Focus: global currents in national histories of science: the "global turn" and the history of science in Latin America

• Published in: Isis Vol. 104; no. 4; p. 773
• Main Author: McCook, Stuart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.12.2013
• Subjects: Cultural Characteristics; History, 15th Century; History, 16th Century; History, 17th Century; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; History, Medieval; Humans; Internationality - history; Knowledge; Latin America; Research - history; Science - history; South America; South America; Latin America
• ISSN: 0021-1753
• DOI: 10.1086/674943

The "global turn" in the history of science offers new ways to think about how to do national and regional histories of science, in this case the history of science in Latin America. For example, it questions structuralist and diffusionist models of the spread of science and shows the often active role that people in Latin America (and the rest of the Global South) played in the construction of "universal" scientific knowledge. It suggests that even national or regional histories of science must be situated in a global context; all too often, such histories have treated global processes as a distant backdrop. At the same time, historians need to pay constant attention to the role of power in the construction of scientific knowledge. Finally, this essay highlights a methodological tool for writing globally inflected histories of science: the method of "following".