Paulo F. C. Fonseca, Barbara E. Ribeiro, Leonardo F. Nascimento
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引用次数: 3
Abstract
ABSTRACT
As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Bolsonarism movement has promoted the drug chloroquine for treating Covid-19 in Brazil, despite it being mostly rejected by mainstream health institutions as an effective treatment. This situation can be investigated through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ignorance studies supported by methods from digital sociology. Bolsonarist discourse does not contest scientific authority tout court, but rather constructs boundaries between what supporters of the president see as legitimate and illegitimate science. This institutionalised ignorance is produced and maintained through Telegram messenger, a backbone of the multi-platform media ecosystem of Bolsonarism. It is accomplished through boundary work: the exclusion or inclusion of knowledge via two complementary practices – pejorative accusations against mainstream science and the crafting of affective bonds with the chloroquine alternative. While the former aims to invalidate knowledge held by experts opposed to the use of chloroquine, the latter focuses on mobilising trust in an alternative model of science, which we refer to as patriotic science. This model of science is demarcated from mainstream science, framed as corrupt and ill-equipped for the needs of Brazilians. This case study advances STS resources for examining the epistemic demarcation between science/non-science, relevant to other polities and publics that use such boundary work to institutionalise ignorance.
期刊介绍：
Our culture is a scientific one, defining what is natural and what is rational. Its values can be seen in what are sought out as facts and made as artefacts, what are designed as processes and products, and what are forged as weapons and filmed as wonders. In our daily experience, power is exercised through expertise, e.g. in science, technology and medicine. Science as Culture explores how all these shape the values which contend for influence over the wider society. Science mediates our cultural experience. It increasingly defines what it is to be a person, through genetics, medicine and information technology. Its values get embodied and naturalized in concepts, techniques, research priorities, gadgets and advertising. Many films, artworks and novels express popular concerns about these developments. In a society where icons of progress are drawn from science, technology and medicine, they are either celebrated or demonised. Often their progress is feared as ’unnatural’, while their critics are labelled ’irrational’. Public concerns are rebuffed by ostensibly value-neutral experts and positivist polemics. Yet the culture of science is open to study like any other culture. Cultural studies analyses the role of expertise throughout society. Many journals address the history, philosophy and social studies of science, its popularisation, and the public understanding of society.
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