Doctoral Dissertation Research in Science and Technology Studies

本文主要研究玻利维亚的科技知识与政治。它认为，通过政治和技术科学领域的具体实践，将一种特定药物作为一种对象构成，将极大地影响玻利维亚当代国家形成项目。智力价值：本研究的目的是一个民族志案例研究，具有以下目标。首先，研究技术科学，政治和salmuera的物理特性之间的相互作用如何塑造锂的材料和象征性结构以及锂工业的发展。其次，详细说明玻利维亚的这一行业的发展如何与所谓的后新自由主义、后社会主义、“多民族”政治项目的形式和方向相交叉。因此，该研究考察了工程师指导新兴锂产业的实践，以了解这些实践与围绕“多民族”国家概念边界的争议相交的潜力。它考察了技术和科学实践如何与这样一个国家是什么和应该是什么愿景相交。更广泛的影响：随着向“锂经济”转型的可能性越来越大，玻利维亚等周边国家将发现自己的地缘政治地位至关重要。这项研究在研究新的战略资源，特别是那些与新兴的“绿色技术”的全球动态密切相关的战略资源的作用方面具有更广泛的意义。部门，在负责生产此类资源的外围国家的国家形成中发挥作用。这项研究有望对新兴动态有更广泛的见解。尤其是在拉丁美洲？它们正在挑战关于发展、现代化、自然资源的管理和利用、国家形成模式的传统观念，以及科学和技术与建立替代这些传统观念的实际做法之间的关系。

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.