Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America

by Eden Medina (Editor), Marcos Cueto (Foreword), Ivan Da Costa Marques (Editor)

The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global Sout -- -the view of technology as "imported magic." They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present.

The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile.

ContributorsPedro Ignacio Alonso, Morgan G. Ames, Javiera Barandiaran, Joao Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, Henrique Cukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Diaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, Jonathan Hagood, Christina Holmes, Matthieu Hubert, Noela Invernizzi, Michael Lemon, Ivan da Costa Marques, Gisela Mateos, Eden Medina, Maria Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Hugo Palmarola, Tania Perez-Bustos, Julia Rodriguez, Israel Rodriguez-Giralt, Edna Suarez Diaz, Hernan Thomas, Manuel Tironi, Dominique Vinck"

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Eden Medina is Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research uses technology as a means to understand historical processes and she combines history, science and technology studies, and Latin American studies in her writings.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for my graduate course. Great compilation of essays about STS in Latin America geared for the U.S. audience. I highly recommend to challenge your perspective and see more connections of STS in other disciplines of history, public policy, etc.

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

Se siente un poco desactualizado. Sin embargo supongo que está bien para el circuito al que está dirigido.

[Zara Rahman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great, thought-provoking selection of essays. Some were more to my taste than others - learning about, for example, the history of the use of fingerprinting within police departments, was fascinating.

My main issue with the book is one of accessibility: the price puts it way out of the reach of many, and the essays (though the work of many of the authors appears to be funded through public sources) - are not available online anywhere without payment either. It strikes me as a huge shame that the knowledge gathered by the authors is locked behind multiple paywalls, especially given the disparity in accessibility to those sources of knowledge.