Preliminary Programme

Wed 23 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 24 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 17.30

Fri 25 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 26 April
    8.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

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Wednesday 23 April 2014 14.00 - 16.00
E-3 LAT01 The Politics of Science in Latin America
Hörsaal 34 raised ground floor
Network: Latin America Chair: Rossana Barragán
Organizers: Kim Clark, Paulo Drinot Discussant: Rossana Barragán
Kim Clark : The Politics of Public Health in Ecuador, 1908-1948
Public health physicians can be considered applied scientists and as such they face some specific challenges that differ from those confronted by research scientists. In many situations they must rely on data generated by others (which they must access, or encourage collection of) in order to interpret existing health conditions ... (Show more)
Public health physicians can be considered applied scientists and as such they face some specific challenges that differ from those confronted by research scientists. In many situations they must rely on data generated by others (which they must access, or encourage collection of) in order to interpret existing health conditions and predict future trajectories of disease. They must also persuade the public to alter their behaviour in order to influence and mitigate the spread of disease, and convince both the public and political leaders (at various levels and in various institutions) of the seriousness of health-related risks. Public health work is thus suffused with political considerations of various kinds. This paper asks how public health physicians dealt with these kinds of challenges in the first four decades of operation of the Ecuadorian Public Health Service, exploring the changing infrastructure of personnel networks and information sources that the Service could draw on. With both limited personnel resources and limited funding, what were the specific mechanisms by which Service leaders attempted to coordinate the work of employees in distant locations of the national territory? How did they manage, at the same time, a rapidly shifting political landscape in which national presidents changed frequently (15 of them in the 1930s alone), often bringing with them new cabinet ministers (up to three Ministers of Social Welfare in a single year)? How might we understand the micro-politics of institutional processes in relation to broader questions of Ecuadorian and Latin American state formation? (Show less)

Michela Coletta : Treating the Pathologies of Modernity: Psychiatry, Criminology and National Progress in Early-twentieth Century Argentina
The medicalisation of Argentine socio-political discourse at the turn of the century was an essential element in the process of modernisation promoted by the State, which supported the institutionalisation of psychiatric and criminological theories. Studies on criminal and mental pathologies drew heavily on the Italian school of criminal anthropology led ... (Show more)
The medicalisation of Argentine socio-political discourse at the turn of the century was an essential element in the process of modernisation promoted by the State, which supported the institutionalisation of psychiatric and criminological theories. Studies on criminal and mental pathologies drew heavily on the Italian school of criminal anthropology led by Cesare Lombroso alongside French theories of progressivity and degeneration. Focusing on the work of leading figures such as José Ingenieros, this paper will show that the psychopathological approach to the study of the social body went beyond the problem of the normalisation of society. I will argue that this state of decadence was also associated with certain supposed evils of modernity: excess of civilisation, sophistication, artificial lifestyle in the expanding urban spaces, hyper-rationalism, and abulia or loss of willpower. The reception of sociological theories about civilisation and decadence will also be analysed within this framework. (Show less)

Paulo Drinot : The Regulation of Prostitution and the Sexual Question in Peru, c. 1850-1900
From the 1850s Peruvian elites, like their counterparts in other parts of the world, began to embrace a new, transnational, paradigm that at once helped them make sense of prostitution and in turn seemed to offer a solution to its perceived effects on society: regulationism. The regulation of prostitution as ... (Show more)
From the 1850s Peruvian elites, like their counterparts in other parts of the world, began to embrace a new, transnational, paradigm that at once helped them make sense of prostitution and in turn seemed to offer a solution to its perceived effects on society: regulationism. The regulation of prostitution as a means to deal with female prostitutes and with the spread of venereal diseases with which they were associated had begun to take shape in Europe, and particularly in France, in the early nineteenth century. It quickly spread, and was adopted and adapted, throughout the world in colonial and non-colonial contexts. Regulationism, or more properly, neo-regulationism, with its emphasis on the medical policing and the enclosure of prostitutes in isolated areas of the city, promised to address, through one coherent set of regulations governing sexual commerce, the threat to public order, public morals and public health that was increasingly associated with female prostitution. But elites also perceived regulation as expressive of a modern, rational, even scientific, approach to prostitution. Yet, while Peruvian elites embraced regulationism as an ideological project in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were slow to implement it as an effective policy. In this paper, I examine Peruvian debates over regulation in detail. As was the case in many other national contexts, debates over prostitution in Peru were shaped by, and in turn, helped shape broader debates over the regulation of female and male sexuality, the social role of the family and the threats that it faced, the character and health of the nation; what I call the sexual question. As elsewhere too, debates over prostitution in Peru reflected broader changes in ideas about the role of the state in managing “the social”, and more specifically, “the sexual”. In short, debates over prostitution and its regulation in the second half of the nineteenth century in Peru, I show, expressed the ways in which the sexual question came to occupy an increasingly central place in discussions over state formation and nation building. (Show less)

Thomas Rath : Cow Killers and Informal Empire: U.S. Perspectives on Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Mexico, 1946-1955
The joint U.S-Mexico campaign against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) forms a largely forgotten chapter in the history of disease and U.S.-Mexican relations. Involving hundreds of veterinarians, ranchers, and officials from both sides of the border, and thousands of Mexican troops, it was unprecedented in scale and in the degree of cooperation ... (Show more)
The joint U.S-Mexico campaign against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) forms a largely forgotten chapter in the history of disease and U.S.-Mexican relations. Involving hundreds of veterinarians, ranchers, and officials from both sides of the border, and thousands of Mexican troops, it was unprecedented in scale and in the degree of cooperation across national borders. This paper analyzes how U.S. politics and culture shaped the FMD campaign, focusing on cattle-ranching interests, and U.S. attitudes to the Cold War, science, state power, and rural Mexico. It will also explore how U.S. attitudes changed over time, as the campaign confronted problems of state incapacity, public criticism and violent peasant protest. The paper draws on a rich and previously unexamined source base, including the personal papers of a dozen U.S. veterinarians engaged in the campaign, published and unpublished memoirs, and the official records of the commission. It argues that U.S. perspectives can be conceptualized as part of a larger discourse of informal empire, contributing to scholarship that has applied this concept to different aspects of U.S.-Latin American relations. However, the episode also illustrates how this discourse could be challenged and shift as a result of the implementation of U.S.-sponsored projects on the ground. (Show less)



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