Conocimientos, sociedades y tecnologías en América Latina: Viejos modelos y desencantos, nuevos horizontes y desafíos

Abstract

The book I am reviewing is probably the product of the last face-to-face meeting among senior researchers in the STS field in Latin America – together with some European colleagues – that took place before the pandemic. This was in Bogotá, where Hebe Vessuri was invited as visiting professor at the Universidad de Los Andes. This is not a minor fact: Although most of the texts that compose the book were written in the subsequent isolation, the problems that arose with the pandemic were still very new or had not been expressed. Various controversies about care, prevention, treatment and policy issues, very complex aspects of public communication of science and technology, geopolitical questions about the development, distribution, use and acceptance of vaccines are just some of the many changes that have taken place since then, deepening, in most cases, the problems outlined in the various texts. Among these are, for example, center-periphery relations, particularly regarding the development and use of vaccines, the international circulation of knowledge, the promises of science to solve the pandemic, and even the practices of care and attention became central issues in the social analysis of the pandemic reality. The world has become more global and at the same time more unequal as a consequence of the SARS-COV-2 outbreak.