SCIENCE CENTERS AND SOCIAL APPROPRIATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE AMERICAS: INSTITUTIONAL MEMORIES, PUBLIC MEDIATIONS AND TERRITORIES OF SCIENCE
In Latin America, Science Centers and institutions dedicated to the social appropriation of knowledge have been decisive spaces for relating science, technology, memory, education, heritage and the daily life of communities. Science museums, natural history museums, botanical gardens, planetariums, zoos, aquariums, interactive centers, citizen laboratories, maker spaces and traveling exhibitions do not merely communicate scientific results: they produce cultural mediations, forms of public participation, dialogues between different kinds of knowledge, and situated experiences of citizenship-building.
This symposium proposes to bring together recognized Science Centers and other institutions that develop processes of social appropriation of knowledge and public communication of science, in order to share experiences, challenges, difficulties, lessons learned and opportunities. The discussion starts from a common question: how have these institutions contributed to transforming the relationships between science, society, territory and culture in the Americas?
The symposium seeks to historicize and problematize the place of social appropriation of knowledge. In the Colombian case, this discourse was shaped between scientific dissemination, the democratization of knowledge, scientific culture, and science, technology and innovation policies. However, its consolidation has also been traversed by conceptual, institutional and political tensions that force us to ask what we understand today by appropriation, participation, public communication, knowledge exchange and the social management of science.
From this perspective, the symposium will receive papers analyzing experiences of scientific mediation, non-formal education, museographic design, territorial work, citizen participation, science-technology-society communication, audience evaluation, community projects, inter-institutional networks, sustainability, public policies and the circulation of scientific and environmental memories. It is of particular interest that participating institutions present not only successful results, but also dilemmas, failures, lessons learned and open questions about their practice.
By convening this conversation, the symposium seeks to contribute to the articulation of a plural institutional field, capable of critically thinking about its history, recognizing its forms of public intervention and projecting new alliances among museums, universities, communities, the State, cultural organizations and actors of the National Science, Technology and Innovation System. In dialogue with the Congress theme, it proposes to think of Science Centers as places where tradition and innovation meet to activate memories, knowledge and public futures of science in the Americas.
