Beyond Imported Magic Scholars from around the globe met Friday and Saturday, Aug. 24 and 25, at the Indiana Memorial Union and the School of Informatics and Computing to examine and challenge the widely held view that science and technology in Latin America are like “imported magic,” powerful, mysterious and foreign. They shared research that highlights the ways in which innovation, invention, and discovery occur in multiple contexts. Conference papers also drew attention to the importance of local adaptation and reinvention, and not just acts of invention, in the production and dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge. Eden Medina, Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing, Adjunct Associate Professor of History, and CoDirector of the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University, was the principal organizer of the conference. Other organizers were Shane Greene, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Deborah Cohn, chair of the Department of American Studies.
scholars from universiBeyond Imported Magic ties in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland, as well as an interdisciplinary group of Friday August 24, 2012 IU faculty members and IMU Dogwood Room graduate students. Papers and talks addressed topics including the “invisibility” of female forensic scientists in Colombia, the implementation of the One Laptop per Child program in Peru and Paraguay, and nuclear energy programs in Chile and Argentina. Studying Science & Technology in Latin America:
http://magic.indiana.edu
In discussions of Latin America, a frequent perception is that science and technology come from elsewhere. Join us for an event that challenges these assumptions and demonstrates why Latin American experiences are central to understanding processes of global scientific and technological knowledge production.
10:00–11:00 a.m. Ivan da Costa Marques, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, "Ontological Politics and Latin American Local Knowledges"
11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Julia Rodriguez, University of New Hampshire, "Study the Skulls and Bones: Latin America as a Site of Inquiry into the Origins of Humanity"
2:00–3:00 p.m. Dominique Vinck, University of Lausanne, "Adaptation and Local Innovation: Connecting Innovation Concepts to Science and Technology Policies"
3:15–4:15 p.m. David Hess, Vanderbilt University, "The New Developmentalism: Brazil, the U.S., and Green Transitions"
Funding came from the National Science Foundation with support from IU’s School of Informatics and Computing, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Department of American Studies, Department of Anthropology, Institute for Advanced Study, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Office of the Vice President for International Affairs. This workshop has been made possible with generous support from the
National Science Foundation
Additional funding has been provided by the Mellon Foundation as well as the Indiana University Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, School of Informatics and Computing, Department of American Studies,
Department of Anthropology, Institute for Advanced Study, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Office of the Vice
The workshop brought together scholars in the discipline of Science and Technology Studies, which uses methods from the humanities and social sciences to examine how social, political and cultural factors influence scientific research and technological innovation. Participants included
Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, & Office of the Vice President for International Affairs.
Anna Babel On September 7, 2012 CLACS and the CLACS Minority Languages & Cultures Program sponsored a visit from Dr. Anna Babel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State University. Her talk drew a diverse crowd of faculty and students from various academic disciplines including linguistics, romance languages, anthropology, folklore, and education. Dr. Babel is a sociolinguist and a linguistic anthropologist whose research draws on quantitative and qualitative data from a Quechua-Spanish contact region in central Bolivia. Dr. Babel investigates how linguistic features are linked to social representations and the way that complex social factors are integrated into language structure. In her talk entitled, “The Social Construction of ‘Foreign’ Sounds in Quechua-Influenced Spanish” Dr. Babel explored questions of language contact, foreignness, and social context. She focused on research conducted in the valley region of central Bolivia among Spanish speakers who speak little or no Quechua. Dr. Babel discussed how and why
speakers of Andean Spanish use aspirates and ejectives of Quechua origin despite their dissimilarity to the canonical Spanish sound system. She played several recorded examples of both of these linguistic features to illustrate their use, attention-grabbing quality, and dissimilarity to Spanish. Dr. Babel suggested that Spanish speakers use these Quechua origin sounds and loanwords consciously to index ideologies linked to Quechua and Quechua speakers as well as a general concept of ‘foreignness.’ She noted that under this construction many dissimilar elements are lumped together: a foreign sound could be classified as Quechua sounding, from La Paz, or English. Dr. Babel also demonstrated comically that when people wish to mimic English, they fill their speech with these Quechua origin aspirates and ejectives, which are not present in English. Dr. Babel’s research also suggests that Spanish speakers are more likely to utilize these Quechua origin loanwords and sounds in familiar contexts as opposed to official or institutional contexts, further reinforcing the notion that these sounds are used consciously to draw a particular affective stance.
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