Rethinking Central American Modernization in the Age of Globalization

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The SSRC Program on Latin America promoted research, workshops and training initiatives devoted to assessing and strengthening the social sciences in Central America. These efforts were conducted in cooperation with a variety of institutions in the region, particularly with regional centers of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, which share the Council's commitment to advancing Central American social science and increasing engagement between intellectual debates taking place within the region and those underway elsewhere in Latin America and beyond. For several years beginning in 1995, Ford Foundation funding enabled the Council to join FLACSO-Costa Rica in undertaking an ambitious program on "Restructuring Central American Polities and Economies."

As part of that effort, the SSRC convened research workshops, organized training seminars for junior fellows from the region, and encouraged Central American participation in international conferences. One noteworthy result of this program of comparative research and training was a three-volume publication on "Centroamérica en restructuración" (FLACSO-Costa Rica, 1998), and a special section of World Development, devoted to the challenges of Central American regional integration (Vol. 26, No. 2). Another important outcome was that several Central American fellows continued their post-graduate studies in social science, and remain actively engaged in research and teaching in the region.

In October 2000, FLACSO and the Regional Advisory Panel convened a workshop in El Salvador to address a variety of issues that remain critical to the future of Central American social science. Ranging from infra-structural matters to more general concerns about the organization and content of the region's education system, the workshop reached consensus on several interrelated priorities for the future.

An especially critical objective was the creation of sustainable spaces for social scientists in the region to establish common research priorities. It was agreed that through such agendas, it would be more likely for knowledge generated through research to be transmitted to students in the region, particularly in public universities. This, in turn, suggested potential strategies for addressing the problem of generational renewal of social science expertise in Central America.

Participants

As a follow-up to the October 2000 workshop, the Regional Advisory Panel convened a planning meeting in October 2001 at the SSRC offices in New York to address how the agenda of "modernization" in Central America was being transformed in the context of globalization, with profound implications for polities, economies and societies throughout the region.

Participants

The workshop served two purposes:

First, to discuss memoranda prepared by four participants (Eduardo Baumeister, Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz, William Robinson and Alex Segovia) that addressed key issues in rethinking modernization in the region.
Second, to map out a project that could promote quality research in the region, and in particular to improve the research skills of junior investigators, all within the context of an active research agenda.

Central American scholars are now independently carrying out case studies stimulated by theCouncil initiative. Case studies:

Explore the implications for economic development of the emergence of a new model of accumulation in which traditional export agriculture is replaced with services and manufacturing as the engines of growth.
Consider how consequent changes in the structure of the domestic private sector and its relationships with foreign investors, and trends in labor markets, facilitate or impede efforts to deepen processes of political democratization. Migration would be a central part of this analysis, for the composition of political actors in the region is increasingly transnational, at the same time that the constellation of actors that shape political processes is becoming increasingly diverse and includes governments and pressure groups outside the region.
Consider how economic and political changes are influencing collective identities and cultural practices of communities across different parts of Central America. Migration is central to this question as well, since the movement of people (not only to the U.S. but also from Nicaragua to Costa Rica, or from Guatemala to Mexico) has profound implications for the characteristics of everyday life and for the cultural identities of people in both sending and receiving communities.

Social Science Research Council