Science and Technology Policy in Latin America faced with the "unique thought" challenge

Abstract

Scientific knowledge plays, as it is well known, a crucial role in contemporary societies, and therefore it has a growing public and politic significance. Paradoxically, however, public S&T policies tend to justify themselves by the fact that they are displayed exclusively according a technical rationale that excludes any political issue. Science and technology policies are defined, then, as the development of social innovation capabilities, through links established among social actors (specially government, citizens and scientific institutions and the firms).

When observed from Latin America, this could result in two basic implication: the first one is linked to development process; the second one is a particular bias associating the orientations that science and technology policy must adopt, to a particular idea about economy and society which appears as a new "unique thought", where no alternative is possible, except to adapt ourselves to it.