Sociocultural and Political Development of Costa Rica of 1949-1974 in Modern Historical Research Works

Abstract

The paper attempts to generalize modern research works, in which the sociocultural and political development of Costa Rica in the period 1949-1974 is described. In a complex of scientific researches devoted to the development of Costa Rica of the designated period, several relative groups are singled out, according to the main spheres of interest of the researchers. The first relative group includes general works devoted to the history of Costa Rica in the second half of the 20th century. The second relative group consists of specialized works of researchers, focused on studying the country’s political development. The third relative group includes the research works that consider various aspects of the socio-cultural and economic development of Costa Rica in the second half of the 20th century. In general, during the analysis of current research works devoted to the socio-cultural and political development of Costa Rica, the author has made several generalizations.

Firstly, the certain features of the social, economic, political and cultural development of Costa Rica during the period of 1948-1974 are presented in both general historical works and in specialized works focused on the study of certain spheres of the Costa Rican society. Secondly, the period of 1948-1974 is not as a rule considered as a separate period of Costa Rica development, and it is difficult to find research works devoted to the analysis of just that time interval. Thirdly, the authors considering Costa Rica pay the utmost attention to analyzing its political specificity in the context of researching the development of democracy, and mostly research its economic development, which is interpreted as a guarantee of a democratic transformation of this country.

The issues of socio-cultural development are mainly considered in the context of the above-mentioned political and economic areas, and as a rule, they are not the subject of special attention of scholars. Fourthly, a significant amount of research works on Costa Rica are comparative works in which this country is analyzed either as a component of the Latin American region or in comparison with several other countries in the same region. Thus, the studies of the sociocultural and political development of Costa Rica both in the period of 1948-1974 and the second half of the twentieth century in general, have a fragmentary nature, and therefore, need further development.