Redes sociotécnicas en ciencia y cerveza. Interacciones entre científicos, levaduras, una corporación de cerveza y cerveceros artesanales de San Carlos de Bariloche

Abstract

This thesis describes and analyzes socio-technical networks based on a transfer event between part of a microbiology laboratory in San Carlos de Bariloche and an international brewing corporation, and with craft brewers in the same city. This microbiology laboratory was formed at the end of the 1980s in a branch of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, the Centro Regional Universitario de Bariloche. Its activities started around the Microbiology course of the Biological Sciences degree. 30 years later, the group was relatively consolidated, with an academic reputation and potential objects of commercial interest. In 2011 one of the members of the laboratory published, together with authors from the United States and Portugal, an article identifying a yeast found in Patagonia related to lager yeast. After this publication and its repercussions, a part of this laboratory is oriented to deepen the research of the new yeast and in parallel to the brewing yeasts and services related to beer. In 2015, an R&D agreement was signed, including a license for commercial use with the Heineken brewing corporation. At the same time, relations with brewers in the Andean-Patagonian region are enhanced with different projects and agreements. The general problem of this thesis has to do with academy-industry relations, the commercialization of science, the trajectories, stabilization and reconfiguration of laboratories and research groups. Specifically, it is chosen to explore how socio-technical networks extend from and beyond a particular event where parties sign contracts, exchange objects, money and formulate projects and licenses. For this we chose to follow the constitution and trajectory of networks that were punctuated at that moment of transfer and to explore the state of the network. Therefore, narratives arising from a scientific publication in 2011, the trajectory of the Argentine scientific group involved in the transfer, and productive, technological and social aspects of socio-technical networks in the corporate and craft or independent beer industry will be discussed.