Latin American STS Experimentations: Innovating Security Studies in the Region

Abstract

STS has not yet become prominent in Latin American security research, mainly because the region's scholarly debates have traditionally revolved around issues of drug trafficking, citizen security, police reform, military cooperation, peace building, and violence. This session brings together Latin American scholars experimenting with STS approaches in order to innovatively reframe such topics, and by way of doing so interrogate how security agencies use and produce scientific knowledge and surveillance technologies; how security expertise contributes to public policy and state reform; and how security problems develop into business opportunities and post-conflict economies. The papers comprising this closed panel touch upon a variety of security themes, including maritime police cartography, crime prevention, community policing, forensic engineering, and the privatization of war. Together, these interventions seek to develop an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that is both relevant to current STS discussions and meaningful for Latin American Security Studies.

Individual Presentations

• Community Policing and Drug Trafficking in Neo-Socialist Ecuador, 2011 - 2017 - Daniel Ponton, Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales

• Privatization of War in the Ecuadorian-Colombian Border: Racism, Dispossession and Post-Conflict Violence - Jose Figueroa, Universidad Central del Ecuador

• Police Forensic Engineering in Ecuador: Traffic Accidentology and the Politics of Motorway Infrastructures - Carlos Semblantes, Policia Nacional del Ecuador; Jorge Nunez, Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography

Session Organizer

• Jorge Nunez, Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography