Pablo Kreimer

Chagas Disease in Argentina: Reciprocal Construction of Social and Scientific Problems

This article intends to study the possibilities and limitations of scientific knowledge as a factor of social development in peripheral societies. We challenge the idea that the only promotion of scientific knowledge is a legitimate and adequate method to overcome the social problems that many people in Latin America are subjected to. Instead, we propose to investigate the relationships among the social actors involved in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. We take the case of Chagas disease, a recurring theme in the public agenda since the 1950s, to show how the issue has emerged and has been taken in by public policies related to the production of scientific knowledge. We analyse the different viewpoints and conceptions about the disease, and how they moulded the different institutional initiatives of intervention into the problem. We assume that the practices associated with these mechanisms condition the type of knowledge produced and its possible uses.

Social Studies of Science and Technology in Latin America: A Field in the Process of Consolidation

THE SOCIAL STUDIES of science and technology are relatively new in Latin America. The first reflections, in the 1960s and 1970s, were very promissory and they even gave place to the idea of a ‘Latin American thought of science, technology and society’. Those works, written mainly by scientists and engineers, had a main political concern to find ways and instruments to develop scientific and technological knowledge locally, so that it could be suitable for the needs of the region. The objective of that generation, which was partially reached, consisted in making science and technology an object of public study, as a topic bound to a social and economic development strategy. Besides, there was an emphasis on the fact that science and technology are not neutral and universal, but that are processes with specific features according to the context in which they are introduced. Thus, as it was then said, there was a paradox: while the lesser developed countries try to produce scientific knowledge

Science and Politics in Latin America: The Old and the New Context in Argentina

The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of science policy in Argentina, from its emergence almost four decades ago to its challenges in the current context. In contrast to the functional kind of analysis that has been usual in Latin America for a long time, the attempt is to develop a theoretical framework based on the relation ships among the most significant actors (the state, the scientific community, the university, and the business sector), both in social and institutional development. The process of institutional transformation as well as the most relevant aspects of the national/international context are also taken into account. In the concluding section some of the substantive problems that will undoubtedly form part of the debate on science policy in Argentina and in Latin America in the years to come are discussed.

Book Reviews : BERNARD JOERGES AND TERRY SHINN, eds, Instrumentation between Science, State and Industry (Sociology of Sciences Yearbook, Vol. XXII). Dordrech: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, 270 pp

There is a great deal of discussion nowadays about the contemporary nature of the processes involved in knowledge production, even though it is not clear whether we are confronted with a ’situation’ that has changed substantively over recent decades or have put forward new conceptual tools to analyse older phenomena. As far as most approaches in science, technology and society (STS) studies are concerned, ’conceptual innovation’ seems to have established itself as a hallmark. This is visible in