The Latin American Thought on Science, Technology and Development: a peripheral modernity

FELD, ADRIANA; VASEN, FEDERICO

Nueva York

Workshop; "The Engine of Modernity". Construing science as a driving force of history in the 20th Century; 2017

Universidad de Columbia

We analyze in this presentation some features (ideologicalroots, conceptual frameworks, etc.) of the so-called Latin American Thought onScience, Technology and Development (PLACTED), mobilized by a set of authors inthe late 1960s, prior to the formal institutionalization of STS studies in this region. Strictly speaking, PLACTED was not an academic school of research,but rather an intellectual and political movement carried out by scientists and engineers, which arose from a strong political (and policy) concern.Our aim is to show how some PLACTED´s representatives adopted new philosophical perspectives (like Kuhn´s approach) as well as emerging concepts (like "innovation") to question various assumptions anchored in the traditional discourses on science (science as a part of a "modernity package", science conceived as universal, the automatic link among science-technology-development- innovation, etc.). This process took place in parallel with another one in the social sciences: the "dependency theory" (towhich the PLACTED is partly indebted) and the questioning of the "modernization theory" (in a nutshell: the belief that exists onlyone way to economic growth and social modernization, the one followed byWestern Europe and Northern America). Our challenge is to explain how the PLACTED hybridates concepts and theories coming from different contexts to suggest an alternative modernity to that of developed countries (both capitalist and socialist ones), based on other styles of scientific and technological development.