Critical Reviews on Latin American Research - CROLAR

Costa, Camila

Sobrevivendo ao mito da destruição total: os arquivos da guerrilha do Araguaia de Shirley Carvalhêdo Franco (2014)

Müller, Frank

Segura, Ramiro

Complete Edition CROLAR Vol. 5(2)

Vasen, Federico

Ciencia y política(s) en Argentina (1943-1983) de Adriana Feld (2015)

Beyond Imported Magic. Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America by Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques and Chrstina Holmes (Eds.) (2014)

Kemmer, Laura

Velho, Raquel

Critical Reviews on Latin American Research | 4
The story behind the production of 
this volume of CROLAR is extremely 
biographical. We, the co-authors Laura 
Kemmer and Raquel Velho, met at a 
fortuitous occasion at the University 
of Lancaster (UK) for the annual 
postgraduate meeting. Curiously, we 
found that over the course of our 
doctoral work, we were playing 
a constant game of trading 
places: Velho, Brazilian, is based at 
University College London (UK) and is 
doing her research on accessibility in 
public transport in London. Meanwhile, 
Kemmer, German, though based in the 
University of Hamburg (Germany), is 
currently carrying out fieldwork on the 
last remaining tramway (bonde) of Rio de 
Janeiro. Though we never physically met 
again, we crossed paths over the Atlantic 
Ocean having coincidentally booked 
tickets to visit our respective families in 
the two continents. 
 
The irony of these exchanged places 
was not lost on us as it became a point 
of conversation both at the meeting in 
Lancaster and throughout the editorial 
process of this volume. Indeed, it helped 
shape the call for this volume of CROLAR 
EDITORIAL CROLAR 5 (1)
Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas? 
Raquel Velho and Laura Kemmer 
University College London and University of Hamburg
since the very first day: the fact that 
transport technology has developed in 
such a way that a European and a Latin 
American swap positions, develop parallel 
interests on similar topics in cities across 
an ocean from each other, and have the 
means to maintain contact during months 
through digital means… Today, this does 
not sound remarkable at all. And perhaps 
this is precisely what is remarkable about 
it. Yet despite our personal surprise at 
the situation, our insertion into different 
academic traditions and worlds led us to 
ask questions about what we were seeing 
and the new thought traditions we were 
now embedded in. 
 
In September 2015 we put out the call 
for reviews for this edition of CROLAR, 
“Science, Technology, Society – and the 
Americas?”. The intention was to explore 
the array of knowledge being produced 
in Latin America on the topic of science(s) 
and technology(ies) and how these 
interact with society, and vice versa. In 
addition, we wondered whether there 
was a particular regional approach to the 
discipline of Science and Technology Studies 
(STS), given their somewhat different 
academic origins compared to the global 
Vol. 5(1) (2016): Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas? | 5
processes can be found in the edited 
volume Made in Latin America (Alperin 
and Fischman), which contextualizes 
the specific challenges, but also 
accomplishments of Open Access 
publications through Latin-American 
platforms and journals.  
A second group of books focuses on policy, 
politics, technologies and resistance (of 
various kinds). In Shirley Franco’s book, 
Sobrevivendo ao Mito da Destruição Total, 
the author explores how, despite 
government officials claiming its 
destruction, archives manage to survive 
through networks created by the 
authorities themselves in a process she 
calls “ramification”. Despite the different 
policy fields, the cases in Risco, Ambiente 
e Saúde (Di Giulio) and Assembling Policy 
shine light on how moments of risk, failure 
and disruption reassemble the social and 
the political in a variety of ways. 
 
The last group explores technology and 
social inclusion, innovation and quality 
of life. The edited volume Políticas 
Tecnológicas y Tecnologías Políticas (Hernán 
et al.) concentrates on the marked 
disparity in Latin American between 
investment in research and development 
of technologies and the population’s lack 
of access to this modernity. In a similar 
manner, Tecnologia Social (Dagnino) uses 
a Marxist approach to analyze technology 
and proposes that new forms of innovation 
need to be proposed, based on solidarity 
and self-management. Alberto Nieto’s 
book (La ciencia no puede ser sin pecado un 
 
North. We also wanted to interrogate the 
potential of these studies for countering 
social and political inequalities. We are 
happy to share the result of the call with 
the readers of CROLAR, and believe it to 
be an interesting sample of the diversity 
and breadth of the Latin American field of 
social studies of science and technology 
while simultaneously demonstrating some 
regional tendencies. 
 
In the Focus section of this edition we 
have a variety of book reviews, in which 
we have identified three, rather broad, 
categories. These categories serve 
primarily as an introductory tool for the 
editorial, but we do not believe they 
are particularly binding. Firstly, we have 
books, which put Latin America at their 
very core, be it in their choice of case 
studies or in its comparison with local 
vs. global themes. The edited volumes 
Beyond Imported Magic (Medina et al.) 
and Perspectivas Latinoamericanas en el 
Estudio Social de la Ciencia, la Tecnología 
y la Sociedad (Kreimer et al.) are both 
extraordinary in their breadth and worth 
a category in themselves as, through 
numerous chapters they contrast and 
compare sciences and technologies 
produced in Latin America, as well as the 
field of STS. Meanwhile, Adriana Feld’s 
historical overview of science policy 
in Argentina through the 1940s-1980s 
(Ciencia y política(s) en Argentina (1943-
1983)) shows how important local socio-
historical contexts and ideologies are in 
the development of institutions. A fruitful 
confrontation of regional with global 
 
Critical Reviews on Latin American Research | 6
reaction towards these programs has 
caused resistance to or subversion of their 
original application. 
 
An exciting addition to this volume is 
the new model of review articles with a 
thematic focus, in which several books on 
a given topic are reviewed together on a 
current topic. Debuting this novel way of 
joining both discussion and reviews are 
Nils Brock, revisiting current debates on 
networks, media and communication in 
light of technological changes and power 
shifts, as well as Fernanda Rosa and Diego 
Vicentin, who cover three books on the 
subject of internet governance and science 
policy, particularly in its relation to privacy 
and cybersecurity. 
We have also been fortunate enough 
to have secured interviews with two 
prominent academics from Brazil who 
have seen the development of the 
social studies of science in Brazil: Dr 
Márcia Regina Barros da Silva and Prof 
Léa Maria Leme Strini Velho. The same 
questions were asked to each of them 
concerning their interests in the field, how 
they perceive it, whether they perceive 
differences and inequalities between 
national and international approaches, 
and their perspectives on being women 
within the discipline. 
The Current Debates section of this 
volume deals with the novel approach of 
understanding the city through its sounds, 
elaborated on in Torsten Wissman’s 
Geographies of Urban Sound. With 
Punishment in Paradise (Beattie), a rich 
adorno) covers a similar topic, provoking 
discussions on the role of innovation in 
improving citizens’ quality of life.
 
We are pleased to present Renato 
Dagnino’s review of Amílcar Herrera’s 
classic book Ciencia y Politica en America 
Latina in the section of Classics Revisited. 
Herrera is a pioneer in Latin American 
social studies of science, this book in 
particular having been published over 40 
years ago, it still proves to be a relevant 
read. Herrera was unapologetically a 
leftist who perceived Latin America as still 
subjugated to an imperialist role in which 
it still played a feudal role to the global 
North. As Dagnino discusses, Herrera’s 
work on science policy and many of 
his ideas on technological innovation 
anticipates work then developed in the 
North, particularly in his resistance to 
simplistic notions such as the linear model 
of innovation – in which scientific research 
results in technological development and 
therefore a market product. 
 
The Interventions section in this volume 
proposes two interesting cases, both 
about the introduction of foreign 
programs or developments into a 
Brazilian context and how they are 
translated/transformed in the process 
of being imported. The first case is that 
of Masterclass, a science engagement 
program developed by CERN (Switzerland) 
which proposes to teach children about 
particle physics. The second example 
takes on Uber (USA), a taxi dispatch 
application, which has been making waves 
the world over. In both cases, the Brazilian 
Vol. 5(1) (2016): Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas? | 7
historiographical account of how mass 
imprisonment in 19th century Brazil sheds 
light on current debates around racial 
discrimination in the country.
 
The editing of this volume was nothing 
short of a challenge, as it was constantly 
caught somewhere over the Atlantic and 
between faltering internet connection 
(unexpectedly, primarily on the European 
side). It served as a constant reminder of 
the society we live in, with its technological 
innovations constantly shifting our 
perceptions of time, distance, and each 
other. More important, this volume has a 
joining thread woven through the books 
reviewed and stories told – a story of 
politics, and a story of impact. Despite the 
diversity in the works presented here, the 
origins of Latin American STS are political 
ones, as Dagnino describes in his review 
of Herrera and both Dr da Silva and Prof 
Velho discuss in their interviews. These are 
stories, which discuss beyond the sciences 
or the technologies, they discuss the limits, 
what goes wrong, how subversion and 
resistance happen to reshape and reform 
things imported from the global North. 
The Latin American STS can be an act of 
resistance itself. 
 
As editors, we hope this volume provides 
a new door through which you might 
venture into this world of society, politics, 
technologies and science. One which 
challenges simplistic tales of inventions 
and creators and that prizes the battles 
underneath, opening spaces and crossing 
oceans.


Spanish

Editorial CROLAR 5(1)

da Silva, Vinícius Carvalho

Begalli, Márcia

Critical Reviews on Latin American Research | 84
science studies. From this perspective, 
Hands-on CERN believes that it can 
contribute to the formation of a scientific 
culture that strengthens the ties between 
science and society, teaching young 
students to practice particle Physics, which 
is currently under development at the 
European Center for Nuclear Research.
Masterclass/Hands-on CERN is a 
scientific dissemination project of the 
IPPOG2 (International Particle Physics 
Outreach Group). It has been designed 
for teachers and young students who 
are interested in natural sciences, and it 
aims to increase students understanding 
of the fundamental processes that take 
place in the smallest parts of matter by 
disseminating contemporary research in 
particle collision.
The project brings together about 12,000 
high school students from 42 countries 
once a year, when students go to one of the 
200 universities or research institutes that 
2 http://physicsmasterclasses.org/ (last access 
20/03/2016).
The purpose of this contribution is 
to review not a book or article, but a 
scientific education project on Particle 
Physics and High Energy: the “Masterclass/
Hands on CERN” (European Organization 
for Nuclear Research), focusing on its 
Brazilian version.
The Masterclass/Hands-on CERN is based 
on the assumption that science education 
and science disclosure have high epistemic 
and social value, since they contribute to 
the formation of a scientific culture in the 
societies in which they occur, motivate 
young students to get started on scientific 
careers, and in the long run to increase the 
number of researchers in a given society, 
and create channels of dialogue between 
science and society. This is very important 
in that, ultimately, it is civilian society who 
finances much of the scientific research 
and consumes its applications. Science 
education and communication contribute 
to society’s understanding of science “as 
it is done”, borrowing an expression from 
1 We would like to thank UERJ Professor A. A. P. Videira 
for his suggestions
INTERVENTIONS
Masterclass – Hands-on CERN/Rio
Department of Physics and High Energy, Rio de Janeiro State University 
Reviewed by Vinícius Carvalho da Silva and Márcia Begalli1
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 
Vol. 5(1) (2016): Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas? | 85
Masterclass is held not only at UERJ, it also 
takes place in Natal, capital of Rio Grande 
do Norte state, in northeastern Brazil, in 
Manaus, capital of Amazonas state, in 
Lavras, a country side city in the state of 
Minas Gerais, in São Paulo, capital of the 
São Paulo state, in Curitiba, the capital 
of Paraná state. It is not only an annual 
event held in a single day. It stands out for 
promoting an ongoing project throughout 
the school year, receiving high school and 
college students in the early years of their 
courses in Physics, Computer Science, 
Librarianship, Economics, Engineering 
and Philosophy, to study an Introduction 
to Particle Physics and to Particle Collision 
Analysis.4 This is one of the peculiarities of 
the Brazilian edition of the project in Rio 
de Janeiro, which has become a medium-
term science education program. 
Figure 1: “iSpy is a powerful and lightweight event display 
used for the CMS experiment at the LHC. It reads in an ig 
file which contains event and geometry information”
Source: http://cms-outreach.github.io/ispy/ (last access 
17/04/2016)
Participants in the Brazilian edition learn, 
introductory, about quarks, leptons, 
4 http://physicsmasterclasses.org/index.
php?cat=physics&page=atlas
 http://physicsmasterclasses.org/index.
php?cat=physics&page=cms
 Teachers and students can obtain more information 
here: LISHEP2015 sessão A https://indico.cern.ch/
event/338358/timetable/#20150728 (in Portuguese) 
and LISHEP2009 sessão A http://www.lishep.uerj.br/
lishep2009/ (all accessed on 20/03/2016).
take part in the project to attend lectures 
on Fundamental Physics, the composition 
of matter, and Nuclear Physics, taking 
measurements using real data from the 
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments 
at CERN. After analyzing the events that 
result from proton-proton collisions, an 
international video conference is held to 
communicate the results. 
The goal of the project is to promote 
Particle Physics among students, 
captivating their interest in the cutting-
edge science that is currently practiced 
in this field. In many countries, like Brazil, 
contemporary Physics is not taught, and 
students do not recognize science as a 
practice that is still open, full of challenges, 
uncertainties and adventures, which often 
operates at the limits of knowledge, or 
at least are unaware of the theories and 
models most widely accepted by the 
scientific community.
At an international level, the Masterclassis 
an attempt to bring society and young 
people closer to current particle physics 
and the LHC experiments at CERN, which 
involves highest-level sophisticated 
technology. It is worth noting that the LHC 
is the largest particle accelerator ever built 
in terms of size and power, and that it has 
allowed us to observe the Higgs boson.
The Brazilian management office of 
Masterclass3 is located at the Department 
of Nuclear and High Energy Physics of the 
Rio de Janeiro State University, UERJ. The 
3 http://handsoncernrio.webnode.com/ (last access 
20/03/2016).
Critical Reviews on Latin American Research | 86
its duration, turning a single-day event 
into a continuing education program that 
lasts throughout the school year. Student 
seminars, colloquia, mini-courses, make 
the project content broader, taking in 
students from various fields of knowledge, 
seeking to contextualize the relationship 
between physics and other forms of 
knowledge.
One of the main concepts of the project, 
other than the relationship among science, 
technology and society, is to learn science 
by doing science.8 The aim is to overcome 
the passive, static concept of education 
by receiving information and applying a 
dynamic method in which the students “go 
hands on” and learn about particle physics 
by practicing collision event analysis just 
as a scientist at CERN does. The physics 
teachers and students who participate in 
the project feel that they are part of science 
rather than just impersonal students.
At CERN, particle physics has the so-called 
“standard model of particle physics” 
as a premise. Nonetheless, science is 
developed in a pluralistic environment 
where several representations of nature 
co-exist, in which not any one form of 
science can be considered the complete 
and definitive explanation of reality. The 
standard model may be the most widely 
accepted, consistent and successful, yet 
8 See“PHYSICS/IDENTIFYING PARTICLES” at http://
physicsmasterclasses.org/ (last access 20/03/2016).
 See also: Silva, V.C. (2014): “Hands on CERN como 
una herramienta para la educación y la difusión de 
la física de partículas”, in: Anais - Primer Encuentro 
de la Red Chilena de Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad, 
Santiago: Universidad Alberto Hurtado, at: https://
encuentroctschile.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/libro-
de-resumenes-primer-encuentro-cts-chile.pdf (last 
access 20/03/2016).
fundamental interactions and their 
mediators, the Higgs boson, as well as how 
particles interact with matter and how to 
use it to recognize the different particles 
produced in the proton-proton collisions. 
They also learn about the characteristics of 
each (sub)detector of the ATLAS and CMS 
experiments. More experienced ones are 
encouraged to present their work to the 
others, helping them to understand this 
new activity. New ways of understanding 
the relationship between Particle Physics 
and other areas of knowledge are 
always explored. Particle Physics and 
its correlation with History, its use of 
Computer Science, its relationship with 
Philosophy and its influence in Art have 
been some of the themes studied. The 
goal of the Rio de Janeiro team is to train 
university students and scholl teachers as 
disseminators of Particle Physics, in order 
to take knowledge about the subject to 
different high schools around the country.
In addition to the official software of 
the project, Hybrid Pupil‘s Analysis Tool 
for Interactions in Atlas5 (HYPATIA) 
and iSpyOnline for CMS (see figure 1)6, 
Brazilians have developed their own tools, 
such as an analogic board game, which was 
created by the young participants to teach 
Physics to students in elementary and high 
schools. Also an online game can be used 
by all the participants7. The team based 
in Rio de Janeiro, sought to innovate and 
perfect the project: they have expanded 
5 http://hypatia.phys.uoa.gr/ (last access 20/03/2016).
6 http://ispy.web.cern.ch/ispy/1.5.0/ (last access 
20/03/2016).
7 http://www.sprace.org.br/sprace-game (São Paulo 
team, last access 20/03/2016).
Vol. 5(1) (2016): Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas? | 87
it is but one model among many others. 
Thus, ignoring alternative representations 
would betray the pluralistic, critical nature 
 of scientific research.Therefore, there 
seems to be an inherent challenge 
not only to the Masterclass – Hands-
on CERN, but also to science education 
in general: How do we disclose not a 
theory, event or experiment, nor just 
a scientific institution, but rather the 
“value of science”? How do we go beyond 
“advertising” and communication, and 
make it so that science education will 
serve to create a scientific culture in the 
broadest sense? To what degree are the 
students of Masterclassin Rio educated 
in a critical environment of theoretical 
pluralism? Time will tell if students in Rio 
are only introduced to the experiments at 
CERN or to a scientific research attitude 
that is broader and more critical. Judging 
by the way physics is contextualized in the 
Brazilian version of the project, it certainly 
seems there are reasons for optimism. 


English

Masterclass – Hands-on CERN/Rio

Garcia Peter, Sabina

Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation by Wiebke Keim et al. (2014)

Dagnino, Renato

Ciencia y política en América Latina de Amílcar Herrera (2015 [1971])

“Você é mulher em um campo dominado por homens?” Entrevistas com Márcia Regina Barros da Silva e Léa Maria Leme Strini Velho

Science, Technology, Society – and the Americas?

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