Hist Cienc Saude Manguinhos
March 2020
This article investigates the Brazilian National Technical Commission on Biosecurity, an agency empowered to regulate genetically modified organisms in the country, and presents an analysis of its performance based on Goffman's interactionist approach. The commission is analyzed as if it were a theater in which different experts perform and act on stage, with an audience, a backstage area, and conflicts related to the roles represented. These strategies make it possible to understand the process of consolidating and stabilizing this commission as a decision-making body on genetically modified organisms in Brazil.
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July 2018
This article analyzes how responsible innovation has been discussed and implemented in the context of one of the Portuguese government's main activities to foster nanotechnology. Through the actor-network theory and the sociology of absences, we investigate the process of coproduction at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory to identify how concerns about responsible development have been implemented or ignored in the rules and practices. The institute emerged from a sociotechnical imagination that views it as an autonomous unit for producing technological innovations aimed exclusively at increasing competitiveness in a global market, which has been an obstacle to the materialization of robust responsible development practices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article explores the evolution of the nuclear energy debate and its associated controversies in the Portuguese parliament. The analysis focuses on the dictatorial regime of the New State (from the beginning of the nuclear program in 1951 until the 1974 revolution) and on the democratic period (post-1974). Portugal, as an exporting country of uranium minerals, significantly invested in the development of a national capacity in nuclear research, but never developed an endogenous nuclear power infrastructure.
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