The debate about external financing to Latin-American

JUAN JOSÉ NAVARRO Y FERNANDO QUESADA

Umea

Conferencia; Perspectives from the periphery. International conference on the history of Sociology and the Social Sciences. ISA, International Sociology Association; 2008

Umea University-ISA, International Sociology Association

The Camelot Project emerged as a project for social research orientated to measuring, predicting and controlling internal conflicts within peripheral countries.  This project constituted only an example of the research varieties in the Cold War context, aiming to make a contribution towards the struggle against social insurrection.  Perhaps this case was the most ambitious and coarse example of the interrelation between social science and politics, in which the academic intervention would have indeed in a massive loss of the autonomy of the scientific activity. Camelot Project appeared within the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) in the American University, and was requested by the United States Defense Department to be applied in Chile within the next four years.             In this paper we intend to show that from the irruption of the project in the public sphere in June 1965, a myth was constructed around Camelot as connecting espionage with sociological researches. This myth was based on the idea that every external financing implied not only spying and conspiracy but subordination and dependence of the scientific aims of peripheral countries.