Seminal Ideas for Old and New Problems in Latin America

Abstract: José Medina Echavarría is known as one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century in Latin America. During his exile in México, Puerto Rico, and Chile, he developed vast intellectual networks that contributed to the complex process of institutionalization of sociology in our countries. In this paper, we explain how this was possible through new editorials, translations on social science topics, seminars, debates, and the foundation of important departments of Sociology. These included a double contribution of Medina Echavarría: a reflection on sociology that required a precise conceptual language, and what he called vertical and horizontal theories. And second, his guiding efforts with the critical analysis of the modernization processes in this continent, after the Second World War. We analyze in both these contributions the clear legacy of Weber’s theory of action and his economic sociology.