Format: ORAL

Adolfo Calvo Redondo1

1. Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Amériques, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France

In my ethnobotanical research in 2018 and my recent sociology-of-science fieldwork in Jujuy (Argentina), I address ethical challenges and question the need for expert committees in empirical sciences. I analyze how certain institutional mechanisms force a choice between the privatization of knowledge or its anonymization in the name of scientific universality. In Argentina, despite the 2023 Open Science Law (Law 27738), field research remains trapped in neo-developmentalism and patrimonialistic dynamics, especially when accessing biocultural information in an indigenous context. This reflects a dominance relationship of Jujuy institutions over scientists and their civil informants. The mistrust between academic and indigenist institutions is manifested in police controls and specific protocols for working with Pueblos Originarios (PO). Instead of addressing social exclusion from a Human Rights perspective, a contractual practice is prescribed. Consent is seen as the legal solution to dialogue between different cultures, leading to clientelistic practices among local authorities and researchers, namely by controlling field access. The patrimonialistic regime may promote these pre-research contracts to appropriate knowledge in favor to PO interests. Paradoxically, anti-colonial resistance is expressed through an anti-extractive discourse. In practice, then, control over science is transcended through underground dialogues, driven by a community resistance ethic that shapes the identity of both native populations and field scientists advocating empirical, inclusive, and critical methodologies within a decolonial framework. Critical ethnobotany is based on a dialogue of knowledge from a position of subalternity, promoting interdisciplinarity and institutional coordination to subvert the hierarchical and authoritarian structures of the neoliberal academic playground. However, this decolonial framework can perpetuate conservative dynamics if it does not overcome mistrust and secrecy in the transmission and production of knowledge. On a material level, effectively challenging the patrimonialistic regime requires expanding social justice policies by the State, ensuring academic autonomy in designing collaborative projects directly with the public.