Biotechnologies for Social Inclusion: Public policies, knowledge production and innovation strategies towards solving social and environmental problems in Argentina

BORTZ, GABRIELA

Campinas

Workshop; São Paulo School of Advanced Sciences on Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the Governance of Life Sciences; 2014

Department of Science and Technology Policy, Institute of Geosciences, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

Over the past decade, the Argentinean government has implemented several policies in order to support investment and capacity building on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) as key elements to promote local development dynamics. In this political agenda, biotechnology has been considered a strategic area. The development of high capacities in this area in Argentina can be traced to the 1980s: being regarded as a strategic technology, since then national investment in R&D has backed a trajectory of growing capacities in biotech in public R&D units and private and public-private firms. However, it is hard to establish a correlation between these efforts and the generation of solutions to the major social and environmental problems of the country. One may ask: how are the biotechnological capacities available in Argentina integrated towards the generation of socially inclusive innovation? My doctoral research, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Hernán Thomas, focuses on the analysis of inclusive innovation processes and STI policies in biotechnology. The analysis is undertaken in four interrelated levels: (a) construction of R&D agendas; (b) user participation and knowledge negotiation; (c) capacities in STI policy and decision making; and (d) innovation and sustainable production dynamics, exploring the intertwining of local R&D efforts oriented towards the solution of local social and environmental issues and the incentives and discouragements through STI policies. Based in a qualitative methodology of survey and deep case studies (in the areas of health, agriculture and food production), and using a multidimensional and transdisciplinary approach which triangulates theoretical tools from different matrices (Sociology of Technology, Economics of Innovation and Policy Analysis), the investigation aims to examine the potentials and limitations to transform social inclusion issues in a scientific and technical challenge. Are expected results of this research to map the experiences of ?Biotechnologies for Social Inclusion? developed in Argentina and to understand the construction of R&D and innovation processes at hand. Obtained learnings are aimed to serve as inputs for re-thinking knowledge intensive technology management and STI policies oriented towards inclusive and sustainable development. Research is based on our work at the research program ?Technologies for Social Inclusion (TSI). Public Policies for Science, Technology, and Inclusive Development?, carried out since 2008 by the Instituto de Estudios sobre la Ciencia y la Tecnología (IESCT-Institute for Science and Technology Studies) at the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (UNQ, Argentina). The program aims to contribute to more fair, egalitarian and socially inclusive societies in Latin America by improving the understanding of the roles that TSI may play in social, economic and sustainable development.