STEPS America Latina launches new website

The Centro STEPS America Latina – the new Latin American regional hub for our Global Pathways to Sustainability Consortium – has unveiled its own dedicated website.

The new website is now live at www.stepsamericalatina.com.

The Centro STEPS website is run by a team at the Centro de Investigaciones para la Transformación (CENIT) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who have been working with the STEPS Centre since 2008 on issues linking science, technology and innovation with environmental sustainability and social justice.

The new website showcases the Latin American hub's research, policy engagement and other activities in the region, featuring publications, multimedia outputs, events and a blog. Research areas highlights include 'innovation movements', 'productive transformations', 'power & knowledge', and 'knowledge networks'.

At the moment, the website is available only in Spanish, but English-language content will be added soon.

Making global connections

Centro STEPS America Latina is the first centre in our Global Consortium to launch its own website following the launch of the hub with a series of debates earlier this year (insert link. The five other hubs in the Consortium are being developed by our partners in South Asia, China, Africa and North America. News from the hubs will be posted here as it happens.

To keep up to date with developments, join our mailing list.

To contact the Latin America team, email info@stepsamericalatina.com

STEPS América Latina at the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network

Between 13 and 15 October the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network held its first workshop in Nairobi. The objective of the workshop, organized and funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre, and supported by the University of Toronto and Kenya iHUB, was to kick-start the construction of a research network to promote 'open science' for the Global South.

This initiative arises in a context where open science has become a buzzword for large foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and development institutions internationally. In the midst of so much interest, the inevitable question is whether open science can live up to its promises. In this spirit we went to Kenya to learn about and discuss the issue.

STEPS América Latina was privileged to be amongst 14 other institutions whose proposals had been pre-selected (from over 90 applications) by OCSDnet. Participants came from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Canada, India, Kenya, South Africa, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand. Co-ordinated by Leslie Chan, from the University of Toronto the workshop also included a set of international advisors including Lidia Brito, Hebe Vessuri, Cameron Neylon, Apiwat Ratanawaraha, Matthew Todd and Kaitlin Thaney, representing the Science Lab of the Mozilla Foundation.

If, before the event, a number of elements – the meeting venue, the novelty of the subject, and the excellent background paper – suggested a rewarding and challenging encounter, it rapidly became clear that the event would exceed our expectations. In part this was because the workshop brought together a truly interdisciplinary group of anthropologists, chemists, biologists, lawyers, geographers, ecologists, engineers, experts in social development, forest conservation and sociologists who all shared an interest in the production of open and collaborative knowledge.

In most cases, the participants also had practical experience of the development and use of participatory tools for the collection, management and dissemination of scientific evidence in relation to social or environmental issues. As such, we discussed projects that sought to expand access to scientific databases on botany, foster public control over the emission of gaseous pollutants in urban areas, study the asymmetries of power in cases of indigenous intellectual property, and support the construction of laboratories of open hardware in order to study water contamination, amongst other examples.

Creating dialogue amongst such a heterogeneous set of disciplines, development issues and geographical situations sometimes proved challenging. Of course, there were several moments “lost in translation” (especially between scientists and the few sociologists who participated in the meeting). And yet, the workshop enabled us to explore a rich variety of definitions and interpretations of what it means to do open science (and open innovation).

We cannot summarize here the different points of view aired within the workshop, and interpretations of the event. But if it is interesting to note that it became clear, during the three days, that the notion of open science is intertwined with the collaborative and iconoclastic spirit of the communities of open software and open hardware (along with the hacker and maker movements), the history of grassroots innovation movements, the experiences of Science Shops in Europe and North America and, closer to Latin America, the tradition of participatory action research. All these movements not only share some history with open science, but they also help to form a central aspect of its definition: the search for the democratization of knowledge.

A second issue highlighted during the discussions in Nairobi is the importance of information technology tools for data collection, visualization and communication for the practice of open science. Incorporating these tools is a challenge and a necessity in order to establish ways to collaborate that are open and accessible to the largest number of participants possible.

In the context of increasing interest and discussion of the potential and uses of open science to address major development challenges – for example in research initiatives for orphan diseases – an analysis of the history, diversity and uses of open science practices is more than welcome. It’s also likely that reflection on the notion of open science and citizen participation in the production of knowledge allows us to shed some light on other current topics of innovation and development, as in the cases of research into innovation for social inclusion, and of the tensions between public research and policies for the private commercialization of knowledge.

Of course, there are still more questions than answers. For example: Is it possible to use methodologies of open science for research on issues that are neglected or rejected by dominant institutions of science and technology? In what ways can citizen participation contribute to the collection and validation of evidence on climate change and/or biodiversity loss? In what ways might mechanisms of participatory design and innovation accelerate the development of technologies for social inclusion?

It is difficult to know even if experimentation with forms of open science will be able to help address the growing problems of access and democratization of knowledge about the challenges of inclusive and sustainable development. The OCSDnet initiative certainly contributes to broaden the discussion, and connect the different visions, methods and tools in different regions of the global South. For now, it has given us an excellent reason to investigate the issue, and try to understand different experiences of open and collaborative knowledge production in Argentina and the region.

Find our more about STEPS America Latina Media coverage of the most recent seminar in the STEPS America Latina’s series: Los nuevos senderos que se abren, Pagina 12  

By Mariano Fressoli, STEPS America Latina

Article roundup: STEPS Latin America monthly debates

As part of the build up to the launch of the STEPS Centre’s Latin American hub in 2015, we have started a series of monthly debates in Buenos Aires on sustainability and development. The debates are an important first step in identifying and discussing themes that the new Centre will explore, and in creating a wider network of academics and policy-makers interested in those themes.
Short articles based on each debate are being published in Página12, a national Argentinean newspaper. These take the form of a pair of articles on each debate: one written by our invited speakers, and one by the Centro STEPS America Latina team.

Read the articles

Transgénicos en el ojo de la tormenta
Articles based on our first debate: 'What is the social utility of publicly funded R&D for transgenic crops?' 6 May 2014
There is strong government support for plant genetic engineering in several Latin American countries, as evident in R&D funding and the creation of enabling regulations in intellectual property and licensing. Yet there are very different views about the medium and long term development implications of encouarging transgenic-based agriculture. We invited speakers representing various points of view to address the following questions: What is the social utility of public financing of R&D in plant transgenesis? What is the contribution that this technology can make to sustainable and socially inclusive development? Are there viable alternative options?

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Haz lo que digo, pero no lo que hice
Articles based on our second debate: 'Intellectual Property Rights and innovation in developing countries', 3 June 2014
There are contrasting perspectives about the ways in which different kinds of intellectual property protection may affect innovation in developing countries. In the wake of the 1990s TRIPS agreement, countries have had to harmonize their intellectaul property regulations with internationally-defined rules. We invited speakers to address the following questions: What are the opportunities and challenges posed by the new intellectual property regimes in terms of encouraging local innovation and supporting development objectives? Are there alternatives to the intellectual property rules stipulated by the TRIPS agreement? What is the scope for implementing such alternatives?

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El papel transformador de la innovación
Articles based on our third debate: 'Innovation for social inclusion: Between inclusion as an objective and inclusion as a process of participation', 5 August 2014
Innovation for social inclusion is attracting growing interest amongst policy-makers and other stakeholders, but there are very different ways of understanding what is meant by innovation for inclusion. Is it primarily a process through which solutions to the problems experienced by marginalized actors can be created, or about fostering broader participation in the creation of new knowledge and technologies? We invited speakers to address the following questions: Is it possible to orientate innovation policies for social inclusion in ways that foster greater social participation? What tools would be most effective? How can we allocate resources so that the importance attached to innovation for inclusion can be equated with other R&D priorities?

• Read more from the Latin America hub

A Day with Argentina's 'Street Engineers'

By Adrian Smith

They take pride in what they do at the Reciclando Sueños co-operative. Situated in the La Matanza district of greater Buenos Aires, the workers describe themselves as cartoneros profesionales (professional recyclers) and ingenieros callejeros (street engineers). Whilst some in the city see waste picking as a lowly activity, these workers consider themselves to be providing a public service vital for the future sustainability of the city. In embryonic form, they are nurturing an important urban infrastructure from below.

The co-operative gathers the plastic waste that blows through the vast grid of Buenos Aires’ seemingly never-ending streets. The cartoneros form one of many co-operatives that have developed in the city over the years. Reciclando Sueños specialises in plastic materials. Only some of these have market value, sometimes very limited. So they are trying to find ways of adding value by developing processing techniques, and by experimenting with ways to reclaim a wider range of materials. It is in this grassroots innovation sense that they call themselves street engineers.

By Adrian Smith

So they have developed heating techniques to help separate, clean up, and concentrate different plastics. This, and other methods such as milling, help bulk up the materials and add value. But they have also been experimenting with the conversion of beer bottle labels into bricks suitable for construction, and which have acoustic and thermal insulating potential. The National Institute for Industrial Technology (INTI – Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial) are testing the bricks for certification, but it is taking time to generate the knowledge in officially approved form. It can be tricky working with the bureaucratic procedures of research institutes. Any progress through the system works due to helpful connections with committed individuals within these organisations.

When visiting the co-operative, accompanying a group from the network for Engineering, Social Justice and Peace, it felt to me like the ideas, experimentation and commitment to developing material processing infrastructure in La Matanza was very distant and disconnected from some important research and innovation infrastructures. I wondered what a more dedicated and localised research and innovation infrastructure might look like, and how it could facilitate the creativity evident at the co-op. Even further away is the whole investment and production infrastructure that generates this plastic and, potentially, re-uses it.

By Adrian Smith

The only connection the co-operative currently has with production and consumption infrastructures is through the prices it takes for the materials reclaimed. In trying to boost the price they can get for a wider range of materials, the co-operative is innovating techniques for plastics recovery and reuse. But the processing insights generated by these self-identified street engineers are poorly served by this price mechanism. Until other providers identify the workers as innovative, then existing infrastructures will provide insufficient resources and poor development spaces for co-ops like this to play a more informative role in new urban infrastructure.

By Adrian Smith

Why STEPS is creating a new research hub in Latin America

I am in Buenos Aires for the ESOCITE/4S conference, which is bringing together Latin American scholars in Science & Technology Studies and visitors from the USA, Europe and other regions of the world.   It is an exciting moment to convene in Argentina. The government is mired in controversy over payment of debts, vulture funds, nationalisations, and the future direction of development as the country's politicians jockey for position ahead of the presidential elections next year. In the region too, a decade or so of trying to make a neo-structural model of development more inclusive is leading into a period of reflection and debate about the experience. That decidedly mixed experience has centred on attempts to build upon natural resource-based economies, and use them as a basis to leverage investment for developing a different productive matrix that is less dependent upon the vicissitudes of global markets in resources, and that can create jobs and other industrial sectors with high social inclusion. Reflections on how this has worked, or not, and where it has struggled, and why, must consider which groups, issues and agendas have been included, and which excluded, and the fruits of these attempts. Debate appears to be opening up to a questioning of this model of development, and consideration of alternative models. Obviously, it is extremely difficult for visitors like me to get the full picture, especially without an appreciation of all the nuances and historical specificities required. And, arguably, it is also challenging for people in the region to look across the diverse communities and groups involved. Which is one reason why the creation of the Centro STEPS America Latina – our new research 'hub' in Latin America – is particularly exciting, since it is committed to exploring alternative pathways for sustainable developments in the region. Building regional links Right now, the nucleus of the Centro STEPS, which will become a hub for regional reflections, is a team at Fundación Cenit here in Buenos Aires. It consists of Valeria Arza, Anabel Marin, Patrick van Zwanenberg, Mariano Fressoli and Antonella Perini. They are already building upon existing links with other researchers in the region. The Centro STEPS network provides a platform for critical reflection on the development models currently pursued in the region; a venue for debating alternatives; collaborations that gather evidence and analysis of concrete experiments on the ground; as well as a vehicle for engaging with different agencies and social and economic sectors across the region. Centro STEPS is taking a particular interest in the roles that science and technology, as well as other forms of knowledge production and material creativity, can play in developments that seek social justice and environmental sustainability. The Centro already has considerable experience in deploying the analytical resources from Science & Technology Studies, Innovation Studies and Development Studies. Past projects by Centro members also have a track record in drawing in contributions from the natural sciences, design and engineering, as well as social science disciplines including economics, sociology, political science and anthropology. An engaged and interdisciplinary approach is the hallmark of past projects by this team, and which forms the ethos for the network they are facilitating. The Centro also builds on roundtables organised in Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina as part of the STEPS Centre New Manifesto project for rethinking science and technology for development. At the ESOCITE/4S conference the Centro have a stall and are hosting an evening reception on Friday 22nd August for scholars interested in contributing to this exciting initiative (organised, appropriately, as an alternative to formal conference business). At the reception, in a bar downtown (in the basement of 36 de billar, I hope!), there will be scope to discuss the issues of concern, methodologies, engagements, modes of activity for the network, and opportunities to join and contribute. Getting going: debates, films, conferences The Centro already has a cycle of debates, which began in April with agricultural biotechnology in Buenos Aires. It will be moving soon to other cities in the region (the Centro has funds for potential hosts to bid into). A working paper series is in preparation and a regular network newsletter. These and other items will be hosted on a network website (in development). Our activities, such as the seminar debate on intellectual property, are already reported regularly in the Argentine paper Pagina 12, and syndicated in the region through blogs and other media. There are plans for film documentaries and other media for exploring the issues. And at ESOCITE/4S, as at other academic fora, members of the Centro and network are convening special sessions. For example, Mariano Fressoli and I have convened a two-part session at ESOCITE/4S around the question, What is innovation for social inclusion? We have a fantastic set of contributions in Spanish, Portuguese and English. I will also be contributing the following week to a Centro seminar debate dedicated to the topic of digital fabrication, most emblematically in 3D printing, and what this means for development. I'll be asking questions about grassroots experimentation in new socio-technical possibilities being explored in makerspaces, FabLabs, and hackerspaces. All this is incredibly exciting. I think this initiative is not only important for the region, vital as that is, but also for people considering alternative developments in other regions of the world, whether in Europe like me, Asia, Africa, and North America. The STEPS Centre is collaborating with partners to establish network hubs in all these regions. We plan for these networks to intersect, and provide dynamic and diverse platforms for exchange of experiences and analysis. We want to cultivate a reflexive attitude sensitive to the differences in histories, cultures, economies, societies, epistemologies and so forth, and which we believe can lead to deeper insights and stronger solidarities through appreciation of located and interconnected development alternatives. And hopefully the encounters involved, sparking criticism and argument as well as identifying common ground, will contribute creative insights for those already engaged in experimentation and building diverse pathways towards varied forms of social justice and environmental sustainability. The situation in Latin America now suggests Centro STEPS will provide an important component for that platform; a platform that can help more people become protagonists in the building of caminos (pathways) by asking questions.

By Adrian Smith