Abstract
Smart Oxford philosophy professors, seeking to find out which of their smart students were smartest, and perhaps worthy of becoming the next generation of smart philosophy professors, used to set examination questions along the lines of: “Is this the right question?”1 The answers were hardly useful; they were never—to my knowledge—expanded into enlightening books entitled Is This The Right Book?; but they did serve an immediate purpose—sorting philosophical sheep from nonphilosophical goats. The question we are considering has something of the same instrumental quality: it has served to provoke some lively discussions and (unlike the previous example) it has been developed into a diverse and interesting book.2 Pragmatically, therefore, the question works; but as a “heuristic device” for understanding Latin America, it is not much help. Like “Is this the right question?” it is laden with conceptual difficulties and, if we seek to go beyond such difficulties and “operationalize” the question in specific empirical contexts, it is difficult to make progress. In this, it resembles many other notional questions we might concoct: When was Latin America happy? When was Latin America good? And, the most obvious cognate question: When was Latin America traditional? On the other hand, it differs from other questions which, though they sound similar, are substantially different, since they are conceptually clearer and, to some degree, empirically operationizable, for example: When was Latin America literate? When was Latin America urban? When was Latin America industrial?
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© 2007 Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart
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Knight, A. (2007). When Was Latin America Modern? A Historian’s Response. In: Miller, N., Hart, S. (eds) When Was Latin America Modern?. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603042_5
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