Applied Anthropology in Latin America

Abstract

The decision of the State Department to employ three outstanding rural sociologists to make sociological and anthropological studies in three leading Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico was based in no small measure upon the reputation of the rural sociologists in the applied field. A year ago last February Professor T. Lynn Smith, Head of the Department of Sociology at Louisiana State University, was sent to Brazil; in May, Dr. Carl C. Taylor, Head of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare in the United States Department of Agriculture, left for Argentina; and in June, Professor Nathan Whetten, Dean of the Graduate School at Connecticut University left for Mexico. The State Department, which is furnishing these rural sociologists funds to conduct the investigations in the respective countries, and the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations in the USDA, which cooperates in the direction of the studies, have permitted each of these men wide latitude within which to work.