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La Publicación Académica STS como Un Trabajo de Servicio y Esperanza: Una Conversación con Vivette García-Deister

Vivette García-Deister June 19, 2025
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Pensar, escribir y publicar desde Latinoamérica conlleva importantes retos, especialmente para los investigadores más jóvenes. El trabajo académico está atravesado por diferentes tipos de asimetrías; pero si a ello sumamos la centralidad del idioma inglés y la predominancia de perspectivas teóricas del norte global, el panorama se vuelve aún más desafiante. Frente a esta situación, han surgido proyectos que consideran la publicación como una intervención a las políticas del conocimiento que puede desestabilizar dichas asimetrías y contribuir a la consolidación de prácticas más horizontales. Un ejemplo sería Tapuya: Latin American Science Technology and Society, una revista internacional que conecta conversaciones entre el norte y el sur global, ayudando a sus autorxs a navegar la complejidad de diferentes idiomas y tradiciones de pensamiento crítico. En esta ocasión tuvimos la oportunidad de platicar con Vivette García-Deister, la editora en jefe de esta revista. En esta entrevista, ella nos contó por qué considera que la edición académica es un trabajo de servicio, en qué sentido ciertos procesos editoriales —como la lectura cuidadosa, la revisión y la retroalimentación— pueden ayudar a lxs autores jóvenes a robustecer teórica y metodológicamente sus textos y por qué la publicación puede ser una forma de esperanza. (read more...)

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STS Academic Publishing As a Work of Service and Hope: A Conversation with Vivette García-Deister

Vivette García-Deister June 19, 2025
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Thinking, writing, and publishing from Latin America pose significant challenges, especially for younger researchers. Academic work is affected by various kinds of asymmetries, but when we add to this the centrality of the English language and the predominance of theoretical perspectives from the Global North, the landscape becomes even more challenging. In response to this situation, several projects have emerged that view publishing as an intervention in the politics of knowledge. One such project that aims to undo these asymmetries and contribute to more horizontal practices is Tapuya: Latin American Science Technology and Society, an international journal that fosters conversations between the global North and South and helps its authors navigate the complexities of diverse languages and traditions of critical thinking. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to speak with Vivette García-Deister, the editor-in-chief of this journal. In this interview, she talks about why she considers academic publishing a service, how some editorial processes —such as reading, reviewing, and providing feedback— can theoretically and methodologically support young authors’ texts, and why publishing can be a form of hope. (read more...)

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Peasant Reserve Zones as Techno-socio-environmental Assemblages

Julián Medina-Zárate, Nicolas Lara-Rodriguez June 12, 2025
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Peasant Reserve Zones (Zonas de Reserva Campesina, or ZRCs in Spanish) constitute a legal framework established to organize territories historically inhabited by peasant communities in Colombia. Designed as part of agrarian reform efforts, these zones are intended to promote environmental conservation and socioeconomic sustainability in rural areas. The ZRCs provide peasant organizations with a set of tools to structure their social, economic, political, and environmental governance. However, their effectiveness in achieving social and environmental objectives remains a subject of ongoing research across disciplines such as ecology, sociology, and economics. Existing studies yield inconclusive results, instead highlighting the complexity of the dynamics surrounding this institutional mechanism.   (read more...)

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Homecoming: Tasting Death in a Vietnamese Forensic Laboratory 

Tiên-Dung Hà June 10, 2025
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Hội An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Quảng Nam province in Central Việt Nam. In the daylight, Hội An dazzles with architectural riches reflecting its history as a trading port and cultural hub: well-preserved wooden Chinese shophouses, French colonial buildings, traditional Vietnamese tube houses, and Japanese covered bridges. By night, the town is illuminated with colorful lanterns crafted from bamboo, adorned with silk, and fashioned into elaborate shapes, like bánh ú– a traditional Vietnamese glutinous rice cake. These lanterns serve as symbols of reverence for Gods and ancestors, while also representing wishes for luck, prosperity, and peace. Off the bustling main street Lý Thường Kiệt, nestled away in an alley just wide enough for a car, sits Nhà Lao Hội An (Hội An Prison). The building is reclusive and unassuming amid the charming city of its namesake. The prison in this serene and ancient town bore witness to some of the most intense fighting in the region’s history. (read more...)

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The Sugar Library

Katie Ulrich June 3, 2025
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This post is part of a series on the SEEKCommons project. Read the Introduction to the series to learn more. Sugar, particularly that from sugarcane, takes many different shapes and forms in the world. During my research on sugarcane in Brazil, the largest producer of the crop, I started tracking in a spreadsheet all the various forms of sugar or sugarcane I encountered in my fieldwork. I called this my sugar library. The below figures display some examples from the sugar library, grouped into thematic categories and listed without the various metadata included in the spreadsheet version. (read more...)

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The Porosity of Promise: Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and the New Science of Technofixation

Aaron Gregory May 29, 2025
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Amidst the proliferation of material technologies developed to solve the problems of planetary climate change and carbon emissions, the technoscientific community increasingly champions a new molecular hero: metal organic frameworks (MOFs). Metal organic frameworks are an emergent generation of material technologies lauded for their capacity to capture and sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) within their porous structures. They are among the most widely researched materials within the fields of climate science, materials science, and various (sub)disciplines of chemistry, heralded for potential applications that include yet exceed carbon capture and sequestration. Their synthesis anticipates infinite configurations of matter and materiality at the molecular scale, with an equally infinite array of applications. This article examines the promise and porosity of MOFs created to capture CO2 and an expanding array of technoscientific actors and interests. (read more...)

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What if We’ve Been Thinking About Wildfire Smoke the Wrong Way?

Arielle Milkman May 20, 2025
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Helping on a prescribed fire as a volunteer firefighter sometime in September, I felt the anticipation that had been building in our team dissipate as we learned that we would not be able to proceed with the day’s planned ignitions. We gathered our tools and snacks and slouched back toward the briefing area. I imagined others who had been assigned to work on the burn cordoning off the day as a lost cause. Folks who were working for local companies and non-profits would only be able to bill for the couple of hours we spent standing around waiting for orders, and there would certainly be no overtime. The Lomatium, Whitebeam, Kincaid’s lupine, and other species the land managers hoped would benefit from habitat restoration because of the burn would have to wait, maybe until the next week, maybe until the next season, as would their goals to reduce the likelihood of a high severity fire on the preserve. Such was the reality of attempting a planned burn, or a prescribed burn, in the suburbs of the densely populated pockets of the Willamette Valley. (read more...)

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L’Écosystème Multiple: Naviguer le Destin Transatlantique de la Biosphère 1 ½

Elie Danziger May 8, 2025
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C’est la fin du mois de mars 2022 et, comme toujours, le temps est radieux à Tucson, en Arizona. Mais une grande réunion rassemble un groupe binational à l’intérieur d’un bâtiment climatisé du campus. Pour la première fois depuis le début de la pandémie de Covid-19, des scientifiques français du Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) ont pu venir rencontrer leurs homologues de l’Université d’Arizona (UA), pour célébrer le lancement d’un partenariat entre les deux institutions, qui a débuté officiellement en 2021. Grâce à ce partenariat, les deux parties souhaitent favoriser des recherches collaboratives et complémentaires, notamment sur le thème de l’environnement. L’un des points forts de cette collaboration est la perspective de projets conjoints faisant usage d’un laboratoire appelé « Biosphère 2 ». (read more...)

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