The pathways of rural sociology in Latin America

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the trajectory of rural sociology in Latin America, its main lines of debate, theoretical issues and ‘displacements’ since the mid-twentieth century to present years. In order to examine this trajectory we propose four main periods. The first is located in the origins of the sub-discipline in the continent, where the main effort was to apply the conceptual frameworks oriented by modernization to explain the situation of national rural societies. The second moment is characterized as a critical reaction to modernizing views, where the central axis of the debate was agrarian transformations, social classes, their power relations and the role that the State should play in these transformations. In the third, the focus of the discussions shifts to the market's ability to order society and the emergence of new views on rurality. The fourth is marked by the environmental and food crisis, the power of global chains in ordering the agri-food system and the advance of local resistance and subordinate subjects.