Liliana Gil | Ohio State University (original) (raw)
Peer-Reviewed by Liliana Gil
Third World Quarterly, 2024
Santa Efigênia in São Paulo is an important Latin American hub for buying and selling electronics... more Santa Efigênia in São Paulo is an important Latin American hub for buying and selling electronics. This article draws on long-term fieldwork to discuss repair training in the neighborhood. While scholars have looked at formal and informal educational spaces, this article looks at a new kind of institution that creatively combines aspects of street repair and high-end IT services. Individuals from all over Brazil seek out this popular private school with the expectation of becoming self-employed cellphone technicians. The article starts with a description of repair practices in Santa Efigênia and an analysis of the barriers to and accessibility of repair knowledge, including for the female ethnographer. It then centers on the school’s training sessions, examining how students are prepared to become repair entrepreneurs through a mix of technical skills and para-technical concerns with aesthetics, logistical speed, and networking. I show that this school redraws communities of practice, bringing new actors into repair while excluding others along social divisions of race, class, and gender. Engaging with critiques of the neoliberal push for entrepreneurship in development, I consider the contradictions of this institution, concluding with a discussion of how this case offers insights into the democratization and dissemination of repair knowledge.
American Anthropologist, 2022
In recent decades, many tech spaces have emerged worldwide to promote innovation. Based on ethnog... more In recent decades, many tech spaces have emerged worldwide to promote innovation. Based on ethnographic research, this article examines one of such initiatives in Brazil—a public laboratory of digital fabrication located in a low-income neighborhood in the periphery of São Paulo. While scholars have exposed the neoliberal aspects of fablabs, this article aims to de-center hegemonic understandings of innovation by attending to its situated practices. Analyzing the techno-optimist aspirations and institutional legacies behind this laboratory, I explain how the US-based fablab model was reconfigured in light of community concerns and previous Latin American experiments of digital inclusion. Against a monolithic image of tech collectives, I show how lab workers cultivated a diverse range of audiences and creative practices, specifically those of working-class women. The article concludes with a call for more anthropological attention to overlooked tech practices as a means to imagine fairer and more solidary forms of innovation.
vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, 2016
Health literacy has become a key-element of public health promotion – rising as a discipline, a c... more Health literacy has become a key-element of public health promotion – rising as a discipline, a career, and even a transactional value – and a variety of professionals have assembled around it. This paper departs from the divergent notions of health knowledge that such heterogeneity entails. Embracing a patient-centered and narrative-oriented approach, our objective is to problematize the ways in which health knowledge has been conceived in common health literacy approaches, and explore unconventional in-depth assessment strategies. Drawing from our experience of working in a literacy assessment project focused on asthma, cancer and child obesity, as well as John Law’s ideas about the onto-political dimensions of method, we argue that selecting a methodology entails an important responsibility of the social researcher in constructing reality, in this case in enacting a particularly consequential definition of health knowledge. Here, we reconstruct the steps through which the project’s methodology was developed, with emphasis on the adaptation of the McGill Illness Interview Schedule. We also present some of the project’s results and point to future directions. Asking what it means to know about health and what the role of social science should be in studying health knowledge, the ultimate goal of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on how applied research can be intellectually, ethically and politically responsible.
Sociologia Online, 2014
Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a resea... more Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a research project that explores new approaches to knowledge on health using illness narratives so that it focuses on the multiplicity and singularity of experiences, meanings and trajectories constituting the relationship between subjects and medical information. This paper introduces its main methodological tools, with special attention to the potentialities of narratives and our original adaptation of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview. Through the discussion of some preliminary findings, we will contribute to the debate on the heuristic advantages of the chosen approach, as well as on the conceptual and methodological challenges that it poses.
Keywords: Narratives; Knowledge on health; Health information; Explanatory models.
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2010
Regarding the subject of the place of biotechnosciences in contemporary society, this article att... more Regarding the subject of the place of biotechnosciences in contemporary society, this article attempts to explore the political dimension of technologies and artifacts based on a field experience at the public exhibition Inside: Arte e Ciência. Considering the art and science approach as a potential element of amplification of the public debate on artistic and scientific techniques and practices, the exhibition was thought of as a special situation, a collective environment which, due to its properties, awakens impressions in its experience, condensing tensions between meanings and relations between several groups of agents (the construction of situations proposal, from the Situationist International, and the case studies of the Manchester School, were primary sources of inspiration). With a particular focus on the idea of "technological choice" and of art and technology as systems of action, antagonist views from public and artists regarding the manipulation of biological and artificial life – based on different representations of life and nature –, the artifact's agency and authorship rights, are highlighted. As concluding remarks, the relative everyday life alienation from these matters and the importance of ethnographically studying initiatives of this nature, which induce reflection and allow contact between usually unarticulated groups, are recognized.
Key words: agency; art and science; artifacts; bioart; life; nature; robotic art; technology
Interviews, Podcasts, and Other Selected Work by Liliana Gil
Cultural Anthropology website, 2018
In this episode, AnthroPod brings you a discussion about urban ethnography with Teresa Caldeira, ... more In this episode, AnthroPod brings you a discussion about urban ethnography with Teresa Caldeira, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Caldeira has conducted extensive research on violence and processes of urbanization in the global South. More recently, she has been examining a range of urban practices and forms of cultural production from the peripheries of São Paulo that are reshaping public space, including rap music, graffiti, ostentation funk, and pixação (a Portuguese word for tagging done in a cryptic style, often in high, dangerous, and noteworthy places).
Facta – Revista de Gambiologia, 2017
Magazine article about "gambiarra" and other forms of technological improvisation in a favela in ... more Magazine article about "gambiarra" and other forms of technological improvisation in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Based on an interview with a construction worker from Complexo do Alemão. In Portuguese and English.
Presented at Maintainers II: Labor, Technology, and Social Orders, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, 2017
Interview about my article "To Revive an Abundant Life," conducted by Marianinna Villavicencio an... more Interview about my article "To Revive an Abundant Life," conducted by Marianinna Villavicencio and Liliana Gil for Cultural Anthropology's Dialogues section.
India China Institute Student Fellows Blog, 2016
Short piece about resourcefulness and the Indian Space Research Organization. Based on an intervi... more Short piece about resourcefulness and the Indian Space Research Organization. Based on an interview with Professor Rajaram Nagappa of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bangalore.
Actas do VII Congresso Português de Sociologia, 2012
Responding to the heterogeneous ways of understanding and experiencing illness, an analytical mod... more Responding to the heterogeneous ways of understanding and experiencing illness, an analytical model has been gaining importance in social studies of health: the first-person narratives of illness experience. Illness narratives provide unique materials for exploring the ways in which subjects make sense of illness, allowing the study of particular articulations of personal experience and biomedical knowledge in the form of explanatory models. "Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a research project that explores new approaches to knowledge on health using illness narratives. With an emphasis on the multiplicity and singularity of health-illness experiences, the project privileges qualitative research strategies and sampling for range as a way to grasp a variety of situations associated with specific pathologies. Thus, it becomes possible to explore different meanings and trajectories constituting the relationship between subjects and illness. This paper presents some of the methodological tools we are using, with special attention to the original adaptation of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI), a semi-structured interview script developed for the collection of first-person narratives of illness experience. Through the discussion of some preliminary findings, we will contribute to the debate on the heuristic advantages of the chosen approach, as well as on the conceptual and methodological challenges that it poses.
Keywords: Narratives; Knowledge on health; Health information; Explanatory models
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2012
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2009
Third World Quarterly, 2024
Santa Efigênia in São Paulo is an important Latin American hub for buying and selling electronics... more Santa Efigênia in São Paulo is an important Latin American hub for buying and selling electronics. This article draws on long-term fieldwork to discuss repair training in the neighborhood. While scholars have looked at formal and informal educational spaces, this article looks at a new kind of institution that creatively combines aspects of street repair and high-end IT services. Individuals from all over Brazil seek out this popular private school with the expectation of becoming self-employed cellphone technicians. The article starts with a description of repair practices in Santa Efigênia and an analysis of the barriers to and accessibility of repair knowledge, including for the female ethnographer. It then centers on the school’s training sessions, examining how students are prepared to become repair entrepreneurs through a mix of technical skills and para-technical concerns with aesthetics, logistical speed, and networking. I show that this school redraws communities of practice, bringing new actors into repair while excluding others along social divisions of race, class, and gender. Engaging with critiques of the neoliberal push for entrepreneurship in development, I consider the contradictions of this institution, concluding with a discussion of how this case offers insights into the democratization and dissemination of repair knowledge.
American Anthropologist, 2022
In recent decades, many tech spaces have emerged worldwide to promote innovation. Based on ethnog... more In recent decades, many tech spaces have emerged worldwide to promote innovation. Based on ethnographic research, this article examines one of such initiatives in Brazil—a public laboratory of digital fabrication located in a low-income neighborhood in the periphery of São Paulo. While scholars have exposed the neoliberal aspects of fablabs, this article aims to de-center hegemonic understandings of innovation by attending to its situated practices. Analyzing the techno-optimist aspirations and institutional legacies behind this laboratory, I explain how the US-based fablab model was reconfigured in light of community concerns and previous Latin American experiments of digital inclusion. Against a monolithic image of tech collectives, I show how lab workers cultivated a diverse range of audiences and creative practices, specifically those of working-class women. The article concludes with a call for more anthropological attention to overlooked tech practices as a means to imagine fairer and more solidary forms of innovation.
vis-à-vis: Explorations in Anthropology, 2016
Health literacy has become a key-element of public health promotion – rising as a discipline, a c... more Health literacy has become a key-element of public health promotion – rising as a discipline, a career, and even a transactional value – and a variety of professionals have assembled around it. This paper departs from the divergent notions of health knowledge that such heterogeneity entails. Embracing a patient-centered and narrative-oriented approach, our objective is to problematize the ways in which health knowledge has been conceived in common health literacy approaches, and explore unconventional in-depth assessment strategies. Drawing from our experience of working in a literacy assessment project focused on asthma, cancer and child obesity, as well as John Law’s ideas about the onto-political dimensions of method, we argue that selecting a methodology entails an important responsibility of the social researcher in constructing reality, in this case in enacting a particularly consequential definition of health knowledge. Here, we reconstruct the steps through which the project’s methodology was developed, with emphasis on the adaptation of the McGill Illness Interview Schedule. We also present some of the project’s results and point to future directions. Asking what it means to know about health and what the role of social science should be in studying health knowledge, the ultimate goal of this paper is to contribute to the discussion on how applied research can be intellectually, ethically and politically responsible.
Sociologia Online, 2014
Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a resea... more Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a research project that explores new approaches to knowledge on health using illness narratives so that it focuses on the multiplicity and singularity of experiences, meanings and trajectories constituting the relationship between subjects and medical information. This paper introduces its main methodological tools, with special attention to the potentialities of narratives and our original adaptation of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview. Through the discussion of some preliminary findings, we will contribute to the debate on the heuristic advantages of the chosen approach, as well as on the conceptual and methodological challenges that it poses.
Keywords: Narratives; Knowledge on health; Health information; Explanatory models.
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2010
Regarding the subject of the place of biotechnosciences in contemporary society, this article att... more Regarding the subject of the place of biotechnosciences in contemporary society, this article attempts to explore the political dimension of technologies and artifacts based on a field experience at the public exhibition Inside: Arte e Ciência. Considering the art and science approach as a potential element of amplification of the public debate on artistic and scientific techniques and practices, the exhibition was thought of as a special situation, a collective environment which, due to its properties, awakens impressions in its experience, condensing tensions between meanings and relations between several groups of agents (the construction of situations proposal, from the Situationist International, and the case studies of the Manchester School, were primary sources of inspiration). With a particular focus on the idea of "technological choice" and of art and technology as systems of action, antagonist views from public and artists regarding the manipulation of biological and artificial life – based on different representations of life and nature –, the artifact's agency and authorship rights, are highlighted. As concluding remarks, the relative everyday life alienation from these matters and the importance of ethnographically studying initiatives of this nature, which induce reflection and allow contact between usually unarticulated groups, are recognized.
Key words: agency; art and science; artifacts; bioart; life; nature; robotic art; technology
Cultural Anthropology website, 2018
In this episode, AnthroPod brings you a discussion about urban ethnography with Teresa Caldeira, ... more In this episode, AnthroPod brings you a discussion about urban ethnography with Teresa Caldeira, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Caldeira has conducted extensive research on violence and processes of urbanization in the global South. More recently, she has been examining a range of urban practices and forms of cultural production from the peripheries of São Paulo that are reshaping public space, including rap music, graffiti, ostentation funk, and pixação (a Portuguese word for tagging done in a cryptic style, often in high, dangerous, and noteworthy places).
Facta – Revista de Gambiologia, 2017
Magazine article about "gambiarra" and other forms of technological improvisation in a favela in ... more Magazine article about "gambiarra" and other forms of technological improvisation in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Based on an interview with a construction worker from Complexo do Alemão. In Portuguese and English.
Presented at Maintainers II: Labor, Technology, and Social Orders, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey, 2017
Interview about my article "To Revive an Abundant Life," conducted by Marianinna Villavicencio an... more Interview about my article "To Revive an Abundant Life," conducted by Marianinna Villavicencio and Liliana Gil for Cultural Anthropology's Dialogues section.
India China Institute Student Fellows Blog, 2016
Short piece about resourcefulness and the Indian Space Research Organization. Based on an intervi... more Short piece about resourcefulness and the Indian Space Research Organization. Based on an interview with Professor Rajaram Nagappa of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bangalore.
Actas do VII Congresso Português de Sociologia, 2012
Responding to the heterogeneous ways of understanding and experiencing illness, an analytical mod... more Responding to the heterogeneous ways of understanding and experiencing illness, an analytical model has been gaining importance in social studies of health: the first-person narratives of illness experience. Illness narratives provide unique materials for exploring the ways in which subjects make sense of illness, allowing the study of particular articulations of personal experience and biomedical knowledge in the form of explanatory models. "Evaluating the State of Public Knowledge on Health and Health Information in Portugal” is a research project that explores new approaches to knowledge on health using illness narratives. With an emphasis on the multiplicity and singularity of health-illness experiences, the project privileges qualitative research strategies and sampling for range as a way to grasp a variety of situations associated with specific pathologies. Thus, it becomes possible to explore different meanings and trajectories constituting the relationship between subjects and illness. This paper presents some of the methodological tools we are using, with special attention to the original adaptation of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI), a semi-structured interview script developed for the collection of first-person narratives of illness experience. Through the discussion of some preliminary findings, we will contribute to the debate on the heuristic advantages of the chosen approach, as well as on the conceptual and methodological challenges that it poses.
Keywords: Narratives; Knowledge on health; Health information; Explanatory models
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2012
Antropologia Portuguesa, 2009