“They don't realize how important science and technology policies and politics are in changing the world”

Abstract

In this interview, Renato Dagnino reflects on the importance of linking Science, Technology and Society studies to the needs of most of the Brazilian population and to a development based on what he calls solidarity-based reindustrialization. To this end, influenced by Marxism and the Latin American Thinking on Science, Technology and Society, he points out that it is necessary to redesign capitalist technoscience in the direction of solidarity-based technoscience. Dagnino also addresses the problems of Latin American and Brazilian universities. Here he highlights their character as enclaves in a society with which they do not engage, and which reproduces itself by emulating the teaching, research, and extension agendas of the central countries. Referring to the Science, Technology and Society research community, he stresses the need for it to spend more time thinking about policies and plans that promote a cognitive politics consistent with the scenario that the Brazilian people are building.