Private foreign aid and the contest for academic autonomy: The Rockefeller Foundation at the University of Chile

FERNANDO QUESADA

The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin American

Ashgate

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012; p. 157 - 172

This chapter will address a philanthropic case within the field of the social sciences: the Research Centre for American History, created with funds granted by the Rockefeller Foundation to the Pedagogical Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education of the University of Chile. This institution has proved instrumental in the development of history as a scientific discipline, enabling a detailed examination of the part played by internalization in developing the role of the historian as an agent socially recognized for his/her specific practices. In addition, it will allow us to analyze institutional coordinates - national, regional and international - that contributed to shape the discipline’s structure; retrace social and academic track records of the Centre’s members; and recreate the dispute scenario arising during the professionalization process.