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Agriculture As Connectivity

How to Write the History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

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Handbook of the Historiography of Latin American Studies on the Life Sciences and Medicine

Part of the book series: Historiographies of Science ((HISTSC))

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Abstract

This chapter underscores the centrality of agriculture as a connectivity element of inquiry for Latin American and Caribbean societies, whose legacies of colonialism still survive today. To do that, this study brings leading concepts and debates to complicate chronologies, geographies, and scales in new writings on the agricultural sciences that go beyond the analytical frameworks of center and periphery, and of the region as the passive recipient of Western science and technology. This is to identify promising niches and investigative lines for writing future histories of agricultural sciences in the region that are interconnected, multidirectional, and transversal. The ample and ambitious literature has been considered to argue that similar methodological concerns go through the respective “disciplinary bubbles,” especially in studies covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The departure point is the intersection of science and knowledge, capitalism, technology, commodity histories, and the environment. These are all essential axes in the history of agriculture, and insufficiently explored for the history of science in the region. The chapter closes with some proposals for new, interlinked writings on the history of agricultural science as an expanding field of study within the Life Sciences of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    Leida Fernandez-Prieto

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  1. Leida Fernandez-Prieto
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Correspondence to Leida Fernandez-Prieto .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Evolutionary Biology, UNAM, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

    Ana Barahona

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Fernandez-Prieto, L. (2022). Agriculture As Connectivity. In: Barahona, A. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of Latin American Studies on the Life Sciences and Medicine. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48616-7_13-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48616-7_13-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-48616-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-48616-7

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