Doctoral Dissertation Research in Science and Technology Studies

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This dissertation research examines techno-scientific knowledge and politics in Bolivia. It contends that a specific drug is constituted as an object, through concrete practices in the realms of politics and techno-science, will greatly influence the contemporary project of state formation in Bolivia. Intellectual Merit:The aim of this research is an ethnographic case study with the following objectives. First, examine how the interplay between techno-science, politics, and the physical properties of the salmuera shape the material and symbolic construction of lithium and the development of a lithium industry. Second, detail how the development of this industry in Bolivia intersects with the form and direction of the allegedly post-neoliberal, post-socialist, "plurinational" political project underway there. As such, the research examines the practices of engineers guiding a nascent lithium industry to understand the potential of those practices to intersect with controversies around the conceptual boundaries of the "plurinational" state. It examines how technological and scientific practices intersect with visions of what such a state is and should be.Broader Impacts:As the possibility of transitioning to a "lithium economy" becomes more likely, peripheral states such as Bolivia will find themselves crucially positioned geopolitically. This research promises broader significance in examining the role that new strategic resources, particularly those whose importance is tightly linked to global dynamics of an emerging ?green-technology? sector, play in the state formations of peripheral countries charged with the production of such resources. The research promises broader insights into emerging dynamics?particularly in Latin America?that are challenging traditional conceptions of development, modernization, the management and use of natural resources, and models of state formation, as well as the relation of science and technology to the actual practices of building alternatives to such traditional conceptions.