Banca de DEFESA: PHILIPE JULIANO DA SILVA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : PHILIPE JULIANO DA SILVA
DATE: 29/09/2025
TIME: 09:30
LOCAL: https://meet.google.com/dqx-vrtz-wxo
TITLE:

Turning Brains into GDP or Democratizing Scientific Production? How the Grammar of Backwardness Shapes Two Models for National Science in the Senate

KEY WORDS:

national backwardness; science and technology; Federal Senate; parliamentary discourses; Science and Technology Studies (STS); development.

 

PAGES: 138
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUMMARY:

This dissertation investigates how the notion of “national backwardness” is mobilized in the parliamentary discourses of the Science, Technology, Innovation, Communication, and Informatics Committee of the Federal Senate in 2019. Starting from the premise that backwardness constitutes a consolidated social grammar in Brazilian thought, the study sought to understand how this diagnosis is activated to construct meanings about science, technology, and development. The research employed thematic analysis as its methodological strategy, examining meanings and framings in parliamentary speeches. Theoretical frameworks from Science and Technology Studies (STS) were articulated together with the Brazilian sociological tradition on backwardness, in order to highlight the co-production between political diagnoses and meanings attributed to science. The main objectives of the study were: to map the framings of backwardness mobilized by parliamentarians; to identify the references employed; to analyze how science and technology were positioned as solution, problem, or horizon; and to discuss the limits and potentialities of these framings in the contemporary political debate. The analysis showed that backwardness functions as a “consolidated fact” and is selectively appropriated in the discourses: while both structural and conjunctural causes are acknowledged, dimensions such as coloniality, racialization, and the role of elites are silenced. Science, in turn, emerges as the consensual horizon of overcoming, yet remains disputed regarding what counts as “legitimate science” and to which purposes it should serve. Two main frameworks structure this debate: a Development and Geopolitical Power model, which links science to international competitiveness and market logic; and an Internal Inequality and Social Inclusion model, which conceives science as a public good and  prioritizes equity and technological citizenship. The results confirm the prevalence of the first model,linked to a neoliberal rationality, but indicate that the second broadens the normative imagination by raising the question “science for whom?”, revealing that the dispute over science in Brazil is not only about efficiency and growth, but also about meanings of development and social justice aimed at confronting inequalities and promoting citizenship.

 

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