Keywords

From the “Grand Theories” to Specialized Sociologies, 1980–2000

From the 1980s onwards, and particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (Cuellar, 2019), sociology in Mexico saw a shift from Marxism and the theory of dependency to a “theoretical pluralism” and a concentration on specific topics and fields of knowledge such as political sociology, social movements, and urban and rural studies (Cadena-Roa, 2021). The transformations also changed expectations about the sociologists’ mission and range of action, which led to uncertainties about their professional profile, and in students’ interest in degree programs. After the boom in the 1970s, from 1980 to 1990, sociology’s enrollment decreased, while the demand for other disciplines, such as communication sciences, notably increased (Contreras & Puga, 2017; Silva, 1987).

However, it is also true that during this period, new bachelor’s degrees were opened in some states of the republic such as Tabasco in the southern part of the country, and Tamaulipas in the north. In 1981, the Instituto de Investigaciones José María Luis Mora was inaugurated in Mexico City, offering a PhD in Latin American Development Studies and master’s degrees in political sociology (starting in 1981) and regional studies (starting in 1985). El Colegio de Jalisco was also created as a research and teaching center in the social sciences and humanities, with an emphasis on graduate studies. There were also important changes in the gender composition of the student body, with an increasing number of women as sociology students. From 1992 to 1996, 52.3% of the students enrolled in this degree program at the UAM-A were female (Cuellar & Martínez, 2003, p. 9). Women also began to have an increasing presence as teachers, researchers, and even directors. In 1980, Gloria Zafra founded the Institute of Sociological Research at Oaxaca’s UABJ, and from 1996 to 2000, Cristina Puga was the first woman director of the FCPyS, and shortly after, she became the executive secretary of COMECSO.

Important academic journals were founded with different editorial criteria, such as Estudios Sociológicos at COLMEX (1983) and Sociológica at UAM-A (1986). While the former mostly published empirical studies, dealing with topics such as migrations social movements, employment and families, the latter was directed towards theoretical questions, including debates about modernity and postmodernity and the reinterpretation of classic and contemporary authors (Zabludovsky, 2002). The journal Acta Sociológica, which had been closed down several years after its first publication in 1969, resumed publication at the FCPyS in 1987.

Reservations about the validity of comprehensive theories and the end of the “orthodox consensus” (Giddens, 1998) gave rise to the so-called crisis of paradigms, a phrase that was a sort of ambiguous adaptation of Kuhn’s ideas (Kuhn, 2013; Hernandez Marquez, 2012). However far from being a real “crisis,” the expression was used in reference to what was considered as the theoretical pluralism of the social sciences.

In Mexico and Latin America, Marxist interpretations tended to place a new emphasis on culture, recovering authors like Adorno, Horkheimer, and Gramsci. Concurrently, new readings of the classics were encouraged. Max Weber’s thought took on a special relevance, due largely to the courses given at UNAM and COLMEX by Luis Aguilar Villanueva, Francisco Gil Villegas and José María Pérez Gay, Mexican academics who had studied in Germany. There was also a renewed interest in Durkheim, and a recovery of thinkers who had not been read with enough attention before, such as Simmel, Elias, and even Parsons. In addition to the new influence of the sociological propositions of these authors as theoretical foundations for research and teaching practices, Mexican sociologists have done extensive introductory studies and new editions of the works of European classics of sociology were published by FCE and distributed to all the Spanish-speaking world. These included Max Weber’s Economy and Society (Gil Villegas, 2014), Durkheim’s Elementary Rules of Religious Life (Vera et al., 2012), and Simmel’s Sociology (Zabludovsky & Sabido, 2014) among others.

New attention was also given to the schools of interpretative and historical sociology, Luhmann’s systems theory, Alexander’s neo-functionalism and, most particularly, Foucault’s critical thinking (Girola & Zabludovsky, 1991). After the nuclear incident in Chernobyl, sociology in Mexico was also motivated by the conceptual debates on risk society (Beck, 1998), radicalized modernity (Giddens, 1998), reflexive society (Beck et al., 1997), and communicative action (Habermas, 1982). Bourdieu’s theories of “habitus” and “campus” and Touraine’s notion of social subjects acquired special relevance as theoretical frameworks for research in Mexico.

Despite the focus on European and American authors, there was also a growing interest on the history and new conditions of sociology and social sciences in Mexico and Latin America. This is shown in a number of studies on the history and practice of the social sciences in Mexico. In addition to the texts that have been cited throughout this book as references, among the publications of the 1990s were studies on the development, organization, and institutionalization of the social sciences edited by Paoli (1990) and Muñoz and Suarez (1991) As for the twenty-first century, there is a renewed attention to recent history and to the social sciences process of institutionalization (Gutierrez-Marquez & Valverde, 2015), journal content (Salles & Zabludovsky, 2001; Puente & Mancini, 2017), the relation between the social sciences in universities, academic renewal, social responsibility, technology, and knowledge networks (Casas, 2001; Zamitiz, 2015); and the future prospects of the social sciences (Leyva, 2020). Among the research that focuses on the field of sociology, there are collections edited by Andrade et al. (1995) on sociological research in Mexico; Zabludovsky (2007), on conceptual change, Tavera and Arteaga (2020) about recent sociological debates; and an article written by Abend (2007) that contrasts publications and research practices in Mexico and the United States.

As Lechner (2015) has observed, revolution was the axis around which Latin American sociology in the 1960s moved, while in the 1980s, there was a shift in attention to the transitions to democracy, as shown by the multiple studies on political parties, the institutionalization of electoral processes, the new forms of legitimacy, political subjects, and civic culture. The results of the 1994 electoral process in Mexico, by which the PRI’s hegemony as the only ruling party was brought to an end, prompted a new interest in the construction of a new democracy. Some of the sociologists who specialized in these issues like Jacqueline Peschard (1994) and José Woldenberg (1993) would also play a key role in the formation of the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), later as members of the board and even as presidents. This was a citizen’s body that for the first time organized elections in Mexico with no interference from the Secretary of the Interior.

As in other parts of the world, the debate about globalization was a key issue for sociology. From the economic point of view, it became relevant with the signing of the National Agreement of Tarif and Trade (NAFTA) by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in August 1992. This fact motivated the publication of several sociological studies that addressed topics such as the effects of competition in the Mexican agricultural sector, the new working conditions in the maquiladoras and the export industry, effects on the national business community, challenges in the financial sector, and changes at the northern border. Sociology has also been concerned with studying the political and cultural dimensions of globalization, such as its effects on the sovereignty of the country, the confirmation of new identities, and the impact on the sociological work itself, including deliberations on the validity of the sociological lexicon, what Ulrich Beck has in mind when he warns against “zombie categories” (Beck, 1998; Zabludovsky, 2010), and the emergence of new social identities (Bokser, 1989; Gimenez, 2009; Zabludovsky, 2007). As in other parts of the world, sociology in Mexico during the 1990s had a “cultural and affective turn” with new attention to subjectivities and the rising importance of the sociology of emotions (Ariza, 2020).

Faced with the ebb of Marxism, and influenced by Touraine’s ideas, Mexican sociologists turned from a concentration on social classes to studies on social movements (Tarrés, 1992, pp. 735–757). The above gave rise to both theoretical and methodological reflections, and analysis of specific cases like the movements of teachers, workers, and students. In 1989, several popular groups that were in disagreement with the government, and until then operated surreptitiously, organized in the city of Monterrey the National Congress of Popular Urban Movements, which would be followed by a second one in 1992, where they created the Confederation Nacional de Movimientos Populares (CONAMUP) (Bennett & Bracho, 1993).

Sociology also showed a growing interest in social movements in the countryside, which was marked by a “climax” with the uprising of the “Zapatista Army of National Liberation” (EZLN) in Chiapas in January 1994 (the same year NAFTA started). Considered the first anti-globalization movement, the protest produced a new sociological interest in the rights of indigenous peoples and human rights in general (Sánchez Albarrán, 2021, p. 416) as well as a debate on multiculturalism, regional autonomy, and participatory democracy. As Stavenhagen (2012, p. 23) points out, attention to the indigenous population re-emerged vigorously in the last decades of the twentieth century and also showed that in the “postmodern era, the construction of identities seemed to prevail over class interests.” The period coincides with the awarding of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize to the Guatemalan indigenous woman Rigoberta Menchú and with the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, which the indigenous movement identified as “five hundred years of resistance.”

In the field of rural sociology, various studies addressed issues like the migration of rural workers to the United States; the new agro-industrial projects, the marginalization and poverty of peasants, and the rise of powerful new economic groups. More complete information on rural sociology in this period may be consulted in the state-of-the-art articles by de Grammont (2008) and Larroa (2010). Urban studies also experienced an important boom with topics ranging from the debate about theoretical approaches—with an important influence of Manuel Castells’s contributions—through the analysis of specific situations, like housing conditions, low-income neighborhoods deficits; the increase of the informal economy, urban policies; social movements; the effects of globalization on cities, local powers; and the new Latin American metropolis. The attention to social problems in particular geographical areas and the dissemination of social science institutions among different states gave rise to a new interest in regional sociology with the launching of the journal Eslabones edited by Carlos Martínez Assad (2001) and the studies of the situation of social sciences in certain regions in Mexico as shown in the book edited by Contreras and Hualde (2015) about the research and specialized programs carried out in the northwestern states of Mexico.

After the 1985 earthquake that struck Mexico City, sociologists carried out various studies to understand the social effects of this disaster and generated proposals for the injured and the new homeless. Studies such as Duhau (2016) and Ziccardi (1989) on the history of urban sociology in Mexico give a more detailed picture of the main contributions of Mexican sociology in this field. The interest in urban sociology also took the form of a concern for the resolution of social problems. With this intention in 1994, the UNAM founded the University Program of Studies about the city, PUEC, to collaborate with other national and international university centers, public sector, and local associations to propose practical strategies for the improvement to the conditions of habitability, local development, transport, sustainability, and disasters in cities.

In addition to urban and rural sociologies, the specialization process of sociology in Mexico included a large number of research fields that would be impossible to analyze in this book, but which may be consulted in various studies on the state of the art and that of sociology of the population (Trigueros, 2015), sociology of work (De la Garza & Cavalcanti, 2006; Góngora, 2018; Ibarra & Manzo, 2018) (Cuéllar & Martínez, 2003), sociology of education (Cerón et al., 2017; Zabalgoitia, 2019), sociology of women and gender studies (De Barbieri, 1993; Estudillo et al., 2019; Lamas, 1986; Rosales, 2007), sociology of the family (Salles Tuirán, 1997), sociology of Indians and peasants (Warman, 1989), medical sociology (Castro Pérez, 2001), environmental sociology (Guzman Pineda, 2015), historical sociology (De la Torre et al., 1994), sociology of culture (Gimenez Lizcano, 1999), sociology of the body (Sabido, 2011), sociology of social representations (Gutierrez Valencia, 2009; Urbina & Ovalle, 2018), sociology of protest emotions and collective action (Gravante & Poma, 2017), sociology of social movements (Murga, 2004), and political culture (Hernández et al., 2019).

Some of the texts on the state of the art published by The Oxford Handbook for Sociology in Latin America (Bada & Rivera, 2021) were written by sociologists working in Mexico, such as Mora-Salas de Olivera on the sociology of inequality,(Mora-Salas and Oliveira, 2020) Viviane Brachet on the sociology of the state, Rodolfo R. Blancarte and Hugo José Suárez on the sociology of religion, Liliana Rivera on the sociology of migration, Marina Ariza on women and migrations, Castro y Aranda on women’s health and decision-making, and Roberto Castro on medical sociology. Other academics living in Mexico have also previously written books on history of sociology in Latin America (Herrera, 2006; Zemelman 1989) and Latin American theory (Marini & Millan, 1996).

Mexican sociologists have also held important positions in international organizations. Among them, Guadalupe Espinoza directed United Nation Fund for Women UNIFEM in Mexico and Central America, and Enrique Leff coordinated the United Nations Environment Program for Mexico and Latin America.

From Particular Sociologies to Interdisciplinary Studies

After the trend towards specialization, in the face of the complex phenomena of the twenty-first century, such as migration, violence, public health, ecological damage, disasters, new identities, and forms of governance, the social sciences made a turn towards explaining problems (Valencia, 2020) in a more holistic way, and with an interdisciplinary approach as shown in Garcia’s Canclini (1991) studies about culture and modernity in the era of globalization.

In the case of the research on the escalation of violence in Mexico, it has become evident that the fragmentation of knowledge into separate areas such as sociology, political science, criminology, neuroscience, and international relations often hinders the comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon.

In recent years, studies on the subject have revolved around insecurity, the links between organized crime and drug trafficking, and its repercussions on sovereignty, governance, and the effect on the very foundations of the state. As violence is far from limited to organized crime, researchers have also focused on urban gangs, the victimization suffered by journalists and intellectuals, and the violence carried out by the police force (Ugalde, 2010). One of the axes of the studies on violence is that exerted on Central American migrants who cross the country: attempting to reach the United States. Many young people are forced to participate in the illegal activities of the drug market.

Although it is true that during the twenty-first century, Mexico went from being a country of emigrants mainly to the United States to a transit region for immigrants, that does not mean that the presence of Mexicans who enter the United States has their lost importance. On the contrary, the remittances they send to Mexico have an exceptional relevance for the Mexican economy. Studies on the day laborers at the agricultural sector and other Mexican migrants to the United States have given an account of the adverse situation in which they often live, the mechanisms of exclusion in place, and the limitations and obstacles that children face in enrolling in the schools of the country where they arrive. In the year 2022, the RMCPyS published a special dossier with studies on “migrant corridors,” the role of violence and organized crime in forced displacement, the economic effects of remittances in the support of migrant families, the restrictions and consequences of the pandemic, and reflections on the concepts of diaspora, citizenship, multiculturalism, and human rights.

Studies about violence have shown the dramatic situation experienced by many women in the southern state of Chiapas, where they are victims of trafficking in the sex market and who suffer violence throughout their entire journey from their communities of origin, in the border crossing, and at the places of their arrival. One of the most critical phenomena on which numerous works have been presented deals with what happened starting in 1988 with the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, an important transit area for drugs and migrants, and in which there are numerous export maquiladoras factories that provide employment to thousands of women from other parts of the country (Pineda & Herrera, 2007; Pacheco, 2015; Ugalde, 2010). Social science research has also focused on the daily violence against women that prevails in rural areas of Oaxaca and other states, showing the links that exist between violence, gender inequality, poverty, and the disadvantages experienced in the access to resources.

As in other parts of the world, women have increasingly expressed their discontent at the situation they are experiencing. An analysis of what happened in 2019 shows the great increase in the number of protests, by women, particularly in CDMX and Chihuahua, demanding the public acknowledgement of the disappeared women and justice for the femicides (LAOMS, 2020). Some recent studies have been dedicated to movements of young feminists which have led to strikes of several schools and have demonstrated in the streets without a unified leadership. Complaints about harassment and gender violence presented by middle- and higher-level students have also been analyzed, many of which are carried out informally (by the exhibition of photos of the aggressors at their schools, or in the social networks) without actually producing legal action.

Beyond feminist research and the violence against women, sociology in Mexico has increasingly incorporated the gender approach. In 2021, the RMCPyS published a dossier on the new feminist expressions with articles on public policies, anthropology of emotions, electoral politics. Communication, women entrepreneurs, and the analysis of the feminist movement in specific regions of the country. In fact, during the period starting in 2006, gender studies became a main field of Mexican sociology, covering various topics such as discrimination, the lack of opportunities in the fields of political and economic power, the inequalities generated by the effects of COVID-19, and several innovative approaches around issues such as gender and space.

Another area with growing importance is the sociology of disasters, which for a long time were only studied from the point of view of natural phenomena without taking social conditions and consequences into account. According to data from the National Center for Disaster Prevention (Guevara, 2022), without taking into account the impacts due to the covid epidemic, in the last 20 years, disasters have caused 11,215 deaths that have indirectly or directly affected 60 million people, have led to the loss of 13 million hectares of crops, and damaged some 40,000 schools. Regarding the recent pandemic, the official figures have been highly questioned, but it is evident that the widely documented setback in the three dimensions of human development (health, education, and income) has had strong repercussions in the loss of jobs, and in the quality and sustainability of school enrollment (Cadena-Roa, 2021; ONU, 2021).

In fact, facing the phenomenon of the pandemic by COVID-19, the social sciences in Mexico showed their value for understanding the causes and consequences of the pandemic (Casas et al., 2022) by doing research about health problems in the context of globalization, transnational networks, and governmental action (Velasco Cruz, 2021, p. 9). Among the multiple studies on the subject, the RMS published a special number on the social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with articles dedicated to the social consequences of the public health crisis and the quarantine on migrations, gender inequality, and other issues. In 2012, COMECSO published a collective book (Cadena-Roa, 2021) showing the relevance of the social sciences in the study of disasters, and the economic and social effects of the pandemic among the homeless, and other social groups. During the period, an interdisciplinary group of academics carried out a nationwide survey about the pandemic among 53,000 people (Angulo et al., 2021, p. 11; the ISUNAM’s researchers). Alicia Ziccardi and Diana Figueroa (2021, p. 31) coordinated a survey that detected the precarious conditions and the lack of access to water for large sectors of the Mexican population during the confinement.

As we have pointed out, in the face of the dramatic changes of the nineteenth century, in an alliance with other disciplines, the practice of sociology has evolved remarkably displaying its capability to cooperate in the explanations and solutions for the emerging problems. However, giving the unprecedent changes that are affecting “risk societies” around the word, there is still a lot to do. To face these challenges, sociology must work in parallel with other fields to disseminate its results outside academia and try to achieve greater recognition so that this discipline may be considered as an option for future students of social sciences that usually choose other fields and professions, such as communication studies, international relations, or political sciences.

With this purpose in mind, it is also necessary to study the history of the discipline from a renewed perspective with an integral approach and an effort to include an extensive range of authors and the important contributions of Mexican sociology over more than a century and half. Despite the emergence of studies on the history and state of the discipline, these are usually presented in a fragmentary way as publications in journals or in collective books whose different works are often unconnected and do not have a central theme. In addition, despite Mexican sociology’s growing tendency to work in collective projects, historians of sociology in Mexico usually focus on the intellectual heritage, of one or two authors, who are often presented uncritically as the only “classics” or actors that led to the advancement of the discipline. This has made invisible the legacy of many precursors (including some women) without which sociology in Mexico cannot be understood. Added to this are the few translations and editions of the original works, which prevent these contributions from being known to the new generation and to the international community.