A FabLab in the Periphery: Reconfiguring Innovation from São Paulo

• In Event: Latin American Entanglements of Gender, Sexuality, Race, Ethnicity, Coloniality - I

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a stunning proliferation of community-oriented innovation initiatives in Brazil - from socially-minded makerspaces that aim at promoting gender and racial equality in tech, to public fablabs that aspire to foster small entrepreneurship among underserved populations. Rooted in a particular Latin American lineage of thinking and experimenting with social innovation and digital inclusion, these initiatives have embraced the global rhetoric of innovation, but not without a fair dose of reflexivity and appropriation, conferring it “a Brazilian twist.” This paper delves into the quest for inclusive innovation that characterizes many of these projects. Based on a year of fieldwork, it centers on the day-to-day practices at a free and public fablab located next to a poor community in the periphery of São Paulo, exploring what this space is meant to do, who uses it, and for what purposes. Engaged with theoretical debates in postcolonial and feminist STS, the paper discusses the potentialities and limitations of such initiatives to shed critical light on dominant models of innovation and push them in new, fresh directions. The paper is part of a dissertation research project that examines improvisation as a form of technological production at the level of community-oriented innovation initiatives and the 1970s and 80s electronics industry in Brazil.

Author

• Liliana Gil, The New School