INSTITUTIONS AND THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOUTH AMERICA: POLITICS, HERITAGE, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL
Institutions have played a fundamental role in the production, circulation, legitimation, and preservation of knowledge in the Americas. Since the nineteenth century, universities, museums, archives, scientific congresses, state agencies, professional associations, and civil society organizations have actively participated in the construction of categories, narratives, memories, and policies that help define particular ways of understanding American societies. Far from being neutral spaces, these institutions produce knowledge, select heritages, shape identities, guide public policies, and establish frameworks of interpretation that affect social life.
In recent decades, studies on heritage, the history of disciplines, social studies of science, public policy, memory, and the decolonization of knowledge have highlighted the need to critically analyze the role of institutions as central actors in the construction and legitimation of knowledge. Likewise, contemporary debates around social participation, the restitution of cultural property, the democratization of knowledge, memory policies, open science, and digital transformations invite us to rethink the ways in which these processes are produced, circulated, and contested.
This symposium proposes to bring together research examining the role of academic, scientific, cultural, educational, heritage-related, state, and community institutions in the production and circulation of knowledge in the Americas, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It seeks to create a space for dialogue among research from anthropology, history, archaeology, sociology, social work, law, education, tourism, museology, archival science, heritage studies, the history of science, and other related fields.
Papers will be accepted that address, among other topics, processes of disciplinary institutionalization; scientific congresses; universities; museums; archives and libraries; collections; cultural and documentary heritage; cultural and heritage policies; institutional memories; education; tourism; social policies; the transnational circulation of knowledge; heritage communities; restitution of cultural property; decolonization of knowledge; and new forms of producing and disseminating knowledge.
The goal is to promote a critical exchange that allows us to understand how institutions intervene in the construction, circulation, and resignification of knowledge in the Americas, fostering dialogue among different disciplinary traditions, methodological approaches, and research experiences. It is hoped that this will contribute to reflection on the contemporary challenges institutions face in producing knowledge that is socially relevant, inclusive, and committed to the diversity of American realities.
