Abstract

SMULSKI, Mariana C.. Beyond Scientific Truth: An Ethnographic Look at the Controversy over the First 1000 Days of Childhood Cognitive Development. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2022, n.46, pp.75-97.  Epub Feb 22, 2022. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda46.2022.04.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in examining the dynamics of the legitimation of science in light of the debate over the public undermining of its authority as a discourse of truth. This article explores the questions raised by this debate based on the analysis of a controversy recorded in the framework of ethnographic fieldwork in a research laboratory. This controversy pits scientific facts relevant to policy decisions about children’s cognitive development against each other. From the native’s point of view, the dispute revolves around two issues: (a) the misrepresented communication of knowledge about poverty and childhood development by outreach institutions, multilateral agencies, and various health and neuroscience professionals; and (b) the political use of such statements and knowledge to guide local level government actions. What is reconstructed throughout the paper, is the way in which the set of researchers mobilizes scientific evidence to dispute factual claims presented in the media as true. This is done by considering the dynamics of legitimacy that unfold around this controversy. Following the perspective of co-production, the analysis shows that the legitimacy of scientific knowledge goes beyond the proof of its truth and involves a plurality of contested perspectives in which both the weight of evidence and the different political imaginaries that the agents sustain come into play. This plurality exposes the inseparable relationship between epistemic, social, and normative aspects, while the ethnography highlights that science cannot be separated from society and politics. Science does not only serve to inform political decision-making; it is also produced in response to and in continuity with public discussion and acts in the co-production of a sense of the political and the social.

Keywords : Childhood development; coproduction; ethnography; legitimacy; neuroscience; post-truth..

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