Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo

Who is Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo?

Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo is a Mexican sociologist and public intellectual of wide renown in Mexico and Spain. He is perhaps most well known for his study of nineteenth-century civic culture in Mexico, Imaginary Citizens, a book that made his reputation as a highly skilled interpreter of Mexican politics and has since gone through three editions. He is the author of over a dozen additional books and a large number of scholarly articles on political theory, historical sociology, and cultural criticism. Escalante also intervenes frequently in the print and television media of Mexico, and has been widely cited in sociological papers and studies on his views of cultural transformation of Mexico.

Escalante received his doctorate in sociology from El Colegio de México, where he is currently a professor of social sciences, politics, culture, and sociology. Escalante has taught at other universities in Mexico, Spain and the United States, and in Spring 2005 was the Tinker Visiting Professor in History at the University of Chicago. He is the editor of several collections at the Paidós publishing house and a member of the journal Public Culture’s Editorial Collective.