Latin America | Platypus

Audio Ethnographies of Water from Latin America: Attend the Rains

 Carol Iglesias Otero  February 22, 2024

Each night and day in the industrial port of Ciudad del Carmen (Campeche, Mexico), dozens of Pemex oil platform workers roll their small suitcases across the concrete as they approach the dock to board ships that will take them to offshore platforms for two-week shifts. At any given moment, seventeen thousand people live and work aboard the ships and platforms in aging infrastructure. On land, dozens of logistics workers spend their days observing. They watch the movement of people and the movement of the weather. They then record it and make decisions based on what they note. Constant transport—from workers to provisions and materials—is required to maintain a constant drilling rhythm, and all needs to happen according to schedule, a task made more complicated by the volatile weather conditions that characterize the Gulf of Mexico. (read more...)

Audio Ethnographies of Water from Latin America: Water, Energy, and Youth in the Orinoco River, Colombia

 Fernando López Vega, Sara Monzón  February 22, 2024

July is part of the heavy rainfall season of South America’s northernmost savannas, known since colonial times as the Llanos (Plains/Grasslands) and, more recently, from a biogeographical perspective, as the Colombian-Venezuelan Orinoquia. During the “winter”/rainy months, the abundance of water everywhere makes audible the sounds of boots and motorcycles crossing flooded pastures and streets, thunders, downpours on the predominant zinc roof tiles, migratory birds, and outboard motors of the many boats traveling along tributaries that at another time of the year will almost entirely disappear. Audio recordings taken during the long six months of “summer”/drought, between November and April when no drop falls on the plains, would radically differ. (read more...)

Audio Ethnographies of Water from Latin America: Introduction

 Pablo Aguilera Del Castillo  February 22, 2024

Inspired by Feld’s (2015) work on sound, in this collection of essays, we bring five ethnographers from Latin America to think about their research through the sounds of their respective field sites. The exercise we propose here borrows Feld’s concept of ‘acoustemology’ to help frame our approach towards the aural dimensions of a place: Acoustemology conjoins ‘acoustics’ and ‘epistemology’ to theorize sound as a way of knowing. In doing so, it inquires into what is knowable and how it becomes known through sounding and listening. Acoustemology begins with acoustics to ask how the dynamism of sound’s physical energy indexes its social immediacy. It asks how the physicality of sound is so instantly and forcefully present to experience and experiencers, to interpreters and interpretations. (p. 12) (read more...)

Interactive Science Museums: Replicating Science Without a Context

 alejandra ruiz-leon  August 25, 2022

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“We want a different museum. One where people are not afraid to interact with the objects” were the words of one of the promoters of the ITINTEC museum, the first interactive science museum in Latin America that opened in Peru in 1979 and closed in 1993. During its opening years, this museum became a space for school students to learn about physics and engineering through hands-on activities, where school teachers participated in workshops about science education, and overall, a space where different audiences interacted with science. The museum was part of the Institute of Technological Research, Industry, and Technical Norms, known by its acronym in Spanish as the ITINTEC. However, the museum was not part of the original plans of the institute, and it was impacted by the political context of the military years and the following unstable economic crisis in Peru. Its institutional vulnerability became evident when the institute was transformed into a new agency, the INDECOPI, that focused on intellectual property and industrial competence, where the museum had no place and ended up closing. (read more...)

Counting on Montane Birds: Biologists, Verticality, and Territorial Defense in Colombia

 Ángela Castillo-Ardila  August 2, 2022

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This piece is about the unforeseen and sometimes overlooked connection between (i) birds living in the forests of Colombia’s high tropical Andes, (ii) local biologists supporting an anti-mining coalition by conducting an alternative baseline study, and (iii) the undertheorized production of upward vertical territories. (read more...)

Key Insights for Thinking and Doing Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Work: Contributions from Latin America

 Maria Goñi Mazzitelli  June 22, 2021

Este contenido también está disponible en Español

In April 2021, the First ESOCITE-LALICS Conference took place, albeit virtually. This was the first virtual Conference organized with the collaboration of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y Tecnología (ESOCITE) and Red Latinoamericana para el Estudio de los Sistemas de Aprendizaje, Innovación y Construcción de Competencias (LALICS). Importantly, the two organizations have different profiles: if LALICS aims to deepen the links between innovation processes, national/regional development, innovation systems, learning processes, and capacity building in the region, ESOCITE’s goal is to strengthen linkages across members of the community of social studies of science and technology in Latin America. (read more...)

The Networked Animita: Transgender Remembrance on Social Media

 Baird Campbell  November 18, 2020

Este contenido también está disponible en Español.

Tomorrow, November 20th, the world will commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to collectively mourn and remember those who have died as a result of transphobia. Started in 1999 by US trans woman Gwendolyn Ann Smith, Transgender Day of Remembrance is now observed in countries around the world, including my primary field site, Chile. In this post, I explore how social media might be understood as a technology of memorialization and mourning, especially for marginalized groups. Inspired by informal roadside shrines called animitas, popular in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, I propose the ‘networked animita’ as a useful analytic for understanding trans remembrance online. I do so through an exploration of the digital afterlife of Chilean trans activist, educator, interlocutor, and friend Mara Rita Villaroel Oñate. (read more...)

Connectedness in a Time of Pandemic

 Roberto J. González  October 21, 2020

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

Right now, many of us are reevaluating what it means to be connected. In the United States, we often think of connectivity as having wireless broadband service, or 5G mobile access. Our minds might conjure up images of Big Tech and Silicon Valley, where I teach. That’s especially understandable in a time of quarantines, social distancing, virtual schooling, and working from home. But the coronavirus pandemic has also prompted reflection on the salience of humanconnections, as we find ourselves suddenly separated from those we love—or else cooped up at home with them, day in and day out. (read more...)