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The Status of Quantitative Research on Latin America

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POLITICAL AND SOCIAL STRUCTURES: PART I: AMERICAN COUNTRIES, 1850–1973. By VANHANENTATU. (Tampere, Finland: Institute of Political Science. University of Tampere, 1975. Pp. 326.)

L'HISTOIRE QUANTITATIVE DU BRÊSIL DE 1800 A 1930: COLLOQUES INTERNATION AUX DU CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, PARIS 11–15 OCTUBRE 1971. (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1973. Pp. 488.)

QUANTITATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH ON LATIN AMERICA. Edited by BYARSROBERT S. and LOVEJOSEPH L. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973. Pp. 272. $8.95.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

James W. Wilkie*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

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Type
Books in Review
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. This review of quantitative literature is intended to update my analysis in Statistics and National Policy (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1974), pp. 16–21.

2. For discussion of classificatory statistics (i.e., data organized into standard categories and utilizing such measures as proportion and central tendency) as compared to predictive statistics (i.e., partial—including sample—data examined through correlation, regression, and factor analysis, model building, etc., to predict a “whole” picture), see the discussion in the “Foreword” to my Quantitative Latin American Studies: Methods and Findings (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1977).

3. Within two of three goals of the book as stated by Graham and Smith (who sought to present “research style” based upon “systematic doubt, an awareness of the need for conceptual rigor, and a willingness to try new methodologies”), however, the new approaches are often quite stimulating. Titles of papers and authors included are: “State and Society in Colonial Spanish America: An Opportunity for Prosopography,” by Stuart B. Schwartz; “Spanish and American Counterpoint: Problems and Possibilities in Spanish Colonial Administrative History,” by Margaret E. Crahan; “Bases of Political Alignment in Early Republican Spanish America,” by Frank Safford; “Political Power and Landownership in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” by Richard Graham; “An Approach to Regionalism,” by Joseph L. Love; “Comparative Slave Systems in the Americas: A Critical Review,” by John V. Lombardi; “Approaches to Immigration History,” by Michael M. Hall; “Psychoanalysis and Latin American History,” by Margaret Todaro Williams; and “Political Legitimacy in Spanish America,” by Peter H. Smith.

4. Cf. data sources listed in the endpapers of James W. Wilkie and Peter Reich, eds., Statistical Abstract of Latin America 18 (1977).

5. I = xy/100.

6. WI = xy + x/4 + y/4.