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CSI0010.1177/0011392120932935Current SociologyCortés

Article CS

Current Sociology

Clodomiro Almeyda and

1­–19
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392120932935
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political commitment in the

institutionalization of Chilean
sociology, 1957–1973

Alexis Cortés
Sociology Department, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile

Abstract
This article reviews the tension between autonomy and politicization during the
institutionalization of Chilean sociology (1957–1973), based upon the career trajectories
of two of its main actors: Clodomiro Almeyda (University of Chile, UCH) and Roger
Vekemans (Catholic University, CU) and the reassessment of accounts given by the
first practitioners of Chilean sociology. Almeyda played a pivotal role as director of the
UCH School of Sociology, while maintaining a strong political-militant commitment as
leader of the Socialist Party. Meanwhile, Vekemans, the founder and first director of
the CU School, was an exceptional example of intersecting theoretical contributions
and public-political advocacy, being a bridge between the social sciences and the social
doctrine of the Catholic Church. Both men’s career trajectories are a good reflection
of the politicization prevalent in the discipline at the time of its institutionalization.
However, their career trajectories simultaneously show an ambivalent effect of politics
in the consolidation of the sociological field, for, although they assumed a certain degree
of influence from exogenous factors on the nomos of sociology, they also facilitated a
strong connection between society and sociology at the time.

Keywords
Autonomy, Chilean sociology, institutionalization, politicization

Corresponding author:
Alexis Cortés, Departamento de Sociología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Alberto Hurtado,
Almirante Barroso 10, Santiago de, CP: 8340575, Chile.
Email: acortes@uahurtado.cl
2 Current Sociology 00(0)

Introduction
This article revisits Chilean sociology’s institutionalization period (1957–1973) via the
career trajectories of its two principal actors/founders: Roger Vekemans of the Catholic
University (CU) and Clodomiro Almeyda of the University of Chile (UCH), through the
reassessment of the testimonies left by their first trainees and practitioners, as well as
through 11 interviews conducted in January 2020 with sociology students from both
schools, who began their studies in the period from 1958 to 1972.1
Almeyda played a key role in the institutionalization of the UCH School. Because he
also maintained a strong political-militant commitment, he has been associated with the
extreme politicization and lack of autonomy of the School (Brunner, 1988). In contrast,
Vekemans, the founder and the first director of the CU School, spent only five years at
the University, yet is an exceptional example of intersectional theoretical contributions
(Marginality Theory) and public-political advocacy, for the role of Popular Promotion in
the government of Frei Montalva (1964–1970) and for being a kind of bridge between
social science and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The contrast between the institutional trajectories of these two schools of sociology in
Chile has been recurrent, a kind of portrait of the politicization process of the era, setting
up two contrasting models (Barrios and Brunner, 1988). CU, with Vekemans at the helm,
is recognized as a space of developing functionalism with a strong influence of Christian
Democracy, yet oriented towards professional training. While UCH, via its penchant for
Marxist sociological theory, had the radicality of its approach and training as its defining
characteristic, stimulated by factors exogenous to sociology: the European rediscovery
of Marx and the Cuban Revolution, which forged a sociology of commitment that advo-
cated for socialist development.
However, this article will show how these schools had a high degree of political com-
mitment, without necessarily neglecting the professional aspects of their training. The
politicization that affected sociology, rather than heteronomizing the discipline, contrib-
uted instead to the consolidation of its autonomy in some way, while stimulating a form-
ative profile that strongly articulated sociology with the most urgent debates in society.
The two career trajectories reviewed here demonstrate an ambivalent effect of politiciza-
tion on the consolidation of the sociological field because, although they assumed the
incidence of exogenous factors in their nomos, they also facilitated a strong connection
between society and sociology at that time.

The autonomy of the social sciences in Latin America

According to Martuccelli and Svampa (1993), debates in Latin American social sciences
were marked by the preeminence of political circumstances over the internal dynamics of
the disciplines. Thus, hypersensitivity to external political conditions had weakened the
intellectual strength of the field of sociology by compromising its autonomous character.
Social sciences had been subordinated to politics in Latin America. The political
regime transformed itself into a conditioner of scientific dynamics (Lechner, 1990). The
social sciences had affirmed themselves as technologies for social transformation in the
service of particularist projects (Morandé, 1987). For some authors (Chernilo and
Cortés 3

Mascareño, 2005), the lack of autonomy in its scientific operations was one of the prin-
cipal obstacles to the development of sociology in the region. Politicization limited the
potential of the disciplinary and professional development of sociology due to the inabil-
ity to separate the (social) sciences and politics (Barrios and Brunner, 1988).
These conceptions echo the definition of science as a functionally differentiated social
system with its own language and codes (truths/untruths) that sets clearly defined limits on
its environment (Luhmann, 1996). The sciences produced themselves in a self-referential
and self-poetic way, shutting themselves down in the face of other systems’ semantics.
However, this vision has been strongly questioned. Foucault (2009) has demonstrated
the intersectional nature of the sciences and power techniques. Social sciences were the
decisive element in the governance of behavior. Governmentality would not be possible
without the sustenance of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, Bruno Latour (1983)
showed how the very activity of scientific spaces can effectively change society.
Scientific-technical production, as well as its dissemination and consolidation, had been
the result of the interaction of various actors and socio-technical networks (Callon,
2001). The limits between the scientific and the social, in this way, are intertwined in
multiple dialogues, interactions, and spaces of mutual influence that end up blurring the
boundaries of each.
Proposing a synthesis of previous perspectives, Claudio Ramos (2012) has stated that
pure science is to some extent a myth that hides the sociogenesis that binds it to power.
The relationship between science and society involves cross-border crossings and bidi-
rectional ‘contamination.’ However, as inseparable as the science of governmentality is,
it requires autonomy. When science is subordinate to politics, its contributions to knowl-
edge diminish: ‘But a science woven with government, as a dialogical partner, is a social
science in its natural state’ (Ramos, 2012: 347). Ramos has translated this concept into a
research agenda that has allowed him to review the practices of the social sciences in the
light of the concept of performativity, that is, the ability of science to enact reality
(Ramos, 2014, 2015, 2018).
In a Bourdieusian key, Fernanda Beigel has discovered a high degree of elasticity in
academic autonomy in the face of politicization and state intervention in Latin America.
There have been moments of expansion and contraction of autonomy, depending on the
relationship of academia with politics (Beigel, 2013a, 2013a). Her research agenda has
helped to overcome the opposition between politicization and autonomy, which con-
ceives the former as a disruptive element that distorts and pollutes the functioning of the
social sciences.
In parallel, partly stimulated by Beigel, there has been a movement in Argentina that
has revisited the processes of institutionalization of regional sociology, demonstrating
how politicization was constitutive for the differentiation of the discipline (Blois, 2015,
2016; Soler, 2014). This has resulted in the rewriting of the history of local sociology,
deconstructing some of its founding myths (Pereyra, 2007, 2008).
This article seeks to contribute to reassessing the history of Chilean sociology, demon-
strating how the politicization processes that operated in the institutionalization of the
discipline (1957–1973) contributed to the relative autonomization of the field, thus per-
mitting the formation of the discipline to occur with a high degree of connection to public
debates and the demands for social change at the time. This stimulated a ‘sociological
4 Current Sociology 00(0)

imagination’ which was expressed in Chilean sociological works and knowledge, result-
ing in great social and intellectual impact.

Politicization and institutionalization of the social sciences

in Chile (1957–1973)
Chile, despite being a small country, occupied a distinguished place for the regional
development of the social sciences during the second half of the 20th century. As Garretón
(2005) has shown, the early and relatively successful implementation of a state-driven
‘growth-in’ model created a favorable scenario for the social sciences. In turn, economic
stability allowed the state to allocate significant resources to higher education, also
attracting the installation of large-scale regional centers: the Comisión Económica para
América Latina y el Caribe (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean,
or ECLAC, 1948), the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American
Faculty of Social Sciences, or FLACSO, 1957), the Instituto Latinoamericano y del
Caribe de Planificación Económica y Social (Latin American and Caribbean Institution
for Economic and Social Planning, or ILPES, 1962), among others. The presence of
these centers consolidated the developing and modernizing thoughts found in the
Prebisch proposal (1947), with its more systemic elaboration of import substitution
industrialization. The figure of the social scientist was also legitimized with economic
development policy, as a professional capable of rationalizing the means necessary to
channel the required transformations.
The political system’s stability and its capacity to process conflicts and social change
made it attractive for international agencies to set up their centers in the country. At the
same time, the existence of innovative political projects for social reform, such as that of
the Christian Democrat Frei Montalva (president from 1964 to 1970), with his ‘Revolution
in Freedom’ and that of the Socialist Allende (1970–1973), with his ‘Chilean Path to
Socialism,’ increased the interest of European, American, and Latin American research-
ers – all of whom would achieve great international prestige – in setting up base in Chile:
Alain Touraine, Franz Hinkelammert, Manuel Castells, Fernando Hernique Cardoso,
André Gunder Frank, Paulo Freire, Armand Mattelard, and Aníbal Quijano are just some
of the names that invigorated social sciences in Chile at the time.
The country was a kind of ‘laboratory of social transformation,’ but its political stabil-
ity also provided an adequate environment for refugee researchers persecuted by dicta-
torships in neighboring countries and for the institutional development of the social
sciences. For Beigel (2013b), Chile was instrumental in consolidating a circuit of regional
social research and university teaching since the early 1960s, thanks to the moderniza-
tion of higher education, the creation of public agencies to promote research, and the
proliferation of regional centers.
In this sense, the political and social upheavals in Latin America have had a positive
impact on Chilean social sciences. The circulation of intellectuals, often caused by exile,
was one of the factors that contributed to the modernization of the countryside and its
internationalization (Devés Valdés, 2004). Brazilian exiles in Chile were fundamental in
the development of dependency theory (Kay, 2020), for example.
Cortés 5

Additionally, the political interests of these researchers stimulated the elaboration of

theories and empirical studies of great value, such as the structuralism of ECLAC
(Bielschowsky, 2009), the theory of marginality (Nun, 2001), and the theory of urban
social movements (Castells, 2008). Dependency Theory is considered to be the greatest
Latin American contribution to global social sciences (Kay and Gwynne, 2000). In this
way, the vagaries of the institutionalization of sociology, as well as the particularity of
the political process transformed Chile into a kind of semi-periphery of knowledge pro-
duction for the social sciences.
In this context, sociology was consolidated as a highly appealing discipline due to the
theoretical and methodological tools it offered to understand and, above all, channel
social change. This led Chile’s two main universities to found sociology schools in the
late 1950s.
Eduardo Hamuy is considered the founding father of scientific sociology in Chile
(Brunner, 1988; Cárdenas, 2016; Fuenzalida, 1983). Having trained at Columbia
University as an empirical sociologist, he returned in 1952 to the UCH to lead the
Institute of Sociology, from which he directed much pioneering research in the field of
public opinion and where he contributed to forming, via scholarships to study in the
USA and Europe, the core of scholars that would be created by the School of Sociology
in 1957 (Raúl Samuel, Hernán Godoy, Guillermo Briones, and later Orlando Sepúlveda).
Although this effort was opposed by so-called ‘chair sociologists,’ professors who prac-
ticed ‘social essayism,’ without methodology or empirical support, the School managed
to nurture and strengthen itself with experts sent by UNESCO to found FLACSO
(George Friedman, Alain Touraine, Peter Heintz, Alain Girard, Jean Daniel Reynaud,
and Lucien Brams), engendering a very close collaboration with UNESCO at that initial
stage. Subsequently, a significant number of FLACSO graduates would join the School
of Sociology at UCH (Enzo Faletto and Hugo Zemelman, for example), maintaining a
relationship of proximity and fluid collaboration with the School until the coup d’état
(Franco, 2007).
The CU created its school a year after the UCH in 1958 (Beigel, 2011). Roger
Vekemans led and recruited a number of foreign professors, several of them from
Catholic Universities (Freiburg, Leuven, and Notre Dame), including names such as
Armand Mattelart, Franz Hinkelammert, and Norbert Lechner. This was complemented
by sending students from other disciplines, such as law, to specialize in sociology (José
Sublandt and Raúl Urzúa). In parallel, the Center for Social Research was created under
Hernán Godoy, who had left the UCH, following an internal crisis that separated Hamuy’s
original group (Fuenzalida, 1983). In its origins, there was a strong ecclesiastical doctri-
nal stamp at the CU, which gradually lost ground to the Americanization of the School,
which entailed a more positivist and functionalist approach (Brunner, 1988). Not without
tension, Catholic sociology forged its own path that contributed to the strengthening of
scientific sociology (Beigel, 2011).
The arrival of professors who came from their postgraduate studies in Europe (mainly
at CU) and the US (at UCH) had a high degree of conceptual and theoretical openness,
resulting in an environment that was considered, by its former students, to be intellectu-
ally stimulating.
6 Current Sociology 00(0)

However, the development of scientific sociology had a high political commitment

from its inception, mainly represented by Eduardo Hamuy. As Hernán Godoy (1960)
pointed out, sociology needed to develop in close relation to the national context and
consolidating it should generate interest and support from society, albeit in coherence with
the global development of sociology. Sociology must concern itself with the ‘significant
areas of our social reality,’ that is, in connection with the living forces of society and with
the historical situation in Chile. It can be said, in this regard, that the opening of sociology
to politics was a way of making the field essential and, therefore, of consolidating itself.
It is precisely this political commitment, which would make sociology one of the
main targets for oppression by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, that would put an
end to the foundational period of the social sciences. Thus, Chile went from being a ref-
uge for the persecuted intelligentsia of the continent to a country that began to expel
researchers (Beigel, 2010). Sociology, with the coup d’état (1973), went from one of the
most promising professions for the construction of a new society to being a precondition
for suspicion and possible condemnation by the dictatorship (Brunner, 1988). The politi-
cization of sociology during Allende’s government, in the military’s view, had reached
such a level of intensity that there would be no boundaries between politics and sociol-
ogy. Many social science majors were shut down by the government and their students
and professors were persecuted. In the places where sociology continued to be taught,
aseptic policy training was promoted. Although the social sciences managed to reorgan-
ize through the extra-university circuit of the independent centers (Brunner, 1985;
Morales and Garber, 2018), the dictatorship was a radical break, marked by the estrange-
ment between these centers, dedicated to the study of democratization, and sociologists
trained during the dictatorship. Against this backdrop, the new sociologists, those trained
during the dictatorship, took refuge in the social work and committed practices detached
from disciplinary debates (Güell, 2002).
The politicization of sociologists was expressed in new ways during the dictatorship,
but it did not disappear. However, questions about the politicization of a sociology that
sought to institutionalize itself in the previous period were consolidated in the discipli-
nary imaginary and were profusely reflected in the testimonies collected by Barrios and
Brunner (1988).
The weakening of the social sciences in this period contrasts with the strengthening of
economic sciences, from the role played by the Chicago Boys, economists trained at the
University of Chicago under the influence of Milton Friedman, in the economic refound-
ing of the country during the dictatorship and in the neoliberalization of the country
(Valdés, 1995). During this period, sociology had barely institutionalized itself, and it
was forced to fight for credibility against the supremacy of neoliberal economists trained
in the United States.

Clodomiro Almeyda and the School of Sociology at the

University of Chile
Clodomiro Almeyda studied law at UCH, defending a memoir about Marxist theory of the
state. In 1960, he was the first director of the Arauco magazine, an ideologically-based
publication of the Socialist Party (SP), and he collaborated on envisioning and creating
Cortés 7

the collection ‘Our America’ from University Publishing (Editorial Universitaria).

Additionally, he developed diverse teaching activities, addressing economic, political,
and sociological topics between 1949 and 1987. His university career began at the
Veterinary Medicine Faculty of UCH, directing the Rural Economics course. Later, he
became a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Law, Economics, and
Political Science. He directed the UCH School of Sociology between 1967 and 1970, and
later in 1992 (just after the transition to democracy), where he served as the Chair of
Political Sociology and Sociology of Underdevelopment.
He was initially invited by Manuel Zamorano, Director of the School, to be part of the
cadre, but later was elected as Chair of Political Science. In his memoirs, Almeyda rec-
ognizes that, although to some extent his academic activity was delayed because of his
political responsibilities, his university work was much more in keeping with his own
vocation, affirming the complementarity between politics and academia (Almeyda,
1987). Chilean politics at that time was highly intellectualized. In fact, at the time it was
quite common for partisan politics to recruit its parliamentarians and ministers into the
university world (Cárdenas, 2016).
Almeyda also taught postgraduate studies in Escolatina (Political Sociology) and,
after the coup d’état and his subsequent arrest and expulsion from the country, he held a
teaching position at UNAM in Mexico (1975–1976) and the Humboldt in Berlin (1978–
1987), receiving the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the universities of Havana,
Guadalajara, Humboldt, and Wilhem Pieck (GDR).
Nevertheless, his career was much denser politically, as he held various leadership
positions in the Socialist Party. He was Minister of Labor (1952–1953), a Deputy for
Santiago (1961–1965), and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior, Minister
of Defense, and, briefly, Vice President (May 1973) of Allende’s government. Despite
this, many of the sociologists trained during this period recognize Almeyda as a key fac-
tor in configuring the profile that the School would assume during his management,
creating the transition from a ‘sociology of professorship’ to an empirical and critical
sociology, a paradox because he was a ‘professor sociologist.’ ‘Almeyda was the director
who allowed new researchers to participate responsibly in the workings of the School,
people who already had a foundation superior to those old gentlemen dedicated to the
social sciences with a bookish Marxist inspiration that were not doing any more than
reciting verses, quoting texts, but who never turned to concrete research and who had no
methodological training’ (Barrios and Brunner, 1988: 36).
Some of his former students, in fact, are reluctant to see him as a ‘professor sociolo-
gist,’ even though he shared the same political militancy with them, because ‘Almeyda
was a Marxist all the time, these others [the professor sociologists] were not Marxists at
all and socialists did not have much either’ (interview with Eduardo Lawrence).
Almeyda’s political and intellectual weight was a factor that influenced his election as
School Director; it would be a way of strengthening the School of Sociology, considering
the context of university policy at the time. And his leadership favored interdisciplinary
dialogue with history and political science, attracting students from other majors to train
as sociologists.
In this sense, Almeyda contributed to the change of the School’s formative impres-
sion, initially associated exclusively with positivism. While the CU was influenced more
8 Current Sociology 00(0)

by academics trained in Europe, the UCH had a decidedly American bent. According to
a first-generation student of sociology at UCH, who was later a teacher at the school: ‘the
position of the School, until the arrival of Almeyda and several others, was positivist,
clearly, was very pro-United States’ (interview with Eduardo Lawrence).
Almeyda was the facilitator of the arrival of researchers who contributed to the theo-
retical renewal of the School with a strong commitment to implementing social change.
As a sociologist who went to both CU and UCH elaborated: ‘I believe that ‘Cloro’
[Almeyda’s nickname] played an important role, in the sense that he contributed to this
sociology committed to social reality and allowed for the confluence in the School of
Sociology of interesting figures in sociology, such as Lawrence, Faletto’ (interview with
Andrés Pascal Allende).
Almeyda’s presence was key to attempting to reconcile students’ concerns about
social change with the safeguarding and encouragement of appropriate academic condi-
tions for the development of sociology as a discipline. The theoretical strengthening of
the school, through the introduction of an unorthodox Marxism, was the imprint he
wanted to leave on sociology: ‘Almeyda arrives at the School of Sociology, convinced
that what it is lacking is really an approach to Marxist thought, and he sees himself as an
instrument for that possibility’ (interview with Eduardo Lawrence). At the same time, the
treatment of Marxism would be far from an indoctrinating dynamic, one of its trade-
marks being the spirit of respect for divergence of opinion: ‘He was very respectful of
others, very convinced of his truth, but at the same time very tolerant. I think that was
valuable, that it aroused admiration in us, because in the street or the courtyards of UCH
[there were many conflicts about ideology and political positions on the left] between
different groups’ (interview with Eduardo Lawrence).
This attitude was decisive, so that in the opinion of one of his collaborators, who was
later an important socialist leader, the sociology of the University of Chile contributed to
the theoretical renewal of the Chilean left: ‘He made the school of sociology a factor of
political ideological transformation of the Chilean left. In my opinion, sociology was a
very important factor in the development of ideas that culminated in the election of
Allende’ (interview with Ricardo Núñez).
In fact, this search for articulation between sociology and social change was consist-
ent with the intellectual concerns that Almeyda had been cultivating from early on. In a
text summarizing his interpretation of Chilean social development, published in 1957, in
which he characterizes Latin American societies as ‘unadjusted,’ due to the confluence
of past forms and others that anticipated the future (Almeyda, 1999: 12), he points out
that it is sociology’s task to contribute to the organic integration of these underdeveloped
societies. The exit from underdevelopment could be through a revolutionary and social-
ist solution, but would need to take into account the cultural and social particularities of
Latin American peoples. In his vision, it would be a Latin American, non-imitative, and
national popular socialism (Almeyda, 1999: 28).
Recalling the ‘furious breakthrough’ of two academic fads in Latin American Marxism
during his period at the School, Almeyda was as open to dialogue as he was skeptical.
The first, of European origin, was Althusserian structuralism, which he found in Marta
Harnecker and her book The Fundamental Elements of Historical Materialism, her most
important and massive translation into the Chilean environment. The second was the
Cortés 9

Latin American ‘dependency sociology.’ Recognizing the sociological and theoretical

contributions of these aspects, Almeyda noticed large differences in interpretation. In
particular, he stated about dependence:

The ‘dependence sociology’ as an explanatory theory of underdevelopment, correctly pointing

to the interrelationship between development in metropolitan countries and underdevelopment
in backward countries, exaggerates, in my view, this relationship to the extent of making
backwardness a mere product of dependency, regardless of the fact that the primitive of the
economic structure of backward countries is in fact a pre-existing situation and is not caused by
the action of the central economies. (Almeyda, 1987: 153)

Almeyda elaborated in what is considered to be his most sociological publication,

Sociologism and Ideologism in Revolutionary Theory, which was published a few days
before the 1973 coup d’état, forever condemned to omission by censorship. However,
this book largely summarizes his conception of the sociologist’s profession and its pos-
sible deviations caused by polarization between teachers and sociology students. This
work sought to integrate the empirical and ideal dimension of knowledge for revolution-
ary theory, recognizing the existence of two distortions: one empiricist and one ideolo-
gist. The first would be present among the academic and enlightened media of the
Marxist left, where a practical ignorance of the dialectical method prevailed, because of
the inclination towards ‘empiricist remnants’ of its practitioners, who were oriented
towards an objective social science, reducing their activity to the verification of data and
the verification of connections between variables as apparent as superficial. However, an
ideologist bias would be presented mainly by the youth and the student context of an
idealistic left, who would be unable to distinguish between reality and the predefined
theoretical scheme in Marxism, being led to vanguard and revolutionary positions that
would alienate the student movement from the people. With this publication, he attempted
to sound a warning about the political consequences that dogmatic ideologism could
have:

In the present circumstance, the problem is more complex and serious, because of the validity
in certain advanced student environments of an anti-theoretical, spontaneous attitude, which
makes cult of action and contempt for intellectual discourse one of the assumptions of its
political conduct. Curiously, this anti-theoretical position overlaps with an idealistic and
ideologizing dogmatic and pre-critical position, which runs counter to this cult of action, direct
confrontation, and spontaneity, that is now so in vogue in the radicalized student environment.
(Almeyda, 1973: 13)

According to the testimonies collected by Barrios and Brunner (1988), this radicalization
would have had serious consequences for the formation of new sociologists, since it
would not have been possible to reconcile the ideological and political options with
national problems and good analytical training. However, in the testimonies collected for
this publication, the negative evaluation appears nuanced. While it is acknowledged that
during the radicalization process of the late 1960s until 1973 over-ideologization existed,
analytical and methodological tools were also part of the training. True, vocational train-
ing was not the most relevant thing for students, but it never ceased to be present:
10 Current Sociology 00(0)

On the one hand, I had this rather solid training in Marxism and that, of course, is also a
weakness, because you do not see the whole picture, that is, we were very dogmatic, but on the
other hand, there never stopped being teachers in the department who had been trained in the
United States or the more traditional stream of positivist or neopositivist methodologies and
they were always their strengths. (CU-UCH woman student 1968)

Almeyda contributed to generating a disciplinary impression identified with an ‘epic

sociology’ at UCH (Gómez and Sandoval, 2004), which is distinguished from an instru-
mental understanding of sociology. In this way, the intellectual was privileged over the
professional. True, students viewed their technical training as secondary, but it was
always present. It was not the most important thing at the time, but later, when they had
to insert themselves into the labor market during the dictatorship, it was crucial. As a
student who went to both schools pointed out: ‘I would objectively tell you that [Orlando
Sepúlveda] had much more weight in training future sociologists, he was the one who
gave the methodological spine to all of the people who left UCH’ (interview with woman
student CU-UCH 1968).
In his memoirs, Almeyda also criticized the inclination to ideologism, but emphasized
the energy he unleashed to promote a modernization of the university structure with the
Reform of 1968:

The tumultuous University Reform of the late 1960s surprised me in the direction of the School
of Sociology. The student environment on that campus was at the time, I think, the most unique
of the University. For years, those who went there were moved by a diffuse and immature desire
to play some role, rather than simply to study social sciences, something like the Che Guevara
scenario in Bolivia, or the revolt of Parisian students in May 1968. They wanted to make our
Department in UCH something like what the Sierra Maestra was for the Cuban Revolution.
They grew beards and long hair, wore blankets instead of coats, and smoked pipes instead of
cigarettes . . . However, at least in the Philosophy Departments, they managed to renew
stagnant structures and make way for a life-giving but inorganic change in fundamental aspects
of university life. (Almeyda, 1987: 150)

On the one hand, the politicization of the School of Sociology as part of the hectic stu-
dent movement of the UCH at the time did block certain aspects of the discipline, but on
the other, it invoked a modernizing force of the university space (Cárdenas, 2016). In
addition, it strongly connected the aspirations and tensions of social change at the time
with the research agendas of a discipline that was beginning to take off. In this sense, the
work of a figure like Almeyda was fundamental in facilitating some of these transitions,
valuing the modernizing potential of student energy, although keeping a distance from its
ideologism, despite the strong bond that united him with contingent politics.
A sociologist who became one of the principal leaders of the Revolutionary Left
Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, or MIR, its Spanish acronym), the
most politically-minded radical group of the period, and who went to both CU and UCH,
summarized this track as follows:

I do not believe it is possible that a sociologist can actually be formed if he does not have
dedication and practice, linked to the direct knowledge of social reality, or intervention in that
Cortés 11

social reality. It was study with purpose, it was not simply theoretical, it was not only sociology
for sociology, it was sociology as an instrument for social change. (interview with Andrés
Pascal Allende)

This connection to reality effectively forced them to go beyond what was in the books in
practice, whether it was American functionalism or a more orthodox Marxism.

Roger Vekemans and the School of Sociology at the

Catholic University
The Jesuit priest Roger Vekemans (1921–2007) was trained in sociology in Leuven and in
Munster (Germany), in addition to his studies in philosophy and theology in Malinas, and
received his doctorate in sociology in 1955 at the University of Nimega (Holland). In
1957, at the age of 36, he arrived in Chile to continue Father Alberto Hurtado’s intellectual
work. His competence as a social scientist and his knowledge of Marxism were seen as
fundamental in the face of the advancement of communism in Chile (Beigel, 2011).
Once in Chile, he founded and directed (1957–1964) the Center for Research and
Social Action (Centro de Investigación y Acción Social, or CIAS, its acronym in Spanish),
He was the director of the influential Message Magazine (Revista Mensaje), he created
and headed (1960–1970) the Center for Economic and Social Development of Latin
America (Centro para el Desarrollo Económico y Social de América Latina, or DESAL,
its Spanish acronym) and the Latin American Center for Population and Family (Centro
Latinoamericano de Población y Familia, or CELAP, its Spanish acronym), as well as
the School of Sociology at CU (1959–1964). Additionally, he also served as a consultant
in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Pan-American Union in
Washington (1960, now the Organization of American States or OAS) and at the Inter-
American Development Bank (IADB, 1962). Once he left Chile, in 1970, he also founded
the Center for Studies of the Development and Integration of Latin America (Centro de
Estudios para el Desarrollo e Integración de América Latina, or CEDIAL, its Spanish
acronym) in Colombia.
The figure of Vekemans is representative of a time in the Catholic world that was
particularly inclined to cultivation of the social sciences, as they were in the process of
institutionalization and consolidation in the region and provided indispensable tools to
address religious problems from a scientific point of view: the practices of Catholics,
forms of popular religiosity, the decline of the priestly vocation, etc. According to Beigel
(2011), these priest-scientists, such as Vekemans, Renato Poblete, or François Hourtart,
became professionalized and their main form of ecclesial prestige came from their
knowledge and their place on the front line of the Church’s politicization processes, pro-
vided by the spaces opened by Social Doctrine and the Vatican Council II. This would
explain CU’s early interest in forming a sociology school. Since its foundation, it bene-
fited from the internationalization that the Catholic Church fostered in its educational
institutions, generating a space conducive to innovation in research agendas and a strong
articulation with public debates at the time.
On one hand, the social doctrine of the Church permitted the founding debate of the
regional sociology of that time, the question of underdevelopment/development, to
12 Current Sociology 00(0)

become a central focus of the theoretical concerns of these Catholic social scientists,
relating these efforts to the research agendas of large centers such as ECLAC. This con-
vergence between pastoral action and scientific research, in Vekemans’ case, was
reflected in his Marginality Theory. He identified the dichotomy between a participating,
installed, and hegemonic society versus another society of marginal masses as a charac-
teristic of Latin America (Vekemans and Silva, 1969). Marginality was somewhat more
problematic than poverty, which increased the urgency for an intervention that would
allow the integration of these sectors. Popular Promotion, devised by Vekemans at
DESAL, aimed precisely at integrating the marginalized into a process of social restruc-
turing. Action in training and organization was sought for the marginalized, with the
grassroots organizations of the same population being the foundation of the re-integra-
tive popular process. At the same time, the Christian Democracy Party managed to trans-
late the social doctrine of the Church into politics. With this, Vekemans soon linked
himself with Frei Montalva upon his arrival in Chile, who in 1964 would become presi-
dent of the Republic:

[With Frei] we had the same inspiration for the social doctrine of the Church .  .  . [and] DESAL’s
goal was Popular Promotion. What we wanted to do as much as possible is ensure that the
money, which was released in millions of dollars, reached the marginal populations . . . There
is no doubt that this idea had an impact on Eduardo Frei Montalva and, in particular on one of
his important ministers, Sergio Ossa. (Beigel, 2011: 216).

As a former CU student and later MIR leader recalls, Vekemans made a major contribu-
tion to making the urban poor visible and relevant:

I did not share the goal of such incorporation. But it was of enormous importance and it was
that it overturned a sociology that until then was linked to ECLAC’s theories of development,
etc., [but with a] more American root, without a focus on our country. Vekemans puts the focus
on these sociological conceptions, instruments of sociology, and relieves the importance of
what we would later call in the MIR the poor of the countryside and the city. (interview with
Andrés Pascal Allende)

Vekemans, who had transformed his academic credentials into prestige within the
Church, thus extended his influence to the political world, becoming a central node in a
wide network of research centers receiving a large amount of resources from Catholic
development cooperation and the Alliance for Progress. This made him the target of
strong criticism within the Catholic Church, for the monopolistic character of the recep-
tion of resources and for the source of those resources (Sappia, 2010). Vekemans was
accused of being a CIA agent and one of the premier anti-communists in Chile.
For Vekemans, these accusations would be part of a series of mystifications that he
tried to fight in a book, the title of which is a good portrait of himself, DC – CIA –
CELAM – Autopsy of the Vekemans Myth (1982). Vekemans defined the book as an act
of self-defense against unfounded attacks.
Both his research vision, conceived as a bridge between science and social doctrine,
as well as his proximity to the Christian Democratic government had great influence on
the signature of the School of Sociology he founded. This favored the entry of Catholic
Cortés 13

University sociologists into various public bodies, especially those linked to Popular
Promotion. This delineated his professionalizing trademark. ‘Vekemans had inserted
sociology and the sociologist’s work into the most comprehensive outline of Christian
Democracy’s political project, thereby helping to open the doors of public administration
to the Catholic University’s sociology’ (Barrios and Brunner, 1988: 43).
The politicization fostered by Vekemans in a different key from that of the UCH has
not received the same criticism as the latter, indicating the more analytical and academic
profile of CU sociology. The critical nature that Marginality Theory itself possessed was
not recognized, partly because of its reformist character. The emergence of a more criti-
cal and political profile at CU would only be attributed to the effects of the University
Reform initiated in that university. This resulted in the creation of interdisciplinary insti-
tutes such as the Center for National Reality Studies (Centro de Estudios de la Realidad
Nacional, or CEREN, its Spanish acronym), where prominent intellectuals engaged in
research, such as: Manuel Antonio Garretón, Tomás Moulian, Jorge Larraín, Armand
Mattelard, among others; and the Interdisciplinary Center for Urban Development
(Centro Interdisciplinario de Desarrollo Urbano, or CIDU, its Spanish acronym), which
featured researchers such as Manuel Castells, Franz Vanderschueren, and Eder Sader
(Brunner and Flisfisch, 2014).
Vekemans’ Marginality Theory stimulated significant theoretical and empirical
debates (Giusti, 1973). It was the first systemic effort to understand the urban issue on
the continent, and its controversial propositions stimulated a large number of studies that
sought to refute it. At the same time, it allowed for a strong connection with the theoreti-
cal debates of modernization and dependency theories (Vekemans and Silva, 1969).
Additionally, marginality left an important institutional footprint on the state, through the
Popular Promotion Institute, with positive impacts for the professionalization of the pro-
file of CU sociologists.
The left created a negative interpretation of Vekemans’ actions, even accusing him of
being a CIA agent, that can be contrasted today with his political reformism and his
opposition (within the CU) to the growing influence of the ‘Chicago Boys,’ the econo-
mists who headed the national economic refounding once the Pinochet dictatorship
began. Vekemans considered the neoliberal economic reforms to be contrary to the moral
values of the Church’s social doctrine. Economics and Social Sciences were housed
within one department at CU, and there are many accounts of clashes between Vekemans
and the Chicago Boys, further reinforcing his objection to the neoliberal policies the
economists sought to implement (Gárate, 2012).
Although his early departure from CU diluted Vekemans’ legacy at the School, his
encouragement and promotion were decisive in the careers of a series of students who
subsequently renewed critical sociology at CEREN. As one of the most outstanding soci-
ologists of that generation remembers:

Vekemans encouraged me to go to university. In the year 1963 Vekemans . . . he informs me,
Rodrigo Ambrosio [founder of the MAPU2], Claudio Orrego, and Eugenio Ortega, that he has
obtained a scholarship for some of us to go study in Paris and Leuven. And we left, thus
Vekemans, in that sense, was decisive in my academic life, I owe my studies in Leuven and my
admission to university to him. (interview with Tomás Moulian)
14 Current Sociology 00(0)

This new brood of teachers preserved and expanded the conception of sociology as a
discipline strongly connected with public debates and social intervention. In that sense,
at CU the curricular nets were evolving rapidly to try to process the accelerated transfor-
mations that society was experiencing, requiring adjustments of theories and approaches
that were more appropriate in accounting for those realities. Thus, a society that was
constantly changing corresponded with a sociology that was also constantly changing.

Final considerations
This article, based on the career trajectories of Clodomiro Almeyda (UCH) and Roger
Vekemans (CU), revisited the relationship between the politicization and the institution-
alization of sociology, questioning the consolidated attribution in that country that
assumes politicization is harmful for the autonomy of sociology.
Both Almeyda and Vekemans are good reflections of the politicization prevailing in
the discipline at the time of its institutionalization: the first as one of the central figures
of Chilean socialism and the second as one of the leading ideologues of Frei’s ‘Revolution
in Freedom.’ However, the strongly political career trajectories did not operate as a uni-
vocal factor for the de-autonomization of the discipline, showing an ambivalent effect of
politicization in the consolidation of the sociological field.
Almeyda’s arrival at the School contributed to introducing a disciplinary profile that
conceived of sociology as strongly articulated by, but not subordinated to, national politi-
cal debates and expectations for social change. In this manner, his theoretical-political
concerns favored the critical hallmark of the School, without neglecting empirical
research. Although Almeyda is associated with harmful politicization, he was extremely
critical of the ideologization and sectarianism that his students apparently fell into.
Moreover, as some of the collected stories confirm, it was a highly intellectualized policy.
As the last director of the UCH School pointed out before the coup: ‘they were very politi-
cal students, very politicized, but well-trained as well’ (interview with Eduardo Morales).
The presence of a major political figure like Almeyda was highly stimulating for a genera-
tion that saw sociology as a fundamental tool for the transformation of reality.
Conversely, Vekemans pointed to a different process of politicization, helping to con-
solidate a professional profile for its graduates, precisely because of the demand for
community specialists that the application of the Popular Promotion policy generated,
adopted by the Christian Democratic government of Frei Montalva. The 1960s and 1970s
marked a moment of social change that required that the social sciences be translated into
public policies and that sociology be the privileged discipline to meet that challenge.
This politicization was reflected in the figures of these two heads of schools, who did
not subordinate sociology to politics, but rather connected it in a productive manner, stim-
ulating and outlining a type of training that was highly valued by their graduates (Huneeus,
2018). An important number of them were trained as researchers, and the presence of
international agencies and the growing public demand for empirical studies led to students
having early contact with fieldwork and the knowledge of empirical data processing.
Students trained in this manner were in high demand at many international agencies. At
the same time, the growing demand for teachers led to the most outstanding sociology
students having very early experiences as teachers, either through assistantships, where it
Cortés 15

was common for them to replace tenured professors, or as professors already in charge as
chairs. This demand also encouraged postgraduate studies, within the country at FLACSO,
or by awarding scholarships to the US and Europe, for which personalities such as
Almeyda or Vekemans and others were fundamental.
If we consider Syed Hussein Alatas’s (2006) suggestion of overcoming imitative log-
ics in sociology, promoting both universal contributions to the study of society and the
search for an indigenous sociology concerned with the specific problems of his society,
that is, what for him constitutes an autonomous sociology, then it can be said that both
Almeyda and Vekemans – not in spite of, but rather thanks to how they articulated their
sociological work with politics – contributed to the autonomy of the discipline at the time
of its institutionalization.
Although this politicization actually resulted in incidences of exogenous political fac-
tors in the nomos of the discipline, they facilitated a strong connection between society
and sociology. This is in a context of the strong mobilization and politicization of Chilean
society. It is therefore possible to ask: to what extent could a society politicized to that
extent produce a non-politicized sociology?

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Alina Donoso, Claudio Ramos, Vicente Espinoza, Leesa Rasp, and the three
reviewers for the various support, comments, clues, and contacts that helped me to make this arti-
cle possible.

Funding
This article was funded by the FONDECYT Regular Project No. 1200841.

ORCID iD
Alexis Cortés https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5833-3404

Notes
1. Of the interviewees, seven were originally admitted to the UCH and four were admitted to the
CU. Of that total, four were involved with both schools, three of them as students and one as
a professor. Of the total number of interviewees, three are women sociologists.
2. A left party that was formed from a division of the Christian Democratic Youth and was
hegemonic at the CU School of Sociology.

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Author biography
Alexis Cortés is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the Director of the Master’s pro-
gram in Sociology at the University Alberto Hurtado, and Vice President of the Colegio de
Sociólogos de Chile (the Chilean Sociologists’ professional association). He earned his PhD in
Sociology at the Instituto de Estudios Sociales y Políticos (IESP-UERJ, Institute of Social and
Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro). His research interests include: Latin
American sociology, social movements, and critical thinking. He currently directs the FONDECYT
project ‘Radiography of Latin American Critical Thinking: CLACSO Anthologies as an Approach
to a Regional Canon.’ He is the author of Favelados and Pobladores in the Social Sciences: The
Theoretical Construction of a Social Movement (published in Portuguese, EdUERJ, Rio de Janeiro,
2018).

Résumé
Cet article examine la tension entre autonomie et politisation pendant la période
d’institutionnalisation de la sociologie chilienne (1957–1973), à partir des trajectoires
professionnelles de deux de ses principaux représentants, Clodomiro Almeyda
(Université du Chili, UCH) et Roger Vekemans (Université catholique, CU), et d’une
nouvelle appréciation des témoignages livrés par les premiers praticiens de la sociologie
chilienne. Almeyda a joué un rôle clé en tant que directeur de la Faculté de Sociologie de
l’UCH, tout en maintenant un fort engagement politique et militant en tant que dirigeant
du parti socialiste. Au même moment, Vekemans, qui a été le fondateur et premier
directeur de la Faculté de Sociologie de la CU, a su conjuguer de manière exemplaire
les contributions théoriques et l’action politique et publique, en associant les sciences
sociales et la doctrine sociale de l’Église catholique. Les trajectoires professionnelles des
deux hommes reflètent bien la politisation qui prévalait dans la discipline au moment de
son institutionnalisation. Cependant, leurs trajectoires font en même temps apparaître
un effet ambivalent de l’action politique dans la consolidation du champ sociologique,
car, bien qu’ils aient assumé un certain degré d’incidence de facteurs exogènes dans le
nomos de celui-ci, ils ont aussi à l’époque facilité une forte connexion entre la société
et la sociologie.

Mots-clés
Autonomie, institutionnalisation, politisation, sociologie chilienne

Resumen
Este artículo revisa la tensión entre autonomía y politización durante la institucionalización
de la sociología chilena (1957–1973), a partir de las trayectorias profesionales de dos
Cortés 19

de sus principales actores: Clodomiro Almeyda (Universidad de Chile, UCH) y Roger

Vekemans (Universidad Católica, CU) y la reevaluación de las explicaciones aportadas
por los primeros practicantes de la sociología chilena. Almeyda desempeñó un papel
fundamental como director de la escuela de sociología de la UCH, al tiempo que mantuvo
un fuerte compromiso político-militante como líder del Partido Socialista. Mientras
tanto, Vekemans, el fundador y primer director de la escuela de sociología de la CU, fue
un ejemplo excepcional de contribuciones teóricas cruzadas y defensa pública-política,
siendo un puente entre las ciencias sociales y la doctrina social de la Iglesia Católica. Las
trayectorias profesionales de ambos hombres son un buen indicador de la politización
dominante en la disciplina en el momento de su institucionalización. Sin embargo, sus
trayectorias profesionales muestran simultáneamente un efecto ambivalente de la
política en la consolidación del campo sociológico, ya que, aunque asumieron un cierto
grado de incidencia de factores exógenos en el nomos del mismo, también facilitaron
una fuerte conexión entre la sociedad y la sociología en aquel momento.

Palabras clave
Autonomía, institucionalización, politización, sociología chilena