On the occasion of the 80th birthday of Rodolfo Stavenhagen a distinguished Mexican
sociologist and professor emeritus of El Colegio de Mexico Úrsula Oswald Spring (UNAM CRIM
Mexico) introduces him as a Pioneer on Indigenous Rights due to his research on human rights
issues especially when he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of
indigenous peoples. First in a retrospective Stavenhagen reviews his scientific and political
work for the rights of indigenous peoples. Seven of his classic texts address Seven Fallacies
about Latin America (1965) Decolonializing Applied Social Sciences (1971) Ethnodevelopment: A
Neglected Dimension in Development Thinking (1986) Human Rights and Wrongs: A Place for
Anthropologists? (1998) Indigenous Peoples and the State in Latin America: An Ongoing Debate
(2000) Building Intercultural Citizenship through Education: A Human Rights Approach (2006)
and Making the Declaration Work (2006). This volume discusses the emergence of indigenous
peoples as new social and political actors at the national level in numerous countries as well
as on the international scene. This book introduces a trilogy of Briefs on Rodolfo Stavenhagen
published in the same series Pioneers in Science and Practice.
