An exploration of the History of Science for stories of collaboration of 'non-scientists'

• Grant number: 24/03608-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 15, 2025
• End date: March 01, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Joana Cabral de Oliveira
• Grantee: Mateus Oka de Farias
• Supervisor: Etienne Samuel Benson
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/03361-3 - Of monkeys and primatologists: an anthropological study about the encounters between practices and regimes of knowledge, BP.DR

Abstract

This internship project seeks to take forward the reflections evoked by the main research, in which a participant observation is made among primatologists, capuchin monkeys, and a rural community in the state of Piauí, Brazil. The active collaboration of local people in the production of scientific knowledge is at stake of the main discussion in this project, once the field assistants and the family that participates in the ethnographic work revels more and more significant to the primatology that emerges in Boa Vista. Concerning this subject, the History of Science is a discipline that, by means of categories such as 'lay collaboration', reunites studies that discusses this participation of 'non-scientists' in the production of science. These works include, for example, the European naturalists from the past centuries who were helped by indigenous people and local communities, or, in more modern context, the technicians, parataxonismists, and, as it is the case in Boa Vista, 'mateiros' who give assistance to scientists. In this way, the objective of this internship is to look at other stories of local people's collaboration in science, considering their relations with the animals and plants of concern, weaving a dialogue with the History of Science. The institution chosen for this purpose is the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, where the approval of the supervisor was already given.