las ideas incorporadas al concepto de “desarrollo”, Wallerstein subraya las transformaciones en tiempo y espacio, que no deberían de considerarse como influencias externas sino como aspectos clave para lo que es la transformación social. Se presenta también un análisis crítico de algunos personajes como Marx y Braudel, cuyas ideas han ejercido influencias en el planteamiento del autor.

In this important work, Immanuel Wallerstein develops a highly original critique of the legacy of nineteenth century social science for social thought in the late twentieth century. He argues that the presumptions which provide the foundation of dominant research today need `unthinking' and should be radically revised or even discarded. Once considered liberating, these notions have become a barrier to clear understanding of the social world in current times. Applying these ideas to a variety of theoretical areas and historical problems, Wallerstein also offers a critical discussion of some of the key figures whose ideas have influenced the position he formulates - including Marx and Braudel. In the concluding sections of the book, Wallerstein demonstrates how these new insights lead to a revision of world-systems analysis.

Immanuel Wallerstein develops a thorough-going critique of the legacy of nineteenth-century social science for social thought in the new millennium. We have to "unthink"-radically revise and discard-many of the presumptions that still remain the foundation of dominant perspectives today. Once considered liberating, these notions are now barriers to a clear understanding of our social world. They include, for example, ideas built into the concept of "development." In place of such a notion, Wallerstein stresses transformations in time and space. Geography and chronology should not be regarded as external influences upon social transformations but crucial to what such transformation actually is. Unthinking Social Science applies the ideas thus elaborated to a variety of theoretical areas and historical problems.

Building power beyond the state.

One of the prominent thinkers in the Social Sciences, Aníbal Quijano (1930–2018), has a fundamental work for the compression of contemporary dilemmas since his main theoretical and political concerns have always been linked to the mutations of world capitalism and its reverse paths. This book aims to contribute with analyses of his voluminous and diversified production distributed practically over 60 years of intellectual trajectory. In the first decades, the Peruvian author produced essential works on peasant movements, the urbanization process, and the class structure in Peru and Latin America by mobilizing sociological categories such as marginality, dependency and structural heterogeneity. He devoted himself to investigating imperialist domination in Peru and its implications for social classes and created the journal Sociedad y Política. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Peruvian sociologist published a set of texts on the coloniality and decoloniality of power, which represents a theoretical construction inseparable from the processes and experiences that were occurring in Peru, Latin America and the world, from the “globalization” of “neoliberalism” to global and local resistances. Thus, this book is addressed to all those, with or without specialized training in social sciences, interested in knowing not only the history of social sciences in Latin America but mainly in understanding the historical roots and the political dilemmas of peripheral capitalist societies.

Diez eminentes académicos de diferentes países hacen una reflexión seria sobre la estructuración de las ciencias sociales y la solución de problemas como: la jerarquía entre pasado y presente, entre universalismo y particularismo, entre enfoques ideográficos y nomotéticos, multiculturalismo, interdisciplinariedad, proliferación confusa de programas universitarios de investigación, escasez de recursos, implicaciones políticas, etc. Con el propósito de extender la discusión a la mayor parte de ámbitos universitarios, así como sensibilizar al Estado y a las instituciones oficiales y privadas para el desarrollo de investigaciones sociales altmente redituables en la vida pública.

Academic autonomy has been a dominant issue among Latin American social studies, given that the production of knowledge in the region has been mostly suspected for its lack of originality and the replication of Euro-American models. Politicization within the higher education system and recurrent military interventions in universities have been considered the main structural causes for this heteronomy and, thus, the main obstacles for 'scientific' achievements. This groundbreaking book analyses the struggle for academic autonomy taking into account the relevant differences between the itinerary of social and natural sciences, the connection of institutionalization and prestige-building, professionalization and engagement. From the perspective of the periphery, academic dependence is not merely a vertical bond that ties active producers and passive reproducers. Even though knowledge produced in peripheral communities has low rates of circulation within the international academic system, this doesn't imply that their production is - or always has been - the result of a massive import of foreign concepts and resources. This book intends to show that the main differences between mainstream academies and peripheral circuits are not precisely in the lack of indigenous thinking, but in the historical structure of academic autonomy, which changes according to a set of factors -mainly the role of the state in the higher education system. This historical structure explains the particular features of the process of professionalization in Latin American scientific fields.