TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH IN IBERO-AMERICA: CIRCULATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES (19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES)
This symposium aims to bring together papers discussing the history of science and health in Latin America from a transnational perspective, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since the 1980s, the transnational perspective in contemporary historiography has proven very fruitful in various areas — economic, political, cultural, intellectual history, among others — since it makes it possible to test the limits of national historiographies in order to uncover connections, points of contact and exchange that nuance and illuminate complex historical phenomena. This perspective connects with Latin American Studies, analyzing shared institutional projects, their circulation, eventual disputes, and, above all, challenging a view centered on dependency or imitation vis-à-vis the scientific and health institutions of North America and Europe. In this sense, the perspective of Global History makes it possible to think through the asymmetries and disputes in the process of knowledge production and circulation in postcolonial spaces. These methodological approaches join the body of work produced within the social sciences on science, technology and society, prompting us to think about science and health in Ibero-America in ways that move beyond a colonial outlook and underscore the plural processes involved in the elaboration of knowledge and practices.
From this perspective, we are interested in thinking through the transnational history of science and health, two fields that have been renewed in light of this new approach, since they have made it possible to illuminate, for example, the circulation of knowledge, actors and practices, and to account for their strong internationalization and the way in which these processes. We encourage the submission of papers addressing the asymmetries present in the processes of knowledge production, in research institutions, and in scientific missions since the early nineteenth century. Within this time frame, we also invite the submission of papers on diverse intellectual, professional and institutional trajectories, on the history of scientific and health equipment, and on hospital institutions. As well as research addressing science and health through comparative history, connected history, and intellectual history.
