Seminari

SEMINARI

^"Assembling the food and nutrition problem in Latin America, 1930-1950. A regional genealogy of "community development"

A càrrec d'Stefan Pohl (iHC-UAB)

07/06/24, 11:30h, iHC-UAB
Seminari presentat per Elena Serrano (RyC-iHC)
 

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Since the 1920s, nation states in Latin America and international organizations have been concerned with addressing the food and nutrition problem, mobilizing a whole series of experts, programs, and strategies, and articulating various fields of knowledge and action –such as health, nutrition, agriculture, statistics, economy and education. The institutional architecture (national and international) that dealt with these issues was quite complex, given its multisectoral nature. In this paper I explore two specific programs, implemented by the Colombian government between the 1930s and 1940s, whose objectives were precisely to integrate food, health, and agricultural issues: The Sanitary Units and the School Colonies. Both programs began as pilot projects to test different community strategies intended to intervene in the health of peasants, in the sanitation of their environments and in the ways in which they cultivated, prepared, and consumed their food. This scheme to improve the food system was seen by policymakers and experts as a key element in raising the standard of living of citizens –most of whom lived in rural areas– and growing the national economy. The regional network of experts and field workers involved in these projects, as well as the experiences gained in implementing them, interacted with various international technical assistance programs on health, food and agriculture. I will argue that these intersections played an important role in shaping one of the central strategies deployed in the so called “Third World” by the Specialized Agencies of the United Nations in the 1950s and 1960s: “community development”.

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Stefan Pohl Valero holds a PhD in History of Science (UAB, 2007) and is Associate Professor at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. He researches the history of food, public health and the relations between science, experts and the state. He leads the research project “Assembling the food problem in Latin America during developmentalism”. The most recent results of this project are the edited book (together with Joel Varga) El hambre de los otros. Ciencia y políticas alimentarias en Latinoamérica, siglos XX y XXI (Bogotá, 2021) and the dossier (edited with José Buschini) Estado, saber experto y la configuración del problema alimentario en América Latina (1900-1960) (Estudios Sociales del Estado, 2022). In 2019 he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina and is currently (2022-2024) a “María Zambrano” researcher at the Institute for the History of Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is associate editor of the journal História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos (Brazil) and founder and coordinator of the international network on “Historical and Social Studies of Nutrition and Food in Latin America” (www.redehsnal.com).