The beneficial tyranny of politics: emergence, institutionalisation and newer issues of the history of education in Latin America

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article sketches the emergence, institutionalisation and emergent issues and challenges in the scholarly field of history of education in Latin America. It argues that these processes have been closely linked with nation-building and the decisive role of national politics. The impact of national politics is herein called a ‘beneficial tyranny’. This was certainly true for the first major works written in the late nineteenth century and the major waves of historiography until the slow institutionalisation of the major site of research in history of education: the study of education at universities in the 1960s as well as the institutionalisation of the field of history of education with the establishment of academic societies and specific journals in the 1990s. Yet this interpretation does not explain more recent developments in the field. By looking at recent publications in all major journals of the region for the years 2020 and 2021, new historiographical trends clearly emerge.