Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-txr5j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-16T00:30:28.253Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sources of Infrastructural Power: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Chilean Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Hillel David Soifer
Hillel David Soifer*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The striking development of Chilean public primary education during the nineteenth century has often been noted. Existing explanations emphasize industrialization and social change in shaping societal demand for schooling, and elite consensus, the role of individual leaders, and low levels of inequality and social heterogeneity in shaping the state's educational provision. This article complements existing state-centered arguments by showing that the institutions of local and regional administration were also crucial in transforming policy changes into real progress in primary education. As Chilean schooling spread and became systematized over the course of the nineteenth century, local state officials not only effectively carried out the state's educational policies but also refined it independently and even pushed for the deepening of educational development, and particularly the systematic control of schooling.

Resumo

Resumo

El impresionante desarrollo que la educación primaria tuvo en Chile durante el siglo XIX ha sido una fuente constante de interés. Las explicaciones existentes enfatizan el rol de la industrialización y el cambio social como factores relevantes en la conformación de la demanda social por educación formal. El consenso de la élite, el rol de los líderes individuales, y los bajos niveles de inequidad y heterogeneidad social, resultaron también importantes para ampliar la oferta educativa del estado. Este artículo complementa los argumentos centrados en el estado, al mostrar que sus instituciones regionales y locales fueron cruciales en transformar el cambio de las políticas en progreso real de la educación primaria. Al tiempo que el sistema educativo chileno se ampliaba y sistematizaba a lo largo del siglo XIX, oficiales del estado local no solamente operaron las políticas educativas, sino que también las refinaron de manera independiente. Estos mismos oficiales pugnaron, del mismo modo, por la ampliación del desarrollo educativo, y, particularmente, del control sistemático del sistema escolarizado.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , 2009 , pp. 158 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Research for this article was funded by a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and by the dean of faculty at Bates College. Early versions were presented at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and the 2007 meetings of the Society for Latin American Studies. I am grateful to John Coatsworth, Jorge Domínguez, Jens Hentschke, Steven Levitsky, Heather Lindkvist, Karen Melvin, Annie Stilz, Matthias vom Hau, and Laurence Whitehead for helpful comments and conversations, and to the managing editor and three LARR reviewers for many useful suggestions and pointed criticisms.

References

Ansell, Ben W. 2006 From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education. Ph.D. diss., Department of Government, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Anuario Estadístico de Chile various years Santiago: Dirección General de Estadística.Google Scholar
El Araucano 1869 March 23.Google Scholar
Bauer, Arnold 1975 Chilean Rural Society from the Spanish Conquest to 1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benavot, Aaron, and Riddle, Phyllis 1988 “The Expansion of Primary Education, 1870–1940: Trends and Issues.” Sociology of Education 61 (3): 191–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Britton, John A., ed. 1994 Molding the Hearts and Minds: Education, Communications, and Social Change in Latin America. Wilmington, DE: SR Books.Google Scholar
Bushnell, David, and Macaulay, Neill 1994 The Emergence of Latin America in the 19th Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Campos Harriet, Fernando 1960 Desarrollo educacional 1810–1960. Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello.Google Scholar
Cariola, Carmen, and Sunkel, Osvaldo 1990 Un siglo de historia económica de Chile, 1830–1930. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.Google Scholar
Coatsworth, John 1998 “Economic and Institutional Trajectories in Nineteenth-Century Latin America.” In Latin America and the World Economy since 1800, edited by Coatsworth, John and Taylor, Alan M., pp. 23–54. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Simon 2003 Chile: The Making of a Republic, 1830–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruz, Nicolás 2002 El surgimiento de la educación secundaria pública en Chile, 1843–1876 (El plan de estudios humanista). Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos.Google Scholar
Egaña Baraona, María Loreto 2000 La educación primaria popular en el siglo XIX en Chile: Una práctica de política estatal. Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos.Google Scholar
Encina, Francisco 1940 Historia de Chile desde la prehistoria hasta 1891. Santiago: Editorial Nascimeato.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L., and Sokoloff, Kenneth L. 1997 “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Patterns of Growth among New World Economies: A View from Economic Historians of the United States.” In How Latin America Fell Behind, edited by Haber, Stephen, pp. 260–304. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L., and Sokoloff, Kenneth L. 2002 “Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development among New World Economies.” Working paper No. 9259, National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gootenberg, Paul 1993 Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in Peru's “Fictitious Prosperity” of Guano, 1840–1880. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Jaksic, Iván, and Serrano, Sol 1990 “In the Service of the Nation: The Establishment and Consolidation of the Universidad de Chile, 1842–1879.” Hispanic American Historical Review 70 (1): 139–171.Google Scholar
Labarca Hubertson, Amanda 1939 Historia de la enseñanza en Chile. Santiago: Universidad de Chile.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James 2001 The Legacies of Liberalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael 1984 “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results.” Archives Europeénes de Sociologie 25:185–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mariscal, Elisa, and Sokoloff, Kenneth L. 2000 “Schooling, Suffrage, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Americas, 1800–1945.” In Political Institutions and Economic Growth in Latin America, edited by Haber, Stephen, pp. 159–218 Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.Google Scholar
McEvoy, Carmen 1994 Un proyecto nacional en el siglo XIX: Manuel Pardo y su visión del Perú. Lima: Universidad Católica.Google Scholar
Meltzer, Allan H., and Richard, F. Scott 1981 “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government.” Journal of Political Economy 89:914–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ministerio de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública various years Memoria del Ministerio de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública. Santiago: Ministerio de Justicia, Culto e Instrucción Pública.Google Scholar
Molina, Iván, and Palmer, Steven 2004 “Popular Literacy in a Tropical Democracy: Costa Rica, 1850–1950.” Past and Present 184:169–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newland, Carlos 1994 “The Estado Docente and Its Expansion: Spanish American Elementary Education, 1900–1950.” Journal of Latin American Studies 26 (2): 449–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortega Martínez, Luis 2005 Chile en ruta al capitalismo: Cambio, euforia y depresión, 1850–1880. Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos.Google Scholar
Sater, William F. 1976 “Economic Nationalism and Tax Reform in Late 19th Century Chile.” The Americas 33 (2): 311–335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serrano, Sol 1993 Universidad y nación: Chile en el siglo XIX. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria.Google Scholar
Serrano, Sol 1995 “De escuelas indígenas sin pueblos a pueblos sin escuelas indígenas: La educación en la Araucanía en el siglo XIX.” Historia 29:423–474.Google Scholar
Serrano, Sol 1996“De escuelas indígenas sin pueblos a pueblos sin escuelas indígenas: La educación en la Araucanía en el siglo XIX.” Historia 29:423–474.Google Scholar
Soifer, Hillel David 2006 “Authority over Distance: Explaining Variation in State Infrastructural Power in Latin America.” Ph.D. diss., Department of Government, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Soifer, Hillel David, and Hau, Matthias vom 2008 “Unpacking the ‘Strength’ of the State: The Utility of State Infrastructural Power.” Studies in Comparative International Development 43 (3–4): 219–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szuchman, Mark D. 1990 “Childhood Education and Politics in 19th Century Argentina: The Case of Buenos Aires.” Hispanic American Historical Review 70 (1): 109–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valenzuela, J. Samuel 1985 Democratización via reforma: La expansión del sufragio en Chile. Buenos Aires: Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Mary Kay 1997 Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
vom Hau, Matthias 2008 “State Infrastructural Power and Nationalism: Comparative Lessons from Mexico and Argentina.” Studies in Comparative International Development 43 (3/4): 334–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Eugen 1976 Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woll, Allen 1975 “For God or Country: Historical Textbooks and the Secularization of Chilean Society, 1840–1890.” Journal of Latin American Studies 7:23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeager, Gertrude M. 1983 “Women's Roles in Nineteenth Century Chile: Public Education Records, 1843–1883.” Latin American Research Review 18 (3): 149–156.Google Scholar
Yeager, Gertrude M. 1991 “Elite Education in Nineteenth Century Chile.” Hispanic American Historical Review 71 (1): 73–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeager, Gertrude M. 2005 “Religion, Gender Ideology, and the Training of Female Public Elementary School Teachers in 19th Century Chile.” The Americas 62 (2): 209–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar