Behind the kitchen. Gender, technology and transdisciplinary research in an intervention project in the monte santiagueño, Argentina.

Abstract

The objective of this work is to describe and analyze the complexity and dynamics of an intervention project, in dialogue with a transdisciplinary research process linked to the development of a social inclusion technology, considering in particular the gender perspective. It consisted of an inter-institutional agreement for access to improved cookstoves in peasant communities in the native forest. The challenge was to include in a financing project with a transferring perspective, a flexible view of technology, which allowed us to pay special attention to the subject-object relationship, mediated by social type, territory and gender. It consisted of a transdisciplinary experience between social scientists, an industrial designer, extension agents, communicators and peasant women, a team made up mainly of women, to which the actor SME joined, forming a socio-technical alliance, key to the development of the process. Starting from the perspective of technological development for social inclusion, a device open to design changes and a survey that proposes a diachronic approach were developed, allowing us to measure modifications in their practices, with field work open to qualitative techniques. As a result of the process, the development of an adapted technology has been achieved, redefined according to the functionality that women have given to the kitchen and its incorporation into cultural practices, also enabling potentiating events in relation to the transdisciplinary encounter.