A Meeting on the Amazon Biotechnology Center - a Sociotechnical Approach

• In Event: Can the Subaltern Research? I

Abstract

It was a hot, humid morning in Manaus, a city placed in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest. Twenty researchers and administrators gather under a nearly polar temperature provided by an air conditioner at full steam. The diversity of professional profiles mingled biologists, chemists, physicists, physicians, engineers, information technology staff, accountants, public administrators. All aimed to reach the goal of boosting the Amazon Center for Biotechnology (CBA).

The CBA intends to bridge the gap between local indigenous knowledge and luxurious nature, on the one side, and the academic environment of universities, research centers, the Brazilian manufacturing efforts and international interests, on the other. Furthermore the Center aims to become a local authority of scientific knowledge.

This tank of diverse knowledge (academia, society, natives) - which dwell in the forest – seeks to establish an obligatory passage point where knowledge and practices rooted in local society meet the great national scientific and industrial project.

The confluence of knowledge in the meeting resembles the ´Meeting of the Waters´ of the Rivers Negro and Solimões in the Amazon: of different colors and textures, the meeting highlights evident demarcations between actors and their visions of the same facts and artifacts. Dialogues are a blend of unstable equilibrium.

In these attempts of convergence, we can see how tortuous negotiations seek to appropriate the immensity of the forest but still they are faced with difficulties to deal with a cartography where a mixture of life diversity and knowledge heterogeneity abounds.

This study approaches some of the controversies raised in a meeting that took place in September 2016.It is based on various authors in STS studies, mainly Laymert Garcia dos Santos on biotechnology and Amazon.

Author

• Silvia Vaisburd, COPPE - UFRJ