Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America

Name: Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America
Author: María del Pilar Blanco
ISBN: 9781683401483

Edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Joanna Page

Published by: University of Florida Press

Challenging the common view that Latin America has lagged behind Europe and North America in the global history of science, this volume reveals that the region has long been a center for scientific innovation and imagination. It highlights the important relationship between science, politics, and culture in Latin American history.

352 Pages6.13 × 9.2517 b/w illus., notes, bibliography, index

Hardcover
9781683401483
Published: April 17, 2020

$95.00

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Paperback
9781683403876
Published: March 28, 2023

$28.00

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EPUB
9781683403982
Published: March 28, 2023

(Ebook delivery via Leaf eReader app.)

$28.00

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PDF
9781683401766
Published: March 18, 2020

(Ebook delivery via Leaf eReader app.)

$190.00

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Description
Authors
Praise
Table of Contents

“The most inclusive, informative, and up-to-date volume I have seen regarding science and culture in Latin America. An excellent choice for both the classroom and the individual researcher.”—Jerry Hoeg, coauthor of Reading and Writing the Latin American Landscape
“What is the role played by Latin America in the formation of global science? What is the role performed by science in the shaping of the imaginary in Latin America? Many will surely respond the same to both questions: they will say it has been a subsidiary or marginal role, or that they do not know. After reading this book—diverse, interdisciplinary, and highly topical—one can only agree that neither science nor Latin America are what we thought they were.”—Juan Pimentel, author of The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History

“This multidisciplinary, well-researched work is an excellent contribution to the fields of cultural studies and Latin American studies.”—Choice
“Wonderful and imaginative. . . . An exciting new addition to the literature.”—New Books Network
“The humanities, including language, literature, and history, have increasingly provided valuable insights on the relationships between science, society, and creative work. This book adds significantly to our appreciation of these connections in the Latin American context, including multiple countries and time periods.”—Journal of Latin American Geography
“Excels above all in its capacity to inspire further work on the raised issues. . . . The book does not shy away from the challenge of digging deeper and redeeming forgotten or unknown figures and episodes in the history of Latin American science and culture, which is the reason why it is highly recommended for a broad readership.”—Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Latin America’s Scientific Landscapes

1. Bone Tales: Patagonian Monsters and the Paleontological Imagination
Gabriela Nouzeilles

Chapter 2. Nation as Laboratory: Rethinking Science Writing in Mexico’s República Restaurada (1868–1876)
María del Pilar Blanco

Chapter 3. Natural Histories of the Anthropocene: Santiago del Estero, Argentina, in the 1930s
Jens Andermann

Part II. Latin America as the Site of Knowledge Production

Chapter 4. Empathy, Patients’ Needs and Therapeutic Innovation in the Medical Literature of Early Viceregal Mexico
Yarí Pérez Marín

Chapter 5. Between Potosí and Nuevo Potosí: Mineral Riches and Observations of Nature in the Colonial Andes, ca. 1596–1797
Heidi V. Scott

Chapter 6. Indigenous Medicine and Nation-Building: Hermilio Valdizán’s Medical Project
Edward Chauca

III. Science and the Modern Nation

Chapter 7. Postcolonial Social Sciences of Nineteenth-Century Spanish America: Land Surveys, Comparative Political Sociology, and the Malleability of Race
Lina del Castillo

Chapter 8. “Una nueva y gloriosa nación”: Patriotic Lyrics and Scientific Culture in the Forging of Political Emancipation in Río de la Plata
Miguel de Asúa

Chapter 9. Inventions and Discoveries in Letters to Perón: Dialogue and Autonomy in the Popular Technical Imagination in Argentina in the 1940s and 1950s
Hernán Comastri

Part IV. Utopian Convergences Between Science and the Arts

Chapter 10. Modernismo, Spiritualism, and Science in Argentina at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: An Analysis of National Magazines
Soledad Quereilhac

Chapter 11. Doing Poetry with Science: Unthinking Knowledge in Sarduy, Perlongher, and Eielson
Julio Prieto

Chapter 12. The Science of Reading Fiction: New (Post-Darwinian) Metaphors to Live By
Joanna Page

Part V. Science, Epistemology, and the Critique of Modernity

Chapter 13. Laboratories of Universality: A Genealogy of Solitary Latin American Inventors
Carlos Fonseca Suárez

Chapter 14. The Politics of Relativity: Radical Epistemologies and the Revolutionary Potential of the Scientific Imaginary in José Carlos Mariátegui
Brais Outes-León

Chapter 15. Beyond Empiricism: Rolando García’s Theory of Complex Systems and the Epistemological Consequences of a Non-linear Universe
Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra

Bibliography

Index