Aníbal Quijano’s text, which we publish in the Classics of Social Sciences section, aims to open some fundamental epistemological and theoretical questions to understand the profound transformations that were taking place in social research in Latin America from the beginning of the seventies. These reflections have as their starting point the exploration of the crisis of social thought worldwide and its specific characteristics in Latin America. The crisis is presented on two levels: as a “ crisis of paradigms” -where the models of social knowledge that emerged in Europe in the 19th century no longer “allow the production of significant questions about reality”- and as a “crisis of problematics”-which deals with the set of interrelated issues where, in the case of Latin America, in recent years, social research has abandoned issues related to power conflicts and social tr...

We publish a text by Aníbal Quijano that aims to open up some questions related to the relations between society and the State in Latin America. The exploration of this problem has as its starting point the discussion of the question of “participation” in its two modalities: on the one hand, “self-management participation”, as the intervention of workers in the management of companies; and, on the other hand, the “participation” of the “social movements”, where their relations with the State are closely examined. The examination of these problems explores them from the perspective of the problematic of power. He argues that the power structure in Latin America is in crisis to the extent that capitalist “modernization” exploded “long before it was able to produce that capitalist homogenization of Latin American society.” One of its consequences is the disorganizat...

Aníbal Quijano's text discusses the problem of modernity and its relations with Latin America. Quijano problematizes the Eurocentric debate centered on postmodernity since he considers it essential to keep the liberating promises of modernity. In Latin America, a "metamorphosis" of modernity takes place as it remains confined to subjectivity, blocking the possibilities of its implantation in the daily materiality of society. Finally, the text discusses the constitution in Latin America of an alternative rationality to the Eurocentric instrumental rationality. This new rationality is implied in the proposal of José María Arguedas. The Arguedian utopia carries a new historical sense where “the joy of collective solidarity and the individual fulfillment” are combined.