Sociology in Ecuador (Sociology Transformed) 3031144287, 9783031144288

Citation preview

SOCIOLOGY TRANSFORMED SERIES EDITORS: JOHN HOLMWOOD · STEPHEN TURNER

Sociology in Ecuador Philipp Altmann

Sociology Transformed

Series Editors

John Holmwood School of Sociology and Social Policy University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK Stephen Turner Department of Philosophy University of South Florida Tampa, FL, USA

The field of sociology has changed rapidly over the last few decades. Sociology Transformed seeks to map these changes on a country by country basis and to contribute to the discussion of the future of the subject. The series is concerned not only with the traditional centres of the discipline, but with its many variant forms across the globe.

Philipp Altmann

Sociology in Ecuador

Philipp Altmann Department of Social Sciences and Humanities Central University of Ecuador Avenida América, Ciudadela Universitaria Quito, Ecuador

ISSN 2947-5023     ISSN 2947-5031 (electronic) Sociology Transformed ISBN 978-3-031-14428-8    ISBN 978-3-031-14429-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Introduction  1 References   8  The First Sociology in Ecuador 13 Beyond Positivism: How to Understand Century-Old Sociology?  14 The First Sociology in Ecuador  20 The Second Generation of Sociologists  31 References  57  The Failed Attempt to Modernize Sociology from the Late 1940s 67 National Institutionalization and Global Insertion of Ecuadorian Sociology in the 1940s and 1950s  67 The 1960s as a Chaotic Period of Change  77 References  88 Critical Sociology 95 The 1960s as a Time of Renewal  95 The 1970s and the Institutionalization of Critical Sociology 107 Central Debates in Ecuadorian Critical Sociology 116 The Debate on Populism 116 The Debate on Dependency 123 The Debate on National Integration, the Hacienda, and Rurality 128 The Debate over Sociology 134 v

vi 

Contents

The 1980s as a Time of Crisis and Diversification 140 Sociology in Ecuador Since the 1990s Between Crisis and Reconstruction 146 References 148 Conclusions157 References 162 Index163

Introduction

Abstract  The introduction gives an overview of Ecuadorian society during the twentieth century, the development of Ecuadorian universities, and sociology as an academic discipline. It locates the book in the existing literature and develops the theoretical take around institutionalism and connections to the debates on sociology and social theory on the global level. Keywords  Ecuador • Population • Region • University • Institutions Ecuador is a small country between Colombia and Peru in the Northwest of South America. It is divided into three regions—Coast, Highlands, and Amazon—a condition that together with the predominance of four influential cities—the capital Quito, the main harbor Guayaquil, and Cuenca and Loja in the southern Highlands—translated into a traditionally strong regionalism and weak central state. While the population reached almost 18 million in 2022 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos 2022), it grew much during the twentieth century. In the year 1900, an estimated one million people lived in Ecuador, in 1939 3.2  million, and in 1975 7 million (Cebrián Abellán and Cebrián Abellán 1989: 83; Rubio Orbe 1945: 244).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5_1

1

2 

P. ALTMANN

As this book will focus on the twentieth century, some historical data are needed to introduce into the general context of the development of sociology. The years between 1895 and 1912 were marked by the Liberal Revolution led by two-time president Eloy Alfaro. This time corresponds with attempts to modernize the country concerning both public institutions, especially related to education, and the infrastructure, especially roads and railroads. It is determined by the predominance of the Liberal Party until the 1930s (Cueva Dávila 1970: 710–12). Likewise, the first years of the twentieth century were defined by the cacao boom, leading to high revenues in Ecuador until the early 1920s. The following economic crisis was one of the reasons for a coup in 1925 that led to the creation of several organs that define a modern state, like a Central Bank (Moreano 2018: 105–9). In 1941, Ecuador lost a war against Peru that led to the loss of much state territory in the Amazon with the Protocol of Río de Janeiro of 1942. This event, considered a national humiliation, was one reason for the creation of the national cultural organization Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, led by Benjamín Carrión and engaged with cultural and artistic development. It was only with the banana boom in the 1950s that the export-oriented Ecuadorian economy could achieve stable high incomes (Moreano 2018: 135–41) since the 1970s shifted toward petrol exportation, leading to professionalization and modernization of the state structures and strong urban migration. The urban population grew from 28% in 1950 to 41% in 1974 (Cielo et al. 2018: 58). It is only with the return to democracy at the end of the 1970s, after almost two decades of dictatorships, that illiterates are allowed to vote. With this, the dynamic political changes. The 1980s and 1990s are defined by a rather neoliberal politics and the responses of social movements to them. Finally, this led in 1999 and 2000 to a deep political and economic crisis that could only be overcome in the mid-2000s leading to political reforms that were promising for some time (Arsel and Angel 2012; Escobar 2010; Maniglio and Barragán 2022). Since the nineteenth century and until the 1940s, there have been four universities in Ecuador, in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Loja. Even though there were considerable changes, the most influential departments were, in all cases, the law and medicine departments, with a growing influence of philosophy or pedagogy departments. While there is not much data, a general impression of higher education in Ecuador could be provided from the fact that in 1936, after the university in Loja was closed in 1934, at the Central University of Ecuador in Quito, 863 students were

 INTRODUCTION 

3

matriculated, at the University of Guayaquil, 393 students, and at the University of Cuenca, 170 students (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1936: 642). In order to understand higher education in Ecuador, it is also crucial to know that there were no full-time professorships until the 1950s. Most professors in the Law Department, including sociology professors, gave one course of four hours a week. This did change slowly in the 1950s and 1960s, however, precarious work conditions prevailed until the reforms in higher education in 2010. It is only since the 1950s that enrollment numbers have started to rise. During the 1950s, this rise was an annual 10.8%, representing, at the Central University alone, an increase of 55%. Between 1963 and 1973, the number of university students increased 8.7 times, from 4.091 to 34.797. The annual growth of university enrollments in the 1970s was 27.4% (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 430; Cielo et al. 2018: 58). This massification of higher education is met with the creation of more public and private universities and changes how the university’s role is understood. Sociology as an academic discipline developed differently in Ecuador than in other countries of Latin America. For one, it started much later. While in Peru, the first Chair of Sociology was created in 1896—held by Mariano Cornejo, who debated US-American sociology and engaged with sociological discourse in Europe (Bernard 1942: 10; Sulmont 2007: 86–87). Already in 1882, a Chair for Sociology was created in Colombia. In the 1890s and 1900s, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Mexico followed (Blanco 2005: 25; Roig 1979). However, also the later development differs from the neighboring countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, the traditional Latin American sociology, closer to social philosophy than social sciences and considered a lawyers’ sociology (Briceño-­ León and Sonntag 2000: 802–3), gave way to a scientific sociology, defined by empirical research (for Argentina, see Blois 2019). This is something that never happened in Ecuador. Only with the installation of Marxist sociology in the late 1960s and early 1970s did Ecuadorian sociology develop simultaneously with other sociologies in Latin America—of course, not without certain particularities. With this, three fundamental breaks define the development of Ecuadorian sociology: the positivist sociology that developed in the first years after 1900 broke with earlier social thought. While there are still some references to earlier texts, they are used only to back revisions of history that are defined by the ideas of Spencer, Tarde, Simmel, or other sociological classics of that time. The second fundamental break happened

4 

P. ALTMANN

when Ecuadorian sociology tried to professionalize and connect to the global debate in the 1950s and 1960s. Suddenly, new references enter the discourse and coexist peacefully with much older Spencerian or Tardian takes on society. The third break is a radical one: compromised by their implication in the military dictatorship of the 1960s, the older generation of sociologists lost all moral capital to continue as professors. They were replaced by a young and radical group of people, many with education abroad, that built a Marxist critical sociology on different global influences and re-read Ecuador’s history. Therefore, three relatively well separated periods of Ecuadorian sociology can be distinguished. The first period of positivist sociology was defined in the first years of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, it is not well studied (the most relevant works being Campuzano Arteta 2005; Quintero 1988; Roig 1979) even if it appears in overview works of its time (Bastide 1945; Gibert 1952; Viñas y Mey 1947). There are some interesting historical works of researchers in Ecuador on that time (Bustos Lozano 2017; Prieto 2004); however, they do not focus on sociology and therefore only include some information relevant to this book. The second period is defined by an unsuccessful transition from early positivist sociology to the scientific and empirical sociology of that time. This transition was promoted by international organizations, namely the International Sociological Association and its regional branch Latin American Association of Sociology in the 1950s, and a cooperation with US-American universities in the 1960s. Surprisingly, this phase is hardly studied, the only attempt being Sarzoza (2014). The third period, the Marxist critical sociology since the late 1960s, has received much attention. While research on this period generally focuses on certain protagonists like Agustín Cueva Dávila or Alejandro Moreano, there are some attempts to revise the wider panorama (Campuzano Arteta 2005; Polo Bonilla 2012). This book will focus on these three periods, ranging roughly from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century. The 1990s, 2000s, and the following times will be reflected only briefly. There are many ways to write a history of sociology. The different books published with Sociology Transformed give a panorama of contemporary takes. More generally, histories of sociology focus on central topics of sociological research. Nisbet (1993) with his revision of unit ideas would be the most influential example of this. Baehr (2016) is an actualized and more global approach following similar ideas. Yet, an

 INTRODUCTION 

5

institutionalist approach in the widest sense (for instance, Elias 1982) seems more fruitful in order to not only tell the history of sociology in a given country but also attempt an authentic sociology of sociology, the application of a sociological view on the history of sociology itself. Shils (1970) seems to be the first attempt to do so. However, for this book, the theory of institutionalization of sociology by Roger Geiger (1975) is more promising. Geiger describes early French sociology as a competition between different metaparadigms that leads to the institutionalization of the winning metaparadigm. He divides institutionalization into three components. The intellectual component is the existence of a coherent metaparadigm that several researchers share. It allows to build up organizations. The organizational component refers to both the scientific community and the universities and institutes involved. It is about access to resources, ranging from a personal commitment to monetary funding. And it connects the academic debate to wider society. The third component is the sociocultural aspect. It refers to the connection of the metaparadigm to general culture and, thus, the possibility for researchers to connect to a wider discourse. And it guarantees the conditions for the other two components (Geiger 1975: 237). This translates in the present book into focusing on the formation and development of sociological approaches, including the dominant references, the methodological reflections, and the narrative style. This intellectual component of institutionalization also includes schools of sociological thought, among them, schools that only existed in possibility but could not develop further due to different reasons. This first focus is combined with the organizational component of institutionalization, especially related to universities, research institutes, and cultural or political organizations that influenced the development of the sociological debate. The limits of the form of this text make it necessary to reduce the third component, the sociocultural one, to a minimum. This component is developed further in other publications (Albornoz Peralta 2020; Altmann 2021, 2022; Chávez 2021; Quevedo 2021) and merits longer research. While this book can only offer a short overview of the most relevant developments of sociology in Ecuador, it is related to the reflections on the European, metropolitan, and imperialist background of sociology that still today is reproduced in the form of Eurocentric production of knowledge, unequal forms of publishing, and different perceptions of science in different parts of the world. At least since Wallerstein (1996), it has been commonplace that the conditions of production and consumption of

6 

P. ALTMANN

sociological research are not equal on the global level. Connell (1997) started a debate on the production of the canon of sociology in the United States in the 1930s. Keim (2016) calls attention to the possibilities of translation of concepts. Beigel (2016) focuses on the unequal publishing circuits and their effect on Latin America. Finally, Rodríguez Medina (2013) highlights the role of subordinating objects—both in social institutions and in material instruments—in science in the Global South. In a later text, he focuses on the role of networks in doing sociology (Rodriguez Medina 2019). In this sense, this book is connected to reflections on post-­ colonialism or decoloniality (Go 2013, 2020) and attempts to offer an insight into a ‘sociology otherwise’ as others did before (Maia 2014). This could strengthen the push for a non-hegemonic global sociology (Dufoix and Macé 2019). In this book this translates into a focus on the material and intellectual conditions of the possibility of a sociology in Ecuador, discussing the reception of sociological debates and highlighting the local efforts to build an Ecuadorian sociology with proper takes on central issues of society instead of copying or repeating ideas from the Global North. At all times, Ecuadorian sociology was a genuine sociology, offering proper explanations for social phenomena and engaging with the debates elsewhere— however, the latter mostly without an echo. A revision of those original proposals and their disappearance over time might help to understand the situation of the Global South in a global sociology not only as the history of marginalization and exploitation but also as the history of systematic invisibilizations (Santos 2011). The approach and the limitations of this book imply a series of exclusions. For once, with few exceptions, it will not be possible to include wider social thought and its relationship to academic sociology, as several intellectuals suggested, among them Santiago Castro-Gómez. Then, the probably most famous Ecuadorian social scientists, Agustín Cueva Dávila and Bolívar Echeverría, will be treated only marginally, as they were not part of the institutionalization of Ecuadorian sociology at all, in the case of Echeverría, or only during a short time, in the case of Cueva Dávila. Finally, this book will not be able to trace the use of the term sociology in Ecuadorian society, denominating anything from academic sociology to the typical character of Ecuadorian people and any particular element of Ecuadorian society even if treated in an essayist, historical, archaeological, or another manner.

 INTRODUCTION 

7

The methodological approach to the topic is defined by the availability of the material. The first period of Ecuadorian sociology, from 1900 to 1950, is studied with the institutional information found in the universities’ journals, specifically, in Quito and Cuenca, as well as other journals circulating during that time. This is also where the main contributions to sociology can be found, both as single articles and as book chapters or whole books. The institutionalist approach implies an exclusion of thinkers and texts that are not related to academically institutionalized sociology, namely, Christian sociology and debates of sociology in political parties. As the panorama of those first 50 years is defined by a rather small group of sociologists, the corresponding chapter is based on a review of almost all sociological texts published. The second period of Ecuadorian sociology, in the 1950s and 1960s, also has relatively good coverage in journals and books. This changes due to several crises in the late 1960s and early 1970s. So, the third period of Ecuadorian sociology, between 1970 and the 1990s, will be approached from a different angle: the lack of institutional data will be supplemented with interviews with several key actors of that time. Also, the fact that the number of publications rises considerably leads to a need for selection. Instead of revising all published texts like in the other two epochs, the review of publications since the 1970s will focus on central texts, especially, when they represent a change in the understanding of sociology or when they are efforts of self-reflection. This chapter will be built around the defining debates of the 1970s and 1980s and their impacts on academic sociology. Doing research in the Global South is a particular challenge. Access to the material is always a problem. Universities do not recognize the role of research and writing in the academic world, and some institutions just do not do what they are supposed to do. For instance, in the last years of the research leading to this book, neither myself nor my student assistants were given access to the archive of the Central University. This archive contains the collection of material researchers like Kim Clark or Gabriela Sarzoza were able to use just a few years earlier. At the same time, some people helped this work considerably. Diana Quiroga of the Library of the Central University of Ecuador not only organized the scanning of texts, especially relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also gave the valuable suggestion to check the Anales de la Universidad Central for information on teaching plans, chairs of sociology, or professors, filling the gap created by the lack of operationality of the archive. Sisa Pérez Ruiz of the Library Aurelio Espinosa Polit handled the scanning of most of the

8 

P. ALTMANN

text used in this book. Martha Eugenia Mantilla of the Library of the University of Pittsburgh provided information on the mission of the University of Pittsburgh at the Central University, showing a sensitivity to the historical memory and its critical revision that seems to be absent at the Universities of Houston and St. Louis that participated in similar missions. Anne Moënne-Loccoz Biffiger of the Library of the University of Geneva and especially Anne-Sophie Nussbaumer Schmutz of the municipal Library of Geneva helped find and provided material that would not have been included in this work without them. Sociologists Stephen Turner, John Offer, and Kerby Goff provided information on the pre-­ classics of sociology. My colleagues at the Central University, Mario Chicaiza, David Chávez, Tomás Quevedo, and César Albornoz, exchanged material, publications, and gossip about this topic. Francisco Sánchez and Simón Pachano provided material, information, and contacts. A major part of the research that led to this book happened in five courses of Development of Ecuadorian Sociology in the modality of elective course1 between 2019 and 2021. Another important part of the material used here was provided by students, student assistants, or just friends Wendy Madrid, Jeanphierre Terán, Antonella Duque, Jenny Zamora, Amanda Haro, Eduardo Alcívar, Diego Cabrera, Sixto Zotaminga, Maryclaudia León Salas, and Alejandro Pozo. I owe a special thanks to Ibeth Leiva for all those small things that become big under the present conditions. This research would have been impossible without her.

References Albornoz Peralta, Oswaldo. 2020. Influencia Del Marxismo y de La Revolución de Octubre En Los Intelectuales Del Ecuador, edited by C.  Albornoz and V. Albornoz. Altmann, Philipp. 2021. “Los Últimos Spencerianos. Hacia Un Canon de La Primera Sociología Ecuatoriana.” Íconos—Revista de Ciencias Sociales (71): 103–20. https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.71.2021.4803. Altmann, Philipp. 2022. “Inequality in Ecuadorian Sociology of the 1950s and 1960s.” Global Intellectual History 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/2380188 3.2022.2062420. Arsel, Murat, and Natalia Avila Angel. 2012. “‘Stating’ Nature’s Role in Ecuadorian Development: Civil Society and the Yasuní-ITT Initiative.” Journal of 1  A modality that has been abolished with the transition to the new teaching plan of sociology at the Central University since 2019.

 INTRODUCTION 

9

Developing Societies 28(2): 203–27. https://doi.org/10.117 7/0169796X12448758. Baehr, Peter. 2016. Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology’s Heritage. Second edition, first paperpack printing. New Brunswick (U.S.A.) London (U.K.): Transaction. Bastide, Roger. 1945. “Sociology in Latin America.” Pp. 615–37  in Twentieth Century Sociology, edited by G.  Gurvitch and W.  Moore. New  York: The Philosophical Library. Beigel, Fernanda. 2016. “El nuevo carácter de la dependencia intelectual.” Cuestiones de Sociología 14: 1–17. Bernard, L. L. 1942. “La Sociología Sistemática de Mariano H. Cornejo.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 4(2): 7–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/3537252. Blanco, Alejandro. 2005. “La Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología: Una Historia de Sus Primeros Congresos.” Sociologias (14): 22–49. https://doi. org/10.1590/S1517-­45222005000200003. Blois, Juan Pedro. 2019. “Disputas En Torno al Ensayismo En La Sociología Argentina (1950s–1970s).” Política & Sociedade 18(41): 60–87. https://doi. org/10.5007/2175-­7984.2019v18n41p60. Briceño-León, Roberto, and Heinz R. Sonntag. 2000. “Social Science and Latin America: Promises to Keep.” Journal of World-Systems Research 6(3): 798–810. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2000.204. Bustos Lozano, Guillermo. 2017. El Culto a La Nación: Escritura de La Historia y Rituales de La Memoria En Ecuador, 1870–1950. Primera edición. Quito, Ecuador: Fondo de Cultura Económica: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador. Campuzano Arteta, Álvaro. 2005. “Sociología y misión pública de la universidad en el Ecuador: una crónica sobre educación y modernidad en América Latina.” Pp. 401–62  in Espacio público y privatización del conocimiento, Estudios sobre políticas universitarias en América Latina, edited by P.  Gentili and B.  Levy. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Cebrián Abellán, Francisco, and Aurelio Cebrián Abellán. 1989. “Evolución de La Población En América Latina: La Dinámica En La Estructura Regional de Ecuador.” Paralelo 37(13): 81–96. Chávez, David. 2021. “Marxismo relacional y ‘tercermundización’ en Ecuador.” Pp. 9–60 in De los tzantzicos a la crítica ecológica. Un marxismo en el Ecuador por descubrir [PRIMERA PARTE], Boletín del Grupo de Trabajo Herencias y perspectivas del marxismo. CLACSO. Cielo, Maria Cristina, Jorge Daniel Vásquez, and Pedro Bravo. 2018. “The Political Economy of Critical Knowledge: Producing and Limiting Endogenous Social Sciences in Tanzania and Ecuador.” International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 17(4): 49–67.

10 

P. ALTMANN

Connell, R. W. 1997. “Why Is Classical Theory Classical?” American Journal of Sociology 102(6): 1511–57. https://doi.org/10.1086/231125. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1970. “Interpretación sociológica del velasquismo.” Revista Mexicana de Sociologí­a 32(3): 709–36. https://doi.org/10.22201/ iis.01882503p.1970.3.58200. Dufoix, Stéphane, and Éric Macé. 2019. “Les enjeux d’une sociologie mondiale non-hégémonique.” Zilsel 5(1): 88–121. https://doi.org/10.3917/ zil.005.0088. Elias, Norbert. 1982. “Scientific Establishments.” Pp. 3–69  in Scientific Establishments and Hierarchies, Sociology of the Sciences: A Yearbook, edited by N. Elias, H. Martins, and R. Whitley. Dordrecht, Holland; Boston: Hingham, MA: D.  Reidel Pub. Co.; Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada, Kluwer of Boston. Escobar, Arturo. 2010. “Latin America at a Crossroads: Alternative Modernizations, Post-Liberalism, or Post-Development?” Cultural Studies 24(1): 1–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380903424208. Geiger, Roger L. 1975. “The Institutionalization of Sociological Paradigms: Three Examples from Early French Sociology.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 11(3): 235–45. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-­669 6(197507)11:33.0.CO;2-­A. Gibert, P. 1952. “The Rise of Sociology in Latin America.” Sociological Bulletin 1(2): 126–39. Go, Julian. 2013. “For a Postcolonial Sociology.” Theory and Society 42(1): 25–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-­012-­9184-­6. Go, Julian. 2020. “Race, Empire, and Epistemic Exclusion: Or the Structures of Sociological Thought.” Sociological Theory 38(2): 79–100. https://doi. org/10.1177/0735275120926213. Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos. 2022. “Ecuador En Cifras.” Retrieved April 24, 2022 (https://www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/estadisticas/). Keim, Wiebke. 2016. “The International Circulation of Social Science Knowledge. Relevant Factors for Acceptance and Rejection of Travelling Texts.” Revue d’anthropologie Des Connaissances 10(1). Maia, Joao Marcelo. 2014. “History of Sociology and the Quest for Intellectual Autonomy in the Global South: The Cases of Alberto Guerreiro Ramos and Syed Hussein Alatas.” Current Sociology 62(7): 1097–115. https://doi. org/10.1177/0011392114534422. Maniglio, Francesco, and Vicente Barragán. 2022. “Education, Science, and Technology Policies during Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution: Between Cognitive Dependency and the Struggle for the Social State.” Latin American Perspectives 49(3): 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221083000. Moreano, Alejandro. 2018. “Capitalismo y Lucha de Clases En La Primera Mitad Del Siglo XX En Ecuador.” Pp. 105–44 in Antología del pensamiento crítico

 INTRODUCTION 

11

ecuatoriano contemporáneo, Colección Antologías del pensamiento social latinoamericano y caribeño, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Nisbet, Robert A. 1993. The Sociological Tradition. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Publishers. Polo Bonilla, Rafael. 2012. La crítica y sus objetos: historia intelectual de la crítica en Ecuador (1960–1990). 1a. edición. Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO, Sede Ecuador. Prieto, Mercedes. 2004. Liberalismo y Temor: Imaginando Los Sujetos Indígenas En El Ecuador Postcolonial, 1895–1950. 1. ed. Quito: FLACSO, Sede Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala. Quevedo, Tomás. 2021. “Lecturas e Influencia de Marx En La Primera Mitad Del Siglo XX En Ecuador.” in De los tzantzicos a la crítica ecológica. Un marxismo en el Ecuador por descubrir [SEGUNDA PARTE]. Vol. 2, El ejercicio del pensar, edited by Grupo de Trabajo CLACSO Herencias y perspectivas del marxismo. CLACSO. Quintero, Rafael. 1988. “Estudio Introductorio.” Pp. 11–45 in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R. Quintero. Quito: BCE, CNE. Rodríguez Medina, Leandro. 2013. “Objetos subordinantes: la tecnología epistémica para producir centros y periferias.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 75(1): 7–28. Rodriguez Medina, Leandro. 2019. “Enacting Networks, Crossing Borders: On the Internationalization of the Social Sciences in Mexico.” Current Sociology 67(5): 705–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119833101. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1979. “Los Comienzos Del Pensamiento Social y Los Orígenes de La Sociología En El Ecuador.” Pp. 9–127 in Psicología y sociología del pueblo ecuatoriano. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional. Rubio Orbe, Gonzalo. 1945. “Nuestros Indios. Estudio Geográfico, Histórico y Social de Los Indios Ecuatorianos, Especialmente Aplicado a La Provincia de Imbabura.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 73(322): 105–271. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2011. “Epistemologies of the South.” Etudes rurales 187(1): 21–49. Sarzoza, Gabriela. 2014. “La emergencia de la sociología como campo de saber en la Universidad Central del Ecuador: 1955–1976.” Quito: Flacso Ecuador. Shils, Edward. 1970. “Tradition, Ecology, and Institution in the History of Sociology.” Daedalus 99(4): 760–825. Sulmont, Denis. 2007. “La Sociología Francesa En El Perú.” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’études Andines 36(1): 85–92. https://doi.org/10.4000/ bifea.4606. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1936. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 57(298): 581–653.

12 

P. ALTMANN

Viñas y Mey, Carmelo. 1947. “‘Información americana:’ Ecuador: Los estudios sociológicos y el Seminario de Cuestiones Sociales.” Revista Internacional de Sociología 5(20): 214–15. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1996. Open the Social Sciences. Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

The First Sociology in Ecuador

Abstract  The beginning of the twentieth century in Ecuador was marked by debates on how to understand society. The reception of early, pre-­ classic sociology with authors such as Herbert Spencer, Franklin Giddings, Ludwig Gumplowicz, and Gabriel Tarde led to a positivist and organicist understanding of human interaction. However, the early Ecuadorian sociologists, including the first Chair of sociology from 1915, Agustín Cueva Sáenz, were able to use those theories in a creative and autonomous manner, providing a new way of understanding central social phenomena. Some journals played a central role in this and helped to connect the four chairs of sociology in the country since the early 1920s, in Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Loja. The canon established until the 1920s was maintained by the second generation of Ecuadorian sociologists, introducing some new topics and connecting to different theoretical references. Keywords  Positivism • Liberalism • Indigenous population • Spencer • Tarde

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5_2

13

14 

P. ALTMANN

Beyond Positivism: How to Understand Century-Old Sociology? When the first Chair of Sociology was created in 1915 (Roig 1979), the debate on sociology in Ecuador was at its peak. In the first years after 1900, students of the Law Department of the Central University began to engage with the new discipline. The decade of 1910 saw a lively controversy within the intellectual elite in Quito, with its center in this same Department. A unique role had the Juridical-Literary Society (Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria), a cultural club of students and professors of the Law Department, generally close to the Liberal Party, that was active between the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1930s (Barba Villamarín 2021). The atmosphere was one of renewal: only a few years after the brutal end of the Liberal Revolution of Eloy Alfaro in 1911, many were engaged with creating the intellectual bases of a more just and democratic society. The Liberal Revolution had improved the social position of the Law Departments at the Universities, converting them into “institutions that generate the justifying doctrines of the new ascending groups” (Roig 1979: 66). With this increase in prestige, a certain intellectual autonomy allowed for open debates and innovations, including the demand for social reforms. Roig calls this “libertarian liberalism” (Roig 1979: 67), referring to the liberation of the oppressed masses—something that in the 1910s would be replaced by a “liberalism of order” (Roig 1979: 67). Positivism was the academic expression of this and marked the first break of Ecuadorian sociology, distinguishing it from earlier social thought. With the positivist turn, earlier thinkers such as Eugenio Espejo (1747–1795), Juan Montalvo (1832–1889), or Juan León Mera (1832–1894) were largely ignored in the newly constituted sociology. While something similar happened in other Latin American countries, Ecuador was late both in installing chairs of sociology at the universities and in making positivism the central paradigm—in Argentina and Colombia, for instance, the first chairs of sociology were created in the 1880s (Roig 1979: 24). So, “the first developments of Ecuadorian Sociology happened when positivism had entered its final phase in other Latin American countries” (Roig 1979: 68). A particular problem needs to be clarified before further revising the history of early Ecuadorian sociology. Contrary to Connell (1997: 1514), everything points to the existence of central theories or metaparadigms in

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

15

early sociology—at least in what Ecuador received—that informed the way sociology should be done. These dominating theories are applied or expanded with the help of other theories—however, always without breaking with the central ideas of the dominating theory. Arturo Andrés Roig, the only researcher on early sociology in Ecuador, describes it as an eclectic mixture of spiritualism of the second half of the nineteenth century with some positivistic ideas (Roig 2013: 86) and a heavy influence of Spanish sociology, primarily through Posada and Salas y Ferré (Roig 1979: 71). The result of this mix is a Krausopositivism that goes beyond simple positivism and integrates socialist reformism (Roig 1979: 68). This particular take on sociology was widely diffused at the beginning of the twentieth century in Latin America (Orden Jiménez 1999). However, following Roig, we can say that in Ecuador, Leonidas García, possibly the introducer of sociology in Ecuador, and Agustín Cueva Sáenz,1 the first professor of sociology in Ecuador, were influenced by Krausismo (Roig 1979: 71–72). In order to help the reader to form an own opinion in the later parts of this text, a clarification is needed. Two different versions of positivist sociology will be contrasted in the following, namely Krausopositivism and the approach marked by Herbert Spencer. Judging from the diffusion of the related publications and the general intellectual panorama in Latin America during the first years of the twentieth century, those were the two most relevant competing metaparadigms. Krausismo is based on the German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832). He differentiated himself from the Hegelian idealism of his time through an individualistic and panentheistic2 worldview with harmony as a central value (Orden Jiménez 1999: 153). He held that humans should develop reason and emotions equally as part of a holistic and integral education (Orden Jiménez 1999: 156). Especially relevant is the epistemology derived from those principles: the individual and the universal, and theory and empirical studies should be treated equally and systematically integrated. This implies that the historical context always  Sometimes cited as Cueva Sanz. He was born in 1872 in Loja in southern Ecuador, where he studied, worked as a journalist and a professor both at a high school and the university. From 1914 to 1931, he lived and worked in Quito. He died in 1938 in Ibarra in northern Ecuador (Mora Reyes 1985a). 2  Panentheism is different from pantheism insofar as it claims that god is not only in the world but also goes beyond it. 1

16 

P. ALTMANN

has to be taken into account. The result is a vision of society that is not reduced to the state. In this conception, the state should not get involved with society beyond law and justice. Society appears as “different human groups and levels that only through their specific development and mutual collaboration can achieve a fully human society” (Orden Jiménez 1999: 162). However, it was not Krause himself who influenced Spanish-speaking philosophy and sociology but his students working in Belgium, namely Heinrich Ahrens and Guillaume Tiberghien, and their Spanish students, especially Julián Sanz del Río (Posada 1990: 171), and his students Francisco Giner de los Ríos and Gumersindo de Azcárate, who influenced Latin America, not only through their texts but also through translations (Asún Escartín 1982: 141; Castillo Castillo 1960: 161; Orden Jiménez 1999: 148). While all those people were philosophers, the most relevant Spanish sociologists were influenced by them and developed a krausist sociology. Adolfo Posada (1860–1944) was a dominant Spanish sociologist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He connected to Krausismo early on (Castillo Castillo 1960: 159–61), combining those ideas with North American sociology around Ward, Giddings, and Cooley, and European sociology around Spencer, Durkheim, and Tarde. Those theories are integrated into the krausist conception of society as a spiritual organism with its personality and morals where the social only exists within the reality of the individuals, converting society into an organism of organisms (Castillo Castillo 1960: 159–62). “The end of those societies, as collective moral persons, is to develop and to cultivate all the elements of human nature in an ordered and harmonic fashion” (Castillo Castillo 1960: 160). Posada describes his teacher Giner de los Ríos as the main translator of Krausismo into sociology. He insists that society is a spiritual organism, thus, more complex than animal societies and going beyond the sensual level. This central idea influenced all of his work (Posada 1990: 180)—and Posada himself. Another protagonist of Spanish krausist sociology is Manuel Sales y Ferré (1843–1910) (Infestas Gil 2015: 158). He had a relatively closed view on society, focusing on the connections between Krausismo and the evolutionary approach in the sociology of that time (Posada 1990: 174). As we will see later on, both Posada and Sales y Ferré informed Ecuadorian sociology and legal studies from around 1900. Books of both sociologists were discussed by the lawyers that would found Ecuadorian

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

17

sociology—even if there is a marked tendency to quote Posada in legal studies and not so much in sociology. Both the library of the Central University of Ecuador and the library Aurelio Espinosa Polit—which received donations from several early sociologists—show the presence of books by Posada in the 1900s to 1920s. However, most of them were on legal studies and constitutionalism. Also, the library of the Central University had already in the years after 1900 the book of Ahrens on Natural Law, two books by Posada on political and constitutional law, and Studies in Sociology by Sales y Ferré (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1902a, 1902b, 1902c, 1903).3 The other great metaparadigm of pre-classic sociology in Latin America was built around the ideas of Herbert Spencer. In the second half of the nineteenth century, he developed an integrated approach to the physical, biological, psychological, and social world based on physical power, energy, or force (McKinnon 2010: 440). This force works according to the same evolutionary principles and general laws found at each level, the inorganic, organic, and supraorganic or social (Carneiro and Perrin 2002: 235; McKinnon 2010: 445). For Spencer, societies are superorganisms that evolve spontaneously and grow naturally based on certain general laws that guide both themselves and the lives of individuals that can cooperate in solidarity (McKinnon 2010: 442; Offer 2015: 337–38). The individual members of society slowly adapt to each other, society as a whole, and the external environment. This adaptation “follows the path of least resistance” (McKinnon 2010: 447), composed of certain energy flows and determined by the material capabilities and needs of individuals and society. This analogy goes so far as leading Spencer to describe society’s relationship with nature as a metabolism that appropriates and digests raw materials that are then distributed in the social body by trade. The central nervous system guaranteeing all this would be the state. Unsurprisingly, the division of labor is an effect of the adaptation of society to its natural environment (McKinnon 2010: 447–48). Everything learned and every kind of innovation or change, including people’s very thoughts, is passed from generation to generation and has organic impacts (McKinnon 2010: 443; Offer 2015: 350). Following Lamarck rather than Darwin, “accumulation of these changes should in biological terms be inherited” (Offer 2019a: 3). Both individual organisms and societies as superorganisms 3

 Unless otherwise stated, all books are in Spanish and the titles are translated.

18 

P. ALTMANN

grow in mass and increase the complexity and mutual dependence of their parts (McKinnon 2010: 446). The main difference between biological and social organisms is that the latter does not have a continuous body but constitutes society beyond their individual bodies (Offer 2015: 339–40). They become, at the same time, more heterogeneous and more integrated (McKinnon 2010: 442). In the case of societies, this integration is not despite but due to higher degrees of individuation of their members— connecting well with a form of liberalism that warns against a strong state that would reduce individual freedom (Offer 2015: 341). In this sense, society and individuals interact and shape each other without a clear predominance of one over the other (McKinnon 2010: 442–43). As society develops, it adapts further to—and thus changes—its natural environment and itself, forming a more advanced culture and knowledge (Offer 2015: 342–43). This reduces individual freedom automatically: structures and functions are regularities in actions constituted by the outputs of cooperative doings, which then shape these outputs further, with these modifications in turn modifying afresh the structures and functions, whose survival is always a matter not guaranteed. Changes to structures and functions are the outcome of a ‘natural’ process of adaptation between men and circumstances, in which men themselves and their circumstances may alter. (Offer 2015: 345)

Following Spencer, the role of the state has to be reduced—its main task is to protect its citizens against any infringements of liberty and guarantee the law of equal freedom (Offer 2015: 351–52). Its primary purpose is to let nothing interfere with the natural laws of society. If this succeeds, “social problems tend to correct themselves” (Carneiro and Perrin 2002: 229). Especially in industrial (as opposed to military) societies, the state structures are more decentered, and the degrees of individual freedom are high. Thus, it should not interfere: As a society coheres through spontaneous cooperation, and as a division of labor emerges, it starts to exhibit a relatively stable set of functions and allied structures. Functions and structures are mutable, they are malleable according to the changing and varied contents of what the spontaneous cooperations of individuals are in practice attempting to create. (Offer 2019a: 9)

When sociology started to develop as an academic discipline in the United States, most pioneers discussed Spencer or were openly Spencerians.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

19

This applies to William Graham Sumner, Albion W.  Small, Franklin H. Giddings, Charles Horton Cooley, and Lester Frank Ward (Carneiro and Perrin 2002: 257; Chriss 2006: 127). The books by Spencer can be found both at the library of the Central University of Ecuador and at the library Aurelio Espinosa Polit. At the Espinosa Polit, translations of his books the Principles of Ethics, a part of Principles of Sociology concerning professions as individual book, and the Man versus the State (all published between the 1880s and the 1910s) are present as part of the collections of Juan Yépez del Pozo and Homero Viteri Lafronte, both influential members of the Juridical-Literary Society and professors at the Central University. The collection at the Central University is wider and includes other texts such as the First Principles, further parts of Principles of Sociology published as independent books, other smaller texts on ethics and social institutions, and even an English-­ language edition of The Study of Sociology. All translations were published in Spain. However, the first evidence of Spencer’s books at the library of the Central University dates from 1931, referring to Spanish translations of First Principles, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, and Progress: Its Law and Cause (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1931). The first Ecuadorian sociology is constituted in the matrix formed by those two major references. While some (Roig 1979) claim that the main tendency is Krausismo, others (Altmann 2021) point out markedly Spencerian arguments in the relevant authors. In order to allow the reader to make his or her own decision, we can offer a comparison of both approaches. Admittedly, Krausismo and Spencerianism share many ideas. Both are clearly organicists and understand society as something that develops naturally. Both are individualistic and highlight the role of the individual without subordinating society to it. Finally, both see society as functionally differentiated. However, some ideas separate those two tendencies in Spanish-speaking early sociology. Krausismo focuses on harmony, both in the individual and in the society, and develops a reform agenda around this idea, namely, in education. Spencerianism focusses on evolution in a much more straightforward way than Krausismo does. The main difference could be that Spencerianism highlights the need to adapt to the environment, which is absent in Krausismo.

20 

P. ALTMANN

The First Sociology in Ecuador4 Ecuador was on a regional level rather late in debating sociology.5 While in other countries, such as Argentina, Mexico, or neighboring Colombia and Peru (Sulmont 2007: 86–87), sociology had been taught at universities since the 1880s and 1890s, in Ecuador, sociological texts were read and discussed on a wider level only at the beginning of the twentieth century. The central cultural organization in introducing sociology in Ecuador was the Juridical-Literary Society (Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria), composed mainly of students and professors of law at the Central University of Ecuador in Quito.6 It functioned between 1902 and 1906 and 1913 and 1932, with some short-lived attempts to continue in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s. Without being strictly partisan, this organization was influential in the Liberal Party—and within it, the moderate and reformist fraction around Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez called oligarchic liberalism—and participated on several occasions in the construction of social constitutionalism (Barba Villamarín 2021: 14–15). Beyond the immediate political impact of its members, the Society organized conferences, had a growing library, and published one of the first academic journals in the country, the Revista de la Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria (Prieto 2004: 81–82). It was here where the first sociological reflections were published, and it was here where the particular Ecuadorian approach to sociology was defined. Belisario Quevedo, Jesús Vaquero Dávila, Leonidas García (all since 1905), Pío Jaramillo Alvarado (since 1913), and Agustín Cueva Sáenz (since 1914) were members of this organization (Sociedad 4  For different accounts on  the  early sociology in  Ecuador revise Albornoz (2022), Campuzano Arteta (2005), Quintero (1988), and Roig (1979). 5  The list of sociological books in the library of the Central University in 1902 and 1903 can give an impression of the global debates that were available to the people involved. This list includes translations of Fouillée with Contemporary Social Science, Gumplowicz with a book on politics, philosophy and law, Sales y Ferré with a book on sociology, Tarde with a book on law, Tocqueville with Democracy in America (in both French original and Spanish translation), and other authors such as Posada with books on legal issues (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1902a, 1902b, 1902c, 1903). In 1916, this list was completed with a translation of the Text-Book of Sociology by Dealey and Ward, and a book on morals by Guillaume-Léonce Duprat (Navas 1916). Oswaldo Albornoz Peralta (2020b) offers a longer list of Marxist and positivist books circulating in Ecuador in the years after 1900, including several sociological books by Spencer. 6  As orientation, in 1913, there was a total of 73 students studying law at the Central University of Ecuador (Cárdenas 1913).

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

21

Jurídico-Literaria 1914), until 1916, also Augusto Egas joined (Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 1916). The first clearly sociological text published in Ecuador, the thesis of a law student, discussed the idea of property between the rather krausist allusions that property is the need of every living being and a positivist and inductive program (García 1906: 3–4).7 This rather short text works with impressive references that include positivist classics like Tarde, Spencer, Gumplowicz, Worms, and krausists like Posada and Giner de los Ríos. This led Roig to claim that García was krausist and part of the libertarian liberalism of that time (Roig 1979: 71). García follows Spencer’s Principles of Psychology (Offer 2019b: 3) in understanding property as a feeling in animals that develops in humankind from an egoistic over an ego-altruistic toward an altruistic idea, even if this last step is still a hope for the future. Given the unequal capabilities of the individuals, an unequal distribution of property is far from a surprise. The inequality is furthered by social institutions like social castes and war itself. As all functions of human life are social (García 1906: 6–8), property as something produced by work is a social more than an individual right in the sense that society can and should define the limits of property rights (García 1906: 9–10). The supreme end of society is universal happiness through human perfection. Every member of society is obligated to use all his or her energy to this end—and society has the right to force people who are unwilling to do so to preserve its existence and progress (García 1906: 11). Note the mixture of krausist arguments: happiness, perfection—with Spencerian ones— preservation of the existence of society and progress. For García, the state has to support the colonization of fertile lands and the development of industries to reduce economic inequalities and allow every individual the necessities “for his rational life” (García 1906: 15). Another important aspect is morals: for García, crimes committed by the poor are explainable through their needs and remediable through a reduction of inequality. However, crimes committed by the rich are an expression of their “perverted moral nature” (García 1906: 18) and can only be prevented through education toward honor and human dignity. Besides the theoretical references, García is also a pioneer in the topics he treats. In his text, he engages in social criticism, especially toward politics and the  The text was also published in the same year in the Anales de la Universidad Central 152 and in the Revista de la Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 46/47. 7

22 

P. ALTMANN

armed forces in Ecuador. At the same time, he calls attention to the situation of the indigenous population, both exploited and living in misery and without access to education (García 1906: 29–30). Both topics would become central elements of sociology in Ecuador. However, Leonidas García Ortiz never held a chair of sociology. Besides this sociological and several pedagogical texts, his influence functioned through his work as a teacher and director of several schools, his participation in educational reforms (Ortiz 1921: 153–54), and networking—for instance, he helped his nephew Rigoberto Ortiz to study in Quito.8 Leónidas  García was a professor of Philosophy of Education at the Philosophy Department of the Central University from 1930 (Mosquera 1931). Another member of the Juridical-Literary Society, Alfredo Espinosa Tamayo, a physician from Guayaquil considered by Roig (1979: 9–10) to be the first sociologist in Ecuador, published several texts in the journal of the Society, amongst them the first comprehensive study of Ecuadorian society. In his book, published after his death, he offers a sharp and well-­ written criticism of the society of his time. But while his description of the class structure as a hindrance to the progress of society (Espinosa Tamayo 1979: 202–11), his condemnation of the “lack of sanctions” (Espinosa Tamayo 1979: 305) in politics, or his analysis of the obstacles to economic development (Espinosa Tamayo 1979: 311) are fascinating reading even today, he did not work neither with empirical data nor with sociological theories. He did not apply any of the theories of the authors he mentions in the last part of his book (Spencer, Comte, Ward, Giddings, Taine, Le Bon, Tarde, Buckle, Marx) (Espinosa Tamayo 1979: 357); his work is closer to the Latin American tradition of ensayismo than to the more sociological arguments in other Ecuadorian writers of that time. When the first Chair of sociology in the Law Department of the Central University of Ecuador in 1915 was created, it happened in an intellectual panorama defined by the Juridical-literary Society. Agustín Cueva Sáenz, the first professor of sociology9 (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 419) between

 https: //rodolfoperezpimentel.com/ortiz-bermeo-rigoberto/.  There is evidence of a course in sociology in the first year of the degree program in Law at the University of Cuenca starting in 1916 (Universidad del Azuay 1916). 8 9

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

23

1915 and 1931,10 was part of the Society and developed some of his central ideas there. However, the influence of Cueva Sáenz was through his classes11 more than through his texts (García Ortiz 1945: 147). He did not publish much; only three of his texts are clearly sociological, while the majority are concerned with legal studies. We can highlight the role of the debate between Cueva Sáenz and Belisario Quevedo as a foundational moment of early Ecuadorian sociology. Quevedo12 was part of a more radical wing of the Liberal Party and co-­ founder of the Juridical-Literary Society. At least since 1913, he was the most influential positivist in the country. He worked as a professor of philosophy and history at a prestigious high school in Quito and later in his native Latacunga. In a text from 1913, he references both Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx13 to defend the civilizing mission of the Catholic Church (Quevedo 1913b: 199). Another text of the same year opens the debate. Quevedo works with historical materialism insofar as he considers that social evolution, including politics, is only possible when preceded by “slow modification of economic factors and manners of producing richness” (Quevedo 1913a: 57). From this perspective, concertaje, the semifeudal mechanism that binds indigenous persons to land owned by non-indigenous persons, is the basic structure of an agrarian society such as the Ecuadorian society, defining the relationship between exploiting and exploited class. In this sense, Quevedo understands this form of economic servitude as the basis of all servitudes within the Ecuadorian society,

10  With several interruptions due to his political work—Cueva Sáenz was member of the Parliament in 1906, from 1912 to 1915, and in 1924; he was president of the Constituent Assembly in 1928 and 1929; and he was representative for the universities in the Parliament in 1930 (Mora Reyes 1985b: 17). He was member of a rather conservative wing of the Liberal Party. In the pages of the Anales de la Universidad Central, Cueva Sáenz appears as professor for the first time in 1914 (Cueva Sáenz 1914). In 1921 and 1923, he appears as a professor for sociology and legal history and subdean of the Law Department (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1921a). In 1921 and 1922, a substitute professor was engaged for his topics, Fidel López Arteta (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1921b). In 1924, he appears as vice chancellor of the Central University (Viteri Lafronte 1924). 11  During that time, sociology was a course in the third year of the degree course in jurisprudence (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1926). 12  https: //rodolfoperezpimentel.com/belisario-quevedo-izurieta/ Both Quevedo and Cueva Sáenz were part of the Constituent Assembly of 1906. 13  Some consider him one of the proponents of socialism and Marxism in Ecuador (Albornoz Peralta 2020a: 14–15).

24 

P. ALTMANN

including political servitude to a leader and academic servitude to a text (Quevedo 1913a: 61). Cueva Sáenz developed his approach to this topic in the same year he became Chair of Sociology. For him, the main problem of concertaje is that it hinders national unity (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 32). Given that the integration of the Ecuadorian nationality is an idée-force in the sense of Fouillée (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 42) and that, following Spencer, Durkheim, Tarde, and others, race is not a factor of division but rather “a product of history and the environment” (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 47),14 there are no natural obstacles for that integration. On the contrary, the problem is artificial: “the ability to imitate and absorb the models of social heritage is the grand spring of the civilization of men; and to this ability, we have put fences, maintaining the ignorance of the Indian calculatedly” (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 48–49). Economic exclusion is especially relevant here. Concertaje, thus, retarded the formation of national unity and hindered the operation of social laws (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 50–51).15 His solution is particular protection for indigenous peasants, combined with special schools that “can leave the spiritual pearls of contemporary progress” (Cueva Sáenz 1915: 58) in the souls of the indigenous people. This particular combination of Spencer and Tarde, backed by other pre-classics of sociology, would define Ecuadorian sociology from this moment. Quevedo answered with two more articles. In the first one, he defends the determinant position of economics in modern society (Quevedo 1916b: 69). In the second text, Quevedo explicitly states the need to know the laws of reality in order to be able to influence it. Every social action, especially politics, fails when it lacks knowledge of the laws of society (Quevedo 1916a: 285). Sociology can remedy this. From a sociological perspective, society “is a correlative and harmonious whole in which every condition implies other determinate conditions, independently from the human combinations and volitions” (Quevedo 1916a: 286). In this sense, everything in society is related, and “all social functions have to progress at the same speed, or else the more delayed will condition the advance of the others” (Quevedo 1916a: 287). For Quevedo, the inability of the state to improve or even systematically understand the situation of  He would use a later text to extend these arguments against racism (Cueva Sáenz 1917).  As Parliamentarian, Cueva Sáenz fought for the same ideas. In 1915, he pushed for reforms that would have helped rural workers and that finally in 1918 were approved (Mora Reyes 1985a: 151). 14 15

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

25

rural workers—especially concerning concertaje—is the main problem of Ecuadorian society and hinders any progress (Quevedo 1916a: 286–87). The debate Quevedo-Cueva Sáenz departs from the shared idea that the semi-feudal institution of concertaje is an obstacle to the development of Ecuadorian society and from the same set of theories. However, it helps to clarify two different positions in early Ecuadorian sociology. While Cueva Sáenz wants the state to let society develop freely and sees the main problem in the artificial barriers built by politics, for Quevedo concertaje is corrupting Ecuadorian society from the bottom up. Thus, Cueva Sáenz offered a reformist program with social protection and education, and Quevedo pointed out the need for a fundamental change in Ecuadorian society and politics. The debate was, at the same time, a moment of convergence and an intellectual divorce. As a co-founder more influential in the Juridical-Literary Society, Quevedo continued his approach to society. Shortly after the debate, he explained the regional divide that has defined Ecuador for centuries. For him, this divide is not related to racial or social differences but rather to differences in the climate and how the people adapt. While the coastal region is hot and humid, the highland region has an “eternal spring” (Quevedo 1916c: 218) that leads to inactivity and should be met with education and other activities in sports or the local boy scouts. In another text, Quevedo highlights the difference between sociology and the philosophy of history. For him, Comte, Hegel, and Spencer represent a break with a transcendental philosophy of history (Quevedo 1917: 144–45). The Spencerian ideas of the movement from an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity, including the step from a centralist military regime to industrial individualism and that “every new form of matter has to be understood as an effect of a preceding force or form of matter” (Quevedo 1917: 146) seem to have especially convinced Quevedo. He even criticizes the historical arguments of positivistic sociology for limiting themselves to European history: The history of the white race in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and modern Europe has been taken for a history of humankind, and over this partial base, it was attempted to construct the building of the philosophy of the human species. Without knowing history, it was tried to penetrate its idea, deducing from a transcendental system, it was attempted with arbitrary violence to accommodate the human process to the historical idea. (Quevedo 1917: 148)

26 

P. ALTMANN

In this text, Quevedo defines sociology as “the science of society drawn through induction from history” (Quevedo 1917: 148) that studies “the social phenomenon and its laws” (Quevedo 1917: 149). Comte said that those laws should be explored with experimental methods. With Spencer, “the social process is explained through the growth of the individual value” (Quevedo 1917: 150). Other sociologists like Kidd, Gumplowicz, Giddings, Tarde, Baldwin, Fouillée, Le Bon, and Ward expanded this idea. However, Quevedo continued to insist on the determinating role of economy and the opposition of economic structure and political and legal superstructure, and discusses Marx with Croce, Pareto, Kautsky, Bernstein, and others. After this series of texts, Quevedo wrote a history book for high schools and related texts, an effort he could not complete due to his early death in 1921, at only 38 years of age. However, his most influential work was a book edited posthumously by his friend Roberto Páez and published in 1932 (Quevedo 1983). This collection of texts does not always indicate when they were written—we can only assume, due to their positivistic orientation, that all date from after 1913 (Roig 1977). This book led to the international recognition of Quevedo as Ecuador’s leading positivistic thinker; some parts were included in the canonical compilation by Leopoldo Zea (1980). In the part reproduced in Zea, Quevedo highlights that ideas and experiences are always individual and hereditary but can be shared and abstracted in the sense of a synthesis (Quevedo 1980: 558–59). The same applies to morals: they are a product of individual experiences that, through generalization, form moral laws that the members of a given group or society must adapt to, including a hereditary organic adaptation (Quevedo 1980: 559–60). This process is defined by conflicts between older and newer ideas and conduct where the stronger one prevails. The individual will is always determined by motives defined by the social environment—that, in turn, are defined by morals (Quevedo 1980: 564). Individual freedom is thus specified by social morals. The moral consciousness and the instinct of sociability bind individuals to society, and the preservation of life is the shared end of all (Quevedo 1980: 566). In this sense, the main activities to preserve life form naturally and as a constitutive element of every human association (Quevedo 1980: 569). Thus, morality refers to “the adaptation of the consciousness and the conduct to the laws of life” (Quevedo 1980: 571). Secondary forms of conduct spread “through the reciprocal imitation of the individuals of a society; through

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

27

the selection between imitations in case of a conflict; through the accumulation of these norms of conduct in what we call social consciousness” (Quevedo 1980: 570). This process favors socialization as an approximation to certain forms of action. However, innovations, conflicts, and combinations of imitations are possible; society exercises pressure on the individuals that constitute it. For Quevedo, society is also defined by race: “the collective experience of race molds the experience of the individuals” (Quevedo 1980: 570). Yet, at the same time, society, social consciousness, and morals are produced by individuals (Quevedo 1980: 571). They are compelled to give up parts of their individual freedom through the pleasure or pain produced by moral consciousness and the instinct of sociability. This mechanism of pleasure or pain, strengthened by education, modifies the individual nervous system and is inherited over generations (Quevedo 1980: 581–83). Quevedo derives from those ideas that a science of morals is needed to study the fundamental laws of life and the social conducts that they imply. Those laws are based on the principle of preservation of life through an equal limitation of activities for all (Quevedo 1980: 577–78). This science would study which modes of conduct preserve life and which do not. This part seems to be influenced by the particular combination of Tarde with his concept of imitation and Spencer with his organicist view of society, including heritage, first introduced into Ecuadorian sociology by Cueva Sáenz (1915). Another part of this book, written in 1920, gets closer to the arguments of Spencer by claiming that the constant influence of the natural force of will on social institutions corresponds with a spontaneous development toward socialism (Quevedo 1932: 69–70). This development implies that a fight against the bourgeoisie is pointless, as it produces the proletariat. Instead, both classes should be brought to full development— something not happening in Ecuador. Again, Quevedo highlights economics as the main factor in society. It is “the last cause in the process of social phenomena [that is] the scientific principle of a rational explanation of progress and civilization” (Quevedo 1932: 77). In this sense, “religion, art, science, politics are organized like flesh around the bone [of] the economic constitution of every people” (Quevedo 1932: 88). The state is, consequently, the projection of the economic interests of the social classes (Quevedo 1932: 78). This is why, for Quevedo, economic science is needed to guide economic policy.

28 

P. ALTMANN

Another part of the same book, a historical reexamination of Ecuadorian society, shows in the discussion of president García Moreno (1821–1875) how Quevedo was able to fruitfully use the concepts of pre-classic sociology for social analysis: In the politics of García Moreno, we can see the antecedents of a high philosophy of history defended by powerful scholars, among whom is Giddings, who presents the regime of freedom, contractual, liberal or legal regime, coming by slow evolution and natural development, through imperceptible nuances, from a previous despotic, religious, military and hard regime, to be confused, by insensitive generation in the new ethical-economic phase. Spencer is not far from this way of thinking when he believes that the process goes from military to civilian rule, from authoritarian rule to free industrialism. (Quevedo 1983: 61–62)

Even if he never taught sociology, Belisario Quevedo influenced many thinkers of the second generation of Ecuadorian sociology, becoming one of the pioneers of sociological debate in the 1910s and 1920s. First, however, let us return to the other prominent pioneer, Cueva Sáenz. In 1916, the teaching plan of his course on statistics was published (Cueva Sáenz 1916). Among topics that could be expected, such as probability, data collection and correction, political, moral, legal, intellectual, economic statistics, and demographics, Cueva Sáenz includes a section on universal causation. It is also interesting to note that until the 1940s, not one sociological text included statistics—it seems that many learned at least the basics, but no one applied what was learned. In 1918, a teaching plan for his course in sociology was published. The only sociologists mentioned by name are Spencer, Durkheim, Fouillée, and Sales Ferré. However, other influences can be detected through the concepts used. “Synthetic creations” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 2) could point to Lester Ward and Wilhelm Wundt, “consciousness of the species” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 2) and “ethnic and demotic societies” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 3) as clearly to Franklin Giddings as “imitation” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 3) to Tarde. Other concepts are less clear. For instance, “component and compound societies” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 3) are used both by Durkheim and Sales Ferré, and “social consciousness” (Cueva Sáenz 1918: 3) is used by Spencer, Giddings, and Durkheim.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

29

A second sociological text by Cueva Sáenz was published in the journal of the Society of Legal Studies (Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos),16 based at the Law Department of the Central University. However, unlike the Juridical-­ Literary Society, this Society was organically connected to the department to the extent that teaching programs and internal affairs are debated in the journal. In his text, Cueva Sáenz revises the theories by US sociologist Franklin Giddings. He highlights the role of Comte and Condorcet as founders of a conception of society that is not reduced to authority, and that includes evolution from the inorganic over the biological to the psychologic and, finally, the social spheres (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 19). Giddings is presented as a thinker that analyzes social reality from a psychological position, and the consciousness of the species or of kind17 is mentioned as his main contribution (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 20). In opposition to the German philosophical tradition with its focus on strength and its support for German imperialism, represented by Hegel, Stirner, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, the ideas of Giddings, Ward, and Baldwin are based on love (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 21). The central principle that explains social organization is, for Giddings, consciousness of kind as a result of the physical and psychic development of human society. The two books Cueva Sáenz quotes for this are Principles of Sociology and Inductive Sociology. The role of external forces in the formation of internally similar social aggregates particularly interests Cueva Sáenz. He points out that the formation of similarities has already been studied by Spencer (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 22). Consciousness of kind produces, in this way, human solidarity as it exists in the individual consciousness and allows to recognize another human being as a member of the same or a different group (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 23). Interestingly enough, Cueva Sáenz engages with Peruvian sociologist Mariano Cornejo18 and his understanding of Giddings. Another aspect of Giddings’ thought is that the identity of external stimuli and the identity of reactions produce similarities in the modes of human activity. This instinctive organic sympathy can be transformed by human intelligence into reflexive sympathy. This reflexive sympathy further unifies a  The journal was published between 1919 and 1926.  “Consciousness of kind” appears in this text in English. 18  Since 1896 the first Chair of Sociology in Peru, Cornejo build a sociology based on Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim (Sulmont 2007: 86–87) and many other European and US American references (Bernard 1942: 9)—but without any connections to Latin American social thought. He was maybe the first Latin American academic in debating Giddings and Ward (Bernard 1942: 10). 16 17

30 

P. ALTMANN

given society producing a “collective psyche” (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 25). The result is a tendency of affection and love toward people recognized as similar. Cueva Sáenz also mentions some criticisms of Giddings. For instance, Villa rejects the qualitative aspects inherent in working with individual consciousness as they make it impossible to formulate sociological laws. Roberty insists that social consciousness precedes individual consciousness (Cueva Sáenz 1919a: 26). In the second part of this article, published in the next volume of the journal, Cueva Sáenz focuses on the political theory of Giddings, namely the division of political parties into conscious and convinced leaders and half-conscious members that act through emotion (Cueva Sáenz 1919b: 70) and the idea that the highest stage of development of societies is marked by political parties organized around transcendental concepts (Cueva Sáenz 1919b: 72). Modern scholarship of Giddings confirms that the presentation by Cueva Sáenz is accurate even if it leaves out certain ideas, like the distinction between aggregation and association, the role of statistic methods, or the combination of subjective and objective factors (Chriss 2006: 124–25). The last sociological text of Cueva Sáenz is the transcription of a discourse he held in 1920. In it, he upholds a Spencerian take. For him: “Each human society is a true spiritual organism, an individuality, whose creation and formation represents the last and wisest effort of nature.” (Cueva Sáenz 1985: 66) Solidarity and union are produced through unifying forces, especially on the moral level. However, the organism of a nation is formed through the relationship to the physical, economic and spiritual environment (Cueva Sáenz 1985: 67). This is also why Cueva Sáenz considers the fact that the Spanish conquerors did not replace the indigenous languages, namely Kichwa, with Spanish as a major error that hinders the development of the Ecuadorian nation (Cueva Sáenz 1985: 71). Quevedo died in 1921. Combined with the early death of Espinosa Tamayo in 1918, also aged 38, and the shift of focus of Cueva Sáenz toward politics going hand in hand with a stop to sociological publications, this marked the end of the first and foundational phase of early sociology in Ecuador. This is the first time that a particular phenomenon heavily influences the development of sociology in Ecuador—following the idea of epistemological obstacles, we can talk about biological obstacles: the untimely death of central actors determines the development of Ecuadorian sociology. Both institutions and epistemic communities break with the death of prominent figures.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

31

The Second Generation of Sociologists The first years after this break are marked by a lively debate on sociology without strong protagonists. Several people engage with this discourse but are not able to establish continuity. For instance, Augusto Egas dedicated 1921 a text to Belisario Quevedo, who had died only shortly before. This text proves vast knowledge of pre-classic sociology with references to Ward, Giddings, Spencer, Posada, Giner de los Ríos, Sales y Ferré, Fouillée, Baldwin, and others. Egas understands society “as a substantivity composed of individualities that pursue common goals.” (Egas 1921: 128) As such, it is the product of the law of evolution that goes from the inorganic over the organic to the superorganic level, where superorganic evolution takes place that leads society from matriarchy to patriarchy and from communist forms of property to individual ones. The closeness of individuals to each other leads to “a psychic interaction, as a result of the presence of the socius in each one of the individual spirits that makes that each one of them thinks and feels the other, creating like that a new product, the social.” (Egas 1921: 138) This, in turn, influences in the individual members of society. Society is, thus, a product of individual minds: “each part has the consciousness of itself and the collective representation, the idée-­ force of everything of which it forms part.” (Egas 1921: 141) However, Egas does not follow a voluntaristic perspective—society is still a product of nature that develops a consciousness of itself that corresponds in its phases (spontaneous, reflexive, and volitive) to the individual psyche (Egas 1921: 148). He concludes that: The interaction between individual spirits acquires a social self-awareness, a group consciousness, and a certain social understanding represented by a social judgment, at the same time that it fixes, preserves and transmits the wealth of beliefs and experiences that have been integrated. (Egas 1921: 151)

Egas did not become a sociologist; this would be his only academic text. Instead, he worked as a lawyer and public servant and was, for a short time, the leader of the Liberal Party (Preston et al. 1999).19 Also, in 1921, Rigoberto Ortiz published a text on the Ecuadorian youth. For him, education is the way to improve society, and this is why education in Ecuador, oscillating between krausismo and the German  Thanks to Marc Becker for this information.

19

32 

P. ALTMANN

tradition (Ortiz 1921: 158), should be revised. He uses a series of references, including Ward and Durkheim (Ortiz 1921: 132), to demand a change in how we understand society: With the gigantic impulse of American Sociology, the value of the individual is resurrected, as a social factor, and Sociology, which was presented as fatalistic […] is transformed into a science full of practical consequences, of optimistic promises because it teaches the individual the secret of the domain of social agents. (Ortiz 1921: 137)

Ortiz would become an influential sociologist in Guayaquil (García Ortiz 1945: 150) and part of an exchange of professors from the University of Guayaquil to the Central University in 1930 (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1930). In the first years of the 1920s, the Journal of the Society Legal Studies published several translations from international scholars, including translations done by Roberto Páez (close friend of Belisario Quevedo and later editor of his posthumous book) of fascist thinkers such as George Valois (1921) and Giorgio Del Vecchio (1921). In 1922, it published the seemingly only Spanish translation of the contribution of Durkheim to the book “La Science française” from 191520—the first publication of a text of Durkheim in Ecuador (Durkheim 1922).21 This could have complemented the only books by Durkheim available in Quito before the 1940s—a Spanish translation of “The rules of Sociological Method” from 1912 at the library of the Central University and an Argentinian translation of “Sociology and Philosophy” from 1924 in the personal collection of Yépez del Pozo, now at the Library Aurelio Espinosa Polit. A publication by Alfredo Pérez Guerrero in 1922 shows the vast proliferation of sociological thought. This is especially interesting because over 30 years later, Pérez Guerrero would be one of the leading proponents of a School of Sociology (Campuzano Arteta 2005). In 1922, he combined Tarde, Le Bon, and Spencer to claim “that every civilization is the development of three or four great ideas” (Pérez Guerrero 1922: 138). In this sense, the state is defined by the development of those ideas. Material conditions such as race or the environment are, for Pérez Guerrero, the  The French original is present in the library of the Central University.  And the first translation of this particular text until Durkheim (2016). Thanks to Eduardo Buitrón Portilla for this information. 20 21

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

33

frameworks in which society forms through invention and imitation (Pérez Guerrero 1922: 140). However, spirit dominates matter and life through science and art. In the sense of a social telesis,22 as proposed by US sociologist Lester Ward, in the state, “the subjective forces dominate and order the objective ones to their ends” (Pérez Guerrero 1922: 143–44). In order to guarantee the progress of the state, telesis must be known and systematically studied—something that in Ecuador does not happen (Pérez Guerrero 1922: 145). Referring concretely to the indigenous population, he concludes that to be able to educate them, it is necessary to study them, including statistics on their behavior and preferences. In 1922, Pío Jaramillo Alvarado, lawyer, academic, and liberal politician from Loja and friend of Agustín Cueva Sáenz, would publish his influential book on the Ecuadorian Indian, re-edited and revised several times over the next decades (Jaramillo Alvarado 1954). While the book does not deliver on the expectations of sociological work—it is merely descriptive— it represents a well-informed history of the indigenous population in Ecuador and its problems, and possibilities to overcome those problems. With this text, a central research object is established in Ecuadorian sociology—research on the indigenous population. Until the 1960s, almost all sociologists would write rather long texts on this topic, based on empirical data and mixing sociological with anthropological theories. Most of them were students of Cueva Sáenz and followed his anti-racist approach. However, the tendency to focus on a distinctive indigenous spirit might have hindered a further understanding (Prieto 2004: 170). Jaramillo Alvarado would become a professor at the Central University in 1930 (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1930). At the beginning of the 1920s, two books that could have been the start of Marxist sociology were published, both dedicated to understanding the Russian Revolution and the young Soviet Union. First, Juan Naula, a socialist activist in Guayaquil, published 1921 Principles of Applied Sociology (Naula 1921). In it, he attempts a Marxist re-reading of the history of humanity, led by Friedrich Engels and his book on the Origin of the Family (Albornoz Peralta 2020a: 15–16). While the text is rather descriptive and does not have a complete theoretical approach, Naula follows a Spencerian view of society as energies that are developing following certain rules. “Our admired Ward” (Naula 1921: 8) is referenced several times in explaining those rules. Tomás Quevedo seems to be right to point  This concept refers to socially planned progress.

22

34 

P. ALTMANN

out the mixture between Marxism, positivism, and evolutionism (Quevedo 2021: 9–10). A similar attempt was undertaken in the doctoral thesis of Antonio Quevedo. The book is a well-informed history of Bolshevism and fascism in Europe, showing clear sympathy toward the Soviet Union. However, it does not attempt a sociological interpretation of this history (Quevedo 1924). In 1932, Quevedo would become a professor of international law at the Central University (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1932a). In 1925, Aurelio García, a law student in his fourth year (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1925), denies an essential difference between man and woman. While this text is not very relevant here, it is the first time Georg Simmel was cited and debated at length in Ecuador (García 1925: 65–66). García would deepen his reception of Simmel in his doctoral thesis, applying Simmel’s The Conflict in Modern Culture to Ecuador, extended by his readings of Bergson, Husserl, Scheler, and Spengler. This vitalist conception of society includes criticism of modernity—with Keyserling, García defines the chauffeur as the prototypical human being of that time (García 1927). At the same time, Juan Yépez del Pozo, a classmate of García, describes the degeneration of peoples through the cultural impoverishment caused by useless institutional norms that favor parasitism (Yépez del Pozo 1926: 106). Interestingly enough, he considers imitation in the sense of Tarde as a form of social parasitism. At the same time, sociology became stronger in other Ecuadorian universities. In 1924, sociology appeared as a course in the third year of the degree course in legal studies at the University of Cuenca (Universidad de Cuenca 1924: 355). In 1930, his colleagues elected Antonio Barsallo as a sociology professor.23 In that same year, Luis Monsalve Pozo was a student in the sixth year of the law degree course (Universidad de Cuenca 1930: 103). Alfonso Mora seems to be the first professor to use sociological arguments related to legal arguments in defense of private property. He criticizes Spencerian and neo-Comtian positivism and favors a more philosophical approach with Catholic grounding to understand the role of property in society (Mora 1930: 47). This conception of sociology leads him to denounce Soviet Communism as against conservatism and sociological postulates (Mora 1930: 56).

23  Following information from historian César Albornoz, he was since at least the early 1920s professor for sociology.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

35

This interregnum is characterized by a diversity of people with different conceptual takes on society—and by the fact that they could not establish themselves in sociology at that time. In the second half of the 1920s, this panorama starts to change. In 1924, Ángel Modesto Paredes published his first sociological book, still rather descriptive and without major conceptual work (Paredes 1924). From 1925 to 1927, he publishes a book on Social Consciousness that contains his innovative approach to sociology. The first parts, published in the Revista de la Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria in seven issues, engage with a comprehensive theory of reality close to the theory of Spencer in claiming that the biological world and the social world work follow the same laws. Paredes focuses on consciousness at the individual and social levels and highlights how chemical and biological forces influence it (Paredes 1925: 176). The parts of the book that were published in the Revista de la Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria represent an attempt at a Spencerian and pre-Freudian psychology. It should be noted that from 1926 books by Freud were available at the library of the Central University (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1926). Paredes wrote the two chapters relevant here (Paredes 1927a) only later—eventually becoming the first chapters of his book (Paredes 1927b). In them, he rejects Durkheim and his followers due to their reduction to “almost the pure material relation” (Paredes 1988b: 180), excluding intuition and knowledge that comes before intuition. Instead, he follows Comte and Spencer in the “recognition of society as a product of nature” (Paredes 1988b: 183) in constant evolution. While Paredes accepts the importance of external stimuli and corporal reactions, for him, “nationalities are shallow variations in the systems of life” (Paredes 1988b: 186). Instead of nationalities, Paredes prefers to speak of races as bigger human entities with particular characteristics. Sociology studies the forces and energetic processes in society, focusing not on the concrete expressions but rather on the laws that define them (Paredes 1988b: 187–88). As society is a collective organism, it has a social consciousness that develops similarly to individual consciousness. In this sense, Paredes rejects Durkheim with his idea of a coercive social fact that is exterior to the individual. With Tarde, Paredes argues for an understanding of the social fact as something related to intermental psychology that has to be accepted spiritually and is by no means external to the individual (Paredes 1988b: 195). In the second chapter, Paredes defines his approach of a psychological sociology. Again, he rejects Durkheim with his idea of the social as

36 

P. ALTMANN

something external to human beings (Paredes 1988a: 200). Instead, it is about the “forces that make up or break down into energy systems within society” (Paredes 1988a: 203). Society has biological elements and is analogous to biological organisms, implying the necessity for sociologists to have biological and chemical expertise. This allows studying “[t]he internal activity of the life of the individuals of a group, combined in the processes of social phenomena, through the system of preceding psychological forces” (Paredes 1988a: 205). Energies with the same orientation multiply in all those levels, while opposed energies cancel each other. Individual psychology and social consciousness determine each other based on individual acceptance of sociality. Moreover, there is an organic basis for sociality, expressed, following Paredes, in race. “In human life there are many and successive immersions, and the first is the one that has fixed the race” (Paredes 1988a: 212). For instance, the Indo-Europeans have developed state and organization, while the Asians focus on family, discipline, and morals. This culturalist racism will remain central in all sociological work of Paredes. Instead of the Durkheimian focus on structures, Paredes goes with Tarde for the “analysis of the intimate psychological energies of the group” (Paredes 1988a: 212). For him, the “mental processes between the first agents” (Paredes 1988a: 212) and the “intercerebral activity […] of the resonances of a thought in the millions of brains on which it acts” (Paredes 1988a: 212) are defined by imitation and innovation in the Tardian sense as central social forces. However, the weakness of Tarde is that he does not take into account intra-cerebral activities. What happens inside the individual brain is defined both by the imitations in society and by the reactions to stimuli of nature—all of which are hereditary (Paredes 1988a: 220–23). This is why “[t]he intra-cerebral must proceed […] in any study tending to discover the inter-cerebral process” (Paredes 1988a: 223). The constant imitation leads to mental similarities between the members of society. At the same time and following Giddings, an organic sympathy arises that is translated into a spiritual sympathy and, finally, into consciousness of kind. The theory of affection by Ward goes in this same direction (Paredes 1988a: 226–27). Thus, ethnic or geographic conditions can limit the repetition needed to form a society. However, even the lack of sympathy produces sociality, following Gumplowicz and Giddings, “opposition is one of the great systems of association” (Paredes 1988a: 229). So, while Paredes has an individualistic view of society, he does not deny that there is something beyond human intellect, namely a

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

37

superorganic entity based on individual organisms but able to produce what is missing in the individual entities. This superorganism co-produces the collective and individual psyches. This was one of the few texts of Ecuadorian social sciences that had a response outside of Ecuador. Guillaume-Léonce Duprat wrote a review24 of the book in the Revue Internationale de Sociologie founded by René Worms. This review can be called destructive. After declaring that the book is about psychology and only the first chapters are sociological, Duprat mentions that Paredes believes telepathy to be real and that “despite frequent citations, the study of the most qualified authors has been lacking” (Duprat 1928: 89). For Duprat, Paredes’ take is somewhere between Durkheim and Tarde, close to Worms and Roberty. The organicist understanding of society and the individualism of Paredes seems to Duprat far from sociological reality (Duprat 1928: 90). Paredes published a response to this review in the pages of the Revista de la Sociedad Jurídico-­ Literaria. In it, he answers three significant criticisms by Duprat. He insists that sociology needs to focus on “the forces, motives or means by which one acts: it looks for the internal energy and understands the event as an accident” (Paredes 1928: 37). For him, this implies the need to include the elements of which society is composed, namely, those of individual psychology. Still, he identifies more with psychology than sociology (Paredes 1928: 41). He largely accepts the theoretical identification Duprat makes of him, including organicism—but explicitly rejects Worms as a relevant influence (Paredes 1928: 41). Paredes would turn into the most productive sociological writer in Ecuador between the 1920s and 1950s, with over 6000 pages published, including writings in legal studies, anthropology, travel books, and others (Quintero 1988: 12). His influence was also relevant on a political level. He was co-founder of the Socialist Party in 1926 (Quintero 1988: 20), and his brother, Ricardo Paredes, would become the leader of the Communist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. Quintero notices that Paredes’ understanding of Durkheim is based only on The rules of Sociological Method and does not include crucial texts such as Suicide (Quintero 1988: 22). Paredes was from 1929 the dean of the Law Department and from 1930 a professor of International Law (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1929).

 Thanks to Anne-Sophie Nussbaumer Schmutz from the Bibliothèque de Genève.

24

38 

P. ALTMANN

In 1926, several relevant books were acquired by the library of the Central University. Freud’s Totem and Taboo and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, a book by Scheler on culture and knowledge, books by Vasconcelos and Ingenieros, as well as books on the Soviet Revolution and Social Darwinism were available to students and professors in Quito (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1926). In 1927, this list was completed with Spengler’s The Decline of the West (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1927). In the second half of the 1920s, the only other contributions to sociology happened in a short debate in the Juridical-Literary Society. Jesús Vaquero Dávila published in their journal between 1926 and 1928 a multi-part essay on socialism focusing primarily on the Soviet Union. In the final part, he concludes that socialism is anti-natural because it contradicts the “biological law that sustains and determines the functions of life and makes man selfish and aggressive” (Vaquero Dávila 1928: 311). Thus, socialism is born out of nihilism and tries to destroy democracy and established institutions. It is destructive as it does not allow society to advance to the ego-altruist stage where harmony reigns and social institutions are committed to equality and social justice. Especially problematic is the hatred toward the higher class and the inability of the lower class to run society due to its psychological deformation. For him, the advance of socialism has to be stopped with discipline and slow reforms according to the environmental conditions of each locality (Vaquero Dávila 1928: 314). He is especially preoccupied with the tendency of indigenous peoples to become socialists. In order to prevent this, Vaquero Dávila demands changes in their education, “the way to attend to their spiritual and organic regeneration is to purge it of their ancestral psychological residues” (Vaquero Dávila 1928: 344). As education cannot change the psychology, for him, more efforts for racial mixture are needed: Ecuador needs […] frequent injections of robust and generous blood, to tone with new ethnic mixtures its living frameworks, monotonous and of little racial virility. (Vaquero Dávila 1928: 346)

The book he published shortly after is hardly more than an extension of these ideas, completed with a sympathetic description of Italian fascism and a rejection of feminism (Vaquero Dávila 1930a). However, this book received international attention—a chapter where Bolívar is compared to Napoleon was published in French that same year (Vaquero Dávila 1930b).

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

39

Gonzalo Escudero, who later became a well-known poet and diplomat, showed a better knowledge of Marxism in his answer. Following Fouillée and the idées-forces, he understands Marx as a personified homme-force that produces social life (Escudero 1929: 79). He highlights the materialism of Marx: “the causal relationship established between the productive economic fact and the entire social reality” (Escudero 1929: 90). This includes the determination of a social superstructure by the relations of production (Escudero 1929: 86). Pareto and Worms confirm with some limitations this determination. Nevertheless, Escudero goes beyond those ideas. For him, the vertebras of Marxism are surplus value, class struggle, and historical materialism. While those three aspects are inseparable, they imply two different Marxes: Marx, the researcher works on surplus value and historical materialism, and Marx, the apostle calls to class struggle. Escudero also revises some criticisms of Marxism and denounces the idea of direct determinism, as in Engels, in favor of historical determinism. With this, he defends the idea of social and historical laws. He even builds bridges to idealists: “From the action of consciousness on the surrounding world, by virtue of necessity, the torrent of the economic phenomenon is born” (Escudero 1929: 99). In 1931, several important books were acquired by the Library of the Central University, among texts on the Soviet Union, including one by Trotsky and one by Stalin, classics of philosophy such as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Bergson, but also Spanish translations of Spencer’s First Principles, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical and Progress: Its Law and Cause, Le Bon’s Psychology of Education, Alfred Weber’s History of European Philosophy, Fouillée’s General History of Philosophy, Sorel’s The Ruin of the Antique World, a book by Jung on the unconsciousness, a book by Wundt on psychology. Interestingly enough, also Psychologie des Temps Nouveaux by Le Bon, Cours de Linguistique Générale by Saussure, La Mentalité Primitive and Les Fonctions Mentales by Lévy-Bruhl, La Psychologie Sociale by Duprat in the French original entered the library. Posada’s Social Theory of the State completes this list of sociologically relevant books (Orejuela 1931). Later this year, the French originals of Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive and Discours sur l’esprit positif were acquired (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1931). So, still, during the 1930s, the main interest was positivistic sociology and texts published decades before, even in their Spanish translation. The early 1930s saw a lively sociological debate. Two young talents appeared that would determine Ecuadorian sociology until the 1960s.

40 

P. ALTMANN

Luis Bossano and Víctor Gabriel Garcés studied law at the Central University in the same course (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1929: 597). Bossano published as a student a rather descriptive book on regionalism that is based on two earlier articles (Bossano 1929a, 1929b) in two editions in 1930. It was developed in debates and events realized in the short-lived Society for Sociological Studies (Sociedad de Estudios Sociológicos), organized by students and led by Bossano himself (Bossano 1948: 5). In it, he connects to the social criticism of Espinosa Tamayo. For instance, he gives a depressing panorama of social classes in Ecuador. He recognizes a recent diversification of social classes due to a major tendency to association (Bossano 1930: 63). This leaves a leading role to the higher and middle classes, especially in the urban centers. However, the higher classes care only about their exclusiveness but not about intellectual development. The middle classes are debilitated through the constant struggle for life in an environment of mistrust and ignorance (Bossano 1930: 64–65). The same goes for the intellectual class and politicians. The “principle of morality as guiding axis of the manners” (Bossano 1930: 61) must be connected with education and work in dignified conditions (Bossano 1930: 69–70). In his doctoral thesis published in 1933—Pío Jaramillo was one of the advisers—Bossano develops his stance. Following Leonidas García, he claims that “property is a social function” (Bossano 1933: 290) insofar as it is connected to collective necessities that need to be met. He mentions Cueva Sáenz as his professor and repeats his rejection of race as an independent factor in society (Bossano 1933: 303), and he shares the criticism of servitude with Belisario Quevedo (Bossano 1933: 314). His revision of the situation of the countryfolk of Ecuador, especially the indigenous population of the highlands and the Montubios of the Coastal region, works with the concept of energy as developed by Spencer, Ferrière, and Ward. As it is clear “that spiritual energy marks its transcendental existence to the beat of the organic, either as a present or ancestral reality” (Bossano 1933: 308–9), education is needed in order to allow this energy to develop freely and to overcome the general egoism that hinders the progress of society. In order to allow for the indigenous and Montubios to better their situation, Bossano suggests a series of public policies that include education, labor rights, land distribution, social housing, and others (Bossano 1933: 319). Unlike many publications of this moment, this text has a

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

41

bibliography. Bossano works with Dealey and Ward’s Text-book of Sociology, Tardes’ Laws of Imitation, Posadas’ Principles of Sociology, Giddens’ Principles of Sociology, and Sales y Ferrés’ General Sociology, as well as Cueva Sáenz’s text on Servitude and the first book by Paredes, amongst other non-sociological texts (Bossano 1933: 327). Víctor Gabriel Garcés published his doctoral thesis in 1932, with Pío Jaramillo as one supervisor. This study of the situation of indigenous peoples in the province of Imbabura, north of Quito, is based on the review of official documents and ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews— something unheard of at that time. He was the first professional sociologist to mention the process of politicization of the indigenous peoples that had started in the mid-1920s (Garcés 1932a: 157–58, 1932b: 560). Like Bossano, he blames servitude for society’s problems and, especially, the problems of the indigenous population (Garcés 1932a: 131). It had an essential impact on the psychology of indigenous peoples and did not allow them to develop further (Garcés 1932a: 136–37). Significantly, servitude reduces them to imitation and does not allow true innovation (Garcés 1932a: 173). Moreover, while traditional servitude was outlawed in 1918, he doubts that it has been erased from general manners (Garcés 1932a: 178). Also, like Bossano, he acknowledges the role of property, highlighting communal land ownership in indigenous communities as a model for the future (Garcés 1932a: 159). Garcés rejects the influence of the environment on human groups with reference to Salas Ferré and Cornejo (Garcés 1932a: 169). However, besides the empirical work, the innovative element of his thesis is how he uses Simmel and his idea of reciprocal action to understand the relationship between indigenous and white peoples in Ecuador: “The Indians are physically close to the whites but morally distant. Close not only in the fleeting manifestations pointed out by Simmel: close to the whites during their whole life and so far from them through the whole of history!” (Garcés 1932a: 148). He also uses Simmel to understand the particular role of ornaments in the indigenous celebrations, making the individuals irradiate beauty to show off to others (Garcés 1932a: 173). However, in his conclusions, he maintains with Duguit and Posada that state and law are necessary to keep social harmony. A possible solution to improve the situation of indigenous peoples would be to induce constant contacts that lead to imitation in the sense of

42 

P. ALTMANN

Tarde, combined with the coercion defined by Durkheim, and finally to an adaptation: We are compelled and forced, by a force foreign to us, to proceed in this or that direction, to form a habitual groove of daily attitudes. This coercion—is not imitation a force that imposes itself on the spirit and compels it to imitate, to do the same?—takes effect on every individual, because the demand, the need becomes stronger, more imperative, as one ascends the social ladder. (Garcés 1932b: 528–29)

However, the problematic state of Ecuadorian society, defined by greed and a lack of productivity that hinders the free development of social energies (Garcés 1932b: 533–34), would only lead the indigenous to adapt to the vices of the white. That includes the middle classes, characterized by constant struggle as Simmel does (Garcés 1932b: 558). Also, a simple physical closeness does not necessarily lead to intermental exchange. In order to achieve a real reciprocal influence, transpersonal radiation is needed (Garcés 1932b: 542). Garcés understands society, following Simmel, as a product of reciprocal action. Living in a given territory, a society will acquire a certain organization and, following Posada, form a nation over which a political state will build. With this, he rejects Spencerian organicism as simplistic (Garcés 1932c: 163). As Tarde states, the fact that people live and interact on the same land produces mutual sympathies, leading to psychic similarities (Garcés 1932c: 164). This leads to cultural and ethnic cohesion and to society’s growth, which, in turn, facilitates assimilation (Garcés 1932c: 167). So, a community of objectives and desires arises from individual consciousnesses brought together by sympathy and guaranteeing social harmony (Garcés 1932c: 170). As this text counts with a bibliography, we know that Garcés was working with texts by Paredes, including Social Consciousness, and the book on Regionalism by Bossano. International sociological references also appear—Sociology by Simmel, Political Law by Posada, Sociology by Gumplowicz, and Laws of Imitation by Tarde—albeit this list seems incomplete (Garcés 1932c: 174). Agustín Cueva Sáenz quit his position in 1931, possibly due to persecution he suffered as a follower of president Isidro Ayora (1926–1931) (Mora Reyes 1985a). In 1932, Benjamín Carrión became his successor as Professor of Sociology and History of Law. Leonidas García became a professor of Pedagogy at the Philosophy Department (Universidad Central

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

43

del Ecuador 1932b: 291). Shortly after, Garcés became Professor of the History of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department, and Carrión was elected vice-chancellor from 1932 to 1934 (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1932c: 518, 521). However, as Carrión resigned only one year later because he was appointed to a government position (Bossano 1948: 5), Garcés became in 1933 Professor of Sociology and History of Law (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1933: 348). At that time, the sociology course was part of the fifth year of the degree program in law (Salgado 1933). As a Professor of Sociology, Garcés published two articles that continue the ideas of his doctoral thesis. In 1933, he connected to the earlier sociological tradition in Ecuador. He revises Ecuadorian history based on the idea of objective social reality (Garcés 1933: 174). While society has to be understood as “a product of exclusively spiritual order” (Garcés 1933: 189), Garcés rejects the vital determinism he attributes to Spencer. Society follows a necessary, logical, and chronological path of evolution defined by a social force, in the sense of Ward’s synergy, formed by tradition and imitation (Garcés 1933: 190). In Latin America, society has some particularities related to the disconnection between nation and state. Two major forces influence society in the region: religion attempts to make intercollective relations easier, while economics forces people into interaction and mutual understanding (Garcés 1933: 197). On this basis, Garcés proposes to re-model the American nation freeing it from a despotic politics for the masses and installing a politics for society that is to be understood as an “ethical guide to advance to collective happiness” (Garcés 1933: 199). A text from 1934 continues those reflections and tries to meet the need to “understand the content of the spirit of our peoples” (Garcés 1934: 212). Garcés accepts the Comtian vision of general social progress but highlights that it is defined by a constant opposition between reason and emotion. Society and culture are understood as the product of the interaction of consciousnesses on both the individual and collective levels. Following Spencer, Jung, Lévy-Bruhl, and Freud, Garcés highlights a general development of those different levels of consciousness that leads to spiritual autonomy, solidary altruism, or collective forms of spirituality. This goes beyond “interindividual psychism” (Garcés 1934: 216) as it includes social forces and synergy as defined by Ward, and sympathy and the consciousness of kind as in Giddings, as well as rivalry, following Gumplowicz. Following Cornejo and Durkheim with The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, totemism was formed in the first stages of human evolution to justify fraternity and establish norms of conviviality

44 

P. ALTMANN

based on the idea of a common ancestor. One outcome of totemism is the anthropomorphic myth. Due to its “dynamic and always affective expansion” (Garcés 1934: 222), the myth survives modernity and acquires new characteristics. Now, the myth works “as an emotional force, the indisputable affective motor that activates in the collectivities making them proceed according to feeling, not according to reason” (Garcés 1934: 226). In this sense, modern politics is based on mythical thinking. Garcés points out the European fascism of his time to clarify that democracy is a myth grounded in each people and its particular symbols. There is a general tendency toward affection based on widespread religious feelings in America. The result is a mythical democracy focused on men and not on ideas. This limitation should be overcome with education for the masses (Garcés 1934: 228). Garcés was also influential through his students. He encouraged a student of his, Rafael Avila Garrido, to publish several texts on sociology in the journal of the Law Department. In a short introduction, Avila Garrido (1933) gives a markedly Simmelian overview of the discipline, full of direct quotes from Simmel. The text summarizes Simmel’s formal sociology and the promise to continue—something that never happened. This student would write some other texts in the same journal, always close to the reflections of Garcés. In the same year, an influential outsider starts to engage with sociology, Humberto García Ortiz.25 Since 1932, he has been a professor of Civic Instruction at the Philosophy Department (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1932c). While he already introduced new references—Maurice Halbwachs—in a text on civic education published in 1933, his first sociological research dates from 1934. His following publication is the product of a trip through several indigenous settlements in the Northern highlands and thus closer to cultural anthropology than sociology. For instance, he includes passages on witchcraft, magic, kin relations, and other topics established in anthropology. Following Lévy-Bruhl, he places the indigenous of Ecuador between the pre-logical and the logical mentality in what he calls a semi-logic mentality (García Ortiz 1934: 185). He also uses Freud, Worms, Durkheim, Spencer, and Halbwachs for those anthropological interpretations. However, there are some sociologically relevant 25  García Ortiz (1903–1998) studied law in Quito during the 1920s, worked as high school teacher, as university professor, and in public administration. He was an important figure in the Socialist Party (Ayala Mora 2010).

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

45

observations. García Ortiz highlights the distance between indigenous and non-indigenous populations based on von Wiese’s concepts26 (García Ortiz 1934: 148). This is why he emphasizes the importance of language not only as a means of interpersonal contact but also—with reference to Spengler—as a possibility to connect the dead and the living (García Ortiz 1934: 151). This is why the use of Kichwa and an indigenous bilingual education are key to including indigenous peoples in the greater society. It could also be a way to overcome the sociological doubleness of the indigenous, who present themselves in two completely different ways when treating other indigenous or whites (García Ortiz 1934: 158). This condition is especially problematic as indigenous peoples have lost their traditional territory and can be considered nomads in both the material and the psychic sense (García Ortiz 1934: 144). This condition is prolonged in their relationship to patriotism: indigenous people do not feel that they belong to Ecuador as their country. The mechanisms of dominion established by Gumplowicz do not apply to the indigenous peoples of Ecuador. This argument of physical, psychic, social, or cultural belonging is taken from Spengler (García Ortiz 1934: 168). This is made worse by the institutional insertion into the Ecuadorian state: its representatives, majors, lawyers, school teachers, and clergypersons function as disloyal interpreters that pass the authoritarian orders from the whites to the indigenous— and make sure to protect their benefit from it (García Ortiz 1934: 186). It is interesting to note that García Ortiz comes to the same conclusions as Cueva Sáenz did 20 years earlier: commercial exchange could be a way to produce durable contacts that may eventually lead to associations and a psychic representation of them, that, in turn, facilitates imitations in the sense of Tarde. However, these imitations can also have negative effects on the indigenous population (García Ortiz 1934: 173). This sympathetic attempt to understand the indigenous population ends with some rather harsh anti-Black racist comments. This has also been noted by his followers (Ayala Mora 2010: 273–74). This same year 1934, a  significant intromission of the state into the Central University happened. José María Velasco Ibarra, in the first of five presidencies (1934–1935), closed and reorganized the Central University, shutting down the Philosophy Department. In the Law Department, Pío Jaramillo was made Dean, Pérez Guerrero appears as a professor—and Velasco Ibarra’s friend from the Juridical-Literary Society, Ángel Modesto  This and many others of his references are from the Revue Internationale de Sociologie.

26

46 

P. ALTMANN

Paredes, becomes a professor for sociology. Garcés is moved to the Chair of Labor Legislation, Indigenous Questions, and Statistics (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1934). This constellation remains until 1936 (Paredes 1936). Garcés left the university in 1936 and took up a position in other branches of the public service (Bossano 1948: 6). He would become a major protagonist of the Interamerican Indigenist Institute (Monsalve Pozo 1943: 522), together with Pío Jaramillo, leader of the Ecuadorian Indigenist Institute and editor of its bulletin Atahualpa from 1943. This institute would become a parallel structure for Ecuadorian sociology, as other early sociologists, such as Aurelio García and Humberto García Ortiz (Ayala Mora 2010: 271; Barba Villamarín and Vera Toscano 2022: 42–43), worked there. In 1933, Rigoberto Ortiz, back at the University of Guayaquil, outlined a political sociology. He based his reflections on Aristoteles, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, and Comte and went beyond the varieties of democracy that he claims were studied by contemporary sociologists under the name of sociological types (Ortiz 1933: 535). This rather traditional treatment of sociology leads to a surprisingly radical reflection. He uses terms like imperialism, semi-coloniality, and capitalism to understand the politics of his time and argues for a sociology that uses historical materialism and statistical research. For Ortiz, “A proletarian democracy could thus arise among us, in opposition to the bourgeois feudal democracy in full liquidation” (Ortiz 1933: 538). However, there is a lack of leaders that would allow breaking with class division and “racial minority democracy” (Ortiz 1933: 539). This is also why he rejects the idea of an integral democracy. The text claims to be a chapter of a major work. However, he would not finish this study. During this time, the teaching of social sciences at the University of Cuenca was further institutionalized. The dean of the Law Department argued in 1933 that a deep knowledge of sociology is needed in order to be able to understand the state and its mechanisms and, thus, to be able to study law (Díaz 1933b: 63–64). This is why the degree course in law at this university was organized so that the first three years focused on social sciences in a broad spectrum that contained philosophy, economy, politics, anthropology, sociology—and several law courses. After those three years, students could graduate with the title of licenciado in social sciences—or study law for three more years and graduate as a doctor in law and lawyer (Díaz 1933a). Sometime later, the sociology professor of that time published his seemingly only text with sociological arguments. Debating

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

47

university reform, he highlights the role of the laws of nature in the development of society and the intrinsic connection of needs that grow out of the laws of nature and the institutions that satisfy them (Barsallo 1935: 84). Paredes, at that time also Director of the National Library, published 1935 his next book, on heritage. Here again, he defines races as “strongly defined groups, whose peculiarities are permanent and transmissible through heritage” (Paredes 1935: 385). These peculiarities are anatomic, physiological, and mental qualities understood as permanent mutations. They can combine in national civilizations as the product of the geographic environment and the people. Therefore, and with reference to the peoples’ psychology of Taine and Fouillée, Paredes highlights the necessity to distinguish race, nationality, and people (Paredes 1935: 392). However, Paredes disagrees with Gumplowicz’s conflict view of race relations as he highlights the importance of the contact between “two ethnic psychologies” (Paredes 1935: 393). And while he insists that there are no higher or lower races, but rather races differently gifted, race is for him primordial: “Racial meaning is the first hereditary sign of man, the first preparatory bath of human individuality, it is the nucleus and center of his actions and movements of the mind” (Paredes 1935: 393). In this sense, the peoples’ mentality is determined by their physical environment—and how this environment is perceived is defined by race (Paredes 1935: 409). At the same time, Paredes demanded a state-led eugenics program through moral education and forced sterilization (Paredes 1935: 417–18). His teaching program from 1936 follows his general approach to sociology. Besides an introduction, Paredes included cosmology, geography, biology, psychology, and a seemingly Spencerian focus on energy (Sarzoza 2014: 62). The Philosophy Department was reopened in 1935 and reorganized as a Pedagogy Department. Aurelio García had become a professor of ethics, Gonzalo Escudero of Logic and Theory of Knowledge. Leonidas García and Humberto García Ortiz were also professors. Other influential intellectuals appear as professors in this Department, such as Oscar Efrén Reyes, Emilio Uzcátegui, and Benjamín Carrión, who also served as Dean. In addition, there is now a Chair of Sociology in that Department, held by Manuel E.  Cadena A. (Paredes 1936; Universidad Central del Ecuador 1936). The year 1935 saw another sociological publication. Juan Yépez del Pozo, already publishing in the 1920s, finished his doctoral thesis. While his text is well informed theoretically and correctly explains Spencer,

48 

P. ALTMANN

Durkheim, Ward, Giddings, Comte, Gumplowicz, Roberty, Krause and the krausists, Marx and Engels, Le Bon, Fouillée, Tarde, Spengler, and others, it does not go beyond a mere summary. Yépez del Pozo shows his scholarship and sticks rather closely to the arguments of Paredes. For him, the aesthetic sense is the basis of all life (Yépez del Pozo 1935). In 1936, Ángel Modesto Paredes became president of the Central University. With this, both Pío Jaramillo and Benjamín Carrión leave their positions as Deans. Also, Paredes’ brother, Ricardo Paredes, leader of the Communist Party, becomes a professor in the Medical Department (Paredes 1936). In the Anales  de la Universidad Central del Ecuador, there is an interesting statistic showing that in 1936, there were less than 1500 university students at the 3 universities that existed in Ecuador at that time, after the University of Loja had been closed down in 1934 (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1936: 642). Also in that year, some relevant books entered the Library of the Central University, namely Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle by Hayek, Death and Survival and Sociology of Knowledge by Max Scheler, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy by Engels, and books by C.G. Jung and Alfred Adler (Barrera 1936). In November 1936, the Central University was closed down again and only reopened in February of 1937 by then-President Federico Páez Chiriboga. Paredes is no longer part of the Central University, and Luis Bossano has become a professor of sociology and indigenous questions. The Pedagogy Department has been closed down once again. Another interesting piece of information is the mention of the salaries for professors at that time. For the professors at the Law Department, this salary was 500 Sucres (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1937a)—about US$50 of that time.27 This corresponds with a value of over US$1000 nowadays. This is especially interesting if we consider that all professors were employed only part-time. In the Law Department, contracts for four hours per week were the rule. Since 1937, Aurelio García was professor for Political Law at that department (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1937b: 229). In 1938, the Pedagogy Department was reopened. From the earlier professors, only Emilio Uzcátegui, Oscar Efrén Reyes, and Humberto García Ortiz are left. The salaries had been raised to 550 Sucres per month in the Law Department. First plans to create a School of Economic  https: //www.bce.fin.ec/index.php/cotizaciones.

27

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

49

Sciences were debated (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1938). Also, new books were acquired. Amongst them were texts on Marxism, including the book of Bukharin on Historical Materialism, The Hour of Decision by Spengler, Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century by Sombart, and books by von Keyserling, Jung, Piaget, and Montessori were available to the academic public. However, the sociological debate seems to die down during that time. García Ortiz published around 1938 (Ayala Mora 2010: 274) a rather theoretical text on democracy where he argues for a historical co-­ development of state and nation (García Ortiz n.d.: 40) that is based on the decadence of the empires of the middle ages and the growing importance of independent political entities that eventually would lead to a “democratic-rationalistic theory of the sovereignty of the people” (García Ortiz n.d.: 43). This leads to the opposition of the people as a (legal) subject and as a (biological) object, two entities that can never overlap completely. With this, he intended to further the development of the democratic theory into a pandemocratic theory that implies the step from a limited democracy to an integral democracy. This argument is rather close to the reflections of Alfred Weber. In 1941, Bossano published an introduction to sociology. In it, he describes sociological research as not only directed to discovering the general laws that guide the essence and evolution of societies but, above all, to establish the “precise norms of coexistence” (Bossano 1941: 9). For him, sociology is still marked by its two most influential founders, Comte and Spencer (Bossano 1941: 20), and especially Comte, with his law of three stages, the classification of sciences, and the positive research method which defines sociology (Bossano 1941: 23–24). Thus, observation, experimentation, and induction “will constitute the only route of discovery of the laws of society” (Bossano 1941: 26). The discovery of those laws is the main task of sociology, as it allows a forecast of social phenomena and, with it, the possibility of influencing society (Bossano 1941: 27–28). However, this early positivistic sociology could not go beyond the metaphysical state Comte describes—it did not yet constitute a systematic study of society (Bossano 1941: 34). The mechanical sociology of Spencer and his followers like Fiske, Carey, and Pareto goes further toward building a “unitary explanation for the immense concert of universal realities” (Bossano 1941: 39). From this perspective, “the persistence of force” (Bossano 1941: 40) in constant evolution is critical. So, as a more accurate take on society

50 

P. ALTMANN

the general concept seeks to make the study of society, the science of superorganic evolution investigates the laws of social phenomena adhering to causal relationships and examines the specific characteristics of each society, penetrating the reciprocal action of men and the environment. (Bossano 1941: 42)

However, theoretical reflections were never the main interest of Bossano. In 1942, he was invited to contribute to the influential Revista Mexicana de Sociología and did so with a short text on excess population. He argues that a general population growth can harm society as there is a negative correlation between it and culture and education. This is due to the lack of resources and time needed to educate the younger generations properly. Therefore, it should be controlled through social policy, hygiene, and eugenics to form a “healthy, normal, and select population” (Bossano 1942: 62). In 1943, a teaching program for the course in sociology gave an impression of what Bossano considered central to sociology. The course starts in a Spencerian manner, connecting the inorganic, the organic, and society. It revises several key concepts such as population, the social process, social phenomena, and several anthropological concepts such as the primitive family, totems, and the development from hordes to tribes. Bossano focuses on sociological method, cultural anthropology, and the indigenous population in Ecuador. Only three sociologists are mentioned by name: Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim (Bossano 1943). Just one year earlier, a teaching program of sociology from the University of Cuenca was published. In it, professor Antonio Barsallo sticks closely to the established Spencerian approach to sociology, including reflections on the inorganic, biological, psychological, and, finally, social levels. For him, society “is the product of three great factors: first, the struggle for existence (life); second, consciousness of kind (feeling); and third, reason (thought)” (Barsallo 1942: 5). All those factors follow certain laws of nature and evolution that define human psychology and social forces based on necessities. Thus, social forces are derived from human nature and a primary form of energy that translates into modern products of sociality, namely morals, aesthetics, and intellectual products (Barsallo 1942: 12). Social factors such as altruism, sympathy, synergy, imitation, and invention happen in those three fields. Concerning the social dynamic, Barsallo points out the importance of cultural contact, social heritage, the role of war in social progress, and social conation

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

51

(Barsallo 1942: 21). In each case, “the social is the real product of the spontaneous creative synthesis of all individual spirits, which penetrates the nature of social facts through analyzing the positive, verified, sure, certain social reality” (Barsallo 1942: 39). Interestingly enough, his references for sociology include Benjamin Kidd, Ward, Spencer, Baldwin, Giddings, Sales y Ferré, and Tarde—but Durkheim is not mentioned at all. This is curious because the idea of an objective social fact is debated— as something psychological that in Spencer translates into adaptation, in Fouillée into the contract, and in Tarde into imitation (Barsallo 1942: 49). He also shares the reformist approach to sociology of the Ecuadorian pioneers. For him, sociology is directed toward the betterment of society (Barsallo 1942: 38). The second part of this teaching program focuses on Ecuadorian sociology. It presents some historical data in a rather descriptive way, quotes Belisario Quevedo, and reproduces parts of Espinosa Tamayo (1979). In 1942, one of the most influential sociological books of that time was published. La Forma Nacional (The National Form) was republished several times (for instance: García Ortiz 2011) and read until today. It is the doctoral thesis of Humberto García Ortiz, at that time an ex-professor of the Central University. The commission that approved the thesis and recommended its publication in the Anales de la Universidad Central del Ecuador consisted of Luis Bossano, Aurelio García and Carlos Salazar Flor (García Ortiz 1942a). While the book follows in some parts rather closely two earlier publications (namely: García Ortiz 1934, n.d.), other parts are innovative and offer a new approach to society. An important part of the book is a review first of the history of humanity and then, of the history of Ecuador, in relation to the idea of nation. With reference to Gumplowicz, Renan, and Carlton Hayes, he refines the distinction between a concept of nation based on spirit and a concept of nationality based on blood. In the historical revision, García Ortiz claims that the middle ages were defined by the unifying principle outlined by René Worms in his La sociologie: sa nature, son contenu, ses attaches of 1921. The end of the middle ages brings about a major role for the other main principle, diversification (García Ortiz 1942a: 189). He regards war and conflict, with Gumplowicz, as a factor producing internal cohesion and, with Simmel, as a form of socialization between enemies (García Ortiz 1942a: 204–5). Commercial relations between societies cannot do the same thing—the objective contents of those relations instead lead the involved parties to regard each other as

52 

P. ALTMANN

strangers. He contrasts imitation in the sense of Tarde with an inimitable essence of every people (García Ortiz 1942a: 205–6). On this basis, García Ortiz develops a sociological theory that allows him to understand the history of human societies. For him, the unifying and diversifying tendencies of Worms and the social systems of Simmel are two sociological laws (García Ortiz 1942a: 238). There is a system of social forces with both centripetal and centrifugal forces—just like the planetary system (García Ortiz 1942a: 209). Any person can form part of several systems at the same time. However, one system will always have more ability of attraction and can influence the other systems (García Ortiz 1942a: 213). Like this, the Catholic system weakened, turning centrifugal, and the national systems defined by self-determination and self-­ sufficiency became stronger and more centripetal with the reformation of the sixteenth century (García Ortiz 1942a: 238). His revision of the renaissance and the reformation is based on quotes from Sombart, Toennies, and Fouillée. He uses Alfred Weber, Michels, and Worms to point out that nations do not develop naturally but are products of historical processes and relate to other social forms. [I]t is by no means a question of a pure form, and, above all, not of an ultimate form, since it must be taken into account that, according to what we could call a staggered theory of forms, each of these can act simultaneously as form and as content, depending on the plane from which one looks at it, such a theory being valid also for the realm of social forms. In sum, using this method, we would be able to obtain a formal theory of the “nation”, insistently demanded by scientific interest and to which the aspiration of man undoubtedly tends. (García Ortiz 1942a: 305)

The second part of this book applies the theory he developed to Ecuador. True to his earlier reflections, García Ortiz rejects the geographic determination of culture that Spengler defends (García Ortiz 1942b: 358) and the idea that race is anything other than the product of the influence of the forces of nature and history over humankind (García Ortiz 1942b: 361). With this perspective, he can read Gumplowicz and his theory of the struggle of races as a materialist theory of the state. Abstracting the struggle of races and the Marxian struggle of classes to a struggle of groups, he defines a third law of society (García Ortiz 1942b: 372–73). García Ortiz understands the cultural contact between the Spanish conquerors and the indigenous population as a clash between different

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

53

cultural circles. The resulting domination could not lead to a process of imitation in the sense of Tarde due to an insuperable cultural difference (García Ortiz 1942b: 389). Rather, combining Spencer, Worms, and Gumplowicz, a slow process of racial mixture happens that gives way to the formation of different classes in society (García Ortiz 1942b: 403–4). The result is a pyramidal social structure where the Spaniards form the top, the Mestizo artisans the middle classes and the indigenous masses, and enslaved Black people the bottom (García Ortiz 1942b: 405). From this panorama, a succession of social forms understood as systems of relations happens. Considering that all systems coexist and merely the centrality shifts, religious, juridical-political, and cultural relations—or the Church, the State, and the Nation—supersede each other. At the same time, the objective relations are represented in the subjectivity of the people participating in them—people adapt subjectively to the objective social forms (García Ortiz 1942b: 418–19). Religion, still central during the Inca reign (García Ortiz 1942b: 425), lost importance with the Spanish conquest due to the decadence the Catholic Church was in. The state is defined by a certain order in juridical relations (García Ortiz 1942b: 438). This generally rational constellation can be replaced by a mystical one. This is how in Europe, the—rational—state is connected to the—mystical—nation—and how in Ecuador, the state is connected to the Church (García Ortiz 1942b: 459–60). When speaking of the Nation as a cultural form, it is understood [as] a systematic set of relational processes whose last and specific characteristic is constituted by the relations between men, as creators and maintainers of culture, that is, producers of history as cultural content. (García Ortiz 1942b: 481)

With this definition of the nation, García Ortiz concludes that there is no nation or Ecuadorian culture in Ecuador. Rather, there is still a predominance of the culture of the ruling classes that does not include the other parts of Ecuadorian society. One year later, another classic of early Ecuadorian sociology was published, the prize-winning (Espinosa 2001: 155) El Indio (The Indian) by the sociologist Luis Monsalve Pozo from the University of Cuenca (Monsalve Pozo 1943). As in an earlier text (Monsalve Pozo 1934), Monsalve Pozo describes the situation of the indigenous population in an emphatic and stylistically appealing manner. He shows his knowledge of

54 

P. ALTMANN

the other publications on the topic in Ecuador and names many globally renowned intellectuals. However, he does so without engaging with their theories. Monsalve Pozo seems unwilling to give a theoretical interpretation of the description he offers and opts for what seems to be more of a political discourse than an academic one, even compared with the publications of his time. Indeed, his explanation of the development of the indigenous population focuses on the shift from transpersonality to personality that finally can lead to liberation. He combines the liberal idea of personal autonomy with the Marxist idea of emancipation with materialist groundings (Monsalve Pozo 1943). His writing seems closer to the essayistic style of Espinosa Tamayo (1979) than to the form in which Ecuadorian sociology after the Cueva Sáenz-Quevedo debate organized arguments. This book received a destructive review by a Franciscan Church historian working on Latin America. While the scandalization of Monsalve Pozo’s use of Marxist ideas might be something that had a different weight in the beginning of Cold War, the accusation of factual errors and a lack of the dialectics that Monsalve Pozo claims to use, as well as his usage of only a part of the existing literature, are serious criticisms (Lamadrid 1946: 260). Monsalve Pozo would become a Commercial Law and Statistics professor at the Law Department of the University in Cuenca in the 1940s (Universidad de Cuenca 1948: 206). Between 1946 and 1956, he served as dean of the Law Department (Espinosa 2001: 160). The University of Cuenca established in 1945 the degree of licenciado en Ciencias Políticas y Sociales (Bachelor in Political and Social Sciences) prior to the degree of Doctor of Jurisprudence (Espinosa 2001: 149). In 1944, 12 professors of a total of 39 worked in the Law Department, a number that would rise to 14 in 1948 (Espinosa 2001: 152). In 1948, César Astudillo became professor of sociology in Cuenca (Universidad de Cuenca 1948). In 1943, the School for Economic Science was created as part of the Law Department of the Central University (Cevallos 1943). Later, it would become the Department of Economy (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1951). With professors like Pío Jaramillo Alvarado and Humberto García Ortiz—both teaching law—and Manuel Agustín Aguirre (Cornejo Rosales 1947), this School would have a decisive impact on the development of social sciences in Ecuador. Aguirre, a member of the Socialist Party, introduced Marxism as a viable perspective for teaching and research at universities in the late 1940s (Quevedo 2021: 31). And it is with the School for Economic Science that classical books like General Economic History and Economy and Society by Max Weber, The Age of Late Capitalism

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

55

by Werner Sombart, the Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, and The Capital and Theories of Surplus Value by Karl Marx enter the library of the Central University (Chaves 1946). In the Pedagogy Department of the Central University, another thesis on the indigenous population was presented and published in different outlets. With it, Gonzalo Rubio Orbe, a member of the Indigenist Institute of Ecuador, becomes the first social scientist in Ecuador to work systematically with statistical data. While his theoretical references show a wide knowledge of the social sciences, the work is full of technical data and rather descriptive. For him, applied sociology needs to engage with social reality taking into account history and geographic environment, and should act practically in favor of the groups studied (Rubio Orbe 1945: 115). He uses Posada and, especially, Ward as conceptual background to focus on the causes and reasons for the institutions and traditions of the indigenous population (Rubio Orbe 1945: 116). Beyond the empirical data, he does so by connecting texts by Halbwachs, Engels, and some other globally recognized thinkers with a surprising variety of Ecuadorian writings on the topic, including the debate between Quevedo and Cueva Sáenz. In this context, he sides with those who reject race as an explanatory factor for social reality (Rubio Orbe 1945: 264). In the second part, Rubio Orbe works more closely with Garcés and Humberto García Ortiz. Amongst other topics, he revises the organizing process of the indigenous population. For him, this process is not related to political or ethnic tendencies but a reaction to a perceived threat to the property of the indigenous population. “These are instinctive acts, without organization and without leaders” (Rubio Orbe 1946: 184). In the final chapter, he reexamines the position of the different political actors in Ecuador in relation to the indigenous population. Rubio Orbe would later become a central figure of the Ecuadorian Indigenist Institute and connected to debates on education (Piedrahita 2022), without separating completely from sociology. Around that time, a more disciplinarily specialized debate on political sciences started in Ecuador. Aurelio García, since 1937 professor of political law at the Law Department (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1937c), published in 1946 the first book on political science and the state in Ecuador. He declares that the book was written for the students of his course Science of the State (García 1946: 9). The text has an encyclopaedical style; it summarizes the recognized approaches to the topic, starting with classical Greek philosophy and giving preference to German and

56 

P. ALTMANN

Austrian scholars. It is fascinating to see how the references change. For instance, García declares Jellinek as a “systematic constructor of modern political science” (García 1946: 15). He is the first Ecuadorian social scientist to refer to Max Weber, who, in combination with Simmel, is presented as a classic of political theory or science of the state, understood as a subfield of sociology (García 1946: 36). Also, Karl Mannheim, with his reflections on ideology, is debated in relation to politics, in the sense that the state is a reflection of a given ideology (García 1946: 43–44). However, by presenting the main topics, like political law, total political societies, region, and nation, García connects to the earlier discourse. The importance of Krausism is striking; beyond Posada, Giner de los Ríos, and Ahrens are quoted. But Spencer, Gumplowicz, Toennies, and Renan are also presented as important thinkers on those topics. Even Rudolf Rocker, a German anarchist intellectual of that time, is used to disapprove racism (García 1946: 359). Shortly after, a Chair of Political Sciences was created at the Law Department and García became professor for this course (Cornejo Rosales 1947). In the second half of the 1940s, sociology in Ecuador seems to come to a halt. Until the mid-1950s, only a few new publications appear. Rather, some actors start a process of self-reflection. Probably the most interesting one is the attempt undertaken by Humberto García Ortiz. He repeats his central idea that “the race works, thinks and acts according to the environment and in the long run its best qualities and possibilities stem from the same telluric matrix, which grows, expands and becomes spirit, through men and groups humans.” (García Ortiz 1945: 136–37) In this sense, there is no Ecuadorian race as an entity able to create culture. More interesting is his panorama of sociology in Ecuador before this text. For him, many of the early sociologists, namely Belisario Quevedo and Espinosa Tamayo were influenced by the travel books of the nineteenth century, especially América pintoresca by Charles Wiener and Jules Crevaux, published in 1884. He also highlights the conservative debate on society and what he calls Christian Sociology, a series of debates and publications outside of the university that follows the Catholic social teaching of Pope Leo XIII. Central actors here would be Julio Moreno and Julio Tobar Donoso. At the time of the First World War, Ecuadorian sociology moved to the left and opened up to new theoretical tendencies, including Simmel, Toennies, Worms, Giddings, and von Wiese (García Ortiz 1945: 149). Toennies, Worms, and von Wiese are only used by García Ortiz himself. After a general overview over the sociologists of his time, like Ángel

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

57

Modesto Paredes, Carrión, Aurelio García, Garcés and Bossano, García Ortiz presents a panorama of Ecuadorian sociology of his time. For him, the dominating tendency is indigenism. There is also a socialist tendency that is becoming stronger (García Ortiz 1945: 151). He highlights the need for a third tendency related to the national reconstruction of Ecuador through historical revisionism (García Ortiz 1945: 152).

References Albornoz, César. 2022. “Inicios y Llegada de La Sociología al Ecuador. Notas Para Su Historia.” Ecuador Debate 116:163–99. Albornoz Peralta, Oswaldo. 2020a. Influencia Del Marxismo y de La Revolución de Octubre En Los Intelectuales Del Ecuador. edited by C.  Albornoz and V. Albornoz. Albornoz Peralta, Oswaldo. 2020b. Juan Honorato Peralta. Pionero Del Socialismo En El Ecuador. edited by C. Albornoz. Altmann, Philipp. 2021. “Los Últimos Spencerianos. Hacia Un Canon de La Primera Sociología Ecuatoriana.” Íconos—Revista de Ciencias Sociales 71: 103–20. https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.71.2021.4803. Asún Escartín, Raquel. 1982. “La editorial ‘La España Moderna.’” Archivum: Revista de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras 31–32: 133–200. Avila Garrido, Rafael. 1933. “El Problema de La Sociología.” Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 1(2): 76–80. Ayala Mora, Enrique. 2010. “Humberto García Ortiz. Pensador de la Nación Ecuatoriana.” Revista AFESE 54(54): 267–80. Barba Villamarín, Daisy Daniela. 2021. “Entre Letrados y Patriotas En La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria Del Ecuador Una Mirada Histórico-Cultural de Los Juristas En La Construcción Del Constitucionalismo Social.” Masterarbeit, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador. Barba Villamarín, Daniela, and María Piedad Vera Toscano. 2022. Configuración Del Campo Disciplinar de La Antropología Sociocultural Alrededor de Su Profesionalización En El Ecuador, 1940–1980. Quito: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Barrera, Jaime. 1936. “Biblioteca de La Universidad. Movimiento Bibliográfico Trimestral.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 57(298): 654–84. Barsallo, Antonio. 1935. “La Reforma Universitaria.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 17: 81–102. Barsallo, Antonio. 1942. Programa de Sociología de La Universidad de Cuenca. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca. Bernard, L.L. 1942. “La Sociología Sistemática de Mariano H. Cornejo.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 4(2): 7–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/3537252.

58 

P. ALTMANN

Bossano, Luis. 1929a. “Apuntes Acerca Del Regionalismo En El Ecuador.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 43(269): 181–236. Bossano, Luis. 1929b. “Apuntes Acerca Del Regionalismo En El Ecuador.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 43(270): 431–51. Bossano, Luis. 1930. Apuntes Acerca Del Regionalismo En El Ecuador. 2nd ed. Quito: Universidad Central. Bossano, Luis. 1933. “Notas Sobre El Campesino Ecuatoriano.” Anales de La Universidad Central 50(283): 280–327. Bossano, Luis. 1941. Los Problemas de La Sociología. Quito: UCE. Bossano, Luis. 1942. “Sobre el exceso de la población.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 4(1): 59–62. https://doi.org/10.22201/ iis.01882503p.1942.1.58472. Bossano, Luis. 1943. Programa de Sociología. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Bossano, Luis. 1948. “La Enseñanza de La Sociología En El Ecuador.” Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 4(23–24): 3–7. Campuzano Arteta, Álvaro. 2005. “Sociología y misión pública de la universidad en el Ecuador: una crónica sobre educación y modernidad en América Latina.” in Espacio público y privatización del conocimiento, Estudios sobre políticas universitarias en América Latina, edited by P. Gentili and B. Levy, pp. 401–62. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Cárdenas, Lino. 1913. “Informe Que El Rector de La Universidad Central Eleva al Señor Ministro de Instrucción Pública.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 1(181): 415–25. Carneiro, Robert L., and Robert G. Perrin. 2002. “Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology: A Centennial Retrospective and Appraisal.” Annals of Science 59(3): 221–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790110050768. Castillo Castillo, José. 1960. “Sociedad y nación en Adolfo Posada.” Revista de estudios políticos 113: 159–74. Cevallos, Washington. 1943. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 70(317–318): 239–321. Chaves, Alfredo. 1946. “Boletín Universitario.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 74(323–234): 583–680. Chriss, James J. 2006. “Giddings and the Social Mind.” Journal of Classical Sociology 6(1): 123–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X06061289. Connell, R.W. 1997. “Why Is Classical Theory Classical?” American Journal of Sociology 102(6): 1511–57. https://doi.org/10.1086/231125. Cornejo Rosales, Jorge. 1947. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 75(325–326): 449–508. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1914. “Informe.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 2(188–190): 180–87.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

59

Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1915. “Nuestra Organización Social y La Servidumbre.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 25, 26, 27: 29–59. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1916. Programa Del Curso de Estadística Dictado En La Universidad Central En El Año Escolar de 1916 a 1917. Quito, Ecuador: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1917. “El Problema de Las Razas y Los Factores Étnicos de Nuestra Civilización.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 45, 46: 77–98. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1918. Curso de Sociología. Seguido En La Universidad Central Durante El Año Escolar de 1918–1919. Quito: Universidad Central. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1919a. “Sociólogos Norteamericanos. Giddings.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 1(1): 19–30. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1919b. “Sociólogos Norteamericanos. Giddings.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 1(2,3): 69–74. Cueva Sáenz, Agustín. 1985. “Estructura y Espíritu de La Nación Ecuatoriana.” in Agustín Cueva Sáenz. Estudios y ensayos, edited by E.  Muñoz Vicuña, pp. 63–75. Guayaquil, Ecuador: Universidad de Guayaquil. Del Vecchio, Giorgio. 1921. “Carácteres Fundamentales de La Filosofía Política de Rousseau.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 2(20, 21, 22): 98–113. Díaz, Octavio. 1933a. “Facultad de Jurisprudencia. Sesión Del 13 de Junio de 1933.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 10: 79–82. Díaz, Octavio. 1933b. “Informe presentado por el delegado de la Universidad de Cuenca, Sr. Dr. Octavio Díaz, ante la Asamblea de Universidades, para la unificación del plan de estudios de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, El 28 de Mayo de 1933.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 10: 59–67. Duprat, Guillaume-Léonce. 1928. “Angel M. Paredes.—La Consciencia Social (1° Partie: Les Éléments Individuels de La Conscience Collective). Quito, Impr. de La Universidad Central, 1927, 537 pp.” Revue Internationale de Sociologie (36): 89–90. Durkheim, Émile. 1922. “La Sociología.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 4(28–32). Durkheim, Émile. 2016. Sociología y ciencias sociales: textos inéditos en español. Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi. Egas, Augusto. 1921. “Lo Social.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 82–85: 128–53. Escudero, Gonzalo. 1929. “La Rectificación Sociológica Del Marxismo.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 126: 79–101. Espinosa, Leonardo. 2001. “Diversificación Profesional y Edificación Universitaria (1944–1970).” in Historia de la Universidad de Cuenca. 1867–1997, edited by M.C. Cárdenas, M. Carrasco Vintimilla, L. Espinosa, and C. Malo, pp. 143–257. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca.

60 

P. ALTMANN

Espinosa Tamayo, Alfredo. 1979. Psicología y Sociología Del Pueblo Ecuatoriano. edited by A.A.  Roig. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1932a. “Condiciones Psíquico-Sociales Del Indio En La Provincia de Lmbabura. El Indio, Factor de Nuestra Nacionalidad.” Anales de La Universidad Central 48(279): 126–84. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1932b. “Condiciones Psíquico-Sociales Del Indio En La Provincia de Lmbabura. El Indio, Factor de Nuestra Nacionalidad.” Anales de La Universidad Central 48(280): 516–66. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1932c. “Condiciones Psíquico-Sociales Del Indio En La Provincia de Lmbabura. El Indio, Factor de Nuestra Nacionalidad.” Anales de La Universidad Central 49(281): 160–74. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1933. “Ensayo de Interpretación Histórico-Sociológica de Las Nacionalidades En América.” Anales de La Universidad Central 51(285): 171–200. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1934. “Significación Sociológica Del Mito.” Anales de La Universidad Central 53(289): 209–31. García, Aurelio. 1925. “La Mentalidad Femenina.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 7(65–67): 68–79. García, Aurelio. 1927. El Problema de La Cultura Ecuatoriana. Quito: Tipografía y encuadernación salesianas. García, Aurelio. 1946. Ciencia Del Estado. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. García, Leónidas. 1906. “La Propiedad En Su Aspecto Sociológico.” Licenciado de Jurisprudencia, Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito. García Ortiz, Humberto. 1934. “Breve Exposición de Resultados Obtenidos En La Investigación Sociológica de Algunas Parcialidades Indígenas de La Provincia de Imbabura.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 53(289): 130–231. García Ortiz, Humberto. 1942a. “La Forma Nacional. Ensayo de Una Sociología de La Nación Ecuatoriana.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 67(313): 168–313. García Ortiz, Humberto. 1942b. “La Forma Nacional. Ensayo de Una Sociología de La Nación Ecuatoriana.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 67–68 (314–315): 351–526. García Ortiz, Humberto. 1945. “Los Estudios Sociológicos En El Ecuador.” América 20(83–84): 130–53. García Ortiz, Humberto. 2011. La forma nacional: ensayo de una sociología de la nación ecuatoriana. Quito: Ediciones La Tierra. García Ortiz, Humberto. n.d. “Ensayo Sobre La Democracia.” in Manuales de Iniciación Cultural, pp. 37–64. Quito: Imprenta Fernández. Infestas Gil, Ángel. 2015. “Los comienzos de la sociología española.” La Albolafia: Revista de Humanidades y Cultura 3: 153–67.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

61

Jaramillo Alvarado, Pío. 1954. El Indio Ecuatoriano. Contribución al Estudio de La Sociología Indoamericana. 4th ed. Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Lamadrid, Lázaro. 1946. “El Indio. Cuestiones de Su Vida y de Su Pasión. By Louis Monsalve Pozo. (Cuenca, Ecuador: Editorial Austral, pp.  542.).” The Americas 3(2): 260–61. https://doi.org/10.2307/978719. McKinnon, Andrew M. 2010. “Energy and Society: Herbert Spencer’s ‘Energetic Sociology’ of Social Evolution and Beyond.” Journal of Classical Sociology 10(4): 439–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X10385184. Monsalve Pozo, Luis. 1934. Indoamérica. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca. Monsalve Pozo, Luis. 1943. El Indio. Cuestiones de Su Vida y Su Pasión. Cuenca: Editorial Austral. Mora, Alfonso. 1930. “Estudio Histórico-Crítico Sobre El Proyecto de Unificación Del Derecho Privado.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 4: 33–97. Mora Reyes, Alfredo. 1985a. “Agustín Cueva. Profesor y Estadísta.” in Agustín Cueva Sáenz. Estudios y ensayos, edited by E.  Muñoz Vicuña, pp.  145–55. Guayaquil, Ecuador: Universidad de Guayaquil. Mora Reyes, Alfredo. 1985b. “Páginas Indelebles Del Maestro Agustín Cueva Sáenz.” in Agustín Cueva Sáenz. Estudios y ensayos, edited by E. Muñoz Vicuña, pp. 13–19. Guayaquil, Ecuador: Universidad de Guayaquil. Mosquera, Aurelio. 1931. “Informe Sobre Las Labores Universitarias Elevado al Ministerio de Educación Pública.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 46(276): 467–87. Naula, Juan. 1921. Principios de Sociología Aplicada. Guayaquil: Julio Foyain. Navas, Manuel. 1916. “Estadística de las obras que han ingresado a la Biblioteca de La Universidad Central en el 2o Semestre del año 1915.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 3(207–209): 146–53. Offer, John. 2015. “A New Reading of Spencer on ‘Society’, ‘Organicism’ and ‘Spontaneous Order.’” Journal of Classical Sociology 15(4): 337–60. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1468795X15572278. Offer, John. 2019a. “Herbert Spencer, Sociological Theory, and the Professions.” Frontiers in Sociology 4: 77. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00077. Offer, John. 2019b. “Social Solidarity and Herbert Spencer: Not the Oxymoron That Might Be Assumed.” Frontiers in Sociology 4: 1. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fsoc.2019.00001. Orden Jiménez, Rafael V. 1999. “La filosofía de Krause y su influencia: nuevas perspectivas para el estudio del krausismo en América Latina.” Universitas Philosophica 16(32): 139–79. Orejuela, M. 1931. “Organización e Incremento de La Biblioteca.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 46(275): 113–81. Ortiz, Rigoberto. 1921. “Nosotros Los Jóvenes.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 3(23–27): 131–61.

62 

P. ALTMANN

Ortiz, Rigoberto. 1933. “Contenido de La Democracia (Capítulo de Un Ensayo Sobre Sociología Política).” Revista de La Universidad de Guayaquil 4(1): 534–40. Paredes, Angel Modesto. 1924. Sociología General Aplicada a Las Condiciones de América. Quito: Editorial Chimborazo. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1925. “La Conciencia Social.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 115: 174–213. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1927a. “Introducción al Estudio de La Conciencia Social.” Anales de La Universidad Central 38(259): 137–214. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1927b. “La Conciencia Social.” Quito: Imprenta de la Universidad Central. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1928. “Respuesta a Monsieur Duprat.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 123: 36–43. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1935. Los Resultados Sociales de La Herencia. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Paredes, Angel Modesto. 1936. “Informe Que El Señor Rector de La Universidad Central Presenta al Señor Ministro de Educación Publica.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 57(298): 330–78. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1988a. “La Sociología Psicológica En Sus Múltiples Manifestaciones.” in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R. Quintero, pp. 198–234. Quito: BCE, CNE. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1988b. “Los Principios Fundamentales de La Sociología.” in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R.  Quintero, pp. 179–197. Quito: BCE, CNE. Pérez Guerrero, Alfredo. 1922. “La Télesis Social y La Raza India.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 28–32: 137–162. Piedrahita, John. 2022. “Revista Ecuatoriana de Educación. Un Espacio de Producción Intelectual de Los Pedagogos Ecuatorianos En La Esfera Pública Nacional (1947–1951).” Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito. Posada, Adolfo. 1990. “La Sociología en España.” REIS: Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas 52: 163–94. Preston, Paul, Michael Partridge, James Dunkerley, and Great Britain, eds. 1999. “Letter from J.E.M. Carvell to Attlee, ‘Annual Report on Leading Personalities in Ecuador for 1947.’” in British documents on foreign affairs—reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print. Part III, Series D: From 1940 through 1945. Latin America. Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America. Prieto, Mercedes. 2004. Liberalismo y Temor: Imaginando Los Sujetos Indígenas En El Ecuador Postcolonial, 1895–1950. 1. ed. Quito: FLACSO, Sede Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala. Quevedo, Antonio. 1924. Ensayos Sociológicos y Políticos. Quito: Editorial Chimborazo.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

63

Quevedo, Belisario. 1913a. “Importancia Sociológica Del Concertaje.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 1(7): 57–61. Quevedo, Belisario. 1913b. “Política Religiosa.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-­ Literaria 1(5): 191–99. Quevedo, Belisario. 1916a. “El Concertaje y Las Leyes Naturales de La Sociedad.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 16(36): 283–87. Quevedo, Belisario. 1916b. “El Salario Del Concierto.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 16(33): 67–76. Quevedo, Belisario. 1916c. “La Sierra y La Costa.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-­ Literaria 16(35): 214–19. Quevedo, Belisario. 1917. “Historia, Filosofía de La Historia y Sociología.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 52, 52: 140–55. Quevedo, Belisario. 1932. Sociología, Política y Moral. edited by R. Páez. Quito: Editorial Bolívar. Quevedo, Belisario. 1980. “Sociología, Política y Moral.” in Pensamiento positivista latinoamericano, edited by L.  Zea, pp.  558–590. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho. Quevedo, Belisario. 1983. Sociología, Política y Moral. Guayaquil: Universidad de Guayaquil. Quevedo, Tomás. 2021. “Lecturas e Influencia de Marx En La Primera Mitad Del Siglo XX En Ecuador.” in De los tzantzicos a la crítica ecológica. Un marxismo en el Ecuador por descubrir [SEGUNDA PARTE]. Vol. 2, El ejercicio del pensar, edited by Grupo de Trabajo CLACSO Herencias y perspectivas del marxismo. CLACSO. Quintero, Rafael. 1988. “Estudio Introductorio.” in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R. Quintero, pp. 11–45. Quito: BCE, CNE. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1977. Un Positivista Ecuatoriano: Belisario Quevedo (1883–1921). Quito: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1979. “Los comienzos del pensamiento social y los orígenes de la sociología en el Ecuador.” in Psicología y sociología del pueblo ecuatoriano, pp. 9–127. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 2013. Esquemas Para Una Historia de La Filosofía Ecuatoriana. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Corporación Editora Nacional. Rubio Orbe, Gonzalo. 1945. “Nuestros Indios. Estudio Geográfico, Histórico y Social de Los Indios Ecuatorianos, Especialmente Aplicado a La Provincia de Imbabura.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 73(322): 105–271. Rubio Orbe, Gonzalo. 1946. “Nuestros Indios. Estudio Geográfico, Histórico y Social de Los Indios Ecuatorianos, Especialmente Aplicado a La Provincia de Imbabura.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 74(323–324): 127–262.

64 

P. ALTMANN

Salgado, Cristóbal. 1933. “Horario de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia y Ciencias Sociales Para El Curso Escolar de 1932 a 1933.” Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 1(1): 56. Sarzoza, Gabriela. 2014. “La emergencia de la sociología como campo de saber en la Universidad Central del Ecuador: 1955—1976.” Quito: Flacso Ecuador. Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria. 1914. “Miembros Ecuatorianos de La ‘Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria’ En 31 de Diciembre de 1914, Por Orden de Su Admisión En La Sociedad.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 13(23–24): 224–26. Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria. 1916. “Miembros activos de la ‘Sociedad Jurídico-­ Literaria’ (por orden de ingreso).” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 16(33): 132. Sulmont, Denis. 2007. “La Sociología Francesa en el Perú.” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’études Andines 36 (1): 85–92. https://doi.org/10.4000/ bifea.4606. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1902a. “Catálogo de Las Obras Existentes En La Biblioteca Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 15(115): 181–87. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1902b. “Catálogo de Las Obras Existentes En La Biblioteca Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 15(111): 371–78. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1902c. “Catálogo de Las Obras Existentes En La Biblioteca Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 15(113): 527–32. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1903. “Catálogo de Las Obras de La Biblioteca de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 18(128): 228–85. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1921a. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 30(242): 269–93. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1921b. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 30(243): 512–17. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1925. “Alumnos matriculados en la Universidad Central. Curso Escolar de 1924–1925.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 32–33(251): 172–76. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1926. “Vida Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 37(258): 372–91. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1927. “Adquisiciones para la Biblioteca de la Universidad Central.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 39(260): 479–93. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1929. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 43(270): 555–610. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1930. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 44(271): 217–54.

  THE FIRST SOCIOLOGY IN ECUADOR 

65

Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1931. “Obras que han ingresado a la Biblioteca en el último trimestre.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 46(276): 459–66. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1932a. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 49(281): 283–88. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1932b. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 48(279): 289–328. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1932c. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 49(282): 508–53. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1933. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 50(283): 342–48. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1934. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 52(291): 316–31. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1936. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 57(298): 581–653. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1937a. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 58(299): 279–300. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1937b. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 59(301): 227–82. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1937c. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 59(302): 587–96. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1938. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 60(303): 353–88. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1951. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 78(329–330): 531–77. Universidad de Cuenca. 1924. “Vida Universitaria.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 1(3): 349–65. Universidad de Cuenca. 1930. “Consejo Universitario.” Revista de La Universidad de Cuenca 3: 103–5. Universidad de Cuenca. 1948. “Crónica Universitaria.” Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4(1–2): 167–213. Universidad del Azuay. 1916. “Plan de Estudios de Jurisprudencia.” Revista de La Universidad Del Azuay 5(2): 152–54. Valois, George. 1921. “Nueva Economía Política.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 3(23–27): 89–129. Vaquero Dávila, Jesús. 1928. “La Situación Actual y El Socialismo.” Revista de La Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria 125: 309–52. Vaquero Dávila, Jesús. 1930a. Aspectos Sociológicos de La Nacionalidad Ecuatoriana. Manuel Piedra. Vaquero Dávila, Jesús. 1930b. “Aspects Sociologiques de La Nationalité Équatorienne.” Revue d’Amérique Latine 20(103): 32–38.

66 

P. ALTMANN

Viteri Lafronte, Homero. 1924. “El sabio Max Uhle en la Universidad de Quito.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 32–33(249): 154–58. Yépez del Pozo, Juan. 1926. “Envejecimiento de Los Pueblos.” Revista de La Sociedad Estudios Jurídicos 8(68–70): 105–14. Yépez del Pozo, Juan. 1935. “El Hombre, La Sociedad y La Ley.” Anales de La Universidad Central 55(293): 63–155. Zea, Leopoldo, ed. 1980. Pensamiento Positivista Latinoamericano. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.

The Failed Attempt to Modernize Sociology from the Late 1940s

Abstract  The 1950s were marked by attempts to strengthen the institutionalizations of academic sociology in Ecuador. The first research institutes were created. Two Ecuadorian sociologists were part of the creation of the International Sociological Association and its continental filial Latin American Association of Sociology in the early 1950s. The third conference of the latter organization in Quito in 1955 and the first national sociology conference in 1957 brought public attention to sociology. They also furthered the idea of creating an entire degree program, achieved in the 1960s at the Central University in Quito with a degree course in political sciences. The military dictatorship from 1963 to 1966 represents a significant change in the Ecuadorian university and a break with earlier sociology. Keywords  Military dictatorship • Conference • Pittsburgh • USAID

National Institutionalization and Global Insertion of Ecuadorian Sociology in the 1940s and 1950s From the late 1940s on, several attempts have been undertaken to professionalize sociology in Ecuador. Luis Bossano created, during his time as dean of the Law Department, a Chair for Ecuadorian Sociology, held by

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5_3

67

68 

P. ALTMANN

Miguel Ángel Zambrano, and the Seminar of Ecuadorian Social Research, formed in 1946 and led by Zambrano (Bossano 1948: 6–7), as well as the Institute for the Defense of the Population, led by Bossano himself (Cornejo Rosales 1947: 452). With this, a social science research infrastructure beyond individual efforts was in place at the Central University. Also, during this time, a Chair for Sociology was created at the Philosophy Department of the Central University, held by Manuel Eduardo Cepeda (Cornejo Rosales 1947). There is also evidence of a Chair for Sociology at the University of Guayaquil (Viñas y Mey 1947: 214). However, during the last years of the 1940s and the first 1950s, not much was published on sociology. Nevertheless, there are two relevant sociological texts from the late 1940s. In one, Aurelio García drafts a sociology of education. He does so in coherent terms but without any reference to other texts. For him, education as a social phenomenon is based on reciprocity and mutuality and related to a relationship between generations that facilitates adaptation for the young (García 1948). In 1949, Ángel Modesto Paredes, at that time professor for territorial and diplomatic law (Cornejo Rosales 1947), wrote an invited article for the prestigious Revista Mexicana de Sociología. In it, he develops a theory of the class structure of Ecuador. He focuses primarily on the middle class, which he considers as tightly connected to the development of the nation. By combining three independent dimensions—race, culture, and economics—classes are related to property, income, ethnicity, and education. He distinguishes the indigenous lower and middle class, both connected to agricultural work. The latter is slowly growing due to better access to education and the presence of worker’s unions and agricultural cooperatives. The mestizos, connected to manual labor, are the only ethnic group with an upper, middle, and lower class. As they are not indigenous, they have, since colonial times, had access to privileges like the possibility to buy land or hold public office. On the other hand, the criollos constitute the white upper class. However, more than income or education, social classes were still defined by property in land. This is why Paredes calls for protective labor legislation, free access to a more democratic education, including higher education, and political and economic development (Paredes 1949). Two other efforts to institutionalize Ecuadorian sociology during that time should be highlighted. In 1949, Luis Monsalve Pozo was preparing for a Congress of Ecuadorian Sociology to take place at the University of Cuenca in 1950. This congress was to start a series of conferences in the region (Universidad de Cuenca 1949: 200–201). It never took place. At

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

69

the same time, global sociology created new structures with the formation of the International Sociological Association. Luis Bossano represented Ecuador at its first conference in Zürich in 1950. In the aftermath of this conference, the so-called Zürich Group, consisting of the Latin American sociologists Alfredo Poviña, Carneiro Leão, Luis Bossano, Astolfo Tapia Moore, Isaac Ganón, Rafael Caldera (Scribano 2005: 55–56), founded the Latin American Sociological Association (Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología, ALAS) (Anon 1952: 494; Blanco 2005: 23) as the first regional sociological association (Pereyra 2007). Argentinian sociologist Poviña had a central role in this effort and was president of ALAS for the first 13 years (Pereyra 2007). Those sociologists were identified with a rather philosophical take on sociology that did not build on empirical research but had a strong political reformist slant (Scribano 2005: 58–59). This international structure was related to the creation of professional organizations for sociologists in the 1940s in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico (Blanco 2005: 27), something that Bossano attempted to replicate in Ecuador (Anon 1952: 498), which was successful only in 1955 (Blanco 2005: 30). Ecuadorian sociologists did not participate in the first two conferences of ALAS, 1951 in Buenos Aires and 1953 in Rio de Janeiro (Anon 1952). However, in the concrete institutions in Ecuador, their enthusiasm could not translate into strong sociological research. The only result of the Seminar for Ecuadorian Social Research was a descriptive text on the situation of indigenous populations and the possibilities of cooperatives as a way to improve it (Zambrano 1955). Garcés went back to being a professor at the Central University in 1952, after an interruption of 15 years (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1952: 240). However, it seems that he changed his thinking about society. In 1955, he published a merely philosophical reflection on the topic that already in the 1930s was relevant for him. While in his youth, he thought about the role of distance in the relationship between indigenous and mestizos, in the 1950s, he reflected on the role of proximity between neighbors and how it can be interrupted. The argument is still clearly Simmelian—but now, he works without empirical data or theoretical references (Garcés 1955). During the same time, higher education expanded. Numbers from 1954 show 2938 students at the Central University, 1697 students at the University of Guayaquil, 725 students at the University of Cuenca, and 232 students at the University of Loja (Guerra 1954). Compared with the numbers of 1936, with 863 students at the Central University, 393 at the University of Guayaquil, and 170 students at the University of Cuenca (Universidad

70 

P. ALTMANN

Central del Ecuador 1936: 642), this was a considerable growth: the number of university students in the country more than doubles. This growth goes hand in hand with the growth of the number of professors. At the Central University, this number went up from 89 professors in 1942 to 294 in 1953 (Guerra 1954). Yet, the salary scale installed in 1949, going from 800 to 1400 Sucres per month (Cornejo Rosales 1949), remained in place until the 1960s, despite considerable inflation. It was only in 1952 that the first professors—but only of the Medicine Department—started to work full-time, thanks to support from the Rockefeller Foundation (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1952). In this context, Paredes focused more on social change and inequality. In his book Biology of the Social Classes, published in 1954 (Paredes 1954) and several articles, Paredes outlines his views on the debate on social inequality. Marx and Engels are not to be considered serious thinkers, as they exaggerated to impress (Paredes 1953: 8). Therefore, their class theory is defined by disorientation and dogmatism, and they cannot explain what those classes are. Any sociologist would notice the lack of psychological foundation of social classes (Paredes 1953: 11). Paredes also discusses the more contemporary theories of the two at that time dominant Argentinean sociologists Gino Germani and Alfredo Poviña. While Germani is able to combine structural and psychosocial criteria in his definition, he does not go beyond a mere description of social reality without explaining the reasons for it (Paredes 1953: 14). Poviña gets closer to describing class consciousness. However, Paredes goes one step further and explains social classes through the consciousness of identical interests derived from a community of action and occupation (Paredes 1953: 15). With this, he connects to the vision of development of all life from an undifferentiated stage to specialized forms (Paredes 1953: 16), held together by the consciousness of kind as outlined by Giddings (Paredes 1953: 18–19). The evolution of human society is defined by an evolution of different forms of association that slowly develop toward individualism (Paredes 1953: 26–29). In this sense, social classes are the “spontaneous work of nature, without the intervention of human will” (Paredes 1953: 31), they are the necessary outcome of the evolution of society. This is why Paredes considers the sociological debate of his time on social classes to be deficient—classes need to be understood in their evolution and not as fixed entities. When a group of people shares over a prolonged period interests and values, a shared psychology expressed by similar reactions arises. Only then can we speak of social classes. This is also why Paredes

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

71

rejects the idea of a vertical class structure. It is rather about a horizontal scheme of different classes defined by different activities, but not necessarily by general oppositions (Paredes 1953: 37–38). These different realizations go hand in hand with an organic adaptation of the individuals to their environment and their activities (Paredes 1953: 29–30). A publication by Ulpiano Navarro Andrade, professor of geography at the Pedagogy Department since the late 1940s (Cornejo Rosales 1947), shows the state of sociology in Ecuador during that time. He recompiles different ideas of sociologists on the relationship between sociology and history. However, his main sources are Comte, Spencer, and Durkheim. The most up-to-date sociologist he quotes is Oppenheimer (Navarro Andrade 1955). In October 1955, the third Conference of ALAS took place at the Central University of Ecuador. Of a total of 50 participants, 26 came from Ecuador. Three professors of sociology of the Central University appear: Luis Bossano, president of the conference, Pío Jaramillo Alvarado, and Miguel Ángel Zambrano. From the Central University, also Ángel Modesto Paredes and Víctor Gabriel Garcés participated, alongside Humberto García Ortiz, Manuel Agustín Aguirre, and Aurelio García who appear as members of the teacher’s union Unión Nacional de Educadores, or, in the case of García, member of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. From the University of Guayaquil three participated: Antonio Parra Velasco, Ángel Felicísimo Rojas, and, mentioned as professor of sociology, Guillermo Intriago. From the University of Cuenca César Astudillo (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1956b) participated. Luis Monsalve Pozo could not participate (Universidad de Cuenca 1955: 532). The contributions at this conference were highly diverse both in quality and in concerning their relationship to sociology, with several presentations closer to anthropology than sociology. The program distinguishes six thematic streams that continue the debates of the first two conferences of ALAS: the attempt to unify the teaching of sociology in Latin America, social classes, rural sociology, sociology of education, mestizo population, and indigenous population. In the first stream, a contribution of Gino Germani, sent in from Buenos Aires, sticks out. It is the only text that systematically discusses the sociological theories of that time, including Parsons, Merton, Blumer, Mannheim, and Gurvitch. For him, sociology in Latin America is defined by the lack of empirical study and the need to constantly introduce new theories to show originality. Both factors lead to a chaotic panorama and a discipline that is separated from social reality

72 

P. ALTMANN

(Germani 1956: 102–7). As a solution, he proposes to work with middle-­ range theories and focus on forms instead of contents. This is not only interesting concerning sociology in Ecuador but also an expression of an epistemic struggle between the attempt to modernize Latin American sociology and the established, rather philosophical take by Poviña—a struggle Germani won around that time (Blois 2019; Sarzoza 2014: 89). The other contributions to this stream are more clearly focused on the teaching of sociology, a major topic of the first three ALAS conferences (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 439). Bossano follows Poviña closely in proposing a teaching program that goes from the history of sociology and sociological theory to applied, national, and, finally, Latin American sociology (Bossano 1956). The contributions to the other thematic streams show the state of Ecuadorian sociology at that time. Paredes discusses once again social classes. He highlights the mental processes and the stimuli that derive from the coexistence in groups. Moreover, again, he connects to the Spencerian idea of increasing differentiation of society defined by race, family, and economic condition (Paredes 1988: 404). Social classes are, in this sense, defined by shared interests and shared responses to the same stimuli, something that is diffused by imitation and contagion and finally inherited by the next generations (Paredes 1988: 405). It is, thus, about a long process of learning that finally produces almost spontaneous behaviors. However, classes imitate each other, especially the lower and upper classes. The upper classes react to this by closing ranks and attempting to defend their morals against the newcomers (Paredes 1988: 409–10). Each class itself is defined by the social circles its members move in. Those circles are usually defined by occupations and can be connected to positions of power (Paredes 1988: 412). Paredes also mentions the usage of the money the different classes have, especially concerning consumption. However, there is no sharp difference between social classes beyond the characteristics derived from the same influences. This is also why social classes are not politically coherent (Paredes 1988: 419). As in his earlier texts, Paredes highlights the role of race as “the first of the contestants that endures in human groups, as a position or guiding sense of life” (Paredes 1988: 422). This biological inheritance does not determine society but pre-define how external stimuli are processed (Paredes 1988: 423). As it continues for centuries, it constitutes an organic memory of the group (Paredes 1988: 425). Furthermore, it forms the basis for more abstract ideas that are collectively acquired and spread through imitation and

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

73

mental contagion (Paredes 1988: 432). Extraordinary persons are critical to this process of imitation and contagion (Paredes 1988: 438). However, there is no inherent reason for a class struggle. Paredes defends the idea of a “cooperative arrangement that places them side by side on a horizontal plane of mutual reference and support, including in the distribution of the various, available goods” (Paredes 1988: 438). Following the ideas developed above, Paredes concludes that the evolution of social classes comes from natural stimuli that work through the different occupations (Paredes 1988: 439–40). The social heritage of the learned patterns, including morals and taste, passes through the individual and the collective level alike (Paredes 1988: 444–45). In this sense, the essence of social classes is “the use and employment of each category of goods available” (Paredes 1988: 445). This is guided through a system of values that defined what needs exist and how they are to be satiated. There are only two other contributions that stick out. Aurelio García presents a slight revision of his earlier publication (García 1948). Still, there is no reception of the broader debate on the sociology of education. Rather, García understands society in a vaguely Weberian way as “conditioned by the reciprocity or mutual reference of intention and action in a given phenomenon” (García 1956: 237). Education, in the sense of acts of transmission of culture from one human group to another, builds on both human and material elements. It is a partial social structure that is related to other social structures and, at the same time, the connecting point between different generations as “the transmission of a set of spiritual and material traditions from one generation to another” (García 1956: 239). These traditions condense into social forms that regulate behavior. There is a diffuse form of education through the social and physical environment, and a concrete one, through institutional forms of teaching that use pedagogical techniques. Both forms share their functioning through imitation and suggestions in a context of authority and discipline. The central importance of education makes it necessary for schools to reflect their social environment (García 1956: 244). Garcés contributed a merely descriptive account of rural sociology. While he presents different data compilated from other researchers, he does not debate them on a theoretical level. However, he mentions several Latin American sociologists and Max Weber (Garcés 1956). The conference, as such, had no immediate outcomes. The Ecuadorian Society of Sociology that was created on it (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1956a) never developed relevant activity. There is no evidence of

74 

P. ALTMANN

the creation of other Chairs of Sociology, as Sarzoza (2014: 62–63) states. Instead, the situation did not change after the late 1940s with one Chair for General Sociology and one for Ecuadorian social problems at the Law Department, and one Chair for Sociology, Economy, and Metaphysics at the Pedagogy Department of the Central University of Ecuador. Neither of the other Ecuadorian universities created new Chairs for Sociology. Also, Ecuadorian sociology’s conceptual and methodological development did not advance (Sarzoza 2014: 84–85). In 1957, the first Congress of Ecuadorian Sociology took place at the University of Cuenca. While several of the main protagonists of sociology in Quito could not participate—Yépez del Pozo, Paredes, Zambrano, Garcés—most sociology professors at that moment were present. Luis Bossano participated as sociology professor of the Central University of Ecuador, Rigoberto Ortiz as dean of the Humanities Department of the University of Guayaquil, Guillermo Intriago Alvarado as professor of sociology of the Law Department of the same university, Carlos Domínguez as sociology professor of the Catholic University of Ecuador, César Astudillo as professor of sociology of the University of Cuenca, and Clotario Maldonado Paz as sociology professor of the University of Loja. Luis Monsalve Pozo, Antonio Barsallo, and Pío Jaramillo Alvarado also participated, as well as Gonzalo Rubio Orbe, who was representative of the National Planning Office and the National Statistics Bureau. The topics of the congress were geography, urban and rural realities, classes and casts, the national census of 1950, the family in Ecuador, and hygiene (Universidad de Cuenca 1957). However, most contributions were not clearly related to sociology as a discipline. Some did present the main results or technical details of the census in a descriptive manner. The sociology professor of the Catholic University presented a historical and ethnographic—but not sociological—account of matrimony (Domínguez 1959). The debate on social classes at this conference was more closely related to sociology and presented several important innovations in relation to Paredes’ Biology of the Social Classes, published only a few years earlier. The most traditional take is from Francisco Álvarez González, from the University of Cuenca. He gives a lengthy account of the evolution of society, based on Simmel and Tarde, above all, to reject cast as a biologically closed concept that hinders any change and class as a concept that does not go beyond the economic aspects. For him, “profession defines man better than class or caste” (Álvarez González 1959: 246) as they are better

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

75

compatible with the idea of social circles he defends. César Astudillo, since the late 1940s professor for sociology at the University of Cuenca (Universidad de Cuenca 1948: 206), gave a more complex and up-to-date presentation. For him, society is defined by change. However, human beings always felt the need to form social aggregations. This led to the opposition between community, based on blood and vicinity, and society, based on the will to achieve certain ends. Therefore, complex societies are always defined by the hierarchy. Already in the first moments of humanity, societies are structured into social classes. This structure is produced, following Gumplowicz, by pre-political tribal conflicts. As the state develops, division of labor and, with it, social classes intensify (Astudillo 1959: 257). Thus, “social stratification is created by violence, supported or accepted by weakness or inertia, and maintained by force, whatever its form of manifestation (material force, force of circumstances or force of law)” (Astudillo 1959: 258–59). At the same time, the members of each class share economic, educational, moral, and other circumstances that produce an identity of aspirations, a similar social behavior, and both internal solidarity and external antagonism (Astudillo 1959: 264). Following more contemporary sociologists like Pareto and Sorokin, Astudillo establishes a pyramidal class structure defined by both upward pressure of the lower classes and individual social mobility. As such, “classes are bio-social products manifested in each community based on claims, economic inequality, prejudices and customs” (Astudillo 1959: 275–76). In this sense, Ecuador was already a class society even before the Incas. From Central University, Juan Yépez del Pozo presents in a text he sent a close reading of Gurvitch on social classes. For him, “class is an open, flexible structure, with specific functions and objects; of democratic extraction and incoercible extension; with decisive influence in many important fields of social activity” (Yépez del Pozo 1959: 306). However, his historical review of class structure in Ecuador, including differentiation between indigenous and mestizo populations, does not go beyond the merely descriptive level. Surprising is the contribution of Gonzalo Adolfo Otero, one of the few participants that did not represent any institution. He gives a broad overview of different sociological traditions and explains class mobility with Dumont, elite circulation with Pareto, demographic metabolism with Gini, and class sentiment with Francisco Ayala. He is also the first Ecuadorian sociologist to engage with soviet sociology, especially the manual of Konstantinov. He distinguishes upper, middle, and lower classes

76 

P. ALTMANN

and describes each class in economic, psychological, and political terms, in the case of the upper class, including fashion connected to his reception of Veblen and the leisure class. His main argument is innovative: The multiple and varied phenomena of social classes in our Hispanic-­ American countries determine, due to their excessive mobility and their constant transformation of groups, the presence of an ‘open’ class, whose life without stratification is a constant organic and functional process of replacement and alteration. (Otero 1959: 319)

This congress contained a series of commemorative events for the pioneers of Ecuadorian sociology. Especially Antonio Barzallo as the first professor of sociology in Cuenca, and Agustín Cueva Sáenz as the first professor of sociology in Quito were highlighted. Even the young Agustín Cueva Dávila, son of Cueva Sáenz, held a short speech on this fathers work. Guillermo Intriago Alvarado remembered, in his contribution, the sociological work of Alfredo Espinosa Tamayo, giving a condensed account of his influential book (Intriago Alvarado 1959). However, this density of sociological conferences had no further consequences. While the attempt to connect to global debates—for instance, César Astudillo participated in the Fifth Congress of ALAS in Uruguay in 1959 (Universidad de Cuenca 1959: 525)—persisted, the late 1950s saw the continuations of older projects without innovation in sociology as such. García Ortiz continued his reflections on the Ecuadorian nation, this time focusing on the historical development of law (García Ortiz 1956). Bossano published a compilation of his rather descriptive works (Bossano 1957). Paredes reflected in a long book on the formation of institutions in the European Middle Ages (Paredes 1957a, 1958), continuing his attempt to read history sociologically (Paredes 1957b). The process of modernization of the other Latin American sociologies, connected to the foundation of several institutions, among them FLACSO in Chile, and people like Germani, Peter Heintz, José Medina Echevarría, and Pablo González Casanova (Blanco 2005: 39) happened without any contact to Ecuador.

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

77

The 1960s as a Chaotic Period of Change1 It was only in the 1960s that social sciences in Ecuador changed. During that time, the number of university students grew considerably. It increased during the 1950s by 55%, and from 1963 to 1973 8.7 times (from 4.091 to 34.797) (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 430). Following data from Central University, the growth between 1950 and 1960 was 154.4%. In 1959–1960, 3363 students were studying at the Central University (Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas 1961: 370). Also, the number of professors at the Central University had increased to 328 (Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas 1961: 392). However, a modernization of the Ecuadorian university had still not happened. Only nine professors, all at the Agronomy Department, had full-time positions, almost all others (297 of 328) taught one or two classes. This is why almost all professors had another occupation as their main source of income (Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas 1961: 397). The average salary for professors of Central University was 1366 Sucres, the full-time positions had a salary of 4500 Sucres, corresponding to US$90 and US$297 at that time and roughly US$900 and US$2900 today.2 The first-degree course in social sciences3 in Ecuador was established in the School of Political Sciences, which had been discussed at least since 1957 (Aguirre 1963), and created in June 1960 at the Law Department of the Central University of Ecuador (Quintero 2001: 11). Its purpose was to professionalize politics on all levels to allow for a more just and democratic society (Aguirre 1963: 29; García 1962: 16; Salgado 1962: 466). The School tried to do so by breaking with most of the earlier sociological tradition: of all the social scientists treated until here, only Aurelio García, as professor of political science, was included. He and four other professors, among them historian and novelist Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, worked without pay with the director of the School, Jaime Chávez Granja, with three other professors who had only part-time jobs. The four-year teaching program, leading to a licenciatura degree, had been developed by García and vice dean of the Law Department Humberto García Ortiz (Salgado 1962: 467). The School also included the possibility of a 1  There are few studies on the 1960s in Ecuadorian sociology. The work of Sarzoza (2014) has the best empirical basis and informed much of this chapter. 2  The exchange rate would drop from 15.15 to 18.18 Sucres for US$1 in 1961. 3  Note that the degree course in law at that time was called degree course in social sciences, even if it contained only a few introductory classes in sociology, political science, and the like.

78 

P. ALTMANN

­doctorate (Quintero 2001). Law classes had a heavy influence; two to four of the total of eight to ten classes each year were related to jurisprudence, including a class on the law of aerial and interplanetary navigation. The rest consisted of a general overview of social sciences, especially geography, economy, psychology, and some courses in history and philosophy. Only two classes were clearly sociological—General Sociology and American and Ecuadorian Sociology. And only five classes were clearly related to political science (Trujillo Duque 1962). Aurelio García considered this mix necessary for “the erection of a new spiritual power, appropriate to what the tremendous atomic and nuclear age suggests and requests” (García 1962: 19). This effort was not isolated, a research institute in political science was also in the planning stage (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1962: 419). The School of Political Science published a short-lived journal in 1962, El Político (Quintero 2001: 11). Besides technical information on the professors, the courses, and the 18 students of the first year, it gives an insight into the latent contradictions of that time that would surface soon. The director of the School, Chávez Granja, argues in a short piece about the importance of philosophy and that “a policy without philosophical content of some kind is useless” (Chávez Granja 1962: 17). A few pages later, Patricio Moncayo, president of the Student Association of the School for Political Sciences, employs an openly revolutionary discourse and talks about how the oligarchy and the violence of the capital, and the reactionary forces, oppress students and universities (Moncayo 1962). It seems that sociology had been outsourced: while there were classes in sociology, there were no designated positions for sociology among the professors of the School. Most likely, the sociology professors of the Law Department gave those classes. One of those professors could have been Garcés, who appeared in the Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales as a professor for sociology at the Law Department in 1962 and 1963. They were possibly more closely related to the Ecuadorian Indigenist Institute, which during that time was led by Humberto García Ortiz (Ayala Mora 2010: 271) and had been annexed to the Law Department of the Central University (Salgado 1962: 470). In this context, Garcés defends the view of society as more than an accumulation of individuals but rather a synthesis of individuals that form a collective entity (Garcés 1961: 130). This spiritual integration is based on shared ideals. While the individuals continue to exist with certain degrees of freedom, it is “society that dictates systems and modes of conduct, and there is no way to disobey them”

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

79

(Garcés 1961: 135). Shortly after, he published a book that extended the argument of his presentation at the ALAS congress in 1955. In it, he seems to fall back behind his own reflections from the 1930s. For instance, he insists on the “mysterious transformation into human and superindividual vitality” (Garcés 1962: 7) that defines society. Yet, coming back to his earlier reflections, this transformation is hindered in the countryside due to the wide distances and the lack of contact between people. So, human dynamism cannot develop and the natural environment develops a much stronger influence than human dynamism (Garcés 1962: 11). One of the last texts of Luis Bossano shows the predominance of political science over sociology at that time. Bossano, the most established sociologist of his time, reflects on politics and what later would be called populism. He starts with a neo-Malthusian argument that the population, especially in the least developed sectors, grows exponentially due to the advances in healthcare and hygiene. It seems improbable to him that humanity can overcome this problem with nuclear energy and new agricultural technologies (Bossano 1962: 8). This tendency brings about social and political changes. In the context of industrialization and urbanization, an integrated and consistent mass appears, defined by social tension and political activity (Bossano 1962: 10–12). This influences political parties, understood by the Mexican sociologist Lucio Mendieta y Núñez as “channels of opinion of the groups against the life of their own state” (Bossano 1962: 13) separated by central principles and programs of action. Political parties depend on the evolution of the different societies, namely, political liberty. They consist of a leading group and a mass of followers that the leading group tries to expand constantly. Leaders and followers are distinguished by class, education, and intelligence; the leaders are generally part of the country’s intellectual elite, and the followers are part of the middle and working classes. There are mechanisms in place that bind the masses to the leaders (Bossano 1962: 18). With reference to C. Wright Mills and his The Power Elite, Bossano discusses the role of propaganda and demagogy as a “powerful fence for the movement and development of political parties” (Bossano 1962: 25). Demagogic leaders aspire to take power, supported by the armed forces and the political and intellectual elites. The result of this form of politics is that the state is used for economic retribution to the followers, generally through an increase of posts for public servants and public works—a practice that leads to economic problems for the state. The modern mass society with widespread technology and a general agglomeration of people typically produces demagogues

80 

P. ALTMANN

as it facilitates imitation: “The power of suggestion expands in increasing waves with maximum force and some forms of imitation of those indicated by Gabriel Tarde consolidate the root and outline of a collective consciousness” (Bossano 1962: 33). In this sense, following Francisco Ayala, otherwise-minded people are excluded, and powerful ideas are accepted without reflection. This is why Bossano establishes as a central task of the intellectual elite to establish human rights in social consciousness. A major improvement in knowledge about this topic could limit the impact of demagogy. This text is an indirect criticism of the populism that had developed in Ecuador with the person of Velasco Ibarra since the 1930s. Velasco Ibarra had just been ousted from presidency, ending his fourth term from 1960 to 1961. In the 1970s, this would lead to a major debate that excluded Bossano completely. Another external point of condensation of sociology during that time was the Institute of Sociology and Technique, Transculturation, Integration and Social Research (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Sociología y técnica, transculturación, integración e investigación social; IESTIS), created in 1961 and led by Juan Yépez del Pozo (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Sociología y técnica, transculturación, integración e investigación social 1962). It does not seem to have developed much activity beyond publishing some of Yépez del Pozo’s books. Shortly after this moment of institutionalization, the great social and political changes in the region (Quintero 2001: 12) start to affect social sciences in Ecuador. The military dictatorship in place in Ecuador between July 1963 and March 1966 intervened at the Central University as well as the other universities of the country. It abolished internal democracy and student participation and ended the contracts of 270 professors of the Central University, about 70% of all professors. Seven of the twelve professors of the School for Political Science had to leave the university. Guillermo Bossano and Humberto García Ortiz were separated from their posts at Central University. Others, like Víctor Gabriel Garcés, Gonzalo Escudero, Aurelio García, Miguel Ángel Zambrano, Miguel Cevallos, and Jaime Chávez (Egas 1990: 135) remained in their positions. In January 1964, the Central University was closed down (Quintero 2001: 13–14). When it reopened, it had been profoundly reformed. In 1963 and 1964, three major universities of Ecuador became involved in cooperation programs funded by the U.S.  Agency for International Development and the Inter-American Development Bank in the context of Alliance for Progress. St. Louis University had an agreement with the

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

81

Catholic University in Quito, the University of Houston with the University of Guayaquil, and the University of Pittsburgh with the Central University. In the case of the University of Guayaquil, the focus was on strengthening Chemical Engineering through equipment and five professors from Houston. The focus in the case of the Catholic University was English language training and nursing. In all three cases, the main effort was to modernize university administration by implementing effective student registration and accounting systems. There was also a clear push to implement full-time positions for professors, especially those who had received training in the different programs provided. The central element of modernization was the creation of a department of basic sciences, mimicking the U.S. system: after receiving basic training in this department for two years, students would move on to the already existing departments for professional training in the different disciplines (Agency for International Development 1965: 28–29). In the case of the Central University, this cooperation developed in a complex matrix of three central actors: the state, run by a fiercely anti-­ communist military dictatorship, the mission of the University of Pittsburgh, and the Central University, already governed by different authorities due to the pressure of the government. Since 1960, the need to reform had been debated within the Central University. This was pushed especially by Vice-Chancellor Manuel Agustín Aguirre—under the name of Second University Reform (Aguirre 1973)—and Chancellor Alfredo Pérez Guerrero. Until the military coup, the plan was to democratize higher education, guide the university to the solution to the cultural, social, economic, and political problems of the country, especially the dispossessed classes, and connect teaching to research and the modern technical means (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1965: 392–93). However, this idea changed with the military coup. As a socialist activist, Aguirre was ousted from his position and fired from the university, and the reform project was reformulated. Now, the main element was the creation of a Department of Basic Sciences (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 12) that continued the work of the Institute of Basic Sciences that had been established in early 1963. It started working in October 1964 and contained three major branches of knowledge: humanities, social sciences, and natural and exact sciences (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1965: 393; University of Pittsburgh 1968). The central idea was to reduce costs by eliminating duplicate courses and increasing the university’s flexibility through an interdisciplinary approach to the different disciplines.

82 

P. ALTMANN

Sociology was explicitly part of this Department of Basic Sciences (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1965: 394; University of Pittsburgh 1968). In May 1963, the first members of the mission of Upitt4 started work at the Central University. This mission would contain between 6 and 15 members until 1968 (Knox 1968: 1–2). The first Upitt professors were Wendell Schaeffer as head-of-party, Jack Birch, professor for Special Education, and accounting professor Garnett Beazley. In September 1963, there would be a total of 12 staff members staying for 2 years (Campbell n.d.), including Chemist Henry Frank and Business professor Marshall Robinson (Martin n.d.).5 These experts focused first on the Department of Basic Sciences and the construction of modern laboratories (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1965: 395). The Department of Basic Sciences was met with particularly widespread rejection in the Central University, “because of its size, its power within the university, the threat felt by other Faculties, the lack of a dynamic dean, and of a central faculty” (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 2). In April 1967, the student organization FEUE organized a strike against this department and its cooperation with Upitt, alleging that the Department was not able to do what it was supposed to do. The staff of the Department of Basic Sciences went on strike in order to demand its continuity. Yet, the decision to dissolve it in 1967 stood (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1968). The engagement with the Philosophy Department, focused on teacher formation, failed similarly. As the Department showed no interest in putting into practice the reforms recommended by the experts of Upitt, this part of the mission already stopped working with the Department in 1966 and, instead, collaborated directly with the Ministry of Education to organize courses for teachers (Lovato and Posvar 1968: 561–62; University of Pittsburgh 1968: 3).

4  This part would not have been possible without the help of Martha Mantilla of the Library of the University of Pittsburgh. 5  Other members were Paul Watson (Education), Tom Hart (Biology and Education), Toby Dunkelberger (Chemistry), Jerry Chang (Civil Engineering), George Klinzing (Chemical Engineering), Murdo Macleod (History), Fitzhugh Beazley (Business, Economics), Jay Doubleday (Public Administration), Roger Nett (Sociology), Emily Nett (Sociology), Jim Billings (Physics), Jim Way (Business), Hector Correa (Public Administration), and, in a second wave, Hans Blaise (Chief of Party), and Marlin Sheridan (Civil Engineering). This list has been provided by Martha Mantilla.

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

83

While it is not possible to assess the concrete work of the sociologists in the mission, their research can give an idea of the intellectual exchanges that happened. Roger and Emily Nett worked from 1963 to 1965 at the Central University (Nett 1966: 437). Roger Nett seems to have been part of a wider group of academic adventurers that went from one university abroad to another one over a long time. He is rather well-known for his work in qualitative methodology and data analysis. It seems that during his time in Ecuador courses he gave courses in methodology of the social sciences (Egas 1990: 286). One of his most quoted texts discusses the need to abolish borders (R. Nett 1971b). In his publications, no mention of Ecuador is made. His wife, Emily Nett, later a recognized researcher on families and gender, published two texts on Ecuador. Possibly, she worked as an English teacher during her stay (Egas 1990: 286). The product of her stay with Upitt was a work on the servant class in Ecuador. In it, she does not engage with the Ecuadorian sociological tradition but rather with data from the national statistics bureau, several state institutions, and the Quito-based newspaper El Comercio. She argues against the sole focus on political and economic factors to understand social change, combined with a concentration on the middle class (Nett 1966: 437). Instead, she claimed that “household servants as a category of people with a certain position in the social system can and do influence as well as respond to the changes which are occurring in that system” (Nett 1966: 439). In order to understand this particular class, she compares Ecuador of 1962 with the United States of 1860 in terms of percentage of the population active in agriculture, manufacturing and construction and personal service—in each case almost the same number. Again, comparing household workers in Ecuador with the average North American housewife of the 1960s, she highlights that in Ecuador, “they operate in a system which is not geared to efficiency or equipped with machinery” (E.M. Nett 1966: 442). The position of household workers actually hinders change and “retards (but does not prevent) the process of organizational efficiency” (E.M.  Nett 1966: 442–43). There is simply no need to buy a modern washing machine, for instance, when a household worker washes the clothes by hand. Nett also calls attention to the psychological implications of always having someone around who serves you. She claims that this structure leads to immaturity, inability to care for oneself, and, on a higher level, the absence of institutional responsibility (E.M.  Nett 1966: 443–44). Surprisingly, Nett introduces the argument that contact with the urban population and especially foreigners present a possibility for socialization

84 

P. ALTMANN

for the mostly indigenous household workers (Nett 1966: 445). She also contradicts the industrialization policy of the government in the 1960s, favoring an increase in agricultural output (E.M. Nett 1966: 447). General social change could be accomplished through political action, especially under the conditions of a military dictatorship that could, for instance, raise the minimum wage or include household workers in the social security. However, the problem of implementation is an issue in Ecuador (E.M.Nett 1966: 447), especially given the slow rate of economic amelioration. Nett expected a slow change toward a devaluation of personal service (E. M. Nett 1966: 451). She would go on researching the upper classes in Ecuador with a different grant while working for Texas Southern University in 1967 and 1968. Here, again, she did not engage with Ecuadorian sociology. Rather, she quotes Díaz (1963)—most likely, an Ecuadorian researcher living abroad— and documents of the Planning and Economic Coordination Board. The research is based on information collected through questionnaires to elite members (E. M. Nett 1971a: 115). Nett concludes that the elite in Quito is not renewing itself—only about half of the elite members in 1951 remained part of the elite in 1964—and the upper classes are losing influence over them, especially due to younger people preferring professional specialization over an engagement (E. M. Nett 1971a). One data is especially relevant here. Nett quotes a study of Blaise and Rodriguez, two other members of the mission of Upitt, with numbers showing “that for each 20 upper-class students there are 80 middle-class students in the two universities in Quito” (E. M. Nett 1971a: 117). The cooperation with Upitt ended earlier than intended due to a cut in funding from the U.S.  Agency for International Development (Knox 1968). In the project appraisal report for USAID, Upitt gives an overview of achievements and failures. The total amount of funding, $2,866,000, was used to install 15 laboratories for different disciplines, buy 3500 books for the library, and send 36 students and professors of the Central University to study at Upitt, especially engineering, physics, and mathematics. Also, the funding led to having 20 full-time faculty members at the Central University in 1963 compared to none in 1961, and it allowed 30% of the students to study full time compared to 10% in 1961 (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 10). The formation of the administrative staff was another focus (Lovato and Posvar 1968: 561–62). However, the general account of the mission is rather critical. The “highly political nature of the Central University” (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 4), the lack of

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

85

dissatisfaction with the old system by staff, professors, and students, and the particular role of the university in society (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 13) made “the overall plan of work […] not realistic from the start” (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 15). There was simply no interest in improving higher education. One element of this was the fact that “Salaries that permit recruitment of top professors on a full time basis are not available at the university” (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 16). Only in a later stage of the project was the focus moved to the existing discontent among students, and a student welfare program was developed, including scholarships, improvements to the student’s residence, and a student-run book store (Lovato and Posvar 1968: 561–62; University of Pittsburgh 1968: 15). This was what the last members of the mission were engaged with when USAID started to limit the cash inflow in 1968 (University of Pittsburgh 1968: 5). The project was officially ended on 30 June 1968 due to the end of funding (Lovato and Posvar 1968: 561). During those years, the School of Political Science continued functioning. In 1965, through cooperation with the Institute for Agrarian Reform,6 courses in rural sociology, agrarian economy, cooperatives, and other related topics were held. Also, the Student Association of the School established in 1966 continued, led by Luis Torres. Neither closing down the Central University in most of 1964 and March 1966 nor the military attacks in 1965 and 19667 (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1967a) could destroy the School as others claim (Quintero 2001: 13–14). After a reform in November 1966, it started with a three-year-licenciatura cycle that condensed the earlier teaching plan by eliminating some law courses and adding courses in sociology, research methodology, and statistics. This was completed with a two-year specialization that led to the degree of doctor. Two specializations were functioning, one in sociology and social research with courses in general, urban and rural sociology, social and cultural anthropology, social movements, research methods, statistics, and others. The other specialization was in cooperativism, agrarian law, and syndicalism. It focused on courses in the history of those three topics (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1967b). After the end of the Department of Basic Sciences in March 1967, the specialization in Sociology and Anthropology that existed there was  This institute implemented the land reform undertaken since 1964.  This last attack together with a similar yet more brutal attack on the University of Guayaquil were reasons for the end of the dictatorship in March 1966. 6 7

86 

P. ALTMANN

converted into a School of Sociology and Anthropology in the Law Department. This new School had sixty first-year students, seven third-­ year students, and eleven professors, of whom only five had tenure and the others had no contract at all (Sarzoza 2014: 71–73). It was led by Carlos Muirragui (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1968). The School of Sociology and Anthropology offered a five-year-licenciatura. In its teaching plan, no courses in law appear. Instead, there was a strong focus on anthropology (with eight courses) and archaeology (with six courses) and a much deeper treatment of sociology (with nine courses), including subfields that were not established in Ecuador during that time, including Sociology of Work, of Families, of Culture, and Political sociology. Another focus was research methods with six courses (Sarzoza 2014: 181–82). As there is not much information on the professors or the contents of the courses, it is not possible to determine whether the alleged introduction of functionalist and structuralist tendencies in this School actually happened (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 442; Quintero 2001: 13–14). A publication of the professor for social psychology of the School in cooperation with students of the second course in 1967–1968 might give some insight. This empirical study establishes different methods of contraception available at that time and asks a small sample of roughly 100 persons for their opinion. Sixty-three persons accept contraception, and twenty-seven reject it for religious reasons (15) or fear of mental effects (12). The rest holds that this topic is not important (Barreiro 1969). In August 1967, Hugo Larrea Benalcázar was appointed director of the School of Political Sciences. At the same time, the School of Political Sciences and the School of Sociology and Anthropology were merged into the School of Sociology and Political Sciences (Universidad Central del Ecuador 1968). One of the triggers for this was a strike of the School of Political Sciences students, demanding this merger to prevent duplications, as there was already a specialization in sociology in place at that School (Sarzoza 2014: 73–74; Universidad Central del Ecuador 1968). The new School erased most of the teaching plan of the School of Sociology and Anthropology and retained the plan of the School of Political Sciences, including the law courses (Espinosa Zevallos 1968: 37–38; Sarzoza 2014: 184–85). Two main factors define the later development of this School. On the one hand, the students had radicalized considerably, especially due to the repression suffered during the dictatorship. While their discourse already in 1962 had revolutionary elements, in 1967 they would talk about the

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

87

government being “frightened by the popular awakening, the arrival of the hour of accountability” (Torres Espinosa 1967: 18) and the “intrinsic values of the Ecuadorian proletariat” (Torres Espinosa 1967: 20). Therefore, from their perspective, Political Sciences “lead to the awakening of political and social consciousness” (Torres Espinosa 1967: 19) of the people. On the other hand, the sociology and political sciences elite had lost all moral credibility as they collaborated directly and openly with the dictatorship. This is why Luis Bossano, Miguel Ángel Zambrano, Víctor Gabriel Garcés, and Jaime Chávez Granja (Egas 1990: 76) would lose all influence on the later development of the social sciences in Ecuador. This same perceived relationship between dictatorship and the missions of the US-American universities led to a profound rejection and a complete break. However, this break must be understood as a process that took several years. Contemporary observers noted a shift in the interests of sociology in Ecuador, breaking with the closed circle of established research topics and including cultural change, economic development, education, family, demographics, public opinion, and others (Espinosa Zevallos 1968: 34). While the general lack of funding persisted, some external funding became available. Also, state agencies like the National Board of Planning and Economic Coordination and the Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization engaged in social research (Espinosa Zevallos 1968: 35). The final moment of this modernizing Ecuadorian sociology was the Second Congress of Ecuadorian Sociology in December 1967 at the University of Guayaquil. This Congress was presided by Colón Serrano Murrillo, professor of sociology at that university. The main topics were demography and the national census of 1950 and 1962, the Agrarian Reform of 1964, social mobility, and the regions of Ecuador. At this Congress the Ecuadorian Association of Sociology was founded (Espinosa Zevallos 1968: 36), an organization that could not achieve much relevance. While it is unclear if and where the proceedings of the Congress were published, some contributions could be found. José Cuesta Heredia, professor of economic and social problems in Ecuador at the University of Cuenca, offered an account of internal and external migration in Ecuador based on data from the National Planning Board and the Census and his reading of Gurvitch, Myrdal, and Rostow. He focuses on the different motivations for migration, including economic, cultural, education, social or family reasons, as well as the migration policy of the state (Cuesta Heredia 1968). Fermín Arias (1968) offers a rather descriptive overview

88 

P. ALTMANN

of some census results. In the debate on agrarian reform, the contribution by César Astudillo might provide the clearest connection to earlier sociology. Based on the classics of geography, he revised the history of Ecuador, quoting Mariátegui, Jaramillo Alvarado, and Monsalve Pozo. Then, he presents some rather normative ideas without empirical support on agrarian reform (Astudillo 1968). Astudillo would die in 1968 and Monsalve Pozo would take over the chair for sociology at the University of Cuenca (Universidad de Cuenca 1968). In this debate, the contribution of Clotario Maldonado, Dean of the Law Department of the University of Loja, breaks with the academic status quo. While he does not discuss much empirical data, his argument is based on class struggle and the role of the big landowners who have no interest in increasing agro-industrial productivity. For this argument, he references Marx, Aguirre, and Rubio Orbe. More surprising is his reception of the Marxist historian Oswaldo Albornoz and Celso Furtado, a leading representative of Dependency Theory (Maldonado Paz 1967).

References Agency for International Development. 1965. U.S.  Foreign Aid in the Alliance for Progress. Aguirre, Manuel Agustín. 1963. ‘La Universidad Ecuatoriana’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 92(347): 15–34. Aguirre, Manuel Agustín. 1973. La Segunda Reforma Universitaria. Selección de Documentos. Quito: UCE. Álvarez González, Francisco. 1959. ‘Clases, Castas y Profesiones’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, edited by Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Vol. 1, pp. 228–54. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Anon. 1952. ‘The First Latin American Sociological Congress’. International Social Science Bulletin 4(3): 494–98. Arias, Fermín. 1968. ‘Apuntes de Estructura Demográfica Del Ecuador’. Iuris. Revista de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4: 140–64. Astudillo, César. 1959. ‘Clases y Castas En El Ecuador’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología ecuatoriana, Vol. 1, pp.  255–96. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura. Astudillo, César. 1968. ‘Segundo Congreso de Sociología. Tema: La Reforma Agraria: Su Reprecusión En La Estructura Social y Económica y Consecuencias Futuras Previsibles de Esos Efectos Dinámicos’. Iuris. Revista de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4: 90–139.

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

89

Ayala Mora, Enrique. 2010. ‘Humberto García Ortiz. Pensador de la Nación Ecuatoriana’. Revista AFESE 54(54): 267–80. Barreiro, Jorge. 1969. ‘El Control de La Natalidad En La Planificación de La Familia Ecuatoriana’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 97(352): 131–45. Blanco, Alejandro. 2005. ‘La Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología: Una Historia de Sus Primeros Congresos’. Sociologias 14: 22–49. https://doi. org/10.1590/S1517-45222005000200003. Blois, Juan Pedro. 2019. ‘Disputas En Torno al Ensayismo En La Sociología Argentina (1950s-1970s)’. Política & Sociedade 18(41): 60–87. https://doi. org/10.5007/2175-­7984.2019v18n41p60. Bossano, Luis. 1948. ‘La Enseñanza de La Sociología En El Ecuador’. Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 4(23–24): 3–7. Bossano, Luis. 1956. ‘Proyecto de Bases Para Un Programa Común de La Enseñanza Sociológica En Latinoamérica’. Anales de La Universidad Central 85(340): 71–78. Bossano, Luis. 1957. Tres Problemas Nacionales. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Bossano, Luis. 1962. ‘Una Modalidad Política de La Sociedad de Masas’. Casa de La Cultura Ecuatoriana. Revista 13(23): 7–37. Campbell, Judy. n.d. University of Pittsburgh Names Head for Project at Central University in Ecuador. University of Pittsburgh. Campuzano Arteta, Álvaro. 2005. ‘Sociología y misión pública de la universidad en el Ecuador: una crónica sobre educación y modernidad en América Latina’. in Espacio público y privatización del conocimiento, Estudios sobre políticas universitarias en América Latina, edited by P. Gentili and B. Levy, pp. 401–62. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Chávez Granja, Jaime. 1962. ‘Lo Filosófico, Lo Político y Lo Económico’. El Político. Revista de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas 1(1): 16–18. Cornejo Rosales, Jorge. 1947. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 75(325–326): 449–508. Cornejo Rosales, Jorge. 1949. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 77(328): 365–418. Cuesta Heredia, José. 1968. ‘Segundo Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana. Movilidad Social, Horizontal y Vertical En El Ecuador: Sus Principales Factores y Cambios Morfológicos Que Ocasiona’. Iuris. Revista de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4: 39–63. Díaz, A. 1963. ‘Cambios Sociales de Las Clases Dominantes Del Ecuador’. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 25(2): 721–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/3538732. Domínguez, Carlos. 1959. ‘El Matrimonio’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, edited by Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Vol. 2, pp. 146–66. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana.

90 

P. ALTMANN

Egas, Edison. 1990. La Universidad Central Frente a La Dictadura 1963–1966. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Espinosa Zevallos, Javier. 1968. ‘La Sociología En El Ecuador’. Anuario de Sociología de Los Pueblos Ibéricos 4: 29–46. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1955. ‘Filosofía de La Vecindad’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 84(339): 248–54. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1956. ‘La Sociología Rural En La América Latina’. Anales de La Universidad Central 85(340): 173–233. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1961. ‘Individuo y Sociedad’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 90(345): 127–36. Garcés, Víctor Gabriel. 1962. La Sociología Rural En América Latina. Quito, Ecuador: Universidad Central del Ecuador. García, Aurelio. 1948. ‘Problemas de La Sociología de La Educación’. Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 4(23–24): 24–33. García, Aurelio. 1956. ‘Determinación de La Sociología de La Educación’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 85(340): 237–50. García, Aurelio. 1962. ‘Disertación Sobre La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas En El Acto Inaugural de La Misma, En El Paraninfo de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia’. Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 9(37–38): 16–19. García Ortiz, Humberto. 1956. Las Rutas Del Futuro. Una Interpretación Sociológica Del Hecho Histórico Ecuatoriano. Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Germani, Gino. 1956. ‘Unificación Teórica e Integración Reconstructiva En Sociología’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 85(340): 98–111. Guerra, Luis. 1954. ‘Estadística de La Universidad Central’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 83(338): 406–42. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas. 1961. ‘Estadísticas de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador. Año 1959–1960’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 90(345): 369–423. Instituto Ecuatoriano de Sociología y técnica, transculturación, integración e investigación social. 1962. Estatutos Del Instituto Ecuatoriano de Sociología y Técnica, Transculturación, Integración e Investigación Social—IESTIS. Quito: Artes Gráficas Proaño. Intriago Alvarado, Guillermo. 1959. ‘El Heraldo de La Sociología Ecuatoriano’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, edited by Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Vol. 2, pp.  203–12. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Knox, Helen. 1968. Pitt Ecuador Project Ending. University of Pittsburgh. Lovato, Juan Isaac, and Wesley Posvar. 1968. ‘Declaración Conjunta de Los Señores Rectores de Las Universidades de Pittsburgh y Central Del Ecuador’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 96(351): 561–62.

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

91

Maldonado Paz, Clotario. 1967. La Colonización. Contribución al II Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, Reunido En Guayaquil Del 18 al 22 de Diciembre de 1967. Loja. Martin, David. n.d. Chancellors Sees Challenge in Latin American Project. University of Pittsburgh. Moncayo, Patricio. 1962. ‘La Universidad Central: Fuerza Indestructible’. El Político. Revista de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas 1(1): 25–27. Navarro Andrade, Ulpiano. 1955. ‘Las Relaciones de La Sociología Con La Historia. Comte, Stuart Mill, Durkheim, Spencer’. Revista de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales 8(35–36): 24–33. Nett, Emily M. 1966. ‘The Servant Class in a Developing Country: Ecuador’. Journal of Inter-American Studies 8(3): 437–52. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 165261. Nett, Emily M. 1971a. ‘The Functional Elites of Quito’. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 13(1): 112–20. https://doi.org/10.2307/174750. Nett, Roger. 1971b. ‘The Civil Right We Are Not Ready For: The Right of Free Movement of People on the Face of the Earth’. Ethics 81(3): 212–27. https:// doi.org/10.1086/291811. Otero, Gonzalo Adolfo. 1959. ‘La Clase Social Abierta En Los Países Hispano-­ Americanos’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, edited by Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Vol. 1, pp.  319–42. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1949. ‘Estudio de La Clase Media En El Ecuador’. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 11(1): 7–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 3537964. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1953. ‘Biología de Las Clases Sociales’. Casa de La Cultura Ecuatoriana. Revista VI(13): 6–56. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1954. Biología de Las Clases Sociales. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1957a. ‘El Alma de Provenza. Una Biografía de La Edad Media’. Vol. 1. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1957b. ‘La Interpretación Sociológica de La Historia’. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 19(2): 361–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 3538104. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1958. ‘El Alma de Provenza. Los Orígenes de Las Instituciones de Occidente’. Vol. 2. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Paredes, Ángel Modesto. 1988. ‘Los Rasgos Caracterizantes de Las Clases Sociales’. in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R. Quintero, pp. 403–49. Quito: BCE, CNE. Pereyra, Diego Ezequiel. 2007. ‘The Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología and Its Foundational Role. A History of Institutional Organization of Sociology

92 

P. ALTMANN

in Latin America from the 1950s to The1960s’. in Sociology: History, Theory and practices, Russian Society of Sociologists, pp. 155–73. Moscow, Glasgow. Quintero, Rafael. 2001. Reforma Universitaria En Sociología. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Salgado, Francisco José. 1962. ‘Fragmento Del Informe de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales Durante El Período 1959–1961’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 91(346): 465–78. Sarzoza, Gabriela. 2014. ‘La emergencia de la sociología como campo de saber en la Universidad Central del Ecuador: 1955–1976’. Quito: Flacso Ecuador. Scribano, Adrián. 2005. ‘Orígenes de la asociación latinoamericana de Sociología: algunas notas a través de la visión de Alfredo Poviña’. Sociologias 7(14): 50–61. Torres Espinosa, Luis. 1967. ‘Función de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas’. Ñaupi (Adelante) 1(1): 16–24. Trujillo Duque, Armando. 1962. ‘Plan de Estudios de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas’. El Político. Revista de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas 1(1): 31–32. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1936. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 57(298): 581–653. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1952. ‘Actividades de La Universidad Central En El Año Lectivo 1951–52’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 80(333–334): 226–92. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1956a. ‘Acta de Fundación de La Sociedad Ecuatoriana de Sociología’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 85(340): 333–34. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1956b. ‘Nómina de Delegados al III Congreso Latinoamericano de Sociología’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 85(340): 22–24. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1962. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 91(346): 407–61. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1965. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 94(349): 389–404. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1967a. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 95(350): 365–403. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1967b. ‘Plan de Estudios de La Escuela de Ciencias Políticas Aprobados Por El H.  Consejo Universitario’. Ñaupi (Adelante) 1(1): 87–91. Universidad Central del Ecuador. 1968. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 96(351): 510–23. Universidad de Cuenca. 1948. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4(1–2): 167–213. Universidad de Cuenca. 1949. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 5(1–2): 187–208.

  THE FAILED ATTEMPT TO MODERNIZE SOCIOLOGY FROM THE LATE 1940S 

93

Universidad de Cuenca. 1955. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 11(3–4): 505–40. Universidad de Cuenca. 1957. ‘Delegaciones Acreditadas al Congreso’. Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 13(2–3): 399–403. Universidad de Cuenca. 1959. ‘Crónica Universitaria’. Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 15(3–4): 525–48. Universidad de Cuenca. 1968. ‘Crónica de La Facultad’. Iuris. Revista de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de La Universidad de Cuenca (4): 178–81. University of Pittsburgh. 1968. DC-Central University, Quito. Project Appraisal Report. 518-11-660–088. Agency for International Development. Viñas y Mey, Carmelo. 1947. ‘“Información americana”: Ecuador: Los estudios sociológicos y el Seminario de Cuestiones Sociales’. Revista Internacional de Sociología 5(20): 214–15. Yépez del Pozo, Juan. 1959. ‘Clases y Castas En El Ecuador’. in Memoria del Primer Congreso de Sociología Ecuatoriana, edited by Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Vol. 1, pp. 297–318. Cuenca: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Zambrano, Miguel Ángel. 1955. ‘Las Comunidades Campesinas En El Ecuador y Su Posible Estructuración Cooperativista’. Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 84(339): 332–66.

Critical Sociology

Abstract  The late 1960s led to a radical break in Ecuadorian sociology. A group of young thinkers, many politicized in the artistic movement of the tzántzicos and some with studies abroad, installed a new and different view on society in academic sociology. Rejecting earlier positivism and functionalism, they drew on Marx and the Marxists to re-read Ecuador’s history in terms of social formations and class struggle. They did so in central debates that defined the 1970s and 1980s and connected to sociology at the continental level: the debate on populism as political expression, the debate on dependency theory, the debate on the role of the hacienda and semi-feudal structures in Ecuadorian society, and the debate on the role of sociology in society. This enterprise went into crisis in the mid-1980s but is still influential today. Keywords  Marxism • Dependency theory • Populism • hacienda

The 1960s as a Time of Renewal The 1960s were a time of intellectual and political renewal in Ecuador. The relative stability due to the banana boom since the late 1940s had come to an end in the late 1950s and finally with the failed presidency of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5_4

95

96 

P. ALTMANN

Velasco Ibarra from 1960 to 1961. The Cuban revolution, different insurrectional movements in the region, and the reaction by the states, the political right, and the United States produced deep tensions in society. In this context, the literary movement of the tzántzicos organized its first recital in April 1962 at the Casa de la Cultura in Quito, still run by its founder Benjamín Carrión. The Casa de la Culture had become a significant actor in cultural and academic debates in Ecuador. However, the tzántzicos considered it to be the last residuum of the literary movement of the 1930s (without relevant publications since the late 1940s) and the “chapel of a ritual left” (Tinajero 1988: 796). They were young intellectuals of the middle class, organized in groups around the short-lived journals Pucuna (1962–1968) edited by Ulises Estrella, Indoamérica (1965–1967), run by Agustín Cueva Dávila,1 Françoise Perus and Fernando Tinajero, Bufanda del Sol published from 1965 to 1966 and Revista ‘z’ both edited by Alejandro Moreano and Francisco Proaño Arandi, and Ágora, run by Wladimiro Rivas. All those journals were not only outlets for artistic production but also spaces of radical political and intellectual reflection on power and capitalism (Polo Bonilla 2012: 42–43; Quevedo Ramírez 2022: 143–44). Indoamérica particularly articulated the new intellectuality around the debate on national culture, mestizaje and racial whitening as products of colonialism, criticizing older and already canonized approaches as inauthentic (Quevedo Ramírez 2022: 140–42). Following Sartre, this journal highlighted the intellectual’s political compromise, above all, within a bigger political organization or movement (Quevedo Ramírez 2022: 144–46). Already at that time, one topic of debate was the “deformed assimilation of both the Spanish code and the Andean code” (Quevedo Ramírez 2022: 147), leaving Ecuador with the impossibility of developing an authentic national culture. The tzántzicos, radicalizing Sartre’s existentialism, took the idea of the shrunken heads of the Shuar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the tzantzas, as a “denunciation of the Western macrocephaly, the hypertrophy of the Western ratio and the vindication of experience as a direct access route to reality” (Tinajero 1988: 797). This led them to announce a parricide in Ecuadorian culture: “to assassinate the fathers of the Ecuadorian culture was to assassinate in them the Western culture imposed by colonization, but also to punish the inconsistency between the life and work of such ‘consecrated’ writers” 1  Son of Agustín Cueva Sáenz and the most well-known Ecuadorian sociologist. Concerning his work in the 1960s, there are fewer studies. Tzeiman (2017) gives an overview.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

97

(Tinajero 1988: 798). Instead, the tzántzicos called for a search for authenticity and originality through a critical re-reading of the national culture in Ecuador. Their style was marked by direct communication and agitation that redefined the traditional poetic recital as a reciting act. They quickly discovered the university, especially the Central University, as a “center for the generation of critical thinking” (Tinajero 1988: 809). Some tzántzicos were already studying philosophy there, namely Fernando Tinajero, Ulises Estrella, Bolívar Echeverría, Luis Corral. With this, the two processes, the cultural renovation of the tzántzicos and the intellectual renovation that was part of the university reform undertaken by Manuel Agustín Aguirre, came into contact (Polo Bonilla 2012: 44–45). When the Central University was closed in early 1964 by the dictatorship, the tzántzicos moved on to different cafés as meeting spots. After the end of the military dictatorship, the tzántzicos and other artists around the Association of Young Writers and Artists of Ecuador (Asociación de Escritores y Artistas Jóvenes del Ecuador, AEAJE) occupied the Casa de la Cultura in August 1966 leading to its reorganization and the reinstallation of Carrión as its president. After that, neither the tzántzicos nor the AEAJE could continue their activities. A part of them pushed into humanities and historical research in the universities and promoted a “more consistent handling of Marxist categories […] and an effort to create their own categories” (Tinajero 1988: 805). One expression of this effort were several books published by important tzántzicos in 1967 that condense the main preoccupations of this group (Polo Bonilla 2012: 80). Agustín Cueva Dávila published in 1967 Between wrath and hope (Entre la ira y la Esperanza). This book engages with literary criticism and revises the different literary genres in Ecuadorian history. It is connected to a rather diffusely leftist humanism and based primarily on Lukacs—a path of research that the Ecuadorian sociology would not follow up on (Cerutti Guldberg 1986: 38). Cueva Dávila held that Spanish theatre or novels had no major impact during the colonial period. Only poetry could develop in a relevant manner, focusing on the sublime and constituting the “point of equilibrium between the curve of requirements of the Colony and the curve of ‘virtualities’ of Spanish literature of the same period” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 30). This implied an invisibilization and de-humanization of the indigenous population that was a vast majority at that time: “As the discoverer became a colonizer, he dehumanized the indigenous with his acts, in order to preserve a good conscience, there was no other choice but to dehumanize him also in theory” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 31). In this sense,

98 

P. ALTMANN

poetry presented a “protective veil against reality” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 32). It could dwell in an idea of the sublime uncontaminated by the indigenous—unlike novels that need an at least minimal relation to their localization and therefore would humanize the indigenous. The danger of the “narration of the unspeakable” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 33) led to a marginalization of novels, including censorship and prohibitions. The same level of abstraction and speculation could also be found in another genre, colonial prose. In this panorama, the necessarily realistic popular literature is marginalized and subordinated to the aesthetic values of the cultured class (Cueva Dávila 2008: 35). Colonial literature is thus class literature insofar as it is made by a particular group, reflects its worldview and aesthetic preferences, and is at the service of this group. The central role of the Catholic Church defined the only way for mestizos to access culture—as priests. This position was heavily restricted and included the need to prove allegiance constantly. This resulted in two particular types of literates: the poet who distracts, and the sacred speaker who attracts and contracts. The sacred speaker is a “piece of the colonization machinery” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 40) who constantly needs to show that he is part of civilization by quoting universal authors, even if he did not actually read them. The results are “Speeches destined for an imaginary export” (Cueva Dávila 2008: 40)—they engage in imagined global debates that are constituents of the civilized world, debates that do not even acknowledge their existence. Cueva Dávila finds the only authentic art in colonial architecture. Due to the need to functionally adapt to the place, architecture was original at the level of conception. At the same time, colonial art had a particular context of reception—mostly in obligatory meetings like masses at the Church. And while in Europe, a certain degree of liberty was reached early on, in America a complete alienation prevails. This conception continues in the twentieth century: the art critics appreciate reproduction but not the original production of works of art. In this sense, only writing can provide cultural transcendence, while painting or sculpturing is understood not as art but as craft that provides only minimal income and recognition and needs to follow strict codes (Cueva Dávila 2008: 44). Thus, a committed art is not impossible but needs both a society and artists that allow it—or to rebel. After the end of the military dictatorship in 1966, some persons around this “tzántzic moment” (Polo Bonilla 2012: 42–43) became university professors. Notably, the Central University regained its appeal to these

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

99

radical young thinkers, especially those connected to the person of Manuel Agustín Aguirre, long-time dean of the Economy Department and president and vice-president of the university on different occasions. The clear political compromise of Aguirre was a model—at that time, he was general secretary of the Socialist Party—his deep knowledge of Marxist theory, his proposal for a dialectic and non-positivist science, and his engagement with the modernization and democratization of the Central University around the motto of second university reform (Polo Bonilla 2012: 44–45). Aguirre became a major reference for the generation of the tzantzic moment with their need for a new language (Polo Bonilla 2012: 92). In the printed version of a discourse he held in 1957, Aguirre re-reads the history of the university, focusing on its close connection to the state, the bourgeoisie, and processes of industrialization (Aguirre 1963: 20). The result was an individualistic education and a specialized and fractionalized approach to knowledge. However, this step did not happen in the universities elsewhere in South America—due to their close relationship with the Church and their general lack of autonomy, they were separated from the debates of their times, including the struggle for independence. Until the late nineteenth century, the South American university remains fundamentally colonial and scholastic. This only changes with the emergence of political liberalism. However, this modernization produced universities “oblivious to the problems of the world, which cultivates the servitude of intelligence” (Aguirre 1963: 25). The first university reform in the region, the Reform of Córdoba, constituted not a fundamental change but rather an “intellectual insurrection of the petty bourgeoisie” (Aguirre 1963: 25). Against this situation, Aguirre demands a truly human integral humanism that includes education for solidarity and full autonomy. This includes internal democracy and political engagement with the people, especially, through political education. The university needs to educate for scientific knowledge adapted to the national reality. It is about a “militant science and art, committed to the struggle for justice, surrender and the well-being of all men” (Aguirre 1963: 31). Just a few years later, during the moment relevant here, Aguirre had criticized the university harshly. For him, it has constituted and constitutes an ideological and political instrument of the dominant classes that control the state apparatus and a constant prey of the governments that have taken turns in power; but it has also been the center of opposition and rebellion, the generator of new ideals, in a perma-

100 

P. ALTMANN

nent struggle for freedom and against civilian and especially military dictatorships, which have tried to chain and silence it. (Aguirre 1973: 16)

The Central University was still dominated by the petty bourgeoisie and excludes the poorer classes, while the richer classes prefer to study at private universities or abroad (Aguirre 1973: 15). Yet, the new students that had arrived at the Central University since the 1960s were changing its characteristics, pushing for self-management, and criticizing society and its basic principles (Aguirre 1973: 17). This needed to happen in cooperation with the proletariat in the sense of a transformative struggle (Aguirre 1973: 24–25). The form of the analysis Aguirre undertook of this situation is hinted at by the theoretical references: he quotes Marcuse and Fromm, but also Mandel and C. Wright Mills in his attempt to grasp this struggle of generations (Aguirre 1973: 18, 19, 23). With this, Aguirre seems to have been a connecting point for different leftist movements and individuals. As some of the tzántzicos turned into professors of sociology, namely Agustín Cueva Dávila as director of the School of Sociology and Political Sciences between 1967 and 1970, Alejandro Moreano, and Esteban del Campo (Polo Bonilla 2012: 94), they developed around the ideas of Aguirre. With this, a still-developing Marxism replaced a probably only projected structural functionalism that, in their view, defined the sociology of the 1960s in Ecuador. As the previous chapter showed, the mission of Upitt had no major impact on Ecuadorian sociology. Yet, the combination of dictatorship, US intervention, and criticism of the older generations led to a rejection of structural functionalism—not as a concrete theory but as a general idea—as the main element and central legitimation of the new sociology. The fact that a clearly formulated criticism of structural functionalism never appears supports this interpretation (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 442–43). The central role of Aguirre becomes clearly visible with the short-lived journal Hora Universitaria, edited by Aguirre himself in 1969 and 1970. It was here where the tzántzicos did their first sociological steps. In the first issue, Esteban del Campo proposes a criticism of the solely economic understanding of underdevelopment. For him, “the revolutionary process of proletarian countries” (del Campo 1969: 28) corresponds with a dialectic and historical antagonism between Nation and Anti-Nation. The specific case of Ecuador is defined, following Myrdal and Prebisch, by its economic and political dependency on the United States. One result is the central importance of subsistence economy and the complete absence of

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

101

an internal market. However, this does not change the fact that Ecuador is a class society (del Campo 1969: 30)—even if the classes are defined by the Spanish conquest and the property of land established in the sixteenth century. The result is a lack of class consciousness in the proletariat and a general tendency to inauthenticity and to copy ideas, especially among the elites. Alienation, mimicry, the absence of critical awareness […] and an ornamental understanding of intellectual life, in general, constitute the consequences of this degraded form of the elites in our country. [Therefore] there is no understanding of the surrounding reality, of our environment—which should, at least theoretically, provide foundations for a philosophy and a science of its own—but an import of external mental productions, corresponding to other realities. (del Campo 1969: 32–33)

Two other contributions to this publication would complete the fundamentals of the sociology to be. A Marxist-inspired cultural criticism had been outlined by del Campo and the earlier text of Cueva Dávila. Galarza Zavala (1969) was not a direct part of this group but rather an autonomous leftist intellectual, who introduced a more classically materialist study of the property relations in Ecuadorian society. In this concrete case, he examines with much data the role of the Catholic Church as a landowner and its associated political action. Cueva Dávila (1969a) introduces a different approach, called situation analysis or analysis of conjuncture, in a text that would be republished with the same content but a different title a few years later. In it, he reviews the conditions that led to the general situation during the 1960s. The relative economic and political stability since the late 1940s did not bring about a structural transformation of society and state. When prices of cacao and café started to drop in the second half of the 1950s, leading to a crisis, the economy was defenseless, and the state could not act. The reduction in salaries and the inflation led to the short presidency of Velasco Ibarra as a “symbolic way of opposing oligarchic domination” (Cueva Dávila 1975: 228). However, he could not respond to the crisis and was ousted after one year. A military coup installed vice-president Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy as the new president. This happened in a situation of general social unrest and political radicalization on both the political right and the political left, ultimately leading to another coup and a military dictatorship between 1963 and 1966. The reforms during this period were sustained by a better economic

102 

P. ALTMANN

climate and focused on the middle classes. The Agrarian Reform of 1964 was “a farce intended to deceive the peasant and better protect (in the long run) the interests of the landowners” (Cueva Dávila 1975: 237). Finally, another text by Galarza Zavala in the following (and last) issue of Hora Universitaria introduces a different topic that would define Ecuadorian sociology for several decades. He rejects US imperialism and criticizes the responses of the traditional left. Instead of following foreign formulas, “it is a fundamental task to Ecuadorianize Marxism; that is, adopt national interpretations, forms, and methods. […] revolutionary nationalism is a necessity, and a necessity that perfectly complements revolutionary internationalism” (Galarza Zavala 1970: 19). Related more directly to the institutionalizing School of Sociology and Political Sciences, some short texts by Agustín Cueva Dávila give an insight into the prevailing understanding of sociology. In 1969 anthropologist, ethnohistorian, and folklorist Alfredo Costales2 as a professor for field practice, published in collaboration with his wife Piedad Peñaherrara de Costales and three students a book that represents the work of several years. In a short presentation, Cueva Dávila celebrated the empirical work involved as something that had been neglected for a long time (Cueva Dávila 1969b: 7), and that represents “the first firm step towards the formation of a true social theory of Ecuador” (Cueva Dávila 1969b: 8). However, he goes beyond those ideas. For him, research needs to be incorporated into “a coherent and global vision of the world one lives in” (Cueva Dávila 1969b: 9)—and this vision can only develop in an autonomous university and interdisciplinary collaboration. At the same time, a series of documents for discussion was published by the School of Sociology and Political Sciences, starting with an influential text by Mexican sociologist Pablo González Casanova on what sociology in Latin America should be like (González Casanova 1969). In the introduction, Agustín Cueva Dávila places this publication in the context of a radical reform of systems of teaching, work methods, and the very objectives of the School. Two other issues of this document discussed the relationship between Liberation Theology and Marxism (Comblin 1969; Edwards and Bompane 1971).

2  Costales was one of the few professors of the new School that had worked at the Central University since before the dictatorship, focused on cultural anthropology (Costales Samaniego 1958).

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

103

Only months before Cueva Dávila left Ecuador and became a professor first in Chile and then in Mexico, he wrote a letter to Manuel Medina Castro from the University of Guayaquil commenting on the program for a degree course in sociology at that university that they seemingly had discussed the previous day.3 Cueva Dávila highlights the need for the “students to have a relatively deep understanding of non-Marxist sociology if only to be able to combat it” (Cueva Dávila 1970b: 1). This knowledge would prevent the students, once graduated, from assimilating the ideas of Durkheim, Max Weber, or Anglo-Saxon functionalism. He proposed a three-year program that starts with a first year dedicated to “Marxism, with insistence on its analytical categories and its political perspective (social transformation)” (Cueva Dávila 1970b: 1). The second year would focus on Western sociology, and the third one on Latin America’s sociology, combining studies from foreigners and local researchers (Cueva Dávila 1970b: 1–2). This letter was related to the teaching plans at that time, which changed every few years. The School of Sociology and Political Sciences started in 1967 with a plan for a shared three-year cycle and separated two-year cycles for sociology and political sciences. The shared cycle presented a general introduction to social sciences with courses in geography, economics, history, cultural anthropology, psychology, demographics, mathematics, statistics, general and Ecuadorian sociology, political sciences, and some law courses. The following cycle in sociology focused on research methods, anthropology, and specialized sociologies like political sociology, cultural sociology, and sociology of communication. The cycle in political sciences continued the earlier tradition of focusing on rural issues, agrarian reform, and cooperatives (Sarzoza 2014: 185–87). The teaching plan from 1969 abolished the separation between sociology and political sciences. Now, it was more focused on the study of contemporary problems, and it included several courses in Marxist theory. There were also more courses in research methods. While the general tendency of the program did not change much, now it included a series of seminars that allowed for more open treatment of general topics (Sarzoza 2014: 187–88). And while Cueva Dávila was writing his letter to Medina Castro, the next reform was being prepared. In 1971, the teaching program had a much stronger focus on theory, be it Marxist, sociological, or political,

3

 This letter has been found and distributed by historian Hernán Ibarra.

104 

P. ALTMANN

and included a specialized course in dependency theory (Sarzoza 2014: 188–89). Again, Aguirre influenced the concrete route taken toward a Marxist sociology. In a later text, published in 1987, Aguirre speaks directly about social sciences. He rejects Comte and his organicism as a founder of sociology. For Aguirre, it makes no sense to apply fixed laws to society in the same way natural science does with natural phenomena. He also sees structural functionalism as a continuation of organicism and social Darwinism (Aguirre 2018: 171). The only real social science is Marxist theory. Due to its universalism, it can be applied in Latin America without rejection due to the origin of its creators (Aguirre 2018: 183). The focus should be on social formations, understood as scientific models, but— unlike the Stalinist model—applied to local reality (Aguirre 2018: 176–79). This is why for Aguirre, Latin America is defined by a combination of different social formations, both precapitalist and capitalist (Aguirre 2018: 179–80). However, this radical break was restricted at first to the Central University. At the University of Cuenca, in 1968, César Astudillo was still a General and Ecuadorian Sociology professor in the Law Department. At that time, there were two other sociology professors in the Architecture Department (Juan Antonio Neira Carrión) and the Economy Department (José Cuesta Heredia) (Lloré Mosquera 1968: 138–44). In November 1968, a research Institute of Political and Social Sciences was created, composed of one department for political sciences and one for sociology and anthropology (Universidad de Cuenca 1968: 181). The death of Astudillo at the same time meant a major change. Luis Monsalve Pozo took over his position. In a text published shortly after, he clarifies the need “to think of a SOCIOLOGY of our own, an authentic SOCIOLOGY4” (Monsalve Pozo 1971: 121). The holistic and universalistic approach since Comte, which focused on general laws of society, made a regional or national sociology impossible (Monsalve Pozo 1971: 122–23). However, the specific historical development of national societies makes a national sociology necessary (Monsalve Pozo 1971: 124). Ecuadorian sociology does not break with the scientific method. However, it can include specific Ecuadorian social development factors, such as the geography and the historical origins, including remote history (Monsalve Pozo 1971: 4  Note that it is characteristic for Monsalve Pozo to highlight words with capitalizations since his first texts.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

105

127–28). It would contain not only the analysis of the guiding principles of Ecuadorian society but also allow to predict future developments (Monsalve Pozo 1971: 129). With this, Monsalve Pozo does fit into the new sociology insofar as he focuses on authenticity—but his argument remains deeply positivistic and can not engage with the Marxist debates that are starting to develop. At the Technical University of Machala, a Department of Sociology was created in 1970 (Rodríguez Chiles 1998). Javier Espinosa Zevallos, one of the few sociologists engaged with empirical research more than theoretical debates in Ecuador then, participated in developing the first teaching program. The result was a degree course that focused on sociology (with 15 courses in total), economy, and methods (both with 8 courses in total) but did not discuss Marxist theory in the way the School of Sociology and Political Sciences at the Central University in Quito did. Instead, the particular mix of courses produced a more applied sociology. This also was represented in the degrees to be reached: after four semesters, the students could opt for the title of sociology teacher at secondary schools, after eight semesters for the title of Licenciado in Sociology and Manager of Social Programs, and after ten semesters for the title of Social Researcher or Doctor in Sociology (Espinosa Zevallos 1972). This fifth year was only installed in 1978 (Rodríguez Chiles 1998). A different approach to sociology can be found in a research institute outside the universities, the Ecuadorian Institute for Social Development Planning (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Planificación para el Desarrollo Social, INEDES). This institute, close to the Catholic Church and the modern conservativism of the young party Democracia Popular was created in 1964 with a focus on the poor (Hurtado and Herudek 1974: 114; INEDES 1969: 11). It organized courses on capacity development, social development projects, and research on the national reality. Between March and September of 1968, a multidisciplinary team led by Osvaldo Hurtado5 that contained among others Esteban del Campo and Fernando Velasco Abad researched social reality in Ecuador (INEDES 1969: 12). They use considerable empirical data and a broad national and international research overview, including texts by Rubio Orbe, Jaramillo Alvarado, Garcés, and Espinosa Zevallos. The research focuses on marginality, understood as “the socio-economic fact that considerable groups of the popular sector, 5  Hurtado was co-founder of Democracia Popular and would become vice-president of Ecuador in 1979 and president in 1981.

106 

P. ALTMANN

in spite of belonging to the global society, remain separated from it, without being integrated, or integrated to a minimum degree” (Hurtado 1969: 15). Marginal groups are therefore unable to participate in the wider society. And as marginality is a radical condition affecting a major part of Ecuadorian society, it is impossible to overcome without outside help. Unfortunately, the relevant organizations, above all the state, did not fulfill their duty (Hurtado 1969: 16). The study itself offers a wide view of Ecuadorian society, including many statistical and historical data, but always focuses on the late 1960s. It concludes that Ecuador is indeed two superimposed worlds: one agrarian and semi-feudal, one preindustrial with some capitalistic elements (Hurtado 1969: 243). In both worlds, pressure from outside leads to change, most notably, the exportation of natural resources that implies some modernization and industrialization in the big cities and the coast. The highlands and the countryside seem to be modernizing with the agrarian reform undertaken by the military dictatorship. It is especially here where two worlds superimpose: the European one that exploits and excludes the indigenous one. The result is an increasing migration to the cities—that do not have the capacity to absorb the new population. With the crisis of the banana prices since the mid-1960s, this becomes even more complicated. A real national integration is thus still far away. A few years later, the same institute would publish another book, this time on organizations in civil society. Again, it is an empirical work with much statistical and historical data. And again, it is well connected to studies both in Ecuador and abroad, including anthropologists around the Ecuadorian Indigenist Institute and the Ecuadorian Institute of Anthropology in Otavalo, like Jaramillo Alvarado, Antonio García, Rubio Orbe, Costales, Hugo Burgos, and Latin American sociologists like Fals Borda and González Cansanova. Even the communist leader Pedro Saad is quoted. The research is impressive: the development and situation of all types of organizations are revised, including labor unions, cultural organizations, and agricultural cooperatives. Even the recently founded indigenous organization ECUARUNARI is mentioned (Hurtado and Herudek 1974: 84). Also, public and private institutions like the Ecuadorian Institute of Agrarian Reform and Colonization (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización), ministries, banks, and the Church are studied in relation to civil society. The results are disappointing:

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

107

Only the middle strata and the proletariat have been the beneficiaries of the social legislation issued since 1937. On the other hand, Ecuadorians who make up the marginalized population have not had access to this new legal-­ institutional framework and therefore have not had its protection. (Hurtado and Herudek 1974: 130–31)

Ecuadorian society is still defined by poverty, exploitation, and racism. This led the authors to an interesting conclusion: “the economic system generates marginality and […] this problem will not be solved as long as the productive bases that sustain it are not altered” (Hurtado and Herudek 1974: 134). However, even if INEDES offered relevant data on inequality and social movements in Ecuador and held a critical view of the economic and political conditions in the country, these studies were hardly discussed by the new critical sociologists—even if there is evidence that they knew of them or even participated in them. A few years later, Hurtado would teach a course in political sociology at the Catholic University connected to the work on his next book that would finally be published in 1977. This book was a reaction to the lack of productive debate and the accusations of a mere description of the other texts (Hurtado 2022). Its broadly informed debate of both Ecuadorian and international social sciences and innovative revision of the history of Ecuador, especially connected to questions of dependency and state construction (Hurtado 1988), was hardly received in Ecuadorian sociology. However, it seems to be still read among the interested public (Hurtado 2022).

The 1970s and the Institutionalization of Critical Sociology In 1970, Agustín Cueva Dávila left Ecuador to become a professor first in Chile and then at the National Autonomous  University in Mexico (Tzeiman 2017). With this, his project of a critical sociology at the Central University remained unfinished. Now, in a chaotic atmosphere of general euphoria related to the construction of “an articulating core of intellectual practices” (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 444–45) of the political left—and not an academic center—the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University of Ecuador was defined by intense debates more than teaching or research. While the struggle between a Marxist vision on sociology and a bourgeois one might have been over in the early 1970s,

108 

P. ALTMANN

there still was no clear theoretical approach to society but rather an eclecticism (Moreano 1984: 278; Sarzoza 2014: 55). This theoretical eclecticism corresponded with eclecticism in personal background. When Cueva Dávila left, the new sociology was defined by Alejandro Moreano, Esteban del Campo, Gonzalo Muñoz, Alfredo Castillo,6 and Gonzalo Abad Ortiz as central thinkers. Around 1972, Rafael Quintero, educated in the United States, joined them, combining his work at the Central University in 1972 with teaching at the Anthropology Department of the Catholic University in Quito (Barba Villamarín and Vera Toscano 2022: 120). In 1971 or 1972, the young economist Fernando Velasco, educated at the Catholic University, entered the School of Sociology and Political Sciences as a professor of political economy, at first without receiving a salary (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 444–45; Carvajal 2019). His short cooperation with Moreano was ended by the self-exile of the latter in Mexico after 1974 due to heavy internal struggles between different leftist groups. In general, these kinds of struggles defined the university in Ecuador generally, but, above all, the Central University of Ecuador. From the late 1960s on, different leftist groups have constantly struggled to control the Central University (Carvajal 2019). Maoist groups were especially aggressive against other leftist tendencies—but could never take over the School of Sociology and Political Sciences, which tried to keep an atmosphere of diversity within the radical left (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 439). This environment of chaotic openness was one factor that turned the School of Sociology and Political Sciences into a link to international intellectual developments, especially, related to dependency theory and Marxism (Quintero 2001: 16). One expression was the student-run journal Oveja Negra (Black Sheep) with four issues around 1972, where students and professors alike published short texts of economic studies, cultural critique, or revisions of the debates in the student movement. Alongside the students Francisco Muñoz, Luis Enrique López, Napoleón Saltos, Nicanor Jácome, Vicente Pólit, Miguel Merino, Iván Carvajal, participated Fernando Velasco, Gonzalo Abad, Ulises Estrella, Guido Díaz, and Iván Egüez (Carvajal 2019; Oveja Negra 1972). This time is known as one of self-governance: especially due to the work of Gonzalo Abad between 1970 and 1972, the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University acquired considerable 6  Educated as economist and translator at the Patrice Lumumba University (now: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia) in the 1960s (Castillo Bujase n.d.).

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

109

autonomy from the Law Department of which it was still part. Abad Ortiz had returned from Mexico, where he finished his licenciatura in international relations in 1970 (Abad Ortiz 1970), and brought with him several books that were inspired by the movement of 1968. A short text by José Revueltas (2008) from 1968 seemed to have been an obligatory lecture in his classes and was the basis for the School during those years. The central idea was to create a space for critical thinking beyond all the administrative obligations of higher education. As director of the School between 1971 and 1972, Abad Ortiz pushed for a more diverse approach to society, leading ultimately to the reform in the teaching plan of 1971. In June 1972, he was attacked by Maoist groups that rejected the idea of self-governance and he resigned from his position (Samaniego 2020). In 1974 and until 1983, he would become the first director of FLACSO Ecuador (Lucas 2007). Abad Ortiz also had a different role in Ecuadorian sociology. As subdirector of the National Planning and Coordination Board (Junta Nacional de Planificación y Coordinación), he provided many sociology professors with jobs that guaranteed a good income. Del Campo, Moreano, Cueva Dávila, Nicanor Jácome, and others combined the work at this institution with their classes at the Central University (Pachano 2022). While most of the texts of this Board are limited to economic data and do not engage with sociological research, some texts give an impression of the scope of the debates. For instance, Esteban del Campo wrote an internal document in July 1972 that displays a clear criticism of capitalism alongside a wide knowledge of the contemporary Latin American debates on dependency and marginality, including references to Hurtado, Cueva Dávila, Quijano, González Casanova, Stavenhagen, and others (del Campo 1972). Since the early 1970s, the School of Sociology and Political Sciences participated more openly in political struggles of Ecuadorian society. The national  strikes in 1971 and 1975 influenced the School itself and the teaching programs developed during this period (Moreano 1984: 279). During this time, different leftist organizations engaged actively with the School, influencing teaching and research to connect sociology with the social reality in Ecuador (Quintero 1977: 137). This was one factor— together with particular personal and international connections—why the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University became a national center of political thought and Marxist theory (Moreano 1984: 279). Another result was that the different directors of the School had to state explicitly that it was neither a “school of political cadres”

110 

P. ALTMANN

(Quintero 1977: 131) nor a “political party” (Moreano 1984: 280; Quintero 1977: 131) nor an “organic intellectual of the working class” (Moreano 1984: 279). Their direct political engagement in the conditions of the university had important limitations. Theory needed to be connected to how it was understood in the university (Moreano 1984: 277). This led to an increasing adaptation, in the form of a particular understanding of Marxism that could connect easily to the predominant way of thinking (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 446). Yet another reform of the teaching plan in 1974 shows this growing theoretical coherence. Now, four courses were dedicated to historical or contemporary problems in the world or Latin America, political economy and history of social sciences became much more central, and most advanced courses were seminars with a rather general definition, such as political theory or urban sociology—something unheard of in Ecuador before then. Also, now there were several courses related to Marxist theory, such as seminars in Marx’s Capital, Gramsci, dialectics, or the revolution (Sarzoza 2014: 190–92). Those seminars, starting in the third year of studies, were related to the research done by both professors and students (Granda 1977a: 216). One example is a seminar on Durkheim and Max Weber held by Jessica Ehlers in 1975.7 She was invited by Quintero for this seminar in particular, and taught a variety of critical yet interested students and professors based on books she herself had to provide, as the library of the School at that time was rather small (Ehlers 2022). The seminars were defined by areas that also served to organize the work of the professors (Quintero 1977: 134). Those areas were history of social thought, focusing on the historical development of the social sciences, with professors Enzo Mella, Daniel Granda, Rafael Quintero (Granda 1977a: 217; Quintero 1977: 138), historical materialism, focusing on Marxist theory, class struggle, and social formations, with professors Napoléon Saltos, Milton Benítez, Oswaldo Vintimilla, Simón Corral, theory of method, focusing on how to understand social reality, with professors Gonzalo Muñoz and Francisco Vergara, and political economy, focusing on the relations of economic production, with professors Castillo, César Verduga, Julio César Vizuete, and Diego Cornejo. The area of research methods was not functioning (Quintero 1977: 137–38). In the following years, the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University would professionalize further. For instance, in  It seems that Ehlers was the first female sociologist teaching at the university.

7

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

111

1974, there were 12 professors, but only 2 (Rafael Quintero and Alfredo Castillo) had full-time posts. Esteban del Campo had a half-time position, and Fernando Velasco only had a part-time post. This did not change until 1976, when 10 of the 23 professors had full-time positions. At that point, the major part of the personnel that would define the School until after 2000 was complete,8 including Granda, Jácome, Saltos, Verduga, and a few exiled academics from Chile, namely Mella and one of the first female sociologists in Ecuador, Ana Jusid (Quintero 1977: 135–36). The selection of the professors did not happen through a public recruitment process but through contracts that were turned into tenured positions if the professors proved valuable (Quintero 1977: 134). Still, Quintero as director of the School closed down the doctorate due to a lack of personnel and a workload based on the understanding of the work of a professor by the university as solely concerned with teaching, ignoring research, support for students, and other activities (Quintero 1977: 133–34). The mid-1970 saw the emergence of several degree courses in sociology. Within a few years, sociology could be studied not only at the Central University and the Technical University of Machala but also at the University of Guayaquil, the Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito, and the University of Cuenca. In Cuenca, the degree course in sociology was created in 1974/1975 as a part of the Economy Department. Sociology was conceived as related to revolutionary politics and the formation of political leaders (Salazar Vintimilla 2015: 13). This was achieved with a rather historical and theoretical focus, closer to sociology than elsewhere (Salazar Vintimilla 2015: 14–15), possibly leading to a relatively small interest among students—former director of the School, Marco Salamea, estimates that there were never more than 50 students. Former director Carlos Rojas remembers 30 students in the first generation and 25 to 28 in the second one (Salazar Vintimilla 2015: 15). After one year of functioning, in 1976, a major reform of the teaching plan was undertaken to strengthen critical thinking, a holistic approach to society, and to the application of different theories to local reality (Henriquez 1977: 202). This necessitated overcoming the traditional separation between teaching and research, especially in the central areas of methodology, history, political economy, sociological studies, anthropology, and social psychology 8  The most relevant changes after this moment were the integration of Iván Carvajal as a professor in 1977 and the death of Velasco Abad in 1978 (Carvajal 2019).

112 

P. ALTMANN

(Henriquez 1977: 203). Due to the repressive political regimes in southern Latin America, many intellectuals emigrated to Ecuador, and some became professors in Cuenca. This included several researchers from Chile, Dulfredo Rúa from Bolivia, and María Inés García from Argentina. With this, a much clearer Marxist and sociological formation came into play (Salazar Vintimilla 2015: 16). Nevertheless, two problems already appeared during this time: due to industrialization policy and petrol exploitation, the general discourse in Ecuador centered on development— and sociology could not participate. At the same time, sociology in Cuenca was, following former director Marco Salamea, quite Eurocentric and focused on authors like Balibar, Althusser, and Poulantzas and did not take into account Latin American social theory (Salazar Vintimilla 2015: 17). Nevertheless, with the Revista Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales (Journal Institute of Social Research, IDIS),9 published between January 1975 and December 1991, Cuenca became a center of sociological debate in Ecuador. This, the first Ecuadorian social sciences journal, would define debate in sociology in the country, giving preference to regional studies and researchers working in Cuenca (Cerutti Guldberg 1986: 49–50). The journal Pucara, founded by Iván Carvajal in 1977 and led by different intellectuals, would connect the philosophical debate with social sciences, for instance, with its introductory text by Carvajal himself, who defends with Gramsci the need for a wholistic approach to social reality (Carvajal 1977). FLACSO Ecuador was founded in 1974 as a result of the persecution of the original FLACSO Chile (Beigel 2009: 346), with Gonzalo Abad as its first president. However, until the late 1970s, the focus was on networking and acquiring funding from UNESCO, the Ecuadorian government, and other actors. During the first years, FLACSO Ecuador was engaged more with research and only conducted a few courses for the interested public (Ehlers 2022). The Catholic University of Ecuador shifted during the 1970s under its president Hernán Malo closer to Liberation Theology. One effect was the creation of a Humanities Department in 1971 (Paladines Escudero 2018) that received some philosophers that had to search for refuge from the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, among them Arturo Andrés Roig 9  This was the name since issue 4, published in December 1976. Before that, the journal was called Revista Instituto de Investigaciones Regionales de la Universidad de Cuenca (Journal Institute of Regional Research of the University of Cuenca, IIRDUC).

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

113

and Rodolfo Mario Agoglia. An independent Department of Sociology, dedicated solely to research and social science training for professors of the other departments, was created in 1973. It was annexed to the Humanities Department in 1975 as the School of Sociology, offering a licenciatura degree course in sociology (Arboleda Lasso 2015: 73–74; Arcos 1986: 55–56; García Gallegos 2022; Jácome 2005: 128). At the same time, a Masters-­level program in Rural Sociology was created, backed by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, CLACSO), that would not only form Ecuadorian sociologists and establish a persisting interest in rural issues but also bring many exiled social scientists from the southern part of South America to Ecuador (Arcos 1986: 57; García Gallegos 2022; Pachano 2022). This first Masterslevel program in Ecuador was coordinated by Bertha García and brought together Latin American experts like Miguel Murmis, Edelberto Torres, Eduardo Archetti, and others. It directly influenced the formation of the School of Sociology, both with respect to professors and teaching programs. The result was a sociology focused on research that could count on relatively good funding, due to the support of CLACSO, the Ford Foundation, and other actors (Jácome 2005: 128). Around the mid-1970s, the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University developed a more closed approach society: a structural Marxism, around Althusser and Poulantzas (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 445; Polo Bonilla 2012: 138–39), dedicated to the analysis of social formations, but largely excluding other debates of the contemporary academic left like the Frankfurt School and the Birmingham School. This could have been the result of the need to produce an ‘objective’ knowledge to maintain respectability (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 446). This tendency is expressed first in the publication of Ecuador. Past and Present (Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas 1975). This book brings together important reflections by Fernando Velasco, Alejandro Moreano, and some other thinkers of this period. It defines a certain way of understanding society and marks some of the most relevant debates of the moment. Shortly after, in August of 1976, the first National Congress of Schools of Sociology of Ecuador (Congreso Nacional de Escuelas de Sociología) took place in Quito, with participants from Cuenca, Machala, Guayaquil, the Catholic University, and the Central University, as well as organizations of the political left and researchers working abroad. With it, the new critical sociology was further defined (Polo Bonilla 2012: 140), organized

114 

P. ALTMANN

around debates about the socio-economic formations of Ecuador with a special focus on contemporary and historical situation analysis and the role of social sciences. A common point in the various papers and commentaries is the intention of situating Marxism as the backbone of the sociological instrument for the knowledge of reality. This intention was driven by the significant presence of leftist groups within the Faculties and Schools of Sociology and is linked to a second common statement: the need to work in order to serve the interests of the working class, tending to expand the radius of action of the same, through the importation of their interests and their thinking to the University. (Saltos 1977: 123)

It is interesting to note that Saltos revised the different presentations focusing on their relationship to Marxism on the one hand and positivism and functionalism on the other one. Marxism had become the dominating paradigm of Ecuadorian sociology. Another important factor of institutionalization was the creation of the Revista Ciencias Sociales of the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University. This project, led by Rafael Quintero, tried to overcome the infrastructural problems of Ecuadorian social sciences— such as the long time it took to publish research (Granda 1977a: 218; Quintero 1977: 139)—and to academicize sociology in Ecuador. It would be one of the most relevant platforms of sociological debate in the 1970s and early 1980s (Polo Bonilla 2012: 140) and define the main topics of Marxist critical sociology, especially in the first few issues (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 446). However, some articles engage less in conceptual development and more in an exclusionary leftist discourse that focus on “what Marx really meant to say” (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 447). Thus, the new Marxist sociology was engaged with critical re-reading of Ecuadorian history from an understanding of social totality that considers both material structure and immaterial superstructure and necessarily implied interdisciplinarity—even if there tended to be a certain bias toward economism (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 449; Cerutti Guldberg 1986: 38–39). The historical interests led to a connection with philosophers of the history of ideas school around Arturo Andrés Roig and Carlos Paladines at the Catholic University and Horacio Cerutti at the University of Cuenca (Cerutti Guldberg 1986: 50–51). Most of the philosophers with historical interests were refugees from the dictatorships in Argentina.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

115

Especially Roig is relevant as he was one of the few researchers engaging with the history of social thought in Ecuador (Roig 1977, 1979, 2013). This interest was shared by local publishing houses and sociologists like Rafael Quintero (1988) and the Biblioteca Ecuatoriana run by Elías Muñoz Vicuña in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Still, there remained certain divisions. While one approach to sociology tried to push for a more academic path, valuing empirical research and the institutionalization of research structures—especially, around Quintero—another one, inspired by Cueva Dávila, Moreano, and the tzántzicos, preferred an engagement with the wider public through culture and literature (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 449). Already during the late 1970s, some changes happened in Ecuadorian sociology. Possibly, the XII Latin American Congress of Sociology 1977 in Quito indicated a shift in Ecuadorian sociology. Almost no Ecuadorian participated: the only three presentations were by del Campo, Verduga, and the School of Sociology of Cuenca. At the same time, some stars of Latin American sociology participated, among them Hugo Zemelman, González Casanova, Atilio Borón, and Guillermo O’Donnell (Anon 1978). Shortly after, FLACSO Ecuador, which had operated since 1974 under the direction of Gonzalo Abad but focused on courses more than research or formal education, started its first Master’s Degree in Social Sciences, a Master of Development Studies that ran from 1978 to 1980 (Lucas 2007: 50–51). With this, FLACSO Ecuador started to organize a series of Master’s courses in social sciences and built a solid faculty consisting of permanent full-time professors and invited professors. Among them were Osvaldo Barsky, Carlos Larrea, Luis Verdesoto, Enrique Ayala, Manuel Chiriboga, Enzo Faletto, but also some professors from the Central University like Andrés Guerrero, Luciano Martínez, Rafael Quintero, and Erika Silva (Lucas 2007: 59). In 1979, the second National Congress of Schools and Departments of Sociology of Ecuador took place in Cuenca. The list of participants indicates a succession that prefigured the weakening of sociology in Ecuador in the 1980s. The Central University of Ecuador, the Catholic University of Ecuador, both from Quito, the Technical University of Machala, the University of Guayaquil, the University of Esmeraldas, and the University of Cuenca itself participated. But only few of the dominating sociologists of the 1970s were present: Granda and Moreano from the Central University, José María Egas from the Catholic University, and Víctor Granda and Lucas Achig from the University of Cuenca. Many of the

116 

P. ALTMANN

other names that appeared would not have a major impact on sociology in Ecuador (Anon 1981).

Central Debates in Ecuadorian Critical Sociology With the nationwide institutionalization of sociology as a degree course in Ecuador, it becomes virtually impossible to trace all research being produced. So, instead of giving an overview of the work of every sociologist— since the 1970s, well over 100 people have been working as professors for sociology in the country—in the following, the focus will be on central debates defining the whole of Ecuadorian sociology. Certain topics transverse these debates and allowed several sociologists to participate in more than one rather easily. Those topics are defined by the particular Marxist approach chosen. In every debate, references to social formation, class analysis, the role of the state, and a re-reading of history are to be found. This approach makes some exclusions inevitable. For instance, it will not be possible to analyze and contextualize the work of Patricio Moncayo, one of the first social scientists trained in Ecuador. In several texts in the 1970s, he researched the relation between power and underdevelopment in Ecuador with an approach clearly inspired by Althusser and Poulantzas. He distinguished the economic, juridical-political, and ideological spheres, interrelated in the social totality and defined by a power structure related to class struggle and particularly present in the public sphere (Moncayo 1976: 83). In underdeveloped countries, this general set of relations is even more complex and defined by inherent contradictions. The Debate on Populism Perhaps the debate in Ecuadorian critical sociology that was most visible internationally was the debate on populism. The phenomenon of five-­ times-­president Velasco Ibarra drew particular attention to questions of political culture, class relations, and forms of domination. Agustín Cueva Dávila, still professor in Quito, offered the first interpretation in 1970.10 He criticized the three most relevant thesis to understand Velasco Ibarra’s success in his first elections in 1934. Velasquismo is not simply a conservative reaction to liberalism, it is not explainable as oligarchy domination, 10  As professor in Chile, he would publish these ideas as a book in 1972, El proceso de dominación política en Ecuador.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

117

and it cannot be reduced to the demagogic talent of Velasco Ibarra himself (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 710). Rather, it is connected to the successive failures of liberal governments (until 1925), a military government (1925–1931), and a conservative attempt to build a government in the following years. This atmosphere, produced by the failure of the established political forces, persisted in the later elections Velasco Ibarra won. Another critical factor was the appearance of a “mass situation” (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 715), defined by a growing population in the cities, especially due to migration from the countryside, and the first mass organizations. With this, the political culture in Ecuador changed: “The traditional politics of elites, with its old parties of notables, has become obsolete” (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 716). Now, the politically usable masses were a factor to be taken into account. However, the subproletariat was already at that time opportunistic and hard to organize for Marxist groups (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 719). Velasco Ibarra was able to defuse this potentially dangerous situation. Velasquismo represented a conservative element of the social order, highly functional for having allowed the system to temporarily absorb its most visible contradictions and overcome its worst crises at low cost, maintaining a democratic façade and even with apparent popular consensus. (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 720)

Thus, it allowed absorbing the mass situation through a “mass manipulation mechanism in constant short circuit with domination groups” (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 721). However, once in government, Velasco Ibarra was supported by the lower middle class due to his populist politics of building roads, schools, and public administration buildings—and his tendency to ‘sweep out’ public service. All this produced job opportunities and direct benefits for them, more than for the lower classes. But this politics brings him in direct opposition to the established organizations of the middle class that demand that he meet their needs first. The success of Velasco Ibarra is related to the superficial transplantation of the ideological superstructure—liberalism, conservatism, and socialism in Ecuador are not coherent political ideologies but rather “equivocal entities, with extremely vague existential resonances” (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 727) that barely affect the collective subconsciousness. Velasco Ibarra was able to blend those elements in a political syncretism, focused on the “Catholic models of perception of reality” (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 728) of his constituency as well as the personal relationships of power they

118 

P. ALTMANN

were used to. With a symbolic more than a conceptual message, he creates the illusion of participation and psychological integration of the masses (Cueva Dávila 1970a: 734). These ideas were taken up a few years later by del Campo. A rather general reflection on the social conditions of populism in Ecuador (del Campo 1977) is condensed in 1978  in a more concrete analysis of the conditions of the populism of Velasco Ibarra. Del Campo agrees with Cueva Dávila’s diagnosis of a mass situation and a crisis of the political hegemony of the established forces. In this sense, populism is a new way for the oligarchy to relate to the masses (del Campo 1978: 1103). The mass situation is directly connected to the cacao crisis, when prices dropped in half in 1920 and 1921, ruining many peasants in the coastal region and forcing them to migrate to the cities. As the highland was characterized by a subsistence economy, it was less impacted. The upper classes mitigated their losses with monetary devaluation, leading to a weakening of the coastal oligarchy (del Campo 1978: 1106). The revolution of 1925 produced a break with the financial oligarchy and opened the state to the growing middle classes—however, those proved unable to control society (del Campo 1978: 1108). With this, the conditions for Velasquismo were prepared. Participation of the masses “within the framework established by the dominant classes” (del Campo 1978: 1109), that is their representation and substitution through Velasco Ibarra himself in the sense of paternalism, was a way to maintain the status quo and overcome momentarily the incapacity of the dominant classes to solve their conflicts or establish effective control of power (del Campo 1978: 1110). This temporary solution consisted of the personalization of power in Velasco Ibarra, who presented himself as the central figure of social arbitrage. With this, the masses became “the only real source of autonomous personal power and […] the most important source of legitimacy of the state” (del Campo 1978: 1111). This implies that while the masses lacked power and organization, the binding moment is their relation to the urban economy and their political presence. However, del Campo agrees with Cueva Dávila that Velasco Ibarra is by no means anti-system. Rather, he is an integral part of the state: “The state is the factor that accumulates class disputes and absorbs them in a phenomenon that would seem to avoid the concentration of historical responsibilities of specific sectors of the dominant classes” (del Campo 1978: 1113). This led to a tacit class alliance as all social classes accepted the established rules of the political game and recognized the legitimacy of both state and leader (del Campo 1978: 1115).

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

119

Velasco Ibarra was able to channel democratic legitimacy through electoral participation, maintaining an “authoritarianism typical for this form of charismatic relationship” (del Campo 1978: 1116). With the modernization due to the banana boom beginning in the late 1940s, this general social constellation changed profoundly. Now, the class relations were different, favoring the middle classes, and the economic structure led to the strengthening of “a fraction of the industrial bourgeoisie [tied] to foreign capital, which needs another type of rationalization of the state apparatus” (del Campo 1978: 1118). The result was that populism lost importance and military interventions increased. Another position in this debate, which was not taken into account at first, was contained in a presentation at the second National Congress of Departments and Schools of Sociology in Cuenca in late 1979 by the sociology professor of the Catholic University José María Egas. With reference to Poulantzas, Egas proposed to analyze populism in relation to both the social formation of the country and class struggle and its political expressions. In addition, he introduced a new and different idea connecting to Octavio Ianni. For him, there are two types of populism at play: a populism from below and a populism from above. In this sense, Velasco Ibarra had initiated a profound change in the political culture of Ecuador: “While the leader effectively translated the economic interests of capital into power, he also neutralized the expectations that nourished the illusion of the masses” (Egas 2012: 107). During the second presidency of Velasco Ibarra  between  1944 and 1947, this populist feeling, including nationalism, a Christian identity, anticommunism, and a repressive political style (Egas 2012: 109–10), was perfected and would carry on for a long time, even without Velasco Ibarra himself. The central idea of Egas is that the articulation between a populism from below and a populism for above in terms of those four main ideas had defined Ecuadorian politics up to the moment of his presentation in 1979. However, he attributed to the two new and modern political parties Democracia Popular (of which he was a leading member) and Izquierda Democrática the possibility of changing political culture and deepening democracy in Ecuador. Nevertheless, this interpretation was largely ignored. Both Cueva Dávila and del Campo continued to focus on the person of Velasco Ibarra and his charismatic style of campaign and presidency. Rafael Quintero rejected this kind of interpretation as “subjective sociology” (Quintero 2018: 182). Instead, he called for a methodology that would relate phenomena that are not connected but interdependent. Thus, Quintero

120 

P. ALTMANN

rejected the role of charisma as unscientific (Quintero 2018: 188) and denounced del Campo and the early Cueva Dávila as Weberians (Quintero 2018: 183). For him, the triumph of Velasco Ibarra was not due to his talent as a public speaker. Instead, the Conservative Party, supporting Velasco Ibarra in the 1930s, was the first to organize a professional election campaign as opposed to the Liberal Party, which only later broke with its focus on the local nobility. The Conservative Party became a modern, nationwide political party, with mass organizations that could maintain political control over the subproletariat (Quintero 2018: 202). The political elite finally accepted “suffrage as the most important mechanism of ruling class consensus” (Quintero 2018: 184). This also was an important step in the modernization of the state and society. However, the diagnosis of Cueva Dávila and del Campo that the early 1930s were volatile on a political level is not entirely off: there was, in fact, a revolutionary proletariat developing, connected especially to the Communist Party founded in 1931. Velasco Ibarra could present himself in this context as an “organic intellectual of the allied Right” (Quintero 2018: 188). However, there is a more drastic error in the earlier studies related to the importance of voting in the new suburban population. Using data from the voting registries of the election in late 1933, Quintero pointed out that the landslide wins for Velasco Ibarra did not happen in Guayaquil and the suburban neighborhoods but rather in the countryside and the highlands. For several reasons, the claimed relation between migration to the cities and Velasquismo was incorrect. For once, it is misdated—the cacao crisis did not produce a mass migration to the cities. Rather, the result was to change and strengthen the forms of exploitation on the haciendas of the coast and to switch to other crops or other products altogether. There was also no mass situation for another reason: until the constitution of 1978/1979, illiterates were not allowed to vote in Ecuador—and this applied to almost all migrants to the cities. During the 1940s, all this changed due to the banana boom: now, there was an important migration to the coast and increased access to voting. And the political situation was different, too: “this coastal population escapes the control of the hacienda superstructure at the local level […] and globally, it escapes the control of the Catholic Church” (Quintero 2018: 195). Finally, as the poor peasants in the countryside were also illiterate and not allowed to vote, the most important source of votes for Velasco Ibarra was the rural petty bourgeoisie and the landowners.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

121

Of course, the debate was much wider and included takes from other researchers, who tried to apply these reflections on populism to other phenomena than Velasco Ibarra, or pushed for a more direct study of voter behavior, perhaps most prominently Amparo Menéndez-Carrión, who in the 1980s and 1990s was director of FLACSO Ecuador (Burbano and de la Torre 1989). However, the positions of Cueva Dávila and Quintero— with some changes and adaptations—dominated to the point that they were reproduced in any text on populism in Ecuador. This debate was ended by two historians, Juan Maiguashca and Liisa North, in the early 1990s. With a much better empirical basis and different theoretical references, they confirmed the role of the political crisis caused, in part, by the cacao crisis, in the first election of Velasco Ibarra (Maiguashca and North 1991: 90). However, the debate between Cueva Dávila and Quintero was centered on the social basis of Velasquismo and the question of whether it is a new phenomenon or the consolidation of the Conservative Party. Maiguashca and North worked with a different type of class analysis. They argued that Ecuador during this time “is not a capitalist society and, therefore, cannot be a society of fully conformed classes” (Maiguashca and North 1991: 93). So they proposed a different approach: following English historian E.P. Thompson, class struggle is the condition for the development of both social classes and class consciousness. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account the moral economy of the poor. In order to do that, they reexamined the details of economic development in the different regions of Ecuador. The processes of industrialization between the crisis of cacao (in the first years of the 1920s) and the banana boom (from the last years of the 1940s) led to the greater importance of the highlands and new forms of class struggle. The crisis of traditional authority was met by the dominated with “new languages such as syndicalism and communism. But these languages were reinterpreted on the basis of their cultural heritages” (Maiguashca and North 1991: 100). Now, groups that were formerly excluded from the labor movement, like the indigenous population, started to organize in unions and use strikes as a method of choice. However, in Ecuador, unlike other countries in the region, no proletariat forms. Instead, politicization affects the growing middle classes, connected to public service and craftspeople. Velasco Ibarra, already well-known in the 1920s, could appeal to precisely these groups, defined by a combination of liberal individualism and Catholic beliefs. He could express their needs and demands in traditional terms and not in modern terms of class society (Maiguashca and North

122 

P. ALTMANN

1991: 209). This implies that his relation to the Conservative Party in the 1930s was momentary and could not establish a long-term hegemony. Instead, it was a period of transition. The second phase of Velasquismo, between 1950 and 1972, with the third, fourth, and fifth presidency of Velasco Ibarra, takes place in a rapidly changing society. The cities were growing fast, and employment related to craftsmanship decreased while service jobs increased. However, this process is full of contradictions, including an increase in the number of jobs related to agrarian work. The formerly strong sector of textile production proved unable to compete with international prices. The increasing modernization of agricultural production changed the countryside’s social structure, expelling indigenous workers, especially after the end of the semi-feudal huasipungo on the haciendas with the agrarian reform of 1964. All of this led to an activation of the internal market, an increased political consciousness among the workers, and an increase in informal work. However, as the industry did not grow significantly until the 1980s, a broad organization was impossible (Maiguashca and North 1991: 122). Another important result was that economic weight returned to the coastal region, especially Guayaquil (Maiguashca and North 1991: 130). Maiguashca and North contradict Quintero’s diagnosis of a modernization of the Conservative Party and the state. Political parties were, until the 1960s, “client groups and not modern parties” (Maiguashca and North 1991: 137). As parties actually modernized in the 1960s, Velasquismo lost its attractivity among voters due to the failure of his presidency in 1960–1961 and the contradiction between his moralist message and the development of a modern form of class consciousness (Maiguashca and North 1991: 143). It is during this time that migrants start to play a more important role, of “carriers of new political massages” (Maiguashca and North 1991: 143). In the later years, the debate on populism in Ecuador left its origins behind and focused more on newer phenomena of political populism, especially on Abdalá Bucaram, president from 1996 to 1997, and Rafael Correa, president from 2007 to 2017. Rafael Quintero (2004, 2005) remained influential for a long time, moving closer to political science in his work on elections. However, other researchers like Carlos de la Torre, Felipe Burbano de Lara, Valeria Coronel (Coronel and Cadahia 2018), or Jorge Daniel Vásquez (2022) have a different approach to populism, including other theoretical references and coming to other conclusions.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

123

The Debate on Dependency In the 1970s, dependency theory was the most influential approach to society in Latin America. Although in the late 1960s, there are a few references to the important authors of this theory, it was only in the early 1970s that Ecuadorian thinkers started to apply this theory to Ecuador. It was most likely economist José Moncada Sánchez who introduced a coherent application of dependency theory in Ecuador. After returning from working abroad for the Interamerican Development Bank in 1972, he joined the National Planning and Coordination Board (Salgado Tamayo 2008: 9) and worked at the Economy Department of the Central University. Seemingly, he also worked at the School of Sociology and Political Sciences—at least in one of his publications, he claims to do so. Here, his first publications under the pseudonym Babeuf are relevant (Salgado Tamayo 2008: 31). For him, the central part of the political struggle in Ecuadorian society is related to the structures of international dependency. Mainly, it is the exporting and importing economy against the traditional landowners (Babeuf 1972b: 376). For Moncada Sánchez, it is precisely this conflict that led both to the consecutive successes of Velasco Ibarra in elections and to his consecutive failures in holding power (Babeuf 1972b: 378). In another text, published by the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University, his analysis becomes even more sociological. For him, regional economic integration can lead to a deeper international dependency or internal development processes (Babeuf 1972a: 10). Connecting to sociologists like Octavio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Enzo Faletto, he detects processes of a consensual hegemony that deepen the underdevelopment of the region (Babeuf 1972a: 19). In the same year, 1972, Fernando Velasco Abad graduated as an economist with a thesis that started to circulate immediately but was only published as a book in 1983. This text and his following work would define the debate on dependency in Ecuador (Cerutti Guldberg 1986: 38). For Velasco Abad, the independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century was already defined by mechanisms of international dependency. Ever since the seventeenth century, Spain had become increasingly unable to provide its colonies with manufactured products, due to its strictly mercantilist policy, general lack of industrialization, and lost influence in relation to England (Velasco Abad 2018: 83). The global social formation began to be “dominated by the capitalist mode of production” (Velasco

124 

P. ALTMANN

Abad 2018: 85). When, due to the Napoleonic Wars, the connection between Latin America and Spain was interrupted in the early nineteenth century, commerce with England and the United States took the position of Spain, and ideas of free trade started to spread among the national bourgeoisies related to trade. The result was a shift in the power structure in what would become Ecuador: on the coast and with Guayaquil as the main port, a commercial bourgeoisie started to develop that soon would challenge the predominance of the landowners of the highlands. Liberalism would become their political ideology. However, due to the power struggles between post-colonial elites, the region could not overcome regionalist conflicts and integrate into a common market. Also, the role of exports would remain negligible until the second half of the nineteenth century, especially due to competition with the British Commonwealth in the Caribbean that produced the same products. Because of this, the influence of the United States was more political than economic. It was up to the national commercial bourgeoisie “to structure a nationally consolidated political system that allows local control of the export production system” (Velasco Abad 2018: 92). This fraction of the ruling class tried to take over control of the other fractions and push for national integration, especially through an effective banking system and good roads and railroads. It was only with the cacao boom from the end of the nineteenth century that Ecuador was integrated into the global capitalist system and its international division of labor. Thus, the first century of national independence led to a dependent capitalist model with mutual complementarity of the productive sectors oriented to export growth. In a later text produced in the context of Velasco Abad’s political work in 1975 and only published recently, he connects this historical reexamination with an analysis of his time and the political action needed. Since the Liberal Revolution in 1895, Ecuadorian society had been predominantly capitalist. However, dependency is “a fact that affects society structurally” (Velasco Abad 2019: 293) as the integration of Ecuador into global capitalism was determined by colonialism, that is, combining a constant need to drain surplus value and the impossibility of industrializing. Agricultural production for export was combined with precapitalistic production for the internal market, neither of which could provide sufficient jobs and income for the population. Before the 1960s, the ruling classes were dominated by the agro-exporting bourgeoisie (Velasco Abad 2019: 295). Industrialization since the 1960s could not change the general situation, as it is focused on consumer goods for the middle and upper class and did

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

125

not demand much workforce. This is why a progressive national bourgeoisie that would oppose feudalism and imperialism could not develop (Velasco Abad 2019: 296). The lower classes are no longer simply peasants. As the precapitalist relations decompose, this class divides into minifundistas with small land property and an individualistic way of thinking, an unstable rural proletariat, and marginal urban strata that support populist leaders. The urban proletariat that should be the guiding force of the revolution is small due to the lack of industrialization and tends to “the ideology of consumerism” (Velasco Abad 2019: 298). The middle class is ambiguous on the ideological level, moving between revolutionary and authoritarian attitudes. As socialism depends on objective conditions, the development of the productive forces, specifically the economic development of Ecuador must be strengthened (Velasco Abad 2019: 300). So, to allow for a popular, democratic, and nationalist revolution, dependent capitalism must be overcome. This should be done by pushing industrialization, leading to a more important role for labor unions. This is why the political left must find ways to accumulate strength, push for economic development, and strike against the most reactionary forces within the bourgeoisie. For this debate, the publication of Ecuador. Pasado y Presente in 1975 was decisive. More relevant than the participation of José Moncada are two other contributions. Historian René Báez detected a failure of the development programs around the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s. They proved unable to grasp the fundamental problems (Báez 1975: 250) and instead deepened the dependence on the United States and were to “cause the hypertrophy of the public sector and create techno-military decision-making nuclei that replace, at least partially, the old oligarchies and traditional politicians” (Báez 1975: 251). After a phase of economic problems in the second part of the 1960s, the dictatorship between 1972 and 1978 financed the same type of development policies with the money from the oil boom. The result was a new dependency and a capitalist modernization that established “internal accumulation circuits in our countries” (Báez 1975: 263). The new neocolonial dependency is different from earlier forms. Now, “the modern sectors of the economy—industry, commerce, services—will be controlled ab initio by foreign capital, establishing a solidarity and articulation with local businessmen […] and originating a permanent flow of economic surplus towards the imperialist centers” (Báez 1975: 264).

126 

P. ALTMANN

In another chapter of the same book, Alejandro Moreano articulates his ideas with dependency theory. In his history of the twentieth century in Ecuador, the 1920s are defined by a consolidated Ecuadorian bourgeoisie, organized around agribusiness, and a politics that focuses on national integration and state centralization. Due to the Liberal Revolution, there was a “new ideological apparatus of the State—the secular, state educational system—for the administration and reproduction of the new dominant, liberal, positive, humanist ideology” (Moreano 2018: 105). However, state and society were highly dependent on global capitalism. The cacao crisis in the early 1920s was met with a monetary devaluation and mass unemployment. This economic crisis translated into an ideological crisis: the liberal and conservative political languages could not provide the necessary terms and concepts to deal with the crisis. The elites had to explore socialism as a “great verbal reserve” (Moreano 2018: 112)—the bourgeoisie consumed the ideological products of the proletariat, integrating them into the liberal ideology. This was also the panorama for the nascent Ecuadorian left, turning socialism into “the radical wing of liberalism” (Moreano 2018: 115). The worldwide financial crisis of the 1930s hardly affected the Ecuadorian economy. Yet, the growing overexploitation of urban proletariat, businessmen, and craftsmen led to the first labor unions and the first engaged intellectuals, who demanded democratization and redistribution in a program of class conciliation. The late 1930s saw a growing social consciousness and a first industrialization that ended with the reprimarization of the economy of the region due to the Second World War (Moreano 2018: 133). Especially with the banana boom from the late 1940s, Ecuador became more integrated into the world economy. This was also the moment when the ideological crisis could be overcome: now, a technocratic view of society became en vogue, and the middle classes supported the ruling classes, especially due to an expansion in public service jobs. The 1920s to 1950s saw a development “from the predominance of the liberal professions in an economy in crisis […] to the predominance of small landowners and traders and the upper bureaucratic strata in a boom phase” (Moreano 2018: 141). This went hand in hand with foreign investments in Ecuadorian industry, especially in the following years. This text combining dependency theory with a critique of ideology and class analysis is especially interesting compared to a text published shortly after. In 1976, Moreano undertook a harsh criticism of dependency theory, focusing on the concrete formation and antagonism of social classes (Chávez 2021: 46). Now, he sees dependency theory as something upheld

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

127

naively by groups believing in national development, followers of Fidel Castro, that above all ignore the theory of articulation of modes of production. It does not take into account the imperialistic structure of the capitalist world economy, notably the worldwide expansion of capital-­ commodities and the international amplification of productive capital. All those factors obstruct or deform national productive forces (Moreano 1976: 52). So, for Moreano, it is not about dependency but about the articulation of modes of production. In global capitalism, there is an overdetermination by the dominant mode of production of less-developed socio-economic formations (Moreano 1976: 53) that affects the whole society and makes strategies of national unity absurd. The general tendencies of capitalism, like the fall of the profit rate and overexploitation, especially of colonies, lead to an expansion of capitalism in dependent countries. However, the Third World, due to its semi-feudal condition11 and inability to accumulate, is not integrated into global capitalism but serves as a support for the circulation of commodities and capital: capitalism as social relation remains restricted, and older modes of production are integrated into global exploitation without leading to a modernization of the national economy (Moreano 1976: 60). This turns the hopes for a revolutionary bourgeoisie and both bourgeois and proletarian nationalism into mere dreams. Especially in Latin America, new social zones are created by international capital. These zones, generally plantations or haciendas, work with a particular mixture of forms of primitive accumulation that produce a high surplus value due to low salaries. However, this only works with agricultural production and natural resources. Industrial production lacks the same exploitability. Thus, dependent countries are reduced to exporting raw materials (Moreano 1976: 67). However, the mere existence of capitalist enterprises created pressure in support of the transition of formal to real subordination of work under capital. Combined with the necessary production for the internal market and the transfer of surplus capital to industrial production leads to an incipient modernization. With the agrarian reforms in the 1950s to 1970s, the ideology of national development proved unsustainable. In a final part, Moreano reconsiders the development of nationalism within leftist ideologies. For him, with the failure of the German revolution in 1918/1919, the strategy of a world or at least European revolution was replaced with a mixed strategy combining the “consolidation of the  Here, Moreano follows the interpretation of Mao.

11

128 

P. ALTMANN

Soviet proletariat” (Moreano 1976: 73) with anti-imperialism in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The result was a relatively influential Soviet Union that supported national liberation movements that could create their own nation-states and weaken US influence. However, it also led to profound misunderstandings by the followers of Fidel Castro. Their focus on peasant warfare resulted from a misinterpretation of economic and social conditions—since the 1960s, peasants lost relevance as many migrated to the cities or turned into small landowners. The attempt of dependency theory to explain the relative modernization during the 1960s focused solely on the international division of labor and unequal exchange. The question of surplus production was left out. As those strategies failed, Moreano suggests switching from nationalist revolutions to proletarian revolutions—to starting over with revolutionary Marxism from the beginning of the twentieth century. These explicitly political remarks may have hindered an adequate understanding of Moreano’s critique. At the first National Congress of Schools of Sociology of Ecuador in 1976, where he presented these reflections, he was understood as making a link between the study of Latin American socio-economic formations and the role of the left (Saltos 1977: 123). But it was not only due to the criticism of Moreano and others—like Cueva Dávila (2018)—that the relationship between Ecuadorian sociology and dependency theory was rather critical and short-lived. In 1978 Velasco Abad, the most important defender of dependency theory in the country, died. Moreover, only a few years later, the dependency theory as a whole would enter into a crisis due to the state defaults and the neoliberal politics in the region during the early 1980s. The Debate on National Integration, the Hacienda, and Rurality In his contribution to Ecuador. Pasado y Presente in 1975, Fernando Velasco Abad had been the first to undertake a Marxist re-reading of the colonial phase of Ecuadorian history. This text explicitly challenges the liberal interpretation of the colony that held during that time, from which “all the evils that characterize Latin America’s underdevelopment are born” (Velasco Abad 1975: 61). Instead, he claimed, it is necessary “to rethink […] the analysis of the process of the historical formation of Ecuadorian society” (Velasco Abad 1975: 63). However, this analysis was not merely connected to scientific curiosity. Rather, Velasco Abad understood his work as immediately political. This text “is part of the process of

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

129

forging theoretical weapons linked to a revolutionary practice that drives the construction of socialism in Latin America” (Velasco Abad 1975: 63). The colonization of Latin America is connected to the beginning of capitalism. This is why the main interest in the first decades was the exploitation of precious metals. The focus on mining produced a conflict between the encomenderos—a feudal institution of domination over a territory that combined tax collection with religious instruction in a mostly agricultural form of production—with the mines themselves. Vast zones of the continent were turned into providers for the mines until the beginning of the eighteenth century, especially in terms of agricultural products and textiles. This conflict made any implementation of feudalism impossible and reduced the possibilities of economic development (Velasco Abad 1975: 63). However, the pre-conquest forms of work organization like the mita were integrated into the exploitation of the indigenous workforce (Velasco Abad 1975: 67), constituting a colonial mode of production concentrated on trade goods produced in coercive work conditions without adequate pay. Thus, social formation in Ecuador constituted “of several modes of production, one of which is hegemonic” (Velasco Abad 1975: 71) and articulated with culture, ideology, and institutions, built around colonial exploitation. Due to the tax or tribute indigenous people had to pay, a form of forced agricultural labor, the concertaje, and a form of forced manufacturing labor, the obrajes, both based on a rudimentary division of labor and hardly any technology, became the most relevant forms of production (Velasco Abad 1975: 77). As the salaries were low, this form of production was always combined with communal forms of production in the indigenous settlements, constituting a form of primitive accumulation “as an original productive, political and ideological structure” (Velasco Abad 1975: 79). This combination of modes of production allowed for prolonged overexploitation of the indigenous workforce which continued to produce primarily for the external market. With this, the Real Audiencia of what would become Ecuador was integrated into the Spanish colonial empire, which was itself part of the global capitalist system. As the Spanish economy would lose strength in the eighteenth century, the structural dependency of Latin America continued due “to the colonial fact that constituted the American lands as a structurally dominated space” (Velasco Abad 1975: 84). Colonial Ecuador was inserted into an already functioning global social formation due not to local capacities but the metropole’s needs, strengthening the colony’s internal inequalities and concentrating the economic and political structures on

130 

P. ALTMANN

the cities where “the channels of capital accumulation converge” (Velasco Abad 1975: 86). The colonial system was integrated into the capitalist system through the overexploitation of the indigenous workforce, legitimized with racist discrimination and ethnic stratification (Velasco Abad 1975: 88–89). This was combined with a feudal ideology formed during the reconquest of Spain of the fifteenth century and focused on an aristocratic superiority of Spaniards, tied to their supposedly pure heritage. Already here, a disdain for technology and science originated that would later lead to the attempt “to drown, as unworthy, the germs of a capitalist, financial and industrial ideology” (Velasco Abad 1975: 91). The lack of technology also explains the crisis that hit the colonial economy in the eighteenth century: the mines became less productive, the textiles suffered in competition from France and England, and the lack of cash money meant a break with the earlier forms of production. At the same time, overexploitation had reduced the indigenous population considerably. As a result, both manufacturing and agricultural production— and with them, a significant part of the indigenous population—were integrated under landowners’ control. With the Bourbons and their reforms in the eighteenth century, modernization and industrialization— in the form of import substitution (Velasco Abad 1975: 101)—took place. The American colonies turned from the source of metals to consumers of metropolitan industry—thus, a second colonial pact was formed. The internal division of labor changed, and the colonies became economically more fragmented and autonomous. And with the export of cacao, the Ecuadorian coast became more wealthy and influential than the highlands. With this text, Velasco Abad tried to develop the dialectical categories needed to “reconstruct the real movement of historical processes” (Velasco Abad 1975: 106). The usage of materialist concepts allowed him to describe the double condition of Ecuadorian society as colonial and dependent and trace the formation of a “structurally dominated space” (Velasco Abad 1975: 109) that connects to wider contradictions of social formations in Ecuador. Andrés Guerrero and Quintero answered this text with a different vision of the colonial history of Ecuador. They share the political impetus of Velasco Abad. For them, it is about understanding the historical conditions of contemporary times. Their study was intended to challenge the attempt of the ruling class to legitimate itself through the “vision of the past as an instrument of ideological subjection” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 619). However, they do diverge significantly from Velasco Abad’s

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

131

interpretation. For them, a state did exist during the colonial period, and they deemed it necessary to reexamine the “various forms of intervention by the state apparatus in the economic base” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 611) in order to understand the class struggle during the colony. The state is, for them, one major continuity in a time defined by transitions on both the structural and superstructural level: “state intervention was one of the essential elements throughout the colonial period, both in the constitution of the various social formations and in their economic, political and ideological reproduction” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 611–12). Of course, the state was defined by colonialism and the transition to capitalism that was underway. Yet the colonial state was “result of the historical form of the process of class struggle (economic, political and ideological)” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 613). In a reformulation of Velasco Abad, they claim that during the colonial period, a synthesis of different modes of production, subordinated by the dominating capitalist mode of production, existed. However, the heterogeneity and the lack of specific relations of production and a dominating class did not allow such integration to form by itself. This is precisely why the state has a central role, and it takes the position of the dominating class: “the state is constituted as a factor of cohesion and unity of the various forms of production” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 617). The colonial fact is not only a break with earlier forms of domination but also a reorganization of indigenous forms of power within the colony. The conquest of America dissolves partially “centralized political-­ ideological apparatuses […] but preserves and readjusts communal production relations and certain political-ideological superstructures such as the indigenous cacicazgo [chieftainship]” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 620). The communal forms of production and the communal structures of self-government are integrated into the colonial form of production without constituting a proper mode of production as such. Until the eighteenth century, the indigenous nobility managed these self-government structures, controlling the indigenous population, collecting taxes, and recruiting the labor force in exchange for privileges from the Spanish authorities (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 624). According to Guerrero and Quintero, the first significant break happened with the establishment of the Audiencia Real of Quito in the second half of the sixteenth century, a semi-autonomous entity of colonial administration that limited the autonomy of the semi-feudal encomenderos. Now, a public service functioned as a tax collector and intermediary between the indigenous

132 

P. ALTMANN

population and Spanish colonizers and limited overexploitation in order to allow for the reproduction of the indigenous workforce. The Audiencia Real became the center of hegemonic political power, articulating diverse state apparatuses. It was, therefore, the object of a struggle between the dominant classes. Together with the Catholic Church and its role in controlling civil society, it constituted the colonial block. This concept, borrowed from Gramsci’s agrarian block, refers to a particular configuration of class structure around the reproduction of the block as such, including organizational and ideological aspects and the intermediary groups. In a second phase of the colony in the eighteenth century, the colonial state, as a cohesive element of the total social structure, would implement reforms in the organization of production. The payment of the indigenous tribute would push the indigenous population into the manufacturing obrajes, run by different actors, including indigenous communities themselves, as well as haciendas owned by a class of landowners. All this destroyed the traditional communal forms of organization and weakened the Audiencia Real as the articulation of power structures. Now, the landowners took over more and more instances of political power, supported by the middle classes around craftspeople, clergypersons, and traders. The indigenous masses, differentiated by how they paid their tribute, did not constitute social classes in the Marxist sense. Since the second half of the eighteenth century, the conflict between landowners and the metropolis became more apparent. At the same time, indigenous uprisings came to be more common, putting into danger the whole colonial block, as the indigenous masses were “the main aspect of the reproduction of the colonial society as a whole” (Guerrero and Quintero 1977: 662). In the 1980s, some historians offered a different reading of the same history. Galo Ramón rejected the supposition of a disarticulation of indigenous societies. For him, indigenous society still exists and is reemerging in the form of nationalities that demand a plurinational state (Ramón 1986: 80). The tribute indigenous people had to pay can be reinterpreted as a pact that guaranteed the indigenous communities access to land. In this sense, the free indigenous communities “pay their tribute on condition that they maintain a distinct and unassailable ethnic territory” (Ramón 1986: 84). The tribute was, therefore, a way to prevent indigenous people’s enslavement and allow for the reproduction of indigenous societies. It was understood as a contemporary form of the Inca-style serfdom that included considerable degrees of internal autonomy. However, the strong position of the hacienda and the constant pressure against indigenous

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

133

communal lands redefined this pact as a relation between mercantile production on the hacienda and subsistence production on the indigenous lands. This debate did not continue. However, it had some indirect effects, especially related to research on the more recent history of Ecuador. Guerrero himself would become well-known for his theory of ventriloquism, which was elaborated in the 1990s. In it, he continues his interest in the administration of the indigenous populations in Ecuador, but extends it to the republic. In 1857, the indigenous tribute was finally abolished, supposedly producing complete equality between indigenous and mestizo citizens. However, this called public attention to the conditions of citizenship on a symbolic level, based on both colonial attitudes and a “notion of citizenship conceived in the sense of a force field of social adjustments in the public sphere and the marketplace” (Guerrero 2018: 347). There was no explicit exclusion of indigenous people from citizenship. Still, the “common-sense citizenship” (Guerrero 2018: 352) of the early post-colonial times survived and was expressed in private forms of domination over the indigenous population. This made it impossible for the indigenous to represent themselves and made intermediaries necessary (Guerrero 2018: 376). Quintero would go on to analyze the problem of regionalism in Ecuador in cooperation with Erika Silva. For them, it is not enough to revise the history of the formation of the different regions in Ecuador. Rather, the idea of the region itself needs to be discussed. In this sense, a region within a nation is defined by “a peculiar reality, based on specific forms of production, which in turn gives rise to typical political and social institutions” (Quintero and Silva 1983: 68). As they resist a national integration by the ruling classes, they are articulated with class struggle and can show a given class’s ability or inability to build a state (Quintero and Silva 1983: 67). The sociology of Cuenca would connect to this debate with a different focus. Much of the research done there was related to the Liberal Revolution and its impacts on national unity and the region of Azuay. For Carrasco and Vintimilla, it was only in the late nineteenth century that the first capitalist forms appeared in Ecuador, defined by the incorporation into the global market through the export of cacao. The result was an increasing national disarticulation, especially between the coast and highlands, and a social differentiation that included the new exporting and financial classes. In this context, “economic power shifted increasingly to

134 

P. ALTMANN

the new bourgeoisie while political power and ideological control remained in the hands of the landowner aristocracy” (Carrasco and Vintimilla 1989: 12). This only changed with the Liberal Revolution of 1895 that arose from the coast and took control over the whole country. With it, the ‘aristocratic republic’ of the landowners of the highlands ended. It was defined by a patriarchal ideology and precapitalist relations of production, the lack of differentiation between political and economic power, the lack of civil society, and a national market. As there also was a lack of a legitimating universal national project, the ruling classes derived their legitimation for the Catholic faith, a manorial conception of society that connects inequality with behavioral differences (Carrasco and Vintimilla 1989: 14), and a private form of exercised power, all derived from European traditions. Here, their interpretation connects to Cueva Dávila’s analysis of culture during the colony and the early republic—the focus is on the sublimation of reality. With the Liberal Revolution, the nation started to be understood on a popular basis. Nationalism transcends the racism that characterized earlier versions and focuses on modernizing the national consciousness. It connected to the ideologies of the time, namely positivism and Arielism,12 the belief in the “inherent spiritual superiority of the Latin race” (Carrasco and Vintimilla 1989: 20). The liberals tried to overcome precapitalist structures and modernize production by building an internal market, a functioning monetary system, and infrastructure, centralizing the state, and reducing the influence of the Church. It was about building a “‘protective’ state for the take-off of economic activity” (Carrasco and Vintimilla 1989: 24) and pushing for a political project of social cohesion and the construction of a collective subject in the sense of Gramsci. Education was to be a central element in achieving this, as both the access to it and its contents, now favoring practical application, started to become democratized. However, most of the projects of the Liberal Revolution could not be completed, due to the dependent integration into global capitalism and internal resistance. The Debate over Sociology The institutionalization of sociology in Ecuador in the context of a complete break with earlier traditions produced a gap in legitimation. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a general agreement on the  The name is derived from the essay Ariel published in 1900 by José Enrique Rodó.

12

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

135

interdisciplinary, critical, and engaged character of sociology and the university as such was established. However, this did not define how sociological research should happen. This is why the mid-1970s saw a debate on sociology as a discipline. Interestingly, expatriate Ecuadorians had a central role in it. Three contributions to the first edition of the journal Ciencias Sociales, also presented at the first National Congress of Schools of Sociology of Ecuador in 1976, mark the start of the efforts to reflect on an abstract level on sociology in Ecuador. Agustín Cueva Dávila denies the possibility of an existence of a sociological culture in underdeveloped societies. Due to the instability of the economic basis, the superstructure of those societies is defined by an “Accumulation of contradictions that determine abrupt and constant ruptures at the cultural level, preventing the sedimentation of a relatively stable ‘tradition’” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 23). In Ecuador, social thought only professionalized during the 1960s. For him, the sociologists before that time are simply irrelevant. Instead, he proposed connecting to “our leftist sociological tradition” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 25), including leftist political parties, the realist literature of the 1930s, and individual intellectuals like Aguirre or Oswaldo Albornoz. During the 1950s, Anglo-Saxon anthropology reduced Ecuadorian sociology to “a science at the service of imperialism” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 26) that did not take into account history or economy. During the 1960s, sociology further professionalized and became a specialized scientific activity in the recently created Schools of Sociology (Cueva Dávila 1976: 27). The leftist sociology of this time, of Jaime Galarza, Albornoz, and Medina Castro in Guayaquil, was “more the prolongation of a militant activity than the expression of a professionalization of the social scientist” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 28). The young intellectuals were not organically related to the proletariat. Under these conditions, the development of social sciences at universities and state institutions presented the danger of becoming an “introducer of bourgeois ideology into the heart of Marxism” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 30). Properly leftist sociology was developing slowly, lacking technical expertise and unable to overcome the “Dichotomy between the development of concrete analyses and the theoretical development that should articulate them” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 31). The limitations of theoretical reflection, in particular, reduce the possibilities of re-reading Ecuadorian history. So, he defines a task for Ecuadorian sociology: “To learn from Marxism and apply it consistently to the concrete study of a concrete reality” (Cueva Dávila 1976: 32).

136 

P. ALTMANN

While this criticism is still well-known today (for instance: Herrera 2018), it was not well-taken then. At the conference, Cueva Dávila was harshly criticized for not considering Neomarxist approaches and ignoring other aspects of institutionalization of sociology, such as the will of individual intellectuals (Mella and Granda 1977: 117; Saltos 1977: 125–26). Bolívar Echeverría contributed a highly complex theory about the possibilities of a revolutionary critical discourse under the conditions of capitalist sub-codification. In this sense, the proletarian intellectuals in Latin America developed their political ideas based on a liberal discourse that was formed in Europe and focused on analytical rationality (Echeverría 1976: 35). The Marxist sociology that began to take shape in the 1950s attempted to overcome this discursive subordination with a critical project of “construction of a knowledge by deconstructing other pre-existing knowledge and not by its direct refutation” (Echeverría 1976: 36). This implies that the scientific truth produced by this critical theory should be defined by its materialist approach and focus on praxis. Following Marx, work does not only produce an object by manipulating nature but also the working subject itself, including collective subjects (Echeverría 1976: 39). In Echeverría’s theory, work as structured praxis determined the possibility of production and consumption of meaning. The Marxian separation of use-value and exchange-value, combined with the separation of production and consumption, defines any object—including communicational objects—as biplanar: it is at the same time signifier and signified or form and content. This is why a true knowledge needs to be connected to a fundamental restructuring of the work process by the proletarian class. The organizational independence and programmatic radicalness of a strong leftist party might allow “the realization of a theoretical revolution or a liberation of the proletarian discourse’s capacity for scientificity, oppressed by the dominant bourgeois discourse” (Echeverría 1976: 38). It is, thus, about a “permanent ideological struggle against the peculiar way in which the ideas of the capitalist ruling class are dominant” (Echeverría 1976: 38). A norming and subcodifying dispositive imprints on all production a meaning that defends the mode of social reproduction in which it originated (Echeverría 1976: 42). This is why the class struggle has already been decided on the level of meaning. A modification of the work process would allow a modification of the communications and their meaning. Therefore, critique finds itself always faced with double ideological domination by the bourgeois class: both code and subcode legitimate capitalist production and consumption (Echeverría 1976: 44). The

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

137

task for a revolutionary theory must be the “scientific construction of a revolutionary proletarian knowledge in the conditions of subcodification” (Echeverría 1976: 45). The overcoming of existing structures of knowledge production happens within them and builds “its own knowledge as the systematic negation or destruction of capitalist-constructed knowledge” (Echeverría 1976: 46). Cueva Dávila, Bolívar Echeverría, and Moreano can be considered as loosely connected protagonists of a ‘third-worldization’ of leftist theory in the direction of a relational Marxism that tries to overcome the contradiction between structure and agency and the idea of class struggle, combining a theory of capital with a theory of class (Chávez 2021: 10, 17). One central element of this process was the rejection of official or bourgeois knowledge related to the state and capitalist development. With this, science is defined only negatively, as knowledge in the hands of the oppressing class (Chávez 2021: 11–13). This is understandable, as the central interest of the Marxist intellectuals during the 1960s and 1970s was not to connect to the global academy but to the world revolution (Chávez 2021: 15). This might be why another presentation was largely ignored. Historian Juan Maiguashca, at that time professor in Canada, presented a broad overview of the development of history as an academic discipline and of different historiographic schools. He focuses especially on the French Annales School around Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, and Fernand Braudel with its interdisciplinary understanding of history, including sociology, economics, and other disciplines. Especially the focus on the social conditions of human activity—at least in this version—turns history into a social science (Maiguashca 1976: 125). As the tradition of history as an academic discipline in Latin America is relatively weak and dominated by liberal intellectuals, he proposes an adaptation of the Annales tradition for the continent: an interdisciplinary history that could go beyond the “formulation of universal laws [and focus on] the discovery of regularities circumscribed within a given space-time” (Maiguashca 1976: 137). It is striking how all the above contributions were rejected or ignored by Ecuadorian sociology, especially so if taking into account that all three researchers kept constant contact with Ecuadorian academia, republishing their books in local publishing houses, contributing translations of texts by Marx or relevant Marxists, and participating in conferences and seminars. The debate over sociology among the Ecuadorian sociologists focused narrowly on the self-defined task of “demystification and destruction of all

138 

P. ALTMANN

pseudo-scientific bourgeois sociology, born in defense of the interests of class and domination” (Quintero 1976: 13). Thus, the object and subject of critical sociology was the proletariat in class struggle. The knowledge produced in this way is objective insofar as it is derived from the objective social contradictions of capitalism. Taking a stance cannot be reduced to subjectivism, which is inherently part of bourgeois ideology. The critical sociologists perceive themselves as marginalized. For them, the vast majority of social studies known in our country are part of an ideology of domination, revealing the very character of a society that has not yet freed itself from its old servitude. Instead of criticizing the system, the country’s social studies focus on determinism to indicate that attempts to challenge the established order are fundamentally irrational. (Quintero 1976: 14)

This supposedly dominating bourgeois pseudo-science13 tries to hinder the development of a broader knowledge of the society by both disinformation and direct repression. The university as such is, thus, understood as a “fighting center” (Quintero 1976: 15) in the wider political struggles of the region. This is also why it can be used to marginalize social sciences or cut off funding. Quintero himself expanded these ideas shortly after.14 He declared that the construction of critical currents within the social sciences is a revolutionary practice on the cultural field that allows, foremost, a critique of bourgeois sociology (Quintero 1977: 129). This bourgeois sociology builds on the idea of independent data that are, with systems theory, transformed into social rules or, with neopositivist methodologies, used to hide the essence of social reality (Quintero 1977: 130–31). As bourgeois sociology is reproduced at the university itself, it is necessary to criticize both dominant ideologies and teaching within the university—this is why leftist political organizations were organically integrated into the School of Sociology and Political Sciences (Quintero 1977: 129). Another strategy was to strengthen the study of Marxism, especially in teaching, in order to help the students develop a critical consciousness (Quintero 1977: 131). This conception of a leftist sociology seems to have been a matter of general agreement, at least at the Central University. The next director of 13  There is no evidence of such a sociology in Ecuador during the 1970s besides Hurtado and INEDES. 14  Also published in English (Quintero 1978).

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

139

the School of Sociology and Political Sciences, Daniel Granda, who as a researcher was interested in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Granda 1976), reaffirmed the historical promise of sociology: The struggle for the victory of the proletariat—class commitment—imposes, therefore, the task of perfecting the intellectual weapons necessary for the combat as much as possible. Historical materialism, as the science of the history of social formations, is the most important weapon of the proletariat. (Granda 1977a: 216)

Therefore, he defined a central objective of all research underway at the School of Sociology and Political Sciences as the awakening of “the class consciousness of the workers” (Granda 1977b: 219–20). Quintero particularly included these questions in his research work. In his work on populism, he insisted on cleansing sociological discourse of epistemologically disastrous pseudo-concepts and on the construction of objects of scientific knowledge through a theorization that allows understanding of all aspects of them (Quintero 2018: 188). In contrast, subjectivist sociology proves unable to turn into a proper sociology and merely projects bourgeois prejudices (Quintero 2018: 191). He was part of an effort during the late 1970s to revise the history of sociology in Ecuador, editing a selection of texts by Ángel Modesto Paredes. For him, one of the reasons for the weak sociological tradition in Ecuador is the lack of theorization on its origins due to “the low critical vocation of those of us who do it” (Quintero 1988: 12). In the concrete case of Paredes, Quintero detects a progressist side engaged with demystification and a rather archaic ideological core. His revision of Paredes’s work brings him to the conclusion that it is necessary to “subject the practices of our sociologists to the judgment of epistemological reason in order to identify the course taken by their thinking and avoid the errors and misguidance they share” (Quintero 1988: 41). The main problem with Paredes is his positivistic inspiration and his subjectivist approach to society. Arturo Andrés Roig participates in the same endeavor, editing Alfredo Espinosa Tamayo’s Psicología y Sociología del Pueblo Ecuatoriano. His account goes beyond sociology, understanding it as part of “the totality of the forms of social knowledge, in relation to the system of existing connections” (Roig 1979: 14–15). In this sense, the formation of sociology is connected to certain social developments, including the university itself, that push for specialization of academic knowledge (Roig 1979: 30). This

140 

P. ALTMANN

also favors the close relationship between sociology and positivism in Ecuador during a time when positivism had lost traction elsewhere (Roig 1979: 68). From Cuenca, Lucas Pacheco participated in this debate, connecting social research to the movement for independence of the late eighteenth century and political liberalism of the early nineteenth one, generally reduced to a few members of the upper classes. Since the 1920s, intellectuals “are beginning to become the historical conscience of our society” (Pacheco 1982: 57). It is only since the 1950s that social research has been professionalized in state institutions in an attempt to plan rationally capitalist development from a liberal perspective. Since the 1960s and especially the 1970s, Ecuadorian social thought has become scientific and forms lasting institutions (Pacheco 1982: 59–60). Now, questions of underdevelopment, the role of the state, dependency theory, and modes of production define it, especially from a Marxist perspective and connected to sociology as an academic discipline. However, the focus of the universities on professional education produces a lack of interest in and funding for research and an excessive teaching load. As a result, knowledge is transmitted more than created, favoring bibliographic research over the accumulation of empirical data. The general lack of integration of sociological works leads to a tendency to repetition (Pacheco 1982: 65). Like Quintero, Pacheco defines social conflict as a motor for developing the social sciences (Pacheco 1982: 71). The role of the social scientist should be to support social leaders in their struggles with knowledge. However, as the level of organization and the resulting level of conflict is low, Ecuadorian social sciences cannot develop. The debate on sociology and its role in society was rather short, most contributions were published between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. After this, discussion returned to a somewhat situated criticism of specific problems of the social sciences or to rather general connections to broader academic discourses.

The 1980s as a Time of Crisis and Diversification In the early 1980s, Ecuadorian sociology was thriving. At six schools of sociology all over the country—at the Central University and the Catholic University in Quito, the University of Cuenca, the University of Guayaquil, the Technical University of Machala, and the Technical University Luis Vargas Torres of Esmeraldas (Arcos 1986: 6)—hundreds studied this

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

141

discipline. This was related to a general expansion of higher education. According to data from the National Council of Universities and Polytechnic Schools, the total number of students at all universities in Ecuador rose from 12,076 in 1964, to 99,222 in 1974, and to 290,013 in 1984. This involved the creation of several new universities and a shift in the higher education landscape—now, a significant number of people studied outside the three major cities, and, in 1984, the University of Guayaquil became for the first time the biggest university in the country, with 54,718 students. The Central University lagged behind with 51,986 students (Arcos 1986: 22). However, since 1980, the budget for higher education has been shrinking (Arcos 1986: 23), deepening the economic problems, especially for rather small disciplines like sociology. An impressive diagnosis done by Arcos and his team in 1986, including hundreds of interviews with sociology professors, students, and graduates, gives an overview of the state of sociology roughly ten years after its institutionalization in several universities in the country. In the early 1980s, all degree courses in sociology were defined by Marxism as the dominant theory. The current students criticized the excessive politicization of sociology, the lack of academic and pedagogical training of the professors, and an irregular academic everyday life that includes interruptions to teaching (Arcos 1986: 65). The graduates state that they received ambiguous training that did not prepare them for research. This is also why only a small percentage finish their career with a thesis, leaving a considerable number of sociologists without a formal title (Arcos 1986: 66–68). The review of every single school or department of sociology shows great differences. The School of Sociology of the University of Cuenca did not send data. The Department of Sociology and Political Sciences of the University of Machala, created in 1972, seems to have been in relatively good condition. It consisted of a School of Education and a School of Sociology and Political Sciences. In total, it had 22 professors, 19 with exclusive or full-time positions and a monthly salary between 60,000 and 35,000  Sucres, corresponding to between US$2400 and US$1400  in 1980 and between US$630 and US$370  in 1986.15 The research was focused on the economic situation of the region. Until 1985, a total of 15  Following the numbers of the Ecuadorian Central Bank: https://contenido.bce.fin.ec/ documentos/MercadosInternacionales/Cotizaciones/tipoCambio.xls. The value of the US dollar roughly tripled until now. So the values given should be multiplied by 3.5 in order to understand the present value of those salaries.

142 

P. ALTMANN

3131 students had studied there, in 1985 alone, over 1000 students were matriculated. However, between 1981 and 1985, only 122 students finished the required courses—and only 72 graduated with a thesis. The strong compromise with Marxism and class struggle in 1981 seems to have become weaker over time. By 1985, a teaching reform was being discussed to strengthen the focus on professionalization (Arcos 1986: 43–49). The Department of Sociology and Political Sciences at the Technical University Luis Vargas Torres of Esmeraldas was created in 1980. It consisted of a School of Sociology and a School of Social Work with a total of 18 professors, 16 of them with full-time positions and a monthly salary between 26,000  Sucres and 24,000  Sucres.16 It was identified with Marxism (Arcos 1986: 53). However, at that time, no research was being done. In total, 250 students had been matriculated, and 91 finished the required courses. Eighty-one of them graduated with a thesis. The School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University had 17 professors, 14 with full-time positions, receiving a salary of between 60,000 and 40,000 Sucres.17 They produce relatively more research, four published books since 1982 are mentioned, and four running research projects. While there is no total number of students, the numbers for 1979 to 1984 oscillate between 200 and 300 students each year. Between 1981 and 1985, each year, between 19 and 29 students completed the required courses, but only 15 in total graduated with a thesis (Arcos 1986: 40). This number seems to have improved by the end of the 1980s. In the academic year 1987–1988, a total of 205 students were matriculated, with 25 students completing the required courses, and in the year 1988–1989, a total of 263 students, with 17 students completing the required courses. During this time, 17 theses for the licenciatura-degree were being elaborated, and 10 had been completed (Jácome 1990). The Department of Sociology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador had 13 professors, but only 2 with full-time positions and a salary of 46,000  Sucres.18 However, they produced a considerable amount of research and publications. By 1979, 1042 students had been matriculated, of whom only 56 completed the obligatory courses and only 12 graduated with a thesis. In 1979, the teaching plan was reformed in order to strengthen the political compromise with society—without mentioning  Slightly above and below US$1000 in 1980 and around US$30 in 1986.  Between US$2400 and US$1600 in 1980 and between US$630 and US$420 in 1986. 18  Corresponding to US$1800 in 1980 and US$470 in 1986. 16 17

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

143

Marxism—and to focus on the formation of researchers. However, due to the lack of funding and personnel, the latter goal could not be achieved (Arcos 1986: 60–62). Institutional conditions separated teaching and research, favoring teaching as the main activity (Jácome 2005: 129). This was also related to a change in the university’s leadership: the progressive approach of Hernán Malo was ended and a much more conservative understanding of higher education took over. The most direct expression of this was the reintegration of philosophy into the Theology Department (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 452). The tendency among the students to join political organizations instead of focusing on research translated into a weakening of the schools of sociology in the country (Moreano 1984: 280). As the hope to build a Social Sciences Department at the Central University (Moreano 1984: 281) remained unfulfilled, sociology changed its face after the second half of the 1980s. Sociological research diversified. Since the late 1970s, several research institutions had been created that pushed for their own research agendas, partially breaking with university sociology and absorbing an important part of sociologists (Moreano 1984: 279–80). For instance, in 1977, the Andean Popular Action Center (Centro Andino de Acción Popular, CAAP) was created, dedicated to social research and, since 1983, the publication of the influential social science journal Ecuador Debate (Anon n.d.-c). Another important institution is the Development Studies Corporation (Corporación de Estudios para el Desarrollo, CORDES), founded in 1984 and led by Osvaldo Hurtado (Anon n.d.-b). CORDES became, together with the Latin American Institute for Social Research (Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales, ILDIS), which moved in 1974 from Chile to Ecuador (Anon n.d.-a), major receivers of research funding, especially from German political foundations. This produced new research topics. With the return to democracy in 1978/1979 after almost two decades of unstable or interim governments and dictatorships, democracy and political parties received attention. This led to a shift in a part of sociology toward political science. César Verduga, professor at the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University and educated as an economist in Chile and Russia, established three major conditions for successful democratization: the ability of the state to manage development, especially if it has considerable income due to oil exportation (Verduga 1982: 1166), the ability to strengthen national integration, and the ability to effectively install democracy. The reformist

144 

P. ALTMANN

populism of Jaime Roldós Aguilera, president between 1979 and his death in 1981, seems promising to Verduga, as it would mobilize diverse alliances for a common goal. However, the democratic project needs the support of all social classes and the armed forces. The central task for any political system is the “democratic management of social conflict” (Verduga 1982: 1185). Other authors, like Egas or Luis Verdesoto, also participated in this debate, pushing their research interest from class struggle to state structure and political parties. The doctoral thesis of two of the first Ecuadorian women to have a PhD in sociology also connect to this tendency. The armed forces turned into an object of study in a way they had not before (García Gallegos 1987). And political parties were no longer considered simply fractions within the ruling classes (Ehlers 1989). Another debate on the agrarian reform in Ecuador took place between Oswaldo Barsky, who held that the agrarian reform represented modernization, and Andrés Guerrero, who denied that in the early 1980s (Ospina 2020: 99). One of the most debated new topics was social movements. While they were understood in the 1970s almost exclusively in terms of class struggle, in the 1980s, the debate changed. For instance, Julio Echeverría, brother of Bolívar Echeverría and professor at the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University, connects the topic to the central role of the state as described by Verduga, that is, “as an instance capable of articulating the set of needs and interests […] that make up the social formation as a whole” (Echeverría 1983: 42). Due to the economic crisis and social movements, the gap between the heterogeneity of social formations and the state’s legitimating capacity increases. With financial capitalism, it is no longer the market but the state that needs to integrate society. This is why social movements articulate around the state and disarticulate from their proper processes of integration (Echeverría 1983: 44). It is no longer about the proletariat as a collective subject but about the state as an entity that constitutes social subjects. The state recognizes social movements with particular demands in the sense of a political exchange: the state receives a calm society, the movement, legitimation through the institutional structure of the state. However, resource allocation by the state repoliticises popular struggles as the market “becomes an element that generates processes of social heterogeneity” (Echeverría 1983: 50). The state loses its ability to integrate through its structure, and society becomes ungovernable due to its increasing heterogeneity.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

145

A book, co-published by CLACSO and ILDIS, gives an overview of the debate on social movements (Escobar 1986). In it, young researchers discuss neighborhood movements (Mario Unda), worker’s movements (Jorge León), women’s movements (Mercedes Prieto), or regional movements (Simón Pachano). Research on the indigenous movement shows the changes. While the indigenous population and the indigenous movement did receive attention during the 1970s, they were understood in a rather generic manner as part of social formations or class struggles (Guerrero and Quintero 1977; Velasco Abad 1975). The treatment of the indigenous movement was, while exact and with relevant data, historical and focused on the possibilities of an interethnic classist organization (Albornoz 1976). Velasco Abad connects the indigenous movement with the peasant movement, developing the idea of the structural determination that turns indigenous struggles into peasant struggles that hinder a broader and possibly revolutionary movement. With such a movement, the legitimation of exploitation through racial discrimination could be overcome (Velasco Abad 2018: 297). He highlights the demobilizing effects of agrarian reform (Velasco Abad 1979: 167) and of purely ethnic perspectives (Velasco Abad 2018: 297). As a consequence, he is critical of the movement: “the struggle in purely cultural terms waged by certain indigenous groups [is] today fully functional to the demands of modernization of the national productive system” (Velasco Abad 1979: 162). Just a few years later, the view of indigenous movements is different. Manuel Chiriboga, professor at FLACSO, gets closer to the perspective of the indigenous organization themselves. Beyond giving valuable information on its organizational processes, he understands the indigenous struggle as one for recognition by the state and mestizo society, expressed in demands for concrete rights that are always connected to autonomy (Chiriboga 1986: 85). Alicia Ibarra, a sociologist who graduated from the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University and had worked at the Ecuadorian Indigenist Institute since the early 1980s, combines both interpretations. For her, the correlation of forces in Ecuadorian society had changed. Now, the state needed to use a different discourse that offered the developing indigenous movement the possibility of integration—some form of neo-indigenism that includes self-­ determination and autonomy (Ibarra Illánez 1986: 137). With this, the class coalition between the classist indigenous movement and labor unions would lose strength. However, even if she rejected the ethnic tendencies

146 

P. ALTMANN

within the indigenous movement, her account of the movement, its organizations, and its internal conflicts is impressively complete (Ibarra Illánez 1987).

Sociology in Ecuador Since the 1990s Between Crisis and Reconstruction Those and other works would become relevant in the early 1990s. In 1990, 1992, and 1994, the indigenous movement organized uprisings that would paralyze most of the country for weeks. The academic reactions to this showed yet another shift in the academic landscape of Ecuador. While established sociologists were among the first to provide reactions to the uprisings, most publications on the indigenous movement during the 1990s were done by anthropologists and historians. Moreano rejected the criticism that the ignorance of one of the most relevant social movements in Latin America during that time was due to “classist reductionism” (Moreano 1993: 231) of the Ecuadorian left. Instead, he calls for a holistic analysis of the indigenous population within the social totality of Ecuadorian society. Cueva Dávila, in a text published after his death, shows a deep knowledge of the indigenous movement and its development, including the role of the self-managed bilingual intercultural education in forming leaders and organic intellectuals (Cueva Dávila 1993: 34). He also recognized the possibilities of combining both classist and ethnic positions within the movement (Cueva Dávila 1993: 39). Other works by sociologists on this topic, like several publications by Alicia Ibarra Illánez or a book by Jorge León Trujillo (1994), contribute important aspects to the debate—but were produced outside the schools of sociology of the country. The 1990s are generally described as a time of deep crisis in academic sociology in Ecuador. With the end of the Soviet Union, one major reference for some Marxist sociologists ceased to exist. The shock produced in the rather closed conception of society around specific rigid Marxist categories by the new neoliberal reality meant the end of the old critical sociology. A “new tradition of critical thought” (Palma 2009: 259) could not be established yet. At the same time, the lack of public funding forced sociologists to connect to NGOs and other institutions that allowed access to external funding. The results were “gaseous purposes” (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 274) instead of a clean line of teaching and research. The long-time

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

147

rejection of some of the most relevant sociological classics, like Max Weber, not due to an intellectual critique but only to political reasons (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 276), translated to a lack of theoretical references as Marxism lost traction after the end of the Cold War. The result was an attitude of ‘anything goes’ without strong research. At the same time, the disconnection from regional and global sociological debates increased (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 277–78). This was made worse by the lack of full-time positions and the low salaries at universities (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 279). Sociology as a discipline lost relevance and shrunk in the number of students and research activities (Jácome 2005: 119). The degree course in sociology at the University of Cuenca was closed in 1990 in favor of a degree course in development studies (Salazar Vintimilla 2015). Sociology started “to be part of the legitimizing mechanisms of development interventions” (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 285), focusing on short-term research in the context of internationally funded development projects. This also impacted teaching. Through several reforms of the teaching plans of sociology, most schools moved toward a focus on techniques—such as the planning and execution of projects, demography, and conflict resolution—instead of methodologies (Ramírez Gallegos 1999: 286). The newly created University San Francisco of Quito, an elite private university, opened a degree course in the Sociology of Development in 1990. The degree course in sociology at the Catholic University underwent a profound reformation in the first half of the 1990s. In 1995, it was divided into three specializations—international relations, political sciences, and sociology of development—a structure that would remain stable (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 455; Jácome 2005: 132). In the second half of the 1990s, the degree course of sociology at the Central University was also reformed. It was extended, including the fifth year, and the doctoral program was actualized and re-opened (Jácome 2005: 143; Quintero 2001). Now, the Marxist focus was diversified, pushing for a complete overview of sociology. Sociology and political sciences were separated into two different degree courses after four semesters with classes for both degrees (Jácome 2005: 144–45). After the year 2000, sociology again became more important. In 2009, the degree course in sociology at the University of Cuenca was reestablished (Salazar Vintimilla 2015). At the State University of Bolivar, a degree course in sociology was established in 2010, “aimed at teaching technical skills for public policy design” (Cielo et al. 2018: 61).

148 

P. ALTMANN

But without a doubt, the most important changes happened after the year 2010. With a new law of higher education, relatively high salaries for university professors, a stable budget for universities, and research as a necessary condition for university professors were instituted. Together with the mandatory retirement age of 70 years and a nationwide program of scholarships for Ecuadorian citizens at the Master’s and PhD levels, this meant a considerable renovation of higher education. The proposed democratization was not accomplished. However, the years after 2010 represent a significant change in the Ecuadorian universities and Ecuadorian sociology (Maniglio and Barragán 2022). The considerable limitations that remained or were newly instituted were focused on the supposedly quantitative logic of the number of publications instead of the social relevance of the research done, and reports on classes held instead of the quality of classes (Espín et al. 2017). The result was the appointment of an important number of sociologists educated abroad with defined research agendas that did not fit institutional research policies and were not easily integrated into the level of school, department, or university. However, a revival of the tradition of critical sociology was still a relevant project with the ability to mobilize resources and attention (Polo Bonilla 2016).

References Abad Ortiz, Gonzalo. 1970. “El Proceso de Lucha Por El Poder En El Ecuador.” Licenciatura en Relaciones Internacionales, Colegio de México, Mexico. Aguirre, Manuel Agustín. 1963. “La Universidad Ecuatoriana.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 92(347): 15–34. Aguirre, Manuel Agustín. 1973. La Segunda Reforma Universitaria. Selección de Documentos. Quito: UCE. Aguirre, Manuel Agustín. 2018. “La Ciencia Social Marxista y América Latina.” Pp. 171–84  in La transformación social y revolucionaria de América Latina, Colección Manuel Agustín Aguirre. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador; Ediciones La Tierra. Albornoz, Oswaldo. 1976. Las Luchas Indígenas En El Ecuador. Guayaquil: Editorial Claridad. Anon. 1978. “Ponencias Presentadas En El XII Congreso de Sociología Con Sede En Quito.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 2(7–8): 359–61. Anon. 1981. “Delegaciones Oficiales Para El II Congreso de Escuelas y Facultades de Sociología.” Pp. 5–6 in Memorias del II Congreso de Facultades y Escuelas de Sociología del Ecuador. Vol. 1. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

149

Anon. n.d.-a. “45 Años de FES ILDIS: FES—ILDIS Ecuador.” Retrieved June 9, 2022 (https://ecuador.fes.de/data/45-­anos-­de-­fes-­ildis). Anon. n.d.-b. “CORDES:: Corporación de Estudios Para El Desarrollo.” Retrieved June 8, 2022 (https://www.cordes.org/). Anon. n.d.-c. “¿Qué es el Caap? | Centro Andino de Acción Popular.” Retrieved June 8, 2022 (https://www.caapecuador.org/que_es_el_caap/). Arboleda Lasso, Andrés. 2015. “Sociología Del Conocimiento En La Escuela de Sociología de La Puce.” Licenciatura, Ponitificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito. Arcos, Carlos. 1986. “La Situación Actual y Perspectivas de Enseñanza de La Sociología En Las Universidades Ecuatorianas.” Babeuf. 1972a. Algunas Consideraciones Relativas al Desarrollo Económico, La Integración y La Dependencia Externa. Quito: Escuela de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas. Babeuf. 1972b. “El Desarrollo Económico y Social Del Ecuador: Estructura, Proceso y Perspectivas.” Foro Internacional 12(3 (47)): 373–85. Báez, René. 1975. “Hacia Un Subdesarrollo `moderno´.” Pp. 249–71 in Ecuador. Pasado y Presente, edited by Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Barba Villamarín, Daniela, and María Piedad Vera Toscano. 2022. Configuración Del Campo Disciplinar de La Antropología Sociocultural Alrededor de Su Profesionalización En El Ecuador, 1940–1980. Quito: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Beigel, Fernanda. 2009. “La Flacso chilena y la regionalización de las ciencias sociales en América Latina (1957–1973).” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 71(2): 319–49. https://doi.org/10.22201/iis.01882503p.2009.002.17751. Burbano, Felipe, and Carlos de la Torre. 1989. El Populismo En El Ecuador. Quito: ILDIS. del Campo, Esteban. 1969. “Aspectos de Nuestra Realidad.” Hora Universitaria (1): 27–34. del Campo, Esteban. 1972. “Estructura y Clases Sociales En El Ecuador.” del Campo, Esteban. 1977. El Populismo En Ecuador. Quito: FLACSO Ecuador. del Campo, Esteban. 1978. “Crisis de La Hegemonía Oligárquica, Clases Populares y Populismo En Ecuador.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 40(3): 1101–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/3539677. Campuzano Arteta, Álvaro. 2005. “Sociología y misión pública de la universidad en el Ecuador: una crónica sobre educación y modernidad en América Latina.” Pp. 401–62  in Espacio público y privatización del conocimiento, Estudios sobre políticas universitarias en América Latina, edited by P.  Gentili and B.  Levy. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

150 

P. ALTMANN

Carrasco, Adrián, and María Augusta Vintimilla. 1989. “Sociedad, Cultura y Proyectos Políticos En El Ecuador En El Período 1895–1925.” Revista IDIS 24: 9–38. Carvajal, Iván. 1977. “¿Para Qué Pucara?” Pucara 1: 5–17. Carvajal, Iván. 2019. “Evocación de Fernando Velasco Abad.” Iván Carvajal. Retrieved May 24, 2022 (https://ivancarvajal.com/evocacion-­de-­fernando-­ velasco-­abad/). Castillo Bujase, Alfredo. n.d. “Biografía—Alfredo Castillo Bujase.” Retrieved May 25, 2022 (http://www.alfredo-­castillo.com/biografia/). Cerutti Guldberg, Horacio. 1986. Hacia Una Metodología de La Historia de Las Ideas (Filosóficas) En América Latina. 1a ed. Guadalajara, Jalisco, México: Universidad de Guadalajara. Chávez, David. 2021. “Marxismo relacional y ‘tercermundización’ en Ecuador.” Pp. 9–60 in De los tzantzicos a la crítica ecológica. Un marxismo en el Ecuador por descubrir [PRIMERA PARTE], Boletín del Grupo de Trabajo Herencias y perspectivas del marxismo. CLACSO. Chiriboga, Manuel. 1986. “Crisis Económica y Movimiento Campesino e Indígena.” Pp. 63–91  in Movimientos sociales en el Ecuador. Buenos Aires; Quito: CLACSO; ILDIS. Cielo, Maria Cristina, Jorge Daniel Vásquez, and Pedro Bravo. 2018. “The Political Economy of Critical Knowledge: Producing and Limiting Endogenous Social Sciences in Tanzania and Ecuador.” International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 17(4): 49–67. Comblin, Jose. 1969. La Iglesia y América Latina. Quito: Escuela de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas. Coronel, Valeria, and Luciana Cadahia. 2018. “Populismo republicano: más allá de «Estado versus pueblo».” Nueva Sociedad 273: 72–82. Costales Samaniego, Alfredo. 1958. “Estudios de Antropología Social de Los Grupos: Indígena Del Chimborazo, Marginal Negro Chota y Esmeraldas.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 87(342): 148–92. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1969a. “La Crisis Política de Los Últimos Años.” Hora Universitaria 1: 57–69. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1969b. “Presentación.” Pp. 7–10 in Los Quichuas del Coca y del Napo. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1970a. “Interpretación sociológica del velasquismo.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 32(3): 709–36. https://doi.org/10.22201/ iis.01882503p.1970.3.58200. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1970b. “Letter to Manuel Medina Castro.” Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1975. “La Crisis de Los Años 60.” Pp. 225–48 in Ecuador. Pasado y Presente, edited by Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

151

Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1976. “Notas Sobre El Desarrollo de La Sociología Ecuatoriana.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 1: 23–32. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 1993. “Los Movimientos Sociales En El Ecuador Contemporáneo: El Caso Del Movimiento Indígena.” Revista de Ciências Humanas 9(13): 31–46. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 2008. Entre la ira y la esperanza y otros ensayos de crítica latinoamericana. 02 ed. revisada. edited by A.  Moreano. Bogotá: Siglo del hombre ed. Cueva Dávila, Agustín. 2018. “Problemas y Perspectivas de La Teoría de La Dependencia.” Pp. 37–61  in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Echeverría, Bolívar. 1976. “Discurso de La Revolución, Discurso Crítico.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 1: 34–47. Echeverría, Julio. 1983. “Transformación Del Estado y Movimientos Sociales.” Ecuador Debate 3: 42–52. Edwards, Theodore, and Blase Bonpane. 1971. Marxismo y Cristianismo. Son Acaso Compatibles? Un Debate. Quito: Escuela de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas. Egas, José María. 2012. “Populismo y Lucha de Clases En El Ecuador.” Pp. 105–23  in Escritos desde la academia, Biblioteca de Ciencias Sociales. Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional. Ehlers, Jessica. 2022. Interview, 3.6.2022. Ehlers, Jessica Anne. 1989. Izquierda Democrática or Democratic Left: A Case Study of the Origins, Philosophy, Organization and Quest for Power of a Political Party in Ecuador. Ann Harbor: UMI. Escobar, Santiago, ed. 1986. Movimientos Sociales En El Ecuador. Buenos Aires; Quito: CLACSO; ILDIS. Espín, María Augusta, Alexander Amezquita, and David Chávez. 2017. “Reforma Universitaria, Investigación y ‘capital Académico’ En Ecuador.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 39: 111–26. Espinosa Zevallos, Javier. 1972. “Introducción al Programa de Estudios Propuesto Para La Escuela de Sociología de La Universidad Técnica de Machala.” Pp. 25–30  in Introducción de la Sociología en el Ecuador. Guayaquil: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana. Galarza Zavala, Jaime. 1969. “La Iglesia Católica. Primer Terrateniente Del Ecuador.” Hora Universitaria 1: 35–56. Galarza Zavala, Jaime. 1970. “Problemas de La Revolución Ecuatoriana.” Hora Universitaria 2: 9–30. García Gallegos, Bertha. 2022. Interview, 8.2.2022. García Gallegos, Bertha. 1987. “Militares, economía y lucha política: el Ecuador de los años setenta.” PhD, Colegio de México, Mexico.

152 

P. ALTMANN

González Casanova, Pablo. 1969. La Nueva Sociología y La Crisis de América Latina. edited by A.  Cueva Dávila. Quito: Escuela de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas. Granda, Daniel. 1976. “Símbolo y Razón En El Pensamiento de Paul Ricoeur.” Revista de La Universidad Católica 4(13): 109–27. Granda, Daniel. 1977a. “Introducción General.” Ciencias Sociales 1(3–4): 215–18. Granda, Daniel. 1977b. “Palabras de Apertura Del Curso Preuniversitario 1977.” Ciencias Sociales 1(3–4): 219–21. Guerrero, Andrés. 2018. “El Proceso de Identificación: Sentido Común Ciudadano, Ventriloquia y Transescritura. Del Tributo de Indios a La Administración de Poblaciones En El Ecuador Del Siglo XIX.” Pp. 343–88 in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano contemporáneo, Colección Antologías del pensamiento social latinoamericano y caribeño, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Guerrero, Andrés, and Rafael Quintero. 1977. “La Formación y Rol Del Estado Colonial En La Real Audiencia de Quito: Algunos Elementos Para Su Análisis.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 39(2): 611–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 3539780. Henriquez, Guillermo. 1977. “Escuela de Sociología: Primer Año.” Pucara 1: 201–5. Herrera, Gioconda. 2018. “Introducción.” Pp. 11–33  in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Hurtado, Osvaldo. 1969. Dos Mundos Superpuestos. Ensayo de Diagnóstica de La Realidad Ecuatoriana. Quito: INEDES. Hurtado, Osvaldo. 1988. El Poder Político En El Ecuador. 6a ed. Quito: Ariel: Planeta-Letraviva. Hurtado, Osvaldo. 2022. Interview, 31.3.2022. Hurtado, Osvaldo, and Joachim Herudek. 1974. La Organización Popular En El Ecuador. INEDES; Fray Jodoco Ricke. Ibarra Illánez, Alicia. 1986. “Políticas Estatales y Población Indígena.” Ecuador Debate 12: 125–50. Ibarra Illánez, Alicia. 1987. Los Indígenas y El Estado En El Ecuador. Quito: Abya-Yala. INEDES. 1969. Pp. 11–12 in Dos mundos superpuestos. Ensayo de diagnóstica de la realidad ecuatoriana. Quito: INEDES. Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, ed. 1975. Ecuador. Pasado y Presente. Quito, Ecuador: UCE. Jácome, Nicanor. 1990. “La Escuela de Sociología.” Pp. 45–55  in Informe de Labores 1988–1990. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Jácome, Nicanor. 2005. “La Enseñanza de La Sociología: Análisis de Los Casos de Las Escuelas de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad Católica de Quito—PUCE- y de la Universidad Central del Ecuador—UCE-.” Ciencias Sociales 24: 119–52.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

153

León Trujillo, Jorge. 1994. De Campesinos a Ciudadanos Diferentes: El Levantamiento Indígena. 1. ed. Quito, Ecuador: Centro de Investigación de los Movimientos Sociales del Ecuador. Lloré Mosquera, Víctor. 1968. “La Universidad de Cuenca. Apuntes Para Su Historia.” Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 24(1–2): 9–150. Lucas, Kintto. 2007. Una Historia Dentro de La Historia: Treinta y Dos Años de FLACSO-Ecuador. 1. ed. Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO Ecuador. Maiguashca, Juan. 1976. “El Historiador Como Científico Social y Su Papel En El Análisis de Los Problemas Económicos, Sociales y Políticos de La América Latina y Del Ecuador.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 1: 95–138. Maiguashca, Juan, and Liisa North. 1991. “Orígenes y Significado Del Velasquismo: Lucha de Clases y Participación Política En El Ecuador, 1920–1972.” Pp. 89–160 in La Cuestión regional y el poder, Biblioteca de ciencias sociales, edited by R. Quintero. Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional. Maniglio, Francesco, and Vicente Barragán. 2022. “Education, Science, and Technology Policies during Ecuador’s Citizens’ Revolution: Between Cognitive Dependency and the Struggle for the Social State.” Latin American Perspectives 49(3): 18–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221083000. Mella, Enzo, and Daniel Granda. 1977. “Comentarios a La Ponencia de Agustín Cueva: ‘Notas Sobre El Desarrollo de La Sociología Ecuatoriana.’” Revista Ciencias Sociales 1(2): 115–17. Moncayo, Patricio. 1976. “La Especificidad Del Poder En El Área de ‘subdesarrollo’.” Anales de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador 354: 81–99. Monsalve Pozo, Luis. 1971. “Creación y Vida Del Ecuador. Un Intento de Apuntes Para Su Sociología.” Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca 27(1–2): 120–221. Moreano, Alejandro. 1976. “Latinoamérica. El Desarrollo Del Capitalismo y El Pensamiento de Izquierda.” Ciencias Sociales 1: 51–94. Moreano, Alejandro. 1984. “La Escuela de Sociología y La Realidad Nacional.” Ciencias Sociales V(15/16): 277–81. Moreano, Alejandro. 1993. “El Movimiento Indio y El Estado Multinacional.” Pp. 215–53 in Los Indios y el Estado-Pais. Pluriculturalidad y multietnicidad en el Ecuador: contribuciones al debate. Quito: Abya-Yala. Moreano, Alejandro. 2018. “Capitalismo y Lucha de Clases En La Primera Mitad Del Siglo XX En Ecuador.” Pp. 105–44  in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano contemporáneo, Colección Antologías del pensamiento social latinoamericano y caribeño, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Ospina, Pablo. 2020. La Aleación Inestable. Origen y Consolidación de un Estado Transformista. Quito, Buenos Aires: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Teseo. Oveja Negra. 1972. “Consejo de Redacción.” Oveja Negra 1: 3. Pachano, Simón. 2022. Interview, 4.2.2022.

154 

P. ALTMANN

Pacheco, Lucas. 1982. “El Desarrollo de La Investigación Social En El Ecuador: Apuntes Para Su Estudio.” IDIS. Revista Del Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales 10: 51–74. Paladines Escudero, Carlos. 2018. “La Universidad Católica y La Historia de Las Ideas En El Ecuador: Décadas de Los 70/80.” SOLAR.  Revista de Filosofía Iberoamericana 14(1). Palma, José Gabriel. 2009. “Why Did the Latin American Critical Tradition in the Social Sciences Become Practically Extinct?” Pp. 243–65 in Routledge handbook of international political economy (IPE): IPE as a global conversation, Routledge international handbooks, edited by M. Blyth. London; New York: Routledge. Polo Bonilla, Rafael. 2012. La crítica y sus objetos: historia intelectual de la crítica en Ecuador (1960–1990). 1a. edición. Quito, Ecuador: FLACSO, Sede Ecuador. Polo Bonilla, Rafael. 2016. “Fundamentación de La Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas.” Pp. 63–76  in Proyecto de creación de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas. Informe Técnico Académico, edited by Comisión para la creación de la FCSH. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Quevedo Ramírez, Tomás. 2022. “Indoamérica y La Discusión Sobre La Cultura Nacional (Ecuador 1965–1967).” Theorein. Revista de Ciencias Sociales. 6(1): 139–51. https://doi.org/10.26807/theorein.v6i01.77. Quintero, Rafael. 1976. “Discurso de Inauguración Del Primer Congreso de Escuelas de Sociología Del Ecuador.” Ciencias Sociales 1: 13–19. Quintero, Rafael. 1977. “Informe de Labores Del Director de La Escuela En El Bienio 1974–1976.” Ciencias Sociales 1(2): 127–45. Quintero, Rafael. 1978. “Escuela de Sociología Y Ciencias Políticas: La Política Académica de La Dirección, 1974–1976.” Latin American Research Review 13(2): 236–42. Quintero, Rafael. 1988. “Estudio Introductorio.” Pp. 11–45 in Pensamiento sociológico de Ángel Modesto Paredes, edited by R. Quintero. Quito: BCE, CNE. Quintero, Rafael. 2001. Reforma Universitaria En Sociología. Quito: Universidad Central del Ecuador. Quintero, Rafael. 2004. Nueva Crítica al Populismo: Limitaciones de La Investigación Social En Torno al Populismo. 1era. ed. Quito, Ecuador: Abya Yala. Quintero, Rafael. 2005. Electores Contra Partidos En Un Sistema Político de Mandos. 1a ed. Quito: Abya-Yala: ILDIS, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Proyecto Regional Amazonia Sostenible. Quintero, Rafael. 2018. “El Mito Del ‘Populismo Velasquista’ y La Consumación Del Pacto Oligárquico.” Pp. 181–212 in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano contemporáneo, Colección Antologías del pensamiento social latinoamericano y caribeño, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Quintero, Rafael, and Erika Silva. 1983. “Estado, Nación y Región En El Ecuador: Algunos Elementos Teóricos Para Su Análisis.” Ecuador Debate 3: 61–69.

  CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY 

155

Ramírez Gallegos, Franklin. 1999. “Esperando a Godot. Sociología y Universidad: Relatos de Una Disciplina Espuria.” Ecuador Debate 46: 273–93. Ramón, Galo. 1986. “La Vision Andina Sobre El Estado Colonial.” Ecuador Debate 12: 79–100. Revueltas, José. 2008. “¿Qué es la autogestión académica?” OSAL Observatorio Social de América Latina 9: 152–53. Rodríguez Chiles, Fulton. 1998. Síntesis Histórica de La Facultad de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas. Machala: Universidad Técnica de Machala. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1977. Un Positivista Ecuatoriano: Belisario Quevedo (1883–1921). Quito: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1979. “Los Comienzos Del Pensamiento Social y Los Orígenes de La Sociología En El Ecuador.” Pp. 9–127 in Psicología y sociología del pueblo ecuatoriano. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 2013. Esquemas Para Una Historia de La Filosofía Ecuatoriana. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Corporación Editora Nacional. Salazar Vintimilla, Ana Cecilia. 2015. “Historia de La Escuela de Sociología de La Universidad de Cuenca.” Pp. 11–23 in 40 años de Sociología 1974–2015, edited by S. Endara. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca. Salgado Tamayo, Manuel. 2008. “Estudio Introductorio.” in Historia económica, planificación y socialismo en el Ecuador, Colección Pensamiento socialista. Quito: Ediciones La Tierra. Saltos, Napoleón. 1977. “Relación General Del 1o. Congreso de Escuela de Sociología.” Revista Ciencias Sociales 1(2): 121–26. Samaniego, Natalia. 2020. “Proceso de Autogestión Escuela de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas (1969–1972).” Sarzoza, Gabriela. 2014. “La emergencia de la sociología como campo de saber en la Universidad Central del Ecuador: 1955–1976.” Quito: Flacso Ecuador. Tinajero, Fernando. 1988. “Rupturas, Desencantos y Esperanzas (Cultura y Sociedad En El Ecuador: 1960–1985).” Revista Iberoamericana 54(144): 791–810. https://doi.org/10.5195/REVIBEROAMER.1988.4488. Tzeiman, Andrés. 2017. “Agustín Cueva En La Década de 1960: Dilemas Acerca de Cultura e Identidad Ecuatoriana.” Íconos—Revista de Ciencias Sociales 57: 95–113. https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.57.2017.2250. Universidad de Cuenca. 1968. “Crónica de La Facultad.” Iuris. Revista de La Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de La Universidad de Cuenca 4: 178–81. Vásquez, Jorge Daniel. 2022. “The Political Sociology of 21st-Century Populism in Latin America: A Critique of the Ecuadorian Case.” Critical Sociology 48(2): 283–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205211032256.

156 

P. ALTMANN

Velasco Abad, Fernando. 1975. “La Estructura Económica de La Real Audiencia de Quito. Notas Para Su Análisis.” Pp. 61–110 in Ecuador. Pasado y Presente, edited by Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas. Quito, Ecuador: UCE. Velasco Abad, Fernando. 1979. Reforma Agraria y Movimiento Campesino Indígena de La Sierra. Hipótesis Para Una Investigación. Quito: El Conejo. Velasco Abad, Fernando. 2018. “La Vinculación al Mercado Mundial.” Pp. 83–104 in Antología del pensamiento crítico ecuatoriano, edited by G. Herrera. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Velasco Abad, Fernando. 2019. “Una Mirada al Ecuador Desde 1975.” Revista PUCE 108: 289–307. https://doi.org/10.26807/revpuce.v0i108.223. Verduga, César. 1982. “¿Se Consolidará El Proceso Democrático Ecuatoriano?” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 44(4): 1163–85. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/3540126.

Conclusions

Abstract  The conclusion summarizes the most relevant findings, connecting to the institutionalist approach outlined in the introduction. It also outlines possible continuing research. Keywords  Institutionalism • Marxism • Positivism • Canon Academic sociology has existed in Ecuador since 1915. Shortly after establishing the first chair of sociology at the Law Department of the Central University, held by Agustín Cueva Sáenz, chairs of sociology were created at the Law Departments of all universities in the country. With this, so-­ called lawyers’ sociology (Jácome 2005: 137) arrived in Ecuador. However, it is too easy to reduce early Ecuadorian sociology to some sort of amateur social philosophy integrated into the education of future lawyers and reduced to rhetoric and an ideal of education connected more to distinction than knowledge production (Campuzano Arteta 2005). On the contrary, sociologists like Cueva Sáenz himself, Belisario Quevedo, Víctor Gabriel Garcés, Ángel Modesto Paredes, and others proved that they were not only well informed about some of the sociological theories of their times—especially Herbert Spencer and Gabriel Tarde, but also Georg Simmel and others—but could develop their own approaches to society coherently and innovatively. In a different sense of epistemic disobedience,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5_5

157

158 

P. ALTMANN

they showed that even then, sociology in the Global South was not condemned to simply repeat ideas from the Global North. Their interest in not only understanding but also changing society pushed them to coherent applications of foreign theories to local realities. Most did so by re-­ reading Ecuadorian history in terms of the theory of their choice, but some, notably Garcés, worked with empirical data collected during ethnographic fieldwork. Considering the sometimes complicated access to texts, the fact that all Ecuadorian sociologists until the 1960s had part-time positions, and the relative instability of Ecuadorian universities, impressive work is to be found. With this in mind, early Ecuadorian sociology ceases to look so different from early sociology in Europe or the United States. The failure to create an empirical scientific sociology during the 1950s and 1960s is one element that makes Ecuador stand out in the region. While sociology in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and other countries of Latin America moved to a sociology focused on data collection and processing, often inspired by US sociology, this did not happen in Ecuador. Neither the participation in international conferences, the institutionalization of social science research since the late 1940s, nor collaboration with US universities in the 1960s led to a similar type of sociology. The short-­ lived School of Sociology and Anthropology at the Central University in the 1960s or the ideas around the creation of the Department of Sociology at the Technical University of Machala in the early 1970s did not persist long enough to produce research that could give an insight into empirical reality during that time. And if there was really a structural-functionalist turn in Ecuadorian sociology, it left no traces (Campuzano Arteta 2005: 442–43). Instead, sociology in Ecuador went directly from positivist early sociology to Marxist critical sociology in the late 1960s, pushed especially by the group around Agustín Cueva Dávila at the Central University of Ecuador. This was partially a reaction to the collaboration of several major exponents of positivist sociology with the military dictatorship between 1963 and 1966. With this, the tradition of early Ecuadorian sociology had become politically compromised and was left behind completely. During the 1970s, the new Ecuadorian sociology was constituted around certain Marxist concepts—like social formation—and developed in several debates around—again—a re-reading of Ecuadorian history. The empirical basis was thus broader—but always subordinated to the theoretical interpretation. And through theory, Ecuadorian sociology participated in international debates.

 CONCLUSIONS 

159

However, critical sociology also had moments of instability. Key figures left the university or country, and funding and professional positions were volatile. The 1980s show a considerable diversification of sociological research, connected to the increasing importance of research institutes outside universities. Finally, since the 1990s, Ecuadorian sociology has been in a process of change that was furthered by several conditions that continue to the present. This volatile character of Ecuadorian sociology makes an institutionalist approach fruitful. The most relevant continuity is discontinuity. There is no lack of talented thinkers with innovative approaches to society and original readings of the classics. There is no lack of publishing outlets, especially journals. Moreover, there have been several professional positions for sociologists since the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, all those factors suffered constant breaks and interruptions: some of the most talented thinkers died early or had to leave the academic world for different reasons. Hardly any journal continuously appeared over many years. And the professional positions were not always filled with the most qualified sociologists. Or sociologists at all. Distinguishing the three components of institutionalization defined by Geiger (1975), the intellectual component seems to have been the strongest one. The combination of Spencer and Tarde defined in the debate between Cueva Sáenz and Belisario Quevedo in the 1910s remained a dominating paradigm until the 1950s. It was able to frame almost all research during that time, to the point that anti-Spencerians like Garcés needed to argue why they preferred Simmel over Spencer. The same can be said about the Marxist approach to society that was defined during the 1970s: at least until the 1990s, it was a paradigm in the sense that it was impossible to ignore and that, even now, has followers. Here, again, a canon of authors and a set of questions was defined early on, in the first half of the 1970s. While later sociology did not always connect directly with those debates, most of it was related to them. Only in the 1990s references to social formation or class analysis were rephrased in order to connect to other discourses. However, this intellectual component has not been appropriately studied. Most research on the theories used in Ecuadorian sociology focus only on certain theories—Marxism, for instance—or rejects other theories—positivism, for instance—without further reflection. While the work of Arturo Andrés Roig is certainly impressive, he introduces another problem for the study of sociology as a discipline: if sociology is nothing but a

160 

P. ALTMANN

subbranch of social thought (Roig 1979, 11), there is no need to study sociology as such or the institutionalizations connected to sociology. The organizational component of institutionalization might explain some of the breaks and weaknesses of Ecuadorian sociology. From the beginning, it was not only about universities but also about different organizations which connected to them in different ways. The major part of early sociology in Ecuador did happen at the universities and in cultural organizations, most notably the Juridical-Literary society in Quito, and their journals. Here, an important diversity surges: some organizations and their publications are part of the different universities, especially in Quito and Cuenca; others are connected only indirectly. A third category that is separated from universities, for instance, the Casa de la Cultura, represented the introduction of sociological thought into a much wider educated discourse. While the characteristics of the organizations and journals changed in the time of critical sociology following the late 1960s, their importance did not change. From this point, most organizations and journals were led directly by students or professors of the schools of sociology. At least in the case of the School of Sociology and Political Sciences of the Central University, political organizations, especially of the radical left, played a decisive role, to the point of directly influencing teaching and research. Since the 1980s, this outlook started to change as external research institutions, some with their own publishing houses, were able to fill the gap in research funding the Ecuadorian state itself had created. The devaluation of salaries forced people to work several jobs simultaneously, move research exclusively to external institutions, and reduce teaching efforts to a minimum. This connects to a significant research gap. It could help explain how Ecuadorian sociology connected to other traditions and how the internal debate was structured, to know which books circulated among the intellectuals and which journals existed at what time. While some data is available and allow general ideas on the subject, a history of reception and diffusion of sociological thought in Ecuador (and elsewhere) is needed. The last component of institutionalization for Geiger is the sociocultural component. This was always the strength of Ecuadorian sociology— while research struggled with difficulties, public sociology (Burawoy 2005) was always a major concern for Ecuadorian sociologists. During the first decades, the connection was with elite circles of Ecuadorian society— sociologists were part of that elite and could, especially through their relations with the Liberal Party, introduce some sociological ideas into a wider

 CONCLUSIONS 

161

discourse. The organicist approach of Spencer became a vocabulary to express concerns of the time, especially involving national integration and progress. Tarde’s aristocratic conception of innovators and imitators fit the self-understanding of sociologists perfectly at that time: they themselves and other intellectuals should introduce ideas of justice, democracy, or— later—human rights. The general population would imitate those ideas without understanding them. However, with the shift toward a more technocratic conception of politics since the 1950s, this approach to society would lose traction. Maybe a more technocratic and empirical sociology could not have been established due to the situation of conflict in the 1960s and 1970s. Marxist critical sociology could also connect to established ideas but to ideas that were no longer those of the elite. Rather, they engaged with radical leftist parties and organizations. Thus, as those organizations entered into crisis in the 1990s, critical sociology did too. This last component of institutionalization is well studied. Both positivist and Marxist sociology have been considered in relation to their political and cultural connections. While the approach of Geiger allows for a complete idea of the institutionalization of a particular sociology, its application to the case of Ecuador shows that at least one topic is missing. As Ecuadorian sociology was always a rather small sociology with only dozens of sociologists until the 1960s and hundreds since the 1970s, the early deaths of especially creative thinkers are a factor to consider. The deaths of Belisario Quevedo in 1921 and Fernando Velasco Abad in 1978 certainly changed the destiny of Ecuadorian sociology. These biological obstacles are complemented by institutional obstacles, such as the expulsion of central figures like Agustín Cueva Sáenz, Agustín Cueva Dávila, or Gonzalo Abad Ortiz from the universities or the country. The brevity of this book, the complicated access to material, and the institutional problems mentioned in the introduction leave this work necessarily incomplete. A much longer book would be needed to extend on the other sociological traditions in Ecuador, both at the universities outside Quito and Cuenca, and non-university traditions. This broader overview would allow for a more innovative theoretical reflection on how sociological knowledge is produced and inserted in  local, national, and global institutions. A sociology of global sociology needs to be also a sociology of sociology in the Global South. This view from the South could help remedy some of the problems hegemonic sociology seems to have today, starting with a critique of the arrogance of the canon.

162 

P. ALTMANN

References Burawoy, Michael. 2005. “For Public Sociology.” American Sociological Review 70(1): 4–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240507000102. Campuzano Arteta, Álvaro. 2005. “Sociología y misión pública de la universidad en el Ecuador: una crónica sobre educación y modernidad en América Latina.” in Espacio público y privatización del conocimiento, Estudios sobre políticas universitarias en América Latina, edited by P. Gentili and B. Levy, pp. 401–62. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Geiger, Roger L. 1975. “The Institutionalization of Sociological Paradigms: Three Examples from Early French Sociology.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 11(3): 235–45. Jácome, Nicanor. 2005. “La Enseñanza de La Sociología: Análisis de Los Casos de Las Escuelas de Sociología y Ciencias Políticas de La Universidad Católica de Quito –PUCE- y de La Universidad Central Del Ecuador –UCE-.” Ciencias Sociales 24: 119–52. Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1979. “Los comienzos del pensamiento social y los orígenes de la sociología en el Ecuador”. Pp. 9–127 en Psicología y sociología del pueblo ecuatoriano. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador, Corporación Editora Nacional.

Index1

A Aguirre, Manuel Agustín, 54, 71, 77, 81, 88, 97, 99, 100, 104, 135

F Fascism, 34, 38, 44

D Durkheim, 32, 103

G Giddings, Franklin Henry, 16, 19, 22, 26, 28–31, 29n18, 36, 43, 48, 51, 56, 70 Guayaquil, 1–3, 22, 32, 33, 46, 68, 69, 71, 74, 81, 85n7, 87, 103, 111, 113, 115, 120, 122, 124, 135, 140, 141 Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 20n5, 21, 26, 36, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 51–53, 56, 75, 77

E Education, 40

I Indigenous, 40

C Cuenca, 1–3, 7, 22n9, 34, 46, 50, 53, 54, 68, 69, 74–76, 87, 88, 104, 111–115, 119, 133, 140, 147, 160, 161

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 P. Altmann, Sociology in Ecuador, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14429-5

163

164 

INDEX

K Krausismo/krausist, 15, 16, 19, 21, 31, 48 L Liberal/liberalism, 18, 20, 21, 28, 33, 54, 99, 116, 117, 121, 124, 126, 128, 134, 136, 137, 140 Loja, 1, 2, 15n1, 33, 48, 69, 74, 88 M Marxism/Marxist, 3, 4, 20n5, 23n13, 33, 34, 39, 49, 54, 88, 97, 99, 100, 102–105, 107–110, 112–114, 116, 117, 128, 132, 135–138, 140–143, 146, 147, 158, 159, 161 O Organicism/organicistic/organism, 16–18, 30, 35–37, 42, 104 P Philosophy, 2, 3, 16, 20n5, 23, 25, 28, 39, 46, 55, 78, 97, 101, 139, 143, 157 Positivism, 14–19, 34, 114, 134, 140, 159 Psychology, 35–39, 41, 47, 50, 70, 78, 86, 103, 111 Q Quito, 1, 2, 7, 14, 15n1, 20, 22, 23, 32, 38, 41, 44n25, 74, 76, 81, 84, 96, 105, 108, 111, 113, 115, 116, 131, 140, 147, 160, 161

S Simmel, Georg, 3, 34, 41, 42, 44, 51, 52, 56, 74, 157, 159 Spencer, Herbert, 3, 15–19, 20n5, 21–29, 29n18, 31, 32, 35, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47, 49–51, 53, 56, 71, 157, 159, 161 Spencerian, 4, 18, 19, 21, 25, 30, 33–35, 42, 47, 50, 72 T Tarde, Gabriel, 3, 16, 20n5, 21, 22, 24, 26–28, 32–37, 41, 42, 45, 48, 51–53, 74, 80, 157, 159, 161 Tardian, 4, 36 U University/universities, 2–5, 7, 8, 14, 15n1, 20, 22n9, 23n10, 32, 34, 44n25, 46–48, 50, 53, 54, 56, 68–71, 74, 75, 78, 80–85, 85n7, 87, 88, 97–100, 102–105, 108, 110, 110n7, 111, 114, 115, 135, 138–141, 143, 147, 148, 157–161 V Velasco Ibarra, José María, 45, 80, 96, 101, 116–123 W Ward, Lester, 16, 19, 20n5, 22, 26, 28, 29, 29n18, 31, 32, 36, 40, 41, 43, 48, 51, 55 Weber, Alfred, 39, 49, 52 Weber, Max, 54, 56, 73, 103, 110, 147