Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PHILANTHROPIC RULE (International Authority and Intellectual Domination: External Donors and Local Organizations in Latin American Social Sciences (1945-1973).)
Período documentado: 2017-07-01 hasta 2019-06-30
Donor-recipient relations always raise the question of who is setting the agenda. Granting support while preserving the autonomy of the recipient is a problem that affects not only development aid and foreign-funded transnational advocacy, but also modern science. Almost without exception, modern science cannot obtain sufficient resources from the market, which means that to finance its operation, resources are needed from public funding agencies or private Maecenas like philanthropic foundations. In agreement with the focus on autonomy, PHILANTHROPIC RULE conceptualizes the resources transferred from donors to recipients as means of domination.
The overarching goal is to establish under which conditions donors may use their resources to steer the recipient’s agenda, both in substantive and methodological terms, and when recipients may resist encroachments upon their agendas. The conditions vary depending on whether the donor is a state, an international organization, or a private, philanthropic foundation. A further relevant condition is the multiplicity of donors, all of which may make their support conditional upon the recipient abiding by their indications, subjecting the recipient to frequently mutually incompatible requirements. Alternatively, when multiple donors are available, recipients may play one off against another, obtaining some autonomy from them as a result. The main conclusions of the action are the following: donors may easily warp the agendas of recipients from academia, but surely also from activists; this is particularly true in contexts where recipients do not have access to funding granted by their own governments or other local donors. Therefore, it is essential that recipients are involved in the definition of the donors' policy. Otherwise, comparatively small gaps in resource availability move the recipient to redefine research agendas, neglecting questions that from the local perspective would be essential, but for which funding is not available. Donor-recipient relations easily create the appearance of a shared interest, but resistance and occasionally domination actually behind the scenes.
Projects like PHILANTHROPIC RULE are important for the European Union and its member states, which spend billions of Euros every year on their research policies. Similarly, comparable donor-recipient relations also characterize their outward-bent policies promoting development, human rights, and democracy. To better implement them, it is central to rely more on knowledge that informs decision-makers about how to conduct these policies in ways that combine the donors’ accountability to tax-payers with maximizing the autonomy of the recipients.
The overarching goal is to establish under which conditions donors may use their resources to steer the recipient’s agenda, both in substantive and methodological terms, and when recipients may resist encroachments upon their agendas. The conditions vary depending on whether the donor is a state, an international organization, or a private, philanthropic foundation. A further relevant condition is the multiplicity of donors, all of which may make their support conditional upon the recipient abiding by their indications, subjecting the recipient to frequently mutually incompatible requirements. Alternatively, when multiple donors are available, recipients may play one off against another, obtaining some autonomy from them as a result. The main conclusions of the action are the following: donors may easily warp the agendas of recipients from academia, but surely also from activists; this is particularly true in contexts where recipients do not have access to funding granted by their own governments or other local donors. Therefore, it is essential that recipients are involved in the definition of the donors' policy. Otherwise, comparatively small gaps in resource availability move the recipient to redefine research agendas, neglecting questions that from the local perspective would be essential, but for which funding is not available. Donor-recipient relations easily create the appearance of a shared interest, but resistance and occasionally domination actually behind the scenes.
Projects like PHILANTHROPIC RULE are important for the European Union and its member states, which spend billions of Euros every year on their research policies. Similarly, comparable donor-recipient relations also characterize their outward-bent policies promoting development, human rights, and democracy. To better implement them, it is central to rely more on knowledge that informs decision-makers about how to conduct these policies in ways that combine the donors’ accountability to tax-payers with maximizing the autonomy of the recipients.
Among the outcomes of this research project are two detailed cases studies of the relation between El Colegio de México and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations: all known events were registered in as far as they could impinge either on the research agenda and the internal structure of the recipient, including the selection of staff members, faculty, and PhD students. All these events were registered in a spreadsheet including time, date, people involved, a description of the event, and the researcher’s observations on the event. The resulting document condensates the information extracted from thousands of archive documents, summarizing a donor-recipient relation for a period of almost three decades (1940-1970).
The exploitation of the results: a 12,000-word article published in the Journal of Latin American Studies and a forthcoming chapter in a book edited by Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz. These two pieces are the first and second chapters of a book on US foundations, development, and higher education in Mexico (Colegio de México), Brazil (Escola de Sociologia de São Paulo), Argentina (Universidad de Buenos Aires), and Chile (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) during the “Golden Age of Development.” The book draws on archival resources from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and several Latin American universities. A book manuscript is currently under preparation.
Dissemination is taking place mainly through these publications, but, in addition, two conferences and a workshop were organized. Different parts of the project were also presented at four workshops and three conferences in Europe and Latin America.
The exploitation of the results: a 12,000-word article published in the Journal of Latin American Studies and a forthcoming chapter in a book edited by Didier Fassin and George Steinmetz. These two pieces are the first and second chapters of a book on US foundations, development, and higher education in Mexico (Colegio de México), Brazil (Escola de Sociologia de São Paulo), Argentina (Universidad de Buenos Aires), and Chile (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) during the “Golden Age of Development.” The book draws on archival resources from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and several Latin American universities. A book manuscript is currently under preparation.
Dissemination is taking place mainly through these publications, but, in addition, two conferences and a workshop were organized. Different parts of the project were also presented at four workshops and three conferences in Europe and Latin America.
PHILANTHROPIC RULE moves the frontiers of knowledge in three respects: theoretical, conceptual, and historical. The project offers an alternative to Gramscian accounts of donor-recipient relations in the realm of the social sciences (and elsewhere) by specifying the conditions under which recipient loss autonomy. Instead of assuming, as Inderjeet Parmar and other scholars do, that these relations must lead to hegemony, this project sheds light on the part played by multicausality and contingency, which led to other results, i.e. resistance and consequences that the donor never intended. Multiple donors are one of the reasons why givers cannot always steer recipients’ agendas.
The project goes beyond existing concepts of international authority by enriching this concept with its focus on means of domination, like money and knowledge that help this domination to be perceived as legitimate. A second conceptual inroad is to illuminate how donor-recipient relations even in modern science rely on personal contacts and may lead to clientelism, particularly if these relations persist across time. A third one is the test of indicators, proposed by social theorists, that inform us about the impact of support on a recipient, i.e. its ability to regulate itself and appoint its leadership.
A new history of how foreign donors shaped modern social science can be written on the basis of this project. Previous accounts were centred on how Latin American governments funded post-war social sciences and set their agenda according to their state-building agenda, i.e. social integration of indigenous populations (in particular Mexico and Brasil) and economic development. PHILANTHROPIC RULE shows how foreign donors, targeting a carefully selected elite of scholars and academic organizations, caused changes that, whether unintended or consciously sought, changed sociology and political science in the region. Among these changes are: donors redrew the boundaries between disciplines like law and political science, and severed subfields from their overarching discipline, as in the case of International Relations in Mexico. Donors also supported the quantification of social research and the demise of historical social science.
The impact of the project, socio-economic and societal will need some time to become visible. Hitherto the fellow has become part of a group of scholars and practitioners in Europe and the USA discussing ethical grant-making whose aim is to support recipients without diminishing their autonomy.
The project goes beyond existing concepts of international authority by enriching this concept with its focus on means of domination, like money and knowledge that help this domination to be perceived as legitimate. A second conceptual inroad is to illuminate how donor-recipient relations even in modern science rely on personal contacts and may lead to clientelism, particularly if these relations persist across time. A third one is the test of indicators, proposed by social theorists, that inform us about the impact of support on a recipient, i.e. its ability to regulate itself and appoint its leadership.
A new history of how foreign donors shaped modern social science can be written on the basis of this project. Previous accounts were centred on how Latin American governments funded post-war social sciences and set their agenda according to their state-building agenda, i.e. social integration of indigenous populations (in particular Mexico and Brasil) and economic development. PHILANTHROPIC RULE shows how foreign donors, targeting a carefully selected elite of scholars and academic organizations, caused changes that, whether unintended or consciously sought, changed sociology and political science in the region. Among these changes are: donors redrew the boundaries between disciplines like law and political science, and severed subfields from their overarching discipline, as in the case of International Relations in Mexico. Donors also supported the quantification of social research and the demise of historical social science.
The impact of the project, socio-economic and societal will need some time to become visible. Hitherto the fellow has become part of a group of scholars and practitioners in Europe and the USA discussing ethical grant-making whose aim is to support recipients without diminishing their autonomy.