Problematizing the future: Brazil, biofuels, and basic science
Date
2014
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Haverford College. Department of Anthropology
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Thesis
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The Wyatt MacGaffey Thesis Award in Anthropology
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eng
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Abstract
Biofuels are widely recognized as a possible solution to some of the most pressing problems of the contemporary: energy insecurity, declining resources, and climate change. Rather than taking biofuels as already given, though, I use the analytic of problematization to approach them as a problem, a question. Focusing specifically on the shift from first-generation to second-generation biofuels in Brazil, I ask how and why a scientific problem like second-generation biofuels has emerged and what this means for basic science and scientists. My analysis is based on two months of fieldwork at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where I was located in a botany lab that conducts basic science research related to biofuels. Ultimately, I aim to speak to the way in which scientific problems 1) are a complex of various problems that are not all strictly scientific, and 2) as a consequence, (re)emerge, are (re)articulated, and are (re)mobilized in particular ways in particular contexts, with the result of the production of particular scientific knowledge that have particular effects in and on the world.