The Ford Foundation, Social Science, and the Politics of Poverty and Inequality in Cold War Latin America

FAIN: FEL-273380-21

Patrick Justus Iber
University of Wisconsin, Madison (Madison, WI 53715-1218)

Research and writing leading to a book about the Ford Foundation’s social scientific research in Latin America during the Cold War.

This book will provide an examination of the development of social scientific thinking about poverty and inequality as seen through the operations of the Ford Foundation in Cold War Latin America. During the Cold War, the Ford Foundation was the major institution for the promotion and consolidation of the social sciences throughout the region, and Latin America was an essential site of Cold War contestation in what the United States understood to be its area of influence. Poverty was seen as a political danger, since it could lead the poor to embrace Communism; understanding it and alleviating was a matter of national security. This project will examine the grants, practices, and institutions developed and supported by the Ford Foundation. In so doing, it will make it possible to track changing understandings of poverty and inequality over time, and thus contribute to the intellectual history of the social sciences, U.S. diplomatic history, and Latin American history.

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