Yuri Gama, Book Review of Activist Biology by Duarte (MARLAS Journal) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Nature and Historiography in Brazil, 1937-1945
2003
Three seminal Brazilian authors published some of their most important works in the period in which Brazil lived under the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo (1937-45): Gilberto Freyre published Northeast, Caio Prado Júnior published The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, and Sérgio B. de Holanda published River Expeditions. Besides the proximity in time of their publication, they have another characteristic in common: all of them broadly analyze the relations between man and the environment. In contrast to the majority of people of their time, they extended their understanding beyond the grandiose speeches in which territorial grandeur and abundance of wealth became the founding element of a nationalist spirit. The occupation of territory was studied as historical, social, economic, and cultural action. Their works suggest proposals for the transformation of Brazilian society, with the making of a path to modernity different from the Iberian heritage as well as the idealized patterns in Vargas's dictatorship.
E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y , 2008
This text examines selected writings produced by four leading Brazilian conservation scientists active in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Alberto José Sampaio (1881-1946), Armando Magalhães Corrêa (1889-1944), Cândido de Mello Leitão (1886-1948), and Frederico Carlos Hoehne (1882-1959) were prominent members of a “second generation” of Brazilian conservationists. Although they died on the average about sixty years ago, they have receded from memory and their publications have become all but inaccessible. We argue that their ideas, research, and institution-building efforts were highly pertinent and influential in their own time and remain valuable today as building blocks of Brazilian conservation awareness and policies. This article brings together biographical and professional data about each author and examines the texts that best illustrate their range of concerns, their sources, and their priorities in the field of nature conservation.
Journal of the History of Biology, 2018
This paper discusses the life and scientific work of José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823–1907), a nineteenth-century Portuguese naturalist who carved a new place for zoological research in Portugal and built up a prestigious scientific career by securing appropriate physical and institutional spaces to the discipline. Although he was appointed professor of zoology at the Lisbon Polytechnic School, an institution mainly devoted to the preparatory training of military officers and engineers, he succeeded in creating the conditions that allowed him to develop consistent research in zoology at this institution. Taking advantage of the reconstruction and further improvement of the building of the Lisbon Polytechnic, following a violent fire in 1843, Bocage transferred a natural history museum formerly located at the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon to his institution, where he conquered a more prestigious place for zoology. Although successive governments were unwilling to meet Bocage’s ambitions for the Zoological Section of the newly created National Museum of Lisbon, the collaborators he found in different parts of the Portuguese continental territory and colonial empire supplied him the specimens he needed to make a career as a naturalist. Bocage ultimately became a renowned specialist in Southwestern African fauna thanks to José de Anchieta, his finest collaborator. Travels to foreign museums, and the establishment of links with the international community of zoologists, proved fundamental to build up Bocage’s national and international scientific reputation, as it will be exemplified by the discussion of his discovery of Hyalonema, a specimen with a controversial identity collected off the Portuguese coast.
Natural history museums and zoological collections of São Paulo State
Biota Neotropica, 2022
Scientific collections constitute a valuable source for contributions to scientific research and the training of human resources in systematics, but also other areas of biological knowledge. In this contribution, we intend to discuss these advancements in collections and the role played by FAPESP in sponsoring them, as well as a general overview of the zoological collections in São Paulo state. We also aim to stress the importance of zoological collections and the need for continuous logistic and financial support from institutions and research agencies to maintain and develop these unique repositories of biodiversity. From 1980 to the present, FAPESP supported 118 research projects focused on several areas of zoology that are directly or indirectly associated with collections. There is a constant growth in the number of projects, and the financial support provided by FAPESP through the Biota Program was paramount for the advancement of our knowledge of biodiversity in Brazil. Parallel to the scientific advances, but not less important, this support allowed curators to increase the number of specimens, and to organize, maintain and digitize them in these valuable and irreplaceable collections. Regarding the lack of new taxonomists, it is essential that FAPESP and universities in São Paulo encourage the formation of new academics in zoological groups where specialists are rare. Considering the investment provided by FAPESP, it is quite important that the institutions that benefited from these resources took greater responsibility to safeguard these collections, and they should consider including resources on their budgets to obtain safety certificates, ensuring their permanence for many generations to come. Zoological collections are a heritage of humanity and are essential not only for the improvement of our knowledge of biodiversity but also with direct applications, among other services provided by these biological resources. It is important that research and teaching institutions in São Paulo that house specimens under their care start to value more this important patrimony and this heritage, as these collections represent the most valuable testimony of our impressive biodiversity, records of our past, and windows to our future, essential to our academic, scientific, cultural and social sovereignty.
A Space for Science: The Development of the Scientific Community in Brazil
The Penn State Press, 1993
A Space for Science provides the most comprehensive study available on the growth of modern science in one of the world's major underdeveloped countries. A Space for Science is a new version of Formação da Comunidade Científica no Brasil (published only in Portuguese in 1979 and now out of print), which became a standard reference for studies of the development of scientific traditions and competence in Brazil and, by extension, for other developing countries. Based on hundreds of interviews with several generations of Brazilian scientists, it offers a wealth of information and insight about the motivations, attitudes, values, and perceptions of the scientists who, working in this kind of environment, face challenges and endure frustrations not known to their colleagues in wealthier industrialized countries. The book focuses on the development of natural sciences in Brazil since the nineteenth century, with emphasis on the cultural, institutional, and social context that facilitated or hindered their growth and institutionalization, and offers an analysis of their current predicaments. It also provides an account of the importance to Brazil of foreign-trained scientists and foreign models of research and= higher education. This new English version contains background information on Brazilian society apolitics, a new introduction, and the addition of two new chapters that bring it up to 1988. These changes, along with substantial revisions to the text, make this a new book even for the Brazilian reader. Simon Schwartzman is Professor of Political Science at the Universidade de São Paulo and scientific director of Núcleo de Pesquisas sobre Educação Superior (NUPES). 272 pages, 12 tables 6 x 9, Cloth: $32.50 ISBN 0-271-00740-0 October 1991 The Penn State Press Suite C, Barbara Building 820 North University Drive University Park, PA (814) 865-1327
A students’ oppinion on the importance of natural history collections and taxonomy in Brazil
Zoologia (Curitiba)
Natural history collections (NHCs) contain valuable information that can be used in different fields of knowledge, and aid in the development of society, science, and technology. The role of curators and taxonomists in maintaining and improving biological collections is essential, as these are fundamental for the understanding of biodiversity. However, the role of taxonomists and the importance of NHCs to society have been undervalued in recent years. We, while attending a graduate program on collections at PUCRS, noted a gap in knowledge about scientific collections. Was this gap, which continued from our undergraduate to graduate years, a mere coincidence or widespread in biological science programs in Brazil? We queried 126 Brazilian institutions of higher education to assess the presence of courses related to natural-history collections and taxonomy. A total of 25 private and 37 public universities from 126 institutions searched, have a program of study in biological sciences in the curriculum on their websites. About 16% offer some course related to NHCs or taxonomy, and all of them are public institutions. Despite the budget cutting made by the Brazilian government that make it even more difficult to recognize NHCs and related areas, we believe that there should be more links among researchers from different areas and especially between the levels of basic and higher education, so that students are exposed to this subject early in their education. We, as Brazilian students, believe that more information on NHC-related issues and taxonomic subjects is urgently needed in biological science programs.
Brazil's political-financial crisis and the threat to Biological Collections
Science eLetters, 2019
The recent political crisis in Brazil and its consequences on human rights and environment have been occupying the front pages of international newspapers. Particularly, the cuts in the funds for the maintenance of Public Universities, independent of ideology or need, is threatening our biodiversity knowledge. The major part of Brazilian biological collections is hosted by Public Universities. Without basic maintenance there is an imminent potential of a catastrophic deterioration on such collections, leading to the loss of decades of knowledge and millions of dollars in Scientific Investment. Brazilian and international communities need to mobilize themselves against such a policy.
Brazilian Conservation Under the Light of Historical Materialism
Ecological Economics, 2018
Brazilian biodiversity is being target of many scientific efforts to preserve it. However, there is an enormous contradiction in the country between what is discussed in scientific theory and what government measures are actually doing in practice. In this work, we discuss Brazil's conservationist aspirations under a human and social aspect, which the scientific view of natural scientists seldom explores: the historical materialist conception. From this analysis, we argue that current scientific efforts are important, but merely palliative, because at the heart of capitalist society the logic of value precedes any political decision making of the state. Therefore, the analysis of Brazilian biodiversity conservation under the premises of historical materialism elucidates with more clarity the forces that are at play in the country to inform the practice of conservation. This is a way of understanding the relatively ineffective role that science and technology has had in the permanent control of environmental destruction in Brazil.
From the Begginings: Debates on History of Science in Brazil (2011)
Hispanic American Historical Review 91(3), 2011
This article analyzes the ways in which the book Beginnings of Brazilian Science: Oswaldo Cruz, Medical Research and Policy, 1890 – 1920, published by Nancy Leys Stepan in 1976, has been received in the debates on science and the history of science in Brazil. Our purpose is to show how the discussions prompted by Stepan's book have been directly linked to the emergence of a new historiography of science in that country since the early 1980s, as a professionalized and institutionalized scholarly field. This process has been associated, in turn, with a broader policy debate in Brazil and Spanish America on the particular features of science, and of the history of science, in the so-called developing countries. We also seek to show the extent to which some of the questions posed in The Beginnings of Brazilian Science are still richly relevant to academic and political consideration of the complexity and specificity of the historical and social process of institutionalization of science. Rather than attempt an exhaustive analysis of the readings of Stepan's work, we will focus on the main areas of historiographic debate, based on the more representative works and authors, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.