Expert Knowledge in Latin American History: Local, Transnational, and Global Perspectives

Abstract

This book deals with the role of experts in the modernization efforts of Latin American states in the 19th and 20th centuries. Understanding expert knowledge as the application of academic knowledge in non-academic contexts, a vast number of new research questions have opened up. These refer to tensions between the supply, demand and implementation of specialist knowledge as well as to the mechanisms by which knowledge is transferred. The production of expert knowledge took place in transnational settings characterized by power asymmetries, different national traditions, and multiple histories of professionalization. Latin American societies were not mere receptors of foreign expertise. Local experts actively took part in global transfers of knowledge and external expertise was always subject to complex adaptations in new contexts.