Is There a New PLACTS Wave?

• In Event: Is There a New PLACTS Wave? Towards a Stocktaking of Current Latin American (STS) Thought

Abstract

Yes there is. It renews and blends contributions from our forefathers to show, coherently with their orientation to policy and politics, how to dodge from the labyrinth in which neoliberalism has put us. From Herrera, it rescues his skepticism about the “offertism” of his peers and the trickledown delusion of the entrepreneurs, his obsession to build the future, and his proposal to use our technoscientific potential to face the cognitive challenge embedded in the material demands of the poor. From Sabato, it takes his notions of autonomy and technological package, and updates his triangle (government - university - enterprise) with the introduction of a fourth vertex: the social movements. From Varsavsky, it combines his seminal criticism to neutrality and determinism of technoscience with the contemporary philosopher's denounce of the bureaucratic degeneration of real socialism. The result is the Solidarity Technoscience proposal, a cognitive platform for launching the Solidarity Economy, based on the collective ownership of the means of production and self-management, which is emerging along the human path "beyond capital".

Author

• Renato Dagnino, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP