Connected, Shared, and Entangled: Rethinking Foundational Assumptions about “Local,” “Global,” “Postcolonial,” and “Transnational” in the History of Biology and the Life Sciences
by Ana Barahona | William Leeming | National University of Mexico, UNAM | Ontario College of Arts, Toronto, CA
Preliminary Program
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Evening Session | 18:00-20:00
Venue: Marasleio Room 2
Ana Barahona | Entangled histories: karyotyping and populations genetics in Cold War Mexico. Salvador Armendares and Rubén Lisker characterization of child and indigenous populations, 1960s-1980s
Attention: Due to the small number of participants, this symposium may be canceled.
In this case, registered participants will be transferred to stand-alone papers.
About the Symposium
The aim of the session is to provide a forum for historical investigation that moves beyond diffusionist models of the history of science which represent innovations as originating in a single centre and diffusing in a one-way relationship with centres outside of the centre. Postcolonial critiques of diffusionist “centre-periphery” models inherited from the Cold War era have been highly influential in this regard for their exposure of the deeply embedded Eurocentrism of prevailing narratives in which social, cultural, and political formations are depicted as one-way relationships of “sending” colonisers and “receiving” colonial subjects. These critiques have generated other lines of inquiry which feature what have variously been called “connected,” “shared,” and “entangled” approaches to history that stress networked relations and processes of mutual influencing in establishing innovation relationships. These lines of inquiry permit a foretaste of what can be achieved by untangling and reconnecting local histories of science in ways that do not strictly rely on asymmetrical centre-periphery narratives. The organizers propose to open up and develop these lines of inquiry with a session that explores movements and relationships across borders which attempt to transcend the deeply rooted territorial approaches of the past. To do so, the proposed session invites papers that include (but are not limited to) studies of the “connected,” “shared,” and “entangled” relationships of biological science and the life sciences that:
– Have occurred between colonial powers and (now) independent former colonies
– Have occurred under (pre- or post-1989) first-second-third world international relationships
– Have occurred in the course of development (i.e., developing/developed nations) relationships
– Have occurred as a result of collaborations in international and/or supranational biological and life sciences projects (e.g., Human Genome Projects, Millennium Seed Bank Partnership).