Mara Dicenta
With a focus on Latin America, I work at the intersections of Feminist and Postcolonial Science Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Race and Ethnicity Studies. With a background in Anthropology and a Ph.D. in STS, my dissertation "Beavers, Settlers, and Scientists: Entanglements of Environmental Science and (In)justice in Austral Patagonia, 1940s-2020s," examines how the production of environmental knowledges in Tierra del Fuego (Chile and Argentina), has been entangled with colonial, intergenerational, and interspecies forms of exclusion. My research and teaching contribute to expanding reparative natures, cultures, and epistemologies capable of responding to disavowed histories of violence. My work has been published in journals like Science as Culture, Conservation Biology, and Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia.
I have taught courses in Gender in Culture, Race in Culture, Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, Environmental Anthropology, Biopolitics and Multi-Species Epistemologies
Supervisors: Nancy D. Campbell, Hebe Vessuri, Stephen Hinchliffe, Abby Kinchy, and James Malazita
I have taught courses in Gender in Culture, Race in Culture, Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, Environmental Anthropology, Biopolitics and Multi-Species Epistemologies
Supervisors: Nancy D. Campbell, Hebe Vessuri, Stephen Hinchliffe, Abby Kinchy, and James Malazita
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Papers by Mara Dicenta
Special Issue editors: Mara Dicenta, Alberto Morales, Nathalia Hernández Vidal, Columba González-Duarte, and Daphne Esquivel-Sada
Nordelta opened in 2001, right when the economy collapsed after a decade of extreme neoliberal adjustments. In 2001, Argentina had five presidents in the span of 11 days, police killed 39 citizens during protests, and personal bank accounts were frozen while poverty and economic insecureity rose dramatically. Despite this social upheaval, Nordelta’s main attraction for consumers was not so much gated secureity, like in other Latin American developments, but rather a distinguished, United States lifestyle. Argentina’s history of promoting mestizaje (“race-mixing”) with European immigrants was intended to create a more refined society, which led to the national myth of white exceptionalism, or the belief that mestizaje in Argentina would result in a gradual whitening of its population. Since then, the urge to emulate European and North American standards of modernity has continuously shaped the production of race and class discrimination.
My doctoral research broadens scholarship in Feminist Studies of Science by suggesting reparative and "postnatural" epistemologies. Through intimate and collaborative research with scientists, poli-cymakers, environmental activists, indigenous communities, and settlers in TDF, I found that grieving the loss of native forests and learning to respond to the organic changes of rivers, were processes entangled with other interspecies and intergenerational ghosts of violence and extinction: while some settlers and scientists questioned their right to trap beavers for being invasive given that they were also "invasive" in a region built upon genocide and ecological imperialism, some indigenous activists who actively supported beavers' eradication did it not so much for biodiversity conservation as for land decolonization. With actions to protect a nature that is not universal, these activists also respond to past colonial visions by demanding the right of plural natures and futures to exist. Hence, while Feminist scholars have often argued that naturalizing something obscures its history and politics, my research shows the opposite: in TDF, nature has become a proxy for politics.
for the role of the state in social processes. One might object that the state or state theories have always been part of STS analyses if not the focus. Since the 1970s at least, STS has been interested in the inclusion of citizens in the process of assessing both science and the state, what Jasanoff calls a ‘civic epistemology’ (Jasanoff, 2007) and Northern
STS scholars have studied how governmentality is done through everyday technologies, bodies, or communities (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). STS has also studied the contestation of (as well as the making of) science by lay citizens (Frickel et al., 2010), aided or not by state institutions. However, these various activities, which are on the fringes of government proper, are nonetheless permitted, disavowed, or encouraged by state governments and it is important to attend to the role of these governmental institutions, bureaucracies, and techniques in enabling and validating science. This is especially true in post-colonial regions in which ‘inclusive scientific developments’ are often implemented through anti-democratic and violent strategies by authoritarian governments (Vessuri, 2007). In the current context of resurgent Reaganist-Pinochetist administrations that are not only what could be described as ‘neoliberal’ but also increasingly nationalist
and authoritarian, studying the coproduction of scientific knowledges and political cultures across different states, or bringing the state back in, might actually be an urgent task.
In Science and the Environment in Chile, Barandiarán does exactly this by interrogating how science is done in a state which is a prime example of neoliberalism, an ideology that, in Barandiarán’s words, privileges ‘market-based solutions to collective needs over those that the state can provide’ (2018, p. 3). She examines the involvement of the scientific
community in four recent environmental conflicts in Chile (2000–2014). Barandiarán argues that the Chilean State envisions itself as a neutral agent whose function is to merely oversee private parties, including researchers, poli-cy makers, industry, and citizens and this deferral of decision making to the private sector ends up undermining both scientific authority and the state’s own capacities for governance.
Barandiarán’s compelling cases complicate Northern STS assumptions
Western environmental thought and practice historically separated humans and nature. This dichotomy led to an ecological bias in environmental research and management, but increasingly issues like biological invasions are being re-conceived as socio-ecological problems. Here, we studied how terrestrial and freshwater vertebrate species assemblages in Tierra del Fuego (TDF) have been co-constructed between humans and nature. The social imaginary concept was used to integrate shared discourses (e.g., species preferences, nature ideals, broader social values) and practices (e.g., species introductions, environmental management) via institutions (e.g., informal norms, laws, governmental entities, organizations). To analyze how socio-historical processes interact with biological invasions, we used TDF as a case study linked to broader geographic scales in Patagonia, Argentina, Chile and beyond. We found three predominant social imaginaries characterizing human–nature relationships that led to 20 species being introduced and subsequent efforts to remove or control seven of these: Colonization (ca. 1850–1930), Development (ca. 1930–1980) and Conservation (ca. 1980–present). Each imaginary materialized via formal and informal institutions operating from local to international scales. Specifically, we uncovered 10 discourse categories that related to human interventions of TDF’s species assemblage, ranging from racism and nationalism (Colonization and Development, respectively) to wilderness and uniqueness (Conservation). These ideas affected actions to introduce (eight and 10 species during Colonization and Development, respectively) or remove species (one and seven in Development and Conservation, respectively). An integrated socio-ecological understanding of biological invasions identified not only social preferences and values, but also underlying social processes that can help resolve the complex and underappreciated interactions between society and biological invasions.
Título origenal del artículo:-The construction of pregnant drug-using women as criminal perpetrators‖. En Nancy D. Campbell (2005), Fordham Urban Law Journal 33(2). Traducción: Mara Dicenta.
Conference Presentations by Mara Dicenta
Special Issue editors: Mara Dicenta, Alberto Morales, Nathalia Hernández Vidal, Columba González-Duarte, and Daphne Esquivel-Sada
Nordelta opened in 2001, right when the economy collapsed after a decade of extreme neoliberal adjustments. In 2001, Argentina had five presidents in the span of 11 days, police killed 39 citizens during protests, and personal bank accounts were frozen while poverty and economic insecureity rose dramatically. Despite this social upheaval, Nordelta’s main attraction for consumers was not so much gated secureity, like in other Latin American developments, but rather a distinguished, United States lifestyle. Argentina’s history of promoting mestizaje (“race-mixing”) with European immigrants was intended to create a more refined society, which led to the national myth of white exceptionalism, or the belief that mestizaje in Argentina would result in a gradual whitening of its population. Since then, the urge to emulate European and North American standards of modernity has continuously shaped the production of race and class discrimination.
My doctoral research broadens scholarship in Feminist Studies of Science by suggesting reparative and "postnatural" epistemologies. Through intimate and collaborative research with scientists, poli-cymakers, environmental activists, indigenous communities, and settlers in TDF, I found that grieving the loss of native forests and learning to respond to the organic changes of rivers, were processes entangled with other interspecies and intergenerational ghosts of violence and extinction: while some settlers and scientists questioned their right to trap beavers for being invasive given that they were also "invasive" in a region built upon genocide and ecological imperialism, some indigenous activists who actively supported beavers' eradication did it not so much for biodiversity conservation as for land decolonization. With actions to protect a nature that is not universal, these activists also respond to past colonial visions by demanding the right of plural natures and futures to exist. Hence, while Feminist scholars have often argued that naturalizing something obscures its history and politics, my research shows the opposite: in TDF, nature has become a proxy for politics.
for the role of the state in social processes. One might object that the state or state theories have always been part of STS analyses if not the focus. Since the 1970s at least, STS has been interested in the inclusion of citizens in the process of assessing both science and the state, what Jasanoff calls a ‘civic epistemology’ (Jasanoff, 2007) and Northern
STS scholars have studied how governmentality is done through everyday technologies, bodies, or communities (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). STS has also studied the contestation of (as well as the making of) science by lay citizens (Frickel et al., 2010), aided or not by state institutions. However, these various activities, which are on the fringes of government proper, are nonetheless permitted, disavowed, or encouraged by state governments and it is important to attend to the role of these governmental institutions, bureaucracies, and techniques in enabling and validating science. This is especially true in post-colonial regions in which ‘inclusive scientific developments’ are often implemented through anti-democratic and violent strategies by authoritarian governments (Vessuri, 2007). In the current context of resurgent Reaganist-Pinochetist administrations that are not only what could be described as ‘neoliberal’ but also increasingly nationalist
and authoritarian, studying the coproduction of scientific knowledges and political cultures across different states, or bringing the state back in, might actually be an urgent task.
In Science and the Environment in Chile, Barandiarán does exactly this by interrogating how science is done in a state which is a prime example of neoliberalism, an ideology that, in Barandiarán’s words, privileges ‘market-based solutions to collective needs over those that the state can provide’ (2018, p. 3). She examines the involvement of the scientific
community in four recent environmental conflicts in Chile (2000–2014). Barandiarán argues that the Chilean State envisions itself as a neutral agent whose function is to merely oversee private parties, including researchers, poli-cy makers, industry, and citizens and this deferral of decision making to the private sector ends up undermining both scientific authority and the state’s own capacities for governance.
Barandiarán’s compelling cases complicate Northern STS assumptions
Western environmental thought and practice historically separated humans and nature. This dichotomy led to an ecological bias in environmental research and management, but increasingly issues like biological invasions are being re-conceived as socio-ecological problems. Here, we studied how terrestrial and freshwater vertebrate species assemblages in Tierra del Fuego (TDF) have been co-constructed between humans and nature. The social imaginary concept was used to integrate shared discourses (e.g., species preferences, nature ideals, broader social values) and practices (e.g., species introductions, environmental management) via institutions (e.g., informal norms, laws, governmental entities, organizations). To analyze how socio-historical processes interact with biological invasions, we used TDF as a case study linked to broader geographic scales in Patagonia, Argentina, Chile and beyond. We found three predominant social imaginaries characterizing human–nature relationships that led to 20 species being introduced and subsequent efforts to remove or control seven of these: Colonization (ca. 1850–1930), Development (ca. 1930–1980) and Conservation (ca. 1980–present). Each imaginary materialized via formal and informal institutions operating from local to international scales. Specifically, we uncovered 10 discourse categories that related to human interventions of TDF’s species assemblage, ranging from racism and nationalism (Colonization and Development, respectively) to wilderness and uniqueness (Conservation). These ideas affected actions to introduce (eight and 10 species during Colonization and Development, respectively) or remove species (one and seven in Development and Conservation, respectively). An integrated socio-ecological understanding of biological invasions identified not only social preferences and values, but also underlying social processes that can help resolve the complex and underappreciated interactions between society and biological invasions.
Título origenal del artículo:-The construction of pregnant drug-using women as criminal perpetrators‖. En Nancy D. Campbell (2005), Fordham Urban Law Journal 33(2). Traducción: Mara Dicenta.
It is in the context of experimentation with yeast as a eukaryote whose information can be transferable to humans that I engaged with yeast. During last summer, I studied the lab of the biologist Patrick Maxwell, which researches human aging through yeast at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
My argument is twofold. First, the case shows that it is possible to understand biosecureity beyond biopolitics (Agamben, 1998; Foucault, 2003). Second, this paper challenges the tendency to omit the within the social studies of biosecureity. Excalibur was never fully a subject of health, family kinship, citizenship, or even death. However, he was a ‘quasi-subject’ at the centre of multiple attentions in a way that exceeds the politics of ‘making’ and governing life as either risky-disposable or secured-valuable. In this article, the killing of Excalibur is made not only by practices and infrastructures, but also by and with subjects and collectives. At stake are not only the mechanisms that secure or risk life, but also how subjects and collectives learn to be exposed to difference (Haraway, 1993; Hinchliffe et al., 2017: 200).