El siguiente artículo analiza el estado actual de la perspectiva de redes intelectuales, especialmente en el cruce con los estudios literarios en América Latina. Partiendo de sus primeros trabajos, discute las mentadas estabilidad y transdisciplinariedad del campo de estudio, proponiendo un corpus de referencia para las estructuras de sociabilidad literaria. Posteriormente, el artículo revisa críticamente los tópicos, métodos y restricciones, así como las actuales indeterminaciones conceptuales y metodológicas, que sugieren que este es aún un campo en construcción. Finalmente, se proponen algunas ideas novedosas que podrían contribuir al desarrollo interdisciplinario del campo, extendiendo las potencialidades y ventajas de esta perspectiva a los estudios de literatura latinoamericana.

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.

The foundation of specialised economic journals was one of the main traits in the process of institutionalisation of political economy in 19th century Western Europe. Spain joined this trend at an early stage and in the 1850s and 1860s some specialised, albeit ephemeral, journals sponsored by the liberal school of economic thought – the Economist School – emerged. However, when these reviews ceased publication, Spanish economists lacked specialised periodicals as an outlet for their contributions. Miscellaneous literary reviews addressing a wider audience represented an alternative for the diffusion of economic papers into educated society, sharing space with many other scientific and literary disciplines. This paper analyses the presence of texts on political economy in four of the most important of these reviews in the period 1868-1914, when Spain lacked economic publications. In spite of not being specialised reviews, these publications played a central role in the process of diffusion and popularisation of political economy as a valuable field of knowledge, acting as a good substitute for specifically economic journals.

This article makes a plea for a joint study of intellectual and economic history. Mental perceptions affect economic decisions and variables, while economic realities influence the evolution of ideas. We use the case of Castilian noblemen and their management of landed property to illustrate these interrelations. This was driven to a large extent by the «moral economy» of the group, which provided a moral justification of its privileged place in society. However, during the early modern age new ideas and economic difficulties eroded these concepts and attitudes, and led to an increasing interest of nobility towards an efficient management of their properties. The delicate equilibrium between gains and prestige –intended as an indirect means to acquire wealth– as well as the intermingling of religious worries make it difficult to get a balanced view of the real situation and its evolution, which is none the less necessary.