Outlook for and Development of Social Sciences in the State of Tabasco

Abstract

This article presents an overview and description of the development of the reflections on and diagnosis of social thought and social sciences on and from the state of Tabasco; and the conditions of the local social environment in which they occur. The article shows that the production of this type of studies is perfectly in keeping with moments of crisis and accurately reflects the moments of continuity and rupture in the history of the state despite an unpromising socio-cultural environment. Thus, for example, social sciences are relegated to a role of social accountancy, legitimization and promotion during the period of economic development (1953-1970) characterized by the construction of large infrastructure works and territorial agricultural development plants or during the expansion of petroleum exploration and drilling. However, they are called to find explanations and alternatives when the regional population reacts against the excesses and unwanted results of these developments as happened with the resistance to the Chontalpa plan and subsequently with the resistance to the impact of the petroleum industry. At the time of the oil boom and its crisis, an effort was made to locally implement the teaching and research of these disciplines while offering an alternative discourse of endogenous development. Subsequently, from the mid-1990s onwards, it is striking that planning was carried out at the macro-regional level while local works went from depending on institutional projects to personal initiatives by local civil servants who provided the spaces or promoted research and publications.