Politics and socio-technical construction of technology in the process of international cooperation

ALEJANDRA KERN; HERNÁN THOMAS

International Relations and the Global Politics of Science and Technology

Springer

Lugar: Bonn; Año: 2014; p. 101 - 116

The purpose of this chapter is to present a model to study the relations among science, technology, and politics in the processes of international cooperation between developed and developing countries. To develop this model, an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework was elaborated, having as its analytical focus the complexity of this process captured by the concept of 'socio-technical trajectory'.  In order to have a broad understanding of the cooperation process, the model starts from the combination of concepts coming out from three different social fields: International Relations, Innovation Economy, and Social Studies of Technology. Upon the intersection of these fields, international scientific and technological cooperation presents a number of features which are relevant for the analysis of case studies. Three important characteristics emerge from this framework. First, international cooperation is a state policy which relies on both a state identity, and on political and economic interests which go beyond scientific and technological public policies. Second, it is founded on arguments which are considered to be universally valid regarding the economic value of knowledge. Last, it involves the interaction among researchers, stocks of knowledge, and technologies which are generated and applied in several local contexts. These interactions can be understood as the path of techno-political-economic networks, a concept derived from Michel Callon Actor-Network model that is key in this framework. To understand how the cooperation process came about, three key variables are defined: (a) the politicization of technologies, both at the international and national level; (b) the setting up of an institutional political framework for the development of cooperation; (b) and the interaction dynamics among the research groups, the political agencies and the technologies developed and applied in a particular case. This chapter thus conceptualized and defined the unique features of cooperation in science and technology, putting forward multiple dimensions of analysis which are crucial for the elaboration of public policies. This model was applied to analyze the case of the cooperation between Argentina and Germany in the field of Information and Communication Technologies during the 90s.