Across borders: science and technology during the Cold War. An introduction

Abstract

The five papers included in this dossier aim to contribute to a further understanding of the role of across-the-border travels, itineraries, and transactions that characterized technoscientific practices during the Cold War. They do so by broadening the geographical scope of historical studies, and contextualizing the local within the global events, concerns, and policies of the period, especially through the role of international agencies in the construction of almost-global networks of science. The papers also share a way of seeing, of interrogating the global projects and goals in their local happening and the tensions produced between them. The result, we must say, is not a triumphalist view of science and technical assistance, but one of mixed results. Personal agendas are furthered, development programs fail, the scientific community is seldom truly international, while at the same time the growth of international networks allowed the training of a new generation of scientists around the world, and the incorporation of places, technologies, and actors transformed Cold War technoscientific practices by introducing different local priorities and ways of doing.