Abstract
they were the voice of those who could not speak for themselves. The recent political and economic developments in the region have, if anything, increased the importance of that function. They have also demanded increasing sophis tication from social analysts to deal with more complex structures and growing differences within the region. An appraisal of the recent sociological literature on Latin America is a demanding task for it involves a wide variety of topics approached from very different perspectives. At a minimum, a comprehensive review must include the growing research literature originating in Latin America it self, its major currents and cleavages, and the principal works about the region by foreign sociologists, primarily those from the United States and Western Europe. All of this must be set in the context of the rapid trans formations of Latin American societies during the last two decades. These changes have affected internal class structure, state/society relationships, and the modes of incorporation of these countries into the world economy. If we were to focus attention exclusively on the North American litera ture about Latin America, our task would be considerably simplified. Following a period of enthusiasm and curiosity during the early 1960s, interest in Latin America among US sociologists and other social scien tists has noticeably declined. During the last five years, only five articles and one review essay dealing primarily with Latin America have appeared in the three major sociology journals - American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces. Of these, two deal with urbanization patterns (Firebaugh 1979; Horowitz 1977) and one