Techno-Scientific Promises, Disciplinary Fields, and Social Issues in Peripheral Contexts

Abstract

Scientific work has always worked alongside promises of future developments. Promises, though, have very different consequences across different contexts. Indeed, the formulation of scientific promises in peripheral scientific contexts have different structures and consequences, compared to those in hegemonic sites. Promises are intended to provide solutions to important public problems. Yet in doing so, a scientific field or specialty is positioned as the most legitimate to solve these problems, displacing competing visions, questioning alternative actors, and building the epistemic bases with which to think about these issues. During these processes, scientific fields and technoscientific promises are co-produced. Since most of the studies on promises and techno-scientific expectations have focused on processes located in hegemonic sites, analytic tools must be adapted to analyze the emergence of techno-scientific promises and the corresponding development of scientific fields in peripheral locations. Facing structural barriers to transforming knowledge into marketable products, peripheral scientific elites do not have the same capacity to formulate solutions based on local knowledge. Chagas, a Latin American tropical disease, provides a good example of how scientific promises and scientific fields are co-produced in peripheral locations, along with various power asymmetries in a context of highly globalized knowledge. Through this example, it is possible to see how promises shape and are shaped by relations between different countries and research infrastructures. Because of the structural barriers that exist in peripheral countries, scientific promises often generate cutting-edge knowledge aligned with international agendas, but is almost never able to effectively address public problems.