Decentered Scientific Agendas and Decentralized Actors and Capacities in Patagonian Science Open Access
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Published:June 2025
Ronald Cancino, Cristina Flores, ElÍas Barticevic, Hebe Vessuri, 2025. "Decentered Scientific Agendas and Decentralized Actors and Capacities in Patagonian Science", Decentralizing Knowledges: Essays on Distributed Agency, Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Sandra Harding
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The chapter proposes an analysis of the forms of construction and relationship between the scientific agendas of what is called the Patagonian science of Chile and Argentina. The analysis of three central thematic axes in these territories, such as salmon farming, mining, and the problem of forest fires, suggests how local demands generate the decentering of scientific agendas through processes of decentralization of actors, capacities, and decision making. The chapter proposes that this occurs because socioenvironmental conflicts and/or sociotechnical controversies decenter local knowledge, activating citizens and governments. In this sense, the chapter indicates the way in which decentralized knowledge, in the form of a distributed agency of actors, decisions, and agendas that turn toward the territorial, responds to the need for acknowledgment of heterogeneous actors as a necessary condition for the articulation between the local and global.