If Latin America's public universities are considered part of the state, then it seems plausible to characterise them as similar to the state, i.e. as clientelistic. However, this plausible hypothesis has never been examined by the literature on twentieth-century Mexican social sciences. Just like clientelism, science patrons such as US philanthropic foundations have similarly been neglected. In this article I argue that, as an alternative to what the Rockefeller Foundation perceived as clientelism and amateurism at Latin American universities, it claimed to patronise liberal scholarship, practised according to formal rational criteria. While foundations have been frequently considered part of a US imperialistic drive towards cultural hegemony in Latin America, they were not unitary actors and frequently failed to predict the actual impact of their grants. In Mexico in the 1940s, the Rockefeller Foundation boosted the humanities, but missed the opportunity to support a local take on social science teaching and research.

中文翻译：

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La gran dama：科学赞助、洛克菲勒基金会和 1940 年代的墨西哥社会科学

如果拉丁美洲的公立大学被认为是国家的一部分，那么将它们描述为与国家相似的特征似乎是合理的，即为客户服务。然而，这种似是而非的假设从未被 20 世纪墨西哥社会科学的文献检验过。就像依附主义一样，美国慈善基金会等科学赞助人也同样被忽视。在这篇文章中，我认为，作为洛克菲勒基金会所认为的拉丁美洲大学的依附主义和业余主义的替代方案，它声称支持根据正式的理性标准实践的自由主义学术。虽然基金会经常被认为是美帝国主义在拉丁美洲争取文化霸权的一部分，他们不是单一的参与者，经常无法预测其赠款的实际影响。在 1940 年代的墨西哥，洛克菲勒基金会推动了人文学科的发展，但却错过了支持当地社会科学教学和研究的机会。