Dissertation Research: Ethnographic Research at the Alcantara Launching Center: An Inquiry into the Politics of Space, Race, Technology and Nation in Brazil

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This is a Science and Technology Studies dissertation improvement grant. The researcher will investigate contemporary politics of big science, development and difference in Brazil using as an object of study the Alcantara Launching Center (CLA), an ambitious government project that was intended to help Brazil win "technological independence" when it was built in the early 1980s. Funds from the grant will support travel to Brazil, as well as room, board, and travel within the country. By 2000, Brazil had not successfully launched a satellite from the base of CLA, and there was widespread opposition in Brazil to its planned use by foreign governments. A movement to reclaim the land for displaced Afro-Brazilian communities had gained prominent support. Alcantara, the poor fishing region where the CLA is located, became a flashpoint for debates about the character and future of Brazil as a multi-ethnic and technologically developing nation-state. Through ethnographic research into the conflicts over Alcantara's fate, and building on four months of preliminary ethnographic research, this researcher will use ethnographic and archival methods to examine three groups: 1) NGOs and political organizations involved in the conflicts over the CLA; 2) scientists and others working in or on issues relating to the base; 3) and communities affected or displaced by the base. By investigating the politics of an embattled big science project in a context of relative technological disadvantage and longstanding technological ambition, this project is expected to offer an ethnographic vantage on the cultural specificities and lived- effects of some of the most contentious changes facing contemporary Brazil--changes that are similar to those faced in much of the developing world.