Doctoral Dissertation Research in Science and Technology Studies

本论文的研究考察了玻利维亚的技术科学知识和政治。它认为，通过政治和技术科学领域的具体实践，将一种特定的药物构成一个对象，将极大地影响玻利维亚当代的建国计划。智力价值：这项研究的目的是一个具有以下目标的人种学案例研究。首先，研究技术科学、政治和萨尔穆拉的物理特性之间的相互作用如何塑造锂的材料和象征结构以及锂工业的发展。第二，详细说明玻利维亚这一行业的发展如何与该国正在进行的所谓后新自由主义、后社会主义、“多元”政治项目的形式和方向相交叉。因此，这项研究考察了工程师们的做法，他们指导着一个新兴的锂行业，以了解这些做法的潜力，从而与围绕“多元”国家概念边界的争议相交。它考察了技术和科学实践如何与这样一个国家是什么以及应该是什么的愿景交织在一起。更广泛的影响：随着向“锂经济”过渡的可能性变得更大，玻利维亚等外围国家将发现自己处于至关重要的地缘政治地位。这项研究在考察新的战略资源，特别是那些其重要性与新兴绿色技术的全球动态密切相关的资源所扮演的角色方面具有更广泛的意义。该部门在负责生产这类资源的外围国家的国家组织中发挥作用。这项研究承诺对新兴动态--特别是在拉丁美洲--有更广泛的见解，这些动态正在挑战发展、现代化、自然资源的管理和利用、国家形成的模式等传统概念，以及科学和技术与建立此类传统概念替代品的实际做法的关系。

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.