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

The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science andtechnology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travelunchanged from the global North to the global Sout -- -the view of technology as "importedmagic." They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery butalso how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. Thecontributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin Americanexperiences 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 inthis book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creationand use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and globalnetworks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as thework of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprintingtechnology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops createdand distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy inArgentina, Mexico, and Chile.

ContributorsPedro IgnacioAlonso, Morgan G. Ames, Javiera Barandiaran, Joao Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, HenriqueCukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Diaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, JonathanHagood, 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, JuliaRodriguez, Israel Rodriguez-Giralt, Edna Suarez Diaz, Hernan Thomas, Manuel Tironi, DominiqueVinck

Eden Medina is Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University Bloomington and the author of Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. Ivan da Costa Marques is Associate Professor in the graduate school of Historia das Ciencias e das Tecnicas e Epistemologia (HCTE) at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Christina Holmes is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.