| NSF Org: |
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 7, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | March 7, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1849375 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Frederick Kronz
SES Division of Social and Economic Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
| Start Date: | May 1, 2019 |
| End Date: | October 31, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $12,903.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $12,903.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
66 W 12TH ST NEW YORK NY US 10011-8603 (212)229-5600 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
NY US 10011-8603 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
STS-Sci, Tech & Society, Cult Anthro DDRI |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
This doctoral dissertation research project is a historical and ethnographic investigation of the relationship between improvisation and technological production in Brazil. It focuses on two sites in Sao Paulo, a contemporary network of public fablabs and the 1970s-80s electronics industry, and its aim is to examine the reconfiguration of improvisation in the context of growing discussions about innovation from the global South. This work will shed light on how practices commonly considered peripheral to sophisticated technological production have been used to remake dominant models of technological development across changing contexts, contributing to current debates on innovation in a global perspective, improvisation as a technical and sociocultural phenomenon, and the relationship between skill and expertise. A key impact of this project will be to expand academic and public discussions about sustainable and inclusive technologies by attending to the cultivation of improvisational technical skills associated with fixing, repurposing, and creating technologies. It will serve to increase the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM through its focus on community-oriented innovation hubs and collaborative methodologies. It will also provide valuable material for governmental and nongovernmental professionals working in the fields of trade, industrial, and social policy.
The researcher will conduct participant observation, in-depth interviews, and media and archival research to understand how improvisation has been conceptualized, used, and valued by fablab users, former electronics workers, technoactivists, municipal agents, and policymakers. The researcher has several specific goals. She will examine what happens when global corporate logics of innovation meet socially embedded experiences of improvisation; this will facilitate contributing to an emergent literature in STS that challenges the typical center-to-periphery arrows of technology transfer and diffusionist innovation theories. She also plans to investigate practices of improvisation in two contexts of technological production, one at the beginning of consumer electronics, where the manufacturing of analog devices was under strict protectionism; the other focusing on new forms of digital production in the globalized neoliberal moment, which will provide a productive genealogy for thinking about improvisation as a contemporary political-economic project in Brazil. She also proposes to combine ethnographic approaches with a robust historical framework to be able to provide a cultural dimension to the study of technology while also advancing discussions of scale.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Liliana Gil has completed field research for her doctoral dissertation “Beyond Make-Do Innovation: An Empirical Study of Technological Improvisation,” supported by the NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant. During the grant period, she spent six months in the city of São Paulo in Brazil. She made prolonged stays at a public network of digital fabrication laboratories intended to foster innovation across the city, as well as at Santa Efigênia, one of the largest and oldest electronics neighborhoods in Latin America. To deepen her research on the electronics industry, she also traveled to Manaus, tracking a series of companies that moved from São Paulo to this free economic zone after the 1970s. As an anthropologist of technology, Gil was interested in the relationship between improvisation and innovation. Specifically, she was focused on how people contextually – and at times contradictorily – thought of, performed, and valued improvisation in settings of technological production.
Gil accomplished her main research goals. She used extensive participant observation, in-depth interviews, and media and archival research to examine practices of improvisation across an arc that went from factory-based analog hardware manufacturing under strict economic protectionism to new forms of digital entrepreneurial making in the globalized neoliberal moment. To this end, she followed grassroots techno-activists, state-led innovation projects, independent cellphone repairers, and electronics industry workers. She is currently examining this data to construct an ethnographic and historical argument about practices and representations of innovation from Brazil and the global South more generally. This work will contribute to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with emerging approaches to inclusive innovation and sustainable design. It will also provide greater insight into the complexities of repair economies, and the dynamics of skill recognition in tech labor, among other key-themes of both scholarly and public importance.
Gil’s research had much broader impacts beyond data collection. During the grant period, she organized and participated in several public and scholarly events that allowed her not only to recalibrate her own and others’ theoretical discussions, but also to disseminate preliminary results among different communities of interest, including populations underrepresented in STEM.
Gil’s research on technological production in São Paulo and Manaus forms the basis of her dissertation. To be completed in 2022, the dissertation makes an important contribution to Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies by showing how situated knowledges and practices are central to technological development.
Last Modified: 02/24/2021
Modified by: Liliana Gil Sousa
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