Rethinking Development in Latin America

Understanding development in Latin America today requires both an awareness of the major political and economic changes that have produced a new agenda for social policy in the region and an appreciation of the need to devise better conceptual and methodological tools for analyzing the social impacts of these changes.

Using as a reference point the issues and theories that dominated social science research on Latin America in the period 1960-80, this volume contributes to "rethinking development" by examining the historical events that accounted for the erosion or demise of once-dominant paradigms, and by assessing the new directions of research that have emerged in their place.