The problem of modernity is constitutive of sociology worldwide, and Latin American sociology is no exception to this trend. In fact, it has handled its relationship to modernity with ambivalence. On the one hand, although its references to a certain ›Latin American‹ unity have been much more important than its mentions to particular national traditions, it has found it difficult to get away from an idea of society as equated with the nation-state and from identity conceptions understood as an unchangeable cultural ethos. On the other hand, Latin American sociology has adopted the most abstract and general sociological theories available at different junctures, which of course were created in, and thought for, historical times and social contexts that are not those of the subcontinent itself. In other words, the very regional condition of Latin American sociology has made it aware of the universalistic vocation that lies at the core of the sociological canon. But it is equally noticeable that significant parts of it advance or even reproduce a highly particularistic view in which Latin American modernity is little else than an incomplete version of its European counterpart.