The text “Vaccination Imbroglio in Brazil: Negligence, Political Disputes, and Technical Authority”, written by doctoral student Laís Ramalho has just been published by Pandemic Discourses, a digital collection of articles that aims to bring together views on the covid-19 pandemic from the Global South. At work, the researcher makes an overview of the main events related to vaccination in Brazil to discuss the overlaps between the technical and the political, power disputes, scientific authority and vaccine culture. The Pandemic Discourses collection is organized by The New School university, where the doctoral student studied her sandwich doctorate through the CAPES-PRINT program.
Archives: Notícias
CALL FOR PAPERS Tropical Utopia, Tropical Dystopia: Global South Science Fiction and Critical Approaches to International Politics
After a long time being disregarded as minor genre of literature, Science Fiction (SF) has been recognized by renowned critics, writers, movie directors, and artists as a provocative, intriguing, and potentially abundant field for the exercise of sociopolitical analyses. Since the 1970s, social scientists have been using SF works to raise awareness of crucial debates such as climate change, political freedom, minority rights, global economic challenges, peace, and warfare. In the 1990s, Social Sciences’ cultural turn reached the discipline of International Relations opening an avenue for the connection between traditional and new topics of concern in IR with features from popular culture studies. SF was among the topics evoked from popular culture by contemporary IR theorists. Originally calling the attention of authors under Marxism and Critical Theory, the subject of SF quickly spread among theorists affiliated with different perspectives such as Feminism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, and Gender Studies. The first wave of SF & IR Studies was mainly delivered by scholars based on the Global North and focused on the Global North SF production. This pattern, however, has been challenged by a vibrant Global South SF production followed by the emergence of an increasing interest of Global South scholars in SF works and, particularly, in Global South SF. Innovatively, this Special Issue seeks to represent a vehicle – a ‘spaceship’ or a ‘time-machine’ – for the gathering and the promotion of a community of IR scholars interested in addressing Global South realities by recurring to Global South SF’s body of work, its particularities and its analytical potential.
We are seeking to gather reflections from and for the Global South related to Global South Sci-Fi, its authors, and its themes. We understand ‘Global South’ in its broader definition as the set of societies established within Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well as minorities within the Global North that have been historically subjected by local political, ethnic, and/or economic classes or strata. It is our goal to present an original collection of papers on Sci-Fi and International Relations in the Global South to promote different and diverse critical approaches to the multiplicity of problematic situations and issues that challenge Global South societies. For peoples who are familiar with ‘surreal’ situations of violence, inequality, and political regimes – as well as vast diversity and richness of cultural and intellectual traditions – we believe that it is time to bring for the discipline of International Relations the contribution of Sci-Fi works of art produced and analyzed by ‘Global Southerners’ to build cognitive bridges among ourselves and between the Earth’s North and its vast South.
In view of the above, a non-exhaustive list of indicative themes that would be of interest for this call are:
- Connections between ‘mainstream’ science-fiction and colonialism and imperialism;
- The role of science-fiction in building the imaginary around the Global South;
- Science-fiction narratives (and counter-narratives) and their relation to the international, especially the Global South;
- The emergence of Global South Sci-Fi and IR;
- The “linguistic turn”, Sci-Fi, and the Global South;
- Postcolonial, feminist, and Marxist approaches in IR and Science-Fiction;
- Sci-Fi as a pedagogical tool for understanding Global South realities;
- Sci-Fi, IR futurisms, and the Global South.
Authors should submit their abstracts (up to 300 words) until June 30, 2022 to Contexto Internacional online system (https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/cint-scielo). The preselected authors will have until September 30, 2022, to submit the complete paper (also to https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/cint-scielo), which will be then go through CINT’s peer-reviewing process. All articles must be written in the English following the norms available at CINT’s Authors’ Guidelines (https://www.scielo.br/revistas/cint/iinstruc.htm).
Tropical Utopia, Tropical Dystopia: Global South Science Fiction and Critical Approaches to International Politics
Special Guest Editors: Thiago Rodrigues (Fluminense Federal University, Brazil), Fernanda Barasuol (Grande Dourados Federal University, Brazil), Thiago Borne (Santa Catarina Federal University, Brazil)
Guidelines for the 2021 Institutional Development Plan
Taking PUC-Rio’s Institutional Development Plan (IDP) as a reference, the Institute of International Relations (IRI) started the process of drawing up its own Institutional Development Plan (IDP), which should be completed in the second half of 2021. This Plan must be prepared based on the guidelines set out below.
The activities of IRI/PUC-Rio are guided by the ternary structure that marks the Brazilian university and affirms the inseparability of teaching, research and extension activities. The IRI is also guided by the institutional objectives defined in PUC-Rio’s IDP, among which we highlight:
– The promotion of culture as an instrument for realizing the integral vocation of the human person;
– The development of teaching and the deepening of investigation and research, to create and spread a conscious vision of the necessary unity that must govern the multiplicity of knowledge;
– The training of competent professionals, qualified to fully perform their duties, with a sense of responsibility and participation;
– Insertion in the Brazilian reality, placing science at the service of the community and guiding its activities towards building a better world; and
– Exchange and cooperation with national and foreign educational, scientific and cultural institutions, in order to lend universality to the meaning of their mission.
These institutional objectives support eight guidelines of the PUC-Rio Pedagogical Project:
- Training for the knowledge society;
- Social and environmental responsibility;
- Scientific and technological development;
- Integration of Teaching & Research;
- Training for professional life;
- Interdisciplinary training;
- Internationalization; and
- Methodological innovation.
Based on PUC-Rio’s institutional objectives and pedagogical guidelines, the International Relations Institute (IRI) has the mission of promoting excellent academic and professional training, oriented towards the generation of relevant knowledge about the transformations in the international system and its repercussions on local, national, regional and global plans.
In this way, the IRI is oriented towards:
1) Training of excellence, which links academic solidity and critical thinking, aimed at understanding the dynamics of the international system and its impacts on Brazilian society;
2) Research and production of innovative and relevant scientific knowledge on the ongoing transformations in the international system, with emphasis on understanding the role and place of Brazil and other countries of the South in this system, with a view to achieving social, economic, technological and environmental, particularly in Latin America;
3) Public impact aimed at generating positive economic and social impacts for Brazilian society related to its international insertion, in particular through the contribution to public policies at the local, national, regional and international levels.
The IRI will be relevant to the extent that its capabilities effectively contribute, from the international dimension, to economic and social development and to the confrontation of inequalities in Brazilian society and asymmetries in the international system. IRI reaffirms its commitment to theoretical-methodological plurality and to interdisciplinary debate as a way of producing innovative, socially relevant and actionable knowledge, in addition to training professionals committed to social transformation and enhancing its public impact.
Based on its excellent activities in the fields of education, research and public advocacy, the IRI must thus face significant economic and social challenges and contribute to the creation of innovative solutions. Alongside internationalization, the contribution to economic and social development, the promotion of theoretical-methodological pluralism and interdisciplinary engagement constitute transversal dimensions that qualify IRI’s activities.
In view of the above, the Strategic Plans of IRI’s Graduate Programs must be structured from a matrix perspective that combines the ternary structure of its activities with the Institute’s mission, encompassing the following dimensions: academic (promotion of theoretical-methodological pluralism and interdisciplinary engagement); contribution to economic and social development; and internationalization, as specified in the guidelines above.
March 24, 2021. General Committee of IRI/PUC-Rio.