Is academic globalisation a one-way – that is to say, a North–South – process? What are the possibilities and limits of academic autonomy in ‘peripheral’ countries? Answering these two important questions seems to be the main goal of the volume under review. In recent years the view of academic globalisation as a flattening process that would have erased differences through an ‘Americanisation’ of international intellectual activity, particularly in societies usually characterised as ‘peripheral’, has received a healthy corrective. Recent scholarship has emphasised the creative dimension of the reception and circulation of ideas and academic models, the limits that the different cultural, academic and intellectual traditions impose on globalisation and the specificities and hybridisation involved in the process of cultural modernisation in each cultural space. Fernanda Beigel, who edited this volume, and the research group she leads in the province of Mendoza in Argentina have a very active research agenda going in this direction, and The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America assembles their latest production on the topic.

Headed by an introduction by Beigel, wherein she defines the main concepts and outlines the theoretical framework that articulates the volume, the book consists of 13 chapters divided into four thematic sections. The limited space of a short review does not permit discussion of all the chapters, so I will mention only those that I deem more relevant. The first section, ‘The Institutionalization of Research and Professional Training in Latin America’, is composed of four chapters, two of which are authored by Beigel herself. It is conceptually the strongest section of the whole book and probably the one that best fulfils the goals established in the introduction. Particularly informative are the first three chapters, which include a transnational dimension in the analysis, something absent from most of the other chapters of the book. By pointing to the role of Latin American intellectuals during the early years of UNESCO, the contribution by Anabella Abarzúa Curtoni emphasises that internationalisation of academic institutions occurs along a two-way path. The chapter by Beigel on the diplomatic competition among Argentina, Chile and Brazil for leadership in the institutionalisation of social sciences unearths some interesting new information, while the piece by Natalia Rizzo on the Argentine Institute of National Foreign Service concentrates on an interesting and sorely under-studied institution, created with the purpose of training diplomats as a state elite in Argentina. However, like most of the other chapters, this one is more descriptive than conceptual; while it provides new information, it does not draw any relevant conclusions from it.

The rest of the book focuses on Argentina and Chile. Section II of the volume, ‘International Cooperation, Foreign Aid and Academic Mobility’, consists of three chapters that analyse the evolution of the Fulbright Program between 1955 and 1973, the role of the Jesuits in promoting academic social research in Chile, and the internationalisation of the University of Cuyo in Mendoza, respectively. The chapter on Fulbright by Juan José Navarro is probably the most informative, although it would also have benefited from a conclusion. The piece on the Society of Jesus sheds light on the role of religious organisations in the modernisation of social research in Chile. Surprisingly, however, although he is mentioned several times, it does not analyse the role of Father Roger Vekemans in the controversy generated around the Marginality Project that the Ford Foundation funded in the late 1960s, an affair that had important consequences for the institutionalisation of social sciences in Latin America.

Section III, ‘Politicization versus Professionalization?’, concentrates on the politicisation of academics in the 1960s and 1970s. Out of the three chapters included in this section, Fernando Quesada's piece on the role of the Rockefeller Foundation in Chile, focusing on the creation and evolution of the Centro de Investigaciones de Historia, is probably the most instructive. María Agustina Diez, on the other hand, does not draw any relevant conclusion from her attempt at a prosopographical analysis of Argentine social scientists in the 1960s.

The fourth and final section, ‘The Contraction of Academic Autonomy’, is dedicated to different aspects of the evolution of academic institutions in Argentina and Chile during the dictatorships. It also includes a piece by Paola Bayle that brings to light the relatively little-known role of British institutions in providing aid to Latin American, particularly Chilean, academic exiles. The chapter by Fabiana Bekerman on science in Argentina during the dictatorship analyses the military's scientific policies, showing that the dictators opted to downsize the politicised higher education system and to expand, instead, the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research, an institution that they could control with greater discretion than the universities.

Overall, like most edited volumes, The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America is an uneven product. Most chapters lack conclusions, and in fact the whole volume would have benefited from a general conclusion to tighten up the analysis and provide relevant generalisations based on the specific case studies included. Many of the topics covered by the book are interesting and novel, but the useful information provided by some of the chapters is not capitalised upon in the service of a conceptual and theoretical analysis. Many times the reader ends up suspecting that the information provided is relevant, without knowing exactly why.

In sum, this is an instructive volume that sheds light on some little-known episodes, institutions and processes associated with the development of social sciences in Latin America. However, most contributions fail to provide a conceptual framework and to offer some more general conclusions derived from their specific cases. Moreover, the project behind this volume seems to be more limited than the title of the book suggests: although it makes reference to ‘Latin America’, the scope of the volume is actually limited to Argentina and Chile.