Session Abstract

Fitting within this conference's theme of "Lives, Places, and Stories," the papers in this panel explicitly explore the roles of environment and technology and their historical relationship to rebellion and counter rebellion across three Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico from the late colonial period to the twentieth century. Specifically, they collectively analyze the interaction and interdependence of environmental and technological factors that contributed to popular rural and agrarian rebellions on one hand and state-led developmental measures to counter rebellion on the other. The panelists, chair and discussant are from six U.S. institutions and broadly research how and why environmental and technological processes influence social, political, economic and cultural outcomes and how these impact the lives and stories of people in particular times and places.  Thus far, we find that adverse environmental conditions such as prolonged drought decisively shape such human responses as rebellion, revolution, general unrest, and, accordingly, state developmental policies. As historians, we seek to build on previous scholarship on the history of technology and environment such as Wiebe e. Bijker et al., The Social Construction of Tehnological Systems (1987), William Cronon’s Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (1996), and Martin Reuss and Stephen H. Cutliffe, The Illusory Boundary (2010).   As historians of Latin America, in particular, our objective is to apply the approaches and methodologies of this scholarship to Latin America. The history of technology, science and environment for Latin American countries is a growing, but still relatively small field.  We hope our panel papers will stimulate further interest and invite further collaborations.