The focus is on processes of institutional consolidation of area studies, North–South mobility, the translation-process into German, application in empirical research, modification and rejection. Analysing the circulation of the Latin American dependency theories in the Federal Republic of Germany, this article addresses precisely this gap. Thus far, little attention has been paid to the transregional circulation of theoretical approaches from the South to the North and their impact on the transformation of the European social sciences and humanities.

Based on this premise, many of the studies of circulation focus on the transfer of knowledge in terms of ideas, traditions, authors and concepts from the North to the South. The standard assumption is that as a result of globalization, theories and methods are spread from the global North to the global South. Sociological research into the transregional North–South circulation of knowledge in the social sciences and humanities has tended to have a unidirectional bias to date. The process by which writers can pass from the first to the second and third circuit is, for most, one of progressive elimination. The last circuit – the one in which international fame can be obtained – represents an even more selective, transnational universe institutionally tied to world book fairs, international publishing houses, and international prizes. Selection and recognition here depend on editors, publishers, critics, and audiences of the receiving country.

After having achieved some degree of visibility and recognition in this protected circuit, some writers succeed in obtaining access to a second circuit consisting of the respective national literary fields of the receiving countries.

The first is the semi-official Dutch circuit outside of the Netherlands, socially based on Dutch-speaking groups abroad, dependent on Dutch foreign policy, and institutionally tied to embassies, institutes for Dutch culture, and university departments for Dutch language and literature. It identifies a general pattern structured by three successive circuits of selection, diffusion, valorization and recognition.

This chapter explores the translation and international recognition of Dutch writers. from peripheral countries and languages to more central ones. Although book translations are overwhelmingly made from English and asmall number of other central languages, translations occasionally also flow in the opposite direction, i.e.

O povo brasileiro by Darcy Ribeiro