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.
Gustavo Sor has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He works as an Independent Researcher for the Argentine Scientific Research Council (CONICET) and as Tenured Professor at the Anthropological Department of the National University of Crdoba (Argentina). His latest books are G. Sor, Editar desde la izquierda en Amrica Latina. La agitada historia del Fondo de Cultura Econmica y Siglo XXI (Siglo XXI Argentina, 2017), and J. Heilbron, G. Sor and T. Boncourt, The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations, 2018).
Routledge Studies in Global Latin America
Series Editors:Peter Burke (University of Cambridge), Jorge Caizares-Esguerra (The University of Texas at Austin), Linda\xA0Newson (School of Advanced Study, University of London), Mark Thurner (School of Advanced Study, University of London, and LACSO)
Routledge Studies in Global Latin America publishes critical, post-Area Studies scholarship that connects local histories with the global history of modernity. The editors are keen to publish in those areas where Latin or Iberian America has played a pioneering role in global history.
The First Wave of Decolonization
Edited by Mark Thurner
A History of Book Publishing in Contemporary Latin America
Gustavo Sor
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Global-Latin-America/book-series/RSGLA
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 Gustavo Sor
The right of Gustavo Sor to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sor, Gustavo, 1966 author.
Title: A history of book publishing in contemporary Latin
America / Gustavo Sor.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in global Latin America |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020043510 | ISBN 9780367509897 (hardback)
ISBN 9781003052067 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Book industries and tradeLatin
AmericaHistory20th
century. | Publishers and publishingLatin
AmericaHistory20th
century. | Latin AmericaIntellectual life20th century. |
TranslationsPublishingLatin AmericaHistory
20th century.
Classification: LCC Z490.3 .S66 2021 |
DDC 070.5098/0904--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043510
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-50989-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05206-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
For my children, Valentn, Mora, and Amelia
Part 1
Argentina
1 The Book and Publishing in Argentina
Books for Everyone and the Hispanic American Model
Studies on the Book and Publishing: A Recently Autonomized International Space
The scientific research that revolves around the book world in general and publishing practices in particular is relatively recent. Despite the emergence of some in-depth studies in the 1950s and 1960s (for example, Lapparition du livre by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, in 1958), it was in the 1980s when these multiplied and came together, which gave rise to the formation of an academic specialty. Encouraged by the cultural history boom, authors such as Robert Darnton, Peter Burke, and Roger Chartier encouraged their colleagues and scholars by showing them that texts, readers, booksellers, and publishers opened new discussions on the social, ideological, and moral basis of global phenomena as decisive as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the French Revolution. A threshold for this foundational academic time was the multiplication of national book histories, whose initial (and perhaps the most successful) model was Histoire de ldition franaise, coordinated by Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, and published in four volumes by Promodis and Cercle de la Librairie, between 1986 and 1991. Later on, there arose national histories about Australia, Canada, the United States, Spain, and other central countries, which are collective works where dozens of researchers are gathered and which appeared in more than one volume. In other words, they are reference oeuvres that brought together specialists in the subject, amongst which the synergy produced by cross-citation systems is observed. This is a process which evidences in itself the consolidation of hypotheses, discussions, dialogues, and controversies.1 Some of these national histories also competed against French history with regard to the volume of books that they gathered, as though quantity stood for historical greatness as evidence of significant impact on a global book history. Instances of this include The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain and A History of The Book in America. Edited by John Barnard, David McKitterick, and Ian Willison, the first volume on the British history was published in 1998; the seventh and last one, in 2019. The work about the USA is made of five long volumes edited between 2000 and 2010, under the general supervision of David Hall. In this internationalization cycle, for the Hispanic world, only Historia de la edicin en Espaa (18361936), directed by Jess Martnez Martn, can be included. Its first volume makes reference to the temporal axis between 1836 and 1936, and was published in Madrid by Marcial Pons, in the year 2001. It was just in 2015 when a second volume focusing on the period between 1939 and 1975 appeared.2
