1st Edition
A History of Book Publishing in Contemporary Latin America
This book presents a cultural history of Latin America as seen through a symbolic good and a practice – the book, and the act of publication – two elements that have had an irrefutable power in shaping the modern world.
The volume combines multiple theoretical approaches and empirical landscapes with the aim to comprehend how Latin American publishers became the protagonists of a symbolic unification of their continent from the 1930s through the 1970s. The Latin American focus responds to a central point in its history: the effective interdependence of the national cultures of the continent. Americanism, until the 1950s, or Latin Americanism, from the onset of the Cold War, were moral frameworks that guided publishers’ thinking and actions and had concrete effects on the process of regional integration. The illustration of how Latin American publishing markets were articulated opens up broader and comparative questions regarding the ways in which the ideas embodied in books also sought to unify other cultural areas.
The intersection of cultural, political and economic themes, as well as the style of writing, makes this book an interest to a wide reading public with historical and sociological sensitivity and global cultural curiosity.
Part 1: Argentina 1. The book and publishing in Argentina. Books for everyone and the Hispanic American model 2. Translating the nation. Gregorio Weinberg and the rationalism of Argentinean past Part 2: Mexico 3. Latin America as a civilizing meridian. Fondo de Cultura Económica and the Tierra Firme series 4. Publishing and politics. Cold War in Latin American culture in the sixties Part 3: Brazil 5. Genesis of the national publishing market: a miracle? 6. The house and the enterprise. José Olympio and the evolution of publishing in Brazil Part 4. Transnational Perspectives 7. The world as a fair. Publishing in(ter)dependencies at the Frankfurt Fair 8. The translation of social and human sciences books between France and Argentina as an unequal Exchange
Biography
Gustavo Sorá has a PhD in Social Anthropology by the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He works as an Independent Researcher of the Argentine Scientific Research Council (CONICET) and as Tenured Professor at the Anthropological Department of the National University of Córdoba (Argentina).
