Chagas Disease in Argentina: Reciprocal Construction of Social and Scientific Problems

Abstract

This article intends to study the possibilities and limitations of scientific knowledge as a factor of social development in peripheral societies. We challenge the idea that the only promotion of scientific knowledge is a legitimate and adequate method to overcome the social problems that many people in Latin America are subjected to. Instead, we propose to investigate the relationships among the social actors involved in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. We take the case of Chagas disease, a recurring theme in the public agenda since the 1950s, to show how the issue has emerged and has been taken in by public policies related to the production of scientific knowledge. We analyse the different viewpoints and conceptions about the disease, and how they moulded the different institutional initiatives of intervention into the problem. We assume that the practices associated with these mechanisms condition the type of knowledge produced and its possible uses.