Doctoral Dissertation Research: Drought and Development: Technocratic visions for progress in Brazil's Northeast, 1900-1950

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research project entitled "Drought and Development" is a social and intellectual history of scientific development and the political context in which such efforts take shape. This dissertation will contribute to the literatures of Latin American history, environmental history, and the history of science, preparing the author for a teaching and research career in those fields. Although Latin America has not been a significant regional focus for U. S. historians of science, scientific personnel (including experts from more industrialized countries) were often important promoters of national development there, particularly during the past century of urbanization, national integration and industrialization. This study compares environmental and social explanations for regional backwardness within a developmentalist discourse focused on the problem of drought, between 1900 and 1950. During the early decades of Brazil's First Republic (formed in 1889), sanitarians and engineers undertook a range of technical efforts to ameliorate drought and disease in the country's impoverished Northeast interior. These projects provoked debate among Brazilian intellectuals as to which aspects of Northeastern poverty were the result of natural factors and which were attributable instead to social structure, in particular the colonial legacy of latifundism and continued political domination by the landholding elite. By researching in archives and libraries of both Rio de Janeiro and two Northeastern cities, the investigator aims to uncover a variety of attitudes prevalent in early twentieth-century Brazil about the effectiveness of science as a solution to rural poverty. The author considers how the training and social identity of several professional groups shaped their attitude toward medicine and technology as modernization tools. These include medical personnel in Brazil's rural sanitation movement; Rockefeller Foundation International Health Board staff working in Northeast Brazil; and engineers of the Federal Inspectorate for Works Against the Drought. Additionally, the author examines sociological studies undertaken by Northeastern intellectuals during the 1930s and 1940s. These analyses of regional poverty focused more on its social and political history than on technological solutions. The period in question marked a high point for the participation of doctors and engineers in promoting a progressive national vision for Brazil; in subsequent decades, economists became the professional group deemed best equipped to deal with regional underdevelopment. Brazil's Northeast thus provides a lively context for considering the political shaping and implications of scientific development proposals that took place against a backdrop of debates about national economic integration.