International Ties at Peripheral Sites: Co-producing Social Processes and Scientific Knowledge in Latin America

Abstract

In recent decades, scientific knowledge has been increasingly expected to contribute to the resolution of public and controversial issues in Latin America. However, in peripheral sites of knowledge and economic production, the dynamics of both science and society have been complicated by tensions between the demands of local stakeholders and the ties with the global centers of technical and scientific expertise. First, local public issues are often addressed in merely discursive ways, rather than effectively, in research and expert advice; second, local scientific elites often establish links with experts and the global centers of science in order to legitimate their stance against competing approaches. An analysis of four case studies (neglected diseases, mining pollution, wildlife conservation and migration studies) involving the production of scientific knowledge intended to address public issues in Latin America reveals, first, that material and symbolic asymmetries determine the outcomes of these engagements and, second, that international ties with peripheral sites affect the cognitive definition of the issues at stake and the range of public interventions devised to address them. Yet, in these four case studies, the key actors that mediate links between local stakeholders and international counterparts–or, ‘drivers’–mobilize the bodies of knowledge that, ultimately, shape the cognitive and political contours of the social issues at stake.