Abstrakt
symposium at the 25th International Congress of the IUHPST/DHST in Rio de Janeiro; This symposium will explore the historical relationship between family and knowledge production in science, technology, and medicine in local and global context. The presenters will inquire how a comparative analysis of local cases may illuminate global patterns in knowledge production, as shaped by the structure and dynamics of family collaboration, local conditions such as politics and religion, and social norms governing gender roles.
The period under inquiry will extend from the eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. A range of cultural and national contexts will be considered, including localities within the British Isles, Europe, and the Americas.
A particular focus will be how social and political changes affected women's participation in science, technology, and medicine. Building upon a rich historiography concerning women, gender, and science, as well as sociological and geographical perspectives, our inquiry will explore transnational patterns as a way to move beyond scholars' earlier emphases on the specificities of local knowledge.
By asking how knowledge travels in between localities, how professionalization promotes internationalism, how local social movements become global, and others questions that go beyond the scales of specific private and public institutions, municipalities, countries, and continents, we will indeed consider how the local dynamics of gender in science, technology, and medicine can be fruitfully illuminated by adding the global dimension. All presentations in this symposium will address how their specific cases mediates the "space" in between the local and the global.