Ignorance and 'Habitus': Blinkered and Enlightened Approaches Towards the History of Science in Latin America

Abstract

In broad terms, European students of the history of Latin America have concentrated their researches upon colonial policies, interactions between Europeans (and their American‐born descendants) and indigenous peoples, economic and commercial structures, and political life (whether of elites or, more recently, of subaltern groups). The last two decades have witnessed a significant expansion in Britain and elsewhere of research into gender studies and cultural studies. Although the latter discipline embraces an awareness of the importance of the history of science, this has tended to be rather narrowly focussed upon travel writing, and the extent to which there were links between the promotion of scientific travel and both imperial and national projects, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, like the great British scientific travellers of the nineteenth century in Latin America, the works of cultural studies specialists tend to reveal more about European attitudes and misconceptions than Latin American reality.

Yearnings for Guácharo Cave: affect, absence, and science in Venezuelan speleology

“…62 We know much less about them in Latin America, a region whose history of science only recently has begun to receive adequate attention (an attention that often requires, in turn, different analytical paradigms than those used in other cultural contexts). 63 This is a civic science in Venezuela during an important moment in the history of the science in the nation. During the 1950s and 1960s, investment in public education and the promotion of science in the university increased dramatically fueled by oil revenues.…”