History of Science @Lisbon 1-6|Sep|2014
The Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the city of Lisbon just hosted two major European conferences in the History of Science and Technology: STEP and ESHS. Six days dedicated to broad theoretical issues and specific case studies brought to Lisbon more than five-hundred delegates.The STEP group, celebrating it's 15th anniversary since its creation in 1999, has its foundational manifesto in the paper "SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE EUROPEAN PERIPHERY: SOME HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS", a historiographical must for all of those in the community that wish to address and criticize the dichotomy Centre-Periphery.
In this conference, the participants heard about many topics ranging from the history of disciplinary practices and ideas, to more theoretical approaches in the session «Critical Points».
The European Society meeting opened its program with a very interesting lecture by José Luís Cardoso in the fantastic room «Sala de Portugal» at the Society of Geography of Lisbon, one turn-of-the-century building charged with symbolism. The second day started with two key-note speeches and a prize, awarded to the international scholar Jürgen Renn. This very international congress proposed thematic sessions, some of them lasting for a whole day, concentrated in topics as the recent «Iberian Science» or, other more familiar as, «Popularization», «Education», «Correspondence», «Museums and Collections», etc. All in all, a concentrated occasion for the show-case of Portuguese participation in the community. Hopefully all our colleagues left Lisbon with a more familiar feeling and with the wish to come back!
À la rentrée
After my MSc dissertation, in 2013 I began developing the structure for a PhD project that would carry further some of the issues I touched on the relations between scientific endeavour and political building. This project is now titled «Bocage's Africa» with the explanatory sub-title «Empire, Scientific Expertise and Colonial Administration (1865-1895)». I am now almost finishing my first year working on it and I hope to re-engage with the blogging habit. Here I am again.
Between a rock encrusted with oysters and a diplomatic hard place, I am trying to learn more and write on two different aspects of what is going to (hopefully) become my PhD dissertation. On the one hand I want to explore the arterial network of connections between private interests and individual enterprises, and governmental legislation procedures and administration on the subject of the Portuguese colonial territories in Africa. Mainly I am talking about the Chartered Company of Mozambique and how it came to be. Privately owned lands and resources as substitute for state administration is also what happens in the Oyster Question I am now focusing on. More on that soon. The other main topic of my project is scientific expertise and how it is both accumulated and perceived during the period of the Regeneração and specifically regarding African issues of territorial knowledge and appropriation by the elite of scientific men that Barbosa du Bocage was a part of.
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| L-J. Soubeiran, “L’ostreiculture à Arcachon”, Bull. Soc. Zool., Ser. 2, T.3. (1886) pp. 1-18, illustration from page 15. |
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| R. Bordalo Pinheiro, "O tratado do Zaire", António Maria (March 13th 1884), page 81. |
writing is creating
Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
—Walter Benjamin.
Agency vs Structure
I went back to Anthony Giddens this week, to read more on the different approaches to the reconcialiation between agency and structure. I am trying to think how the history I am writing of Barbosa du Bocage's life is (or not) helped by the Bourdieu concepts of field and capital, and how am I going to address the concept of habitus.
In fact, I was moving away from the concept of habitus, which I found hard to use in my text. My writing became much more fluid when I introduced the concept of scientific persona (that I borrowed from Lorraine Daston's reading of Marcel Mauss). This is now the main point from where my dissertation starts to make sense (I hope). The role implied in the concept of persona seems much more intuitive to use in my case-study.
With this concept I can describe how this naturalist build his carreer around the specific ethos of the scientific work; And how this construction in turn relates with his political participation in matters of colonial administration and colonial science.
In order to relate Bocage's participation in two distinct social fields, I have to find a bridge between the two spheres. Bocage was never a public man, although he involved himself in several institutions and had a political chair as a nation deputy, he didn't participate in the public sphere by writing in the newspapers or using science education and popularization as a tool for progress and regeneration of the country - like many of his generation.
And yet, the bridge between fields materialized.
In fact, I was moving away from the concept of habitus, which I found hard to use in my text. My writing became much more fluid when I introduced the concept of scientific persona (that I borrowed from Lorraine Daston's reading of Marcel Mauss). This is now the main point from where my dissertation starts to make sense (I hope). The role implied in the concept of persona seems much more intuitive to use in my case-study.
With this concept I can describe how this naturalist build his carreer around the specific ethos of the scientific work; And how this construction in turn relates with his political participation in matters of colonial administration and colonial science.
In order to relate Bocage's participation in two distinct social fields, I have to find a bridge between the two spheres. Bocage was never a public man, although he involved himself in several institutions and had a political chair as a nation deputy, he didn't participate in the public sphere by writing in the newspapers or using science education and popularization as a tool for progress and regeneration of the country - like many of his generation.
And yet, the bridge between fields materialized.
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