Internationalism and cooperation in science and technology policies in Argentina. Origins and current challenges

FELD, ADRIANA; KREIMER, PABLO

México

Conferencia; Europe-Latin American Conference on Science and Innovation Policy; 2008

From the mid-40’s to the mid-50’s a set of public institutions was created, oriented to intervene on science and technology activities in Argentina. This scheme remained with almost no changes until the beginning of the 90’ when a new kind of policies were put in practice, together with the creation of new institutions and a reorientation of ‘traditional’ models that had prevailed until then. During the second half of the XXth Century, the relations between science and politics in Latin America went through several tensions that could be summarized as follows:•    Internationalization versus local conditions;•    The ideology of the scientific community, defending ‘autonomy’ as a crucial value versus the emerging belief from National States about the need to intervene on scientific activities;•    The production of knowledge as a ‘cultural value’ versus the social use of knowledge oriented to development.Therefore, we intend to show the articulation of the above mentioned tensions in two significant moments of the development of research policies in Argentina: in the first part we analyze the process of institutionalization of S&T policies between 1946 and 1958, when the basis of a so-called ‘national research system’ was set up, in parallel with the strong activity of international organisms. In the second part, we shall identify the new process that became evident since ‘80s, when new trends in S&T policies emerged, together with a growing process of globalization regarding research practices. We decided to focus on two significant moments due to their high symbolic value, even if there is a risk of overlooking several significant details in a half-century historyThese tensions are the result of a typical configuration of scientific communities in peripheral countries: the research activities were locally institutionalized all along the XXth Century in a strong interaction with the ‘international’ scientific community.