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Deutschland Unter Alles? The German Roots of Latin American Vocational Training Institutions

Sun, August 17, 2:30 to 4:10pm, TBA

Abstract

The so-called “Latin American model” of vocational education has frequently been portrayed as a homegrown success story and invoked by development theorists who prefer local solutions to imported institutions. Is the Latin American model really Latin American in origin? I use a blend of qualitative and quantitative data to trace the model’s deep roots not to Latin America but to Germany and identify three distinct transmission paths: imitation by Latin American elites of German origin and descent at the outset of World War II; propagation by German donors and diplomats in the decades after the war; and adaptation to the Latin American context by local policymakers and employers—who had distinct needs, capabilities, and cultures—in the late twentieth century. The results are of theoretical as well as practical import, for they not only lend insight into the potentially large impacts of small ethnic and cultural minorities but imply that the “celebration of the local” in contemporary development policymaking may well rest on false premises.

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