XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Irving Horowitz and the Circulation of Sociological Knowledge between Brazil and the USA

• In Event: American Exchanges: Ideas and Policies across Brazil and the U.S. 1930s-1970s

Abstract

In 1964, E.P. Dutton & Co published a curious book called “Revolution in Brazil”. The author, the North American sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz (1929-2012), was neither an expert in Brazil nor an “area studies” scholar, and the book combined translations of texts originally authored by Brazilian politicians and intellectuals with chapters written by Horowitz himself. Two years later, the powerful publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica issued a translation for the Latin American market, but efforts to edit the book in Brazil failed. The presentation analyzes the editorial project of the book and Horowitz’s exchanges with Latin American intellectuals and sociologists to discuss broader dimensions of the circulation of sociological knowledge between Brazil and the USA in the 1960s. It argues that the case of Horowitz sheds light on the crucial role played by small intellectual networks that circulated critical theories on development and modernization across the Americas.
Horowitz was a prominent figure in North American sociology in the sixties. After living in Buenos Aires in the late 1950s and collaborating with the University of Buenos Aires, the author of “Revolution in Brazil” returned to the United States to pursue his project of “critical sociology”, which targeted structural-functionalism and the so-called “mainstream sociology”. This project drew on the works of C.Wright Millls, but also relied on the intellectual ties that Horowitz had secured with relevant Latin American scholars, who provided insights on peripheral development that fitted his agenda. These scholars also had their own interests and agendas, and Horowitz granted them access to the Anglophone editorial market by editing and publishing their works. Therefore, the presentation demonstrates that while these intellectual and professional exchanges took shape amid unequal structure of knowledge production, they also contributed to the growing internationalization of Latin American sociological theorizations in the 1960s.

Author

• João Marcelo Ehlert Maia, Fundação Getulio Vargas