Mexican science during the Cold War: an agenda for physics and the life sciences

• Mateos, Gisela ; Suáraz, Edna ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

     Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

     México

     
• Localización: Ludus vitalis: revista de filosofía de las ciencias de la vida = journal of philosophy of life sciences = revue de philosophie des sciences de la vie, ISSN 1133-5165, Vol. 20, Nº. 37, 2012, págs. 47-69
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Dialnet Métricas: 3 Citas
• Resumen

  • This paper aims to offer a programmatic agenda for a social history of science and technology of Mexico during the Cold War period (from 1950 to the mid-1980s). We take into account recent trends in the field of science studies, such as the inclusion of postcolonial studies and a robust attention to the circulation of knowledge, understood as the traveling of scientific practices, people, tools and materials. After a brief survey on the international literature on Cold War science, including Latin America and Mexico, we introduce two requirements: a symmetrical treatment of global and local (Mexican) historical trajectories, and the necessity to write interconnected stories to account for the co-construction of the US scientific and technological hegemony after World War II. Finally, we provide a set of specific questions to be answered by historians of Mexican physics and life sciences during this period.