Researcher evaluates the Rockefeller Foundation’s actions
and the Canadian IDRC in Brazil and proposes a new relationship with international agencies

From philanthropy to
participatory research

LUIZ SUGIMOTO

ABrazilian research institutions have a good time to unite their actors – government, researchers, non-governmental organizations, private sector – and increase bargaining power with international funding agencies, formulating research agendas and demands that are of interest to the public. country and not primarily to funders from the Northern Hemisphere, and ensuring the permanence or sharing of the knowledge generated here. The good moment is provided by the change in relations between donors and countries in the South, noted in the last two decades, with the relaxation of criteria for financing and the acceptance of new actors in the decision-making process of preparing research.

This is the conclusion of sociologist Maria Conceição da Costa, from the Department of Scientific and Technological Policy at the Institute of Geosciences (IG) at Unicamp, in her post-doctoral research “Cooperation for Development: new agendas, old political and ethical questions” . Guided by professor Stephen Turner, from the University of South Florida, and with a scholarship from Fapesp, the IG professor searched archives of international agencies between September 2001 and March 2002, initially focusing on the period from the 1970s onwards, but being forced to go back to the beginning of the XNUMXth century – when the Rockefeller Foundation arrived, chosen as an example of a philanthropic agency. By way of comparison, the researcher also focused on the Canadian IDRC (International Development Research Center), which is engaged in sponsoring participatory research.

Foundation currently finances few programs

“Agencies such as the American Rockefeller, Ford, Carneggie, McArthur and Kellog's come from a 'philanthropic', so-called non-profit, tradition, and with this discourse they began research in several third world countries, with an emphasis on the areas of health, health, agricultural and education”, says the teacher. However, they have been changing their way of acting in recent decades, entering the same field as the more recent agencies, such as IDRC, Cida (Spanish), Sarec (Swedish), Cirad (French) and ODA (English): they understand the generation of science as a much broader process, requiring the participation of NGOs, representatives of local communities and other actors in return for financing. “The idea of ​​the post-doctorate was to evaluate why agencies moved from a paternalistic and philanthropic donation model to one considered more “democratic”, and the possible benefits of this change for Southern countries, such as the effective incorporation of other actors , de facto access to acquired knowledge and the possibility of greater bargaining with Northern countries”, he informs.

Rockefeller – According to Maria Conceição da Costa, the Rockefeller Foundation was the most active agency in Brazil until the 1950s. It arrived around 1915, interested in studies on tropical diseases such as yellow fever, malaria and dengue, as the United States faced this threat in the south of the country. He also invested heavily in research with the same purpose in India and China. During this philanthropic period, the foundation imposed its guidelines on setting up infrastructure to combat endemic and tropical diseases, participating in major surveys and campaigns, and ending up interfering in the scientific area.

“Without Rockefeller’s funding, the creation of the São Paulo Faculty of Medicine, the Institute of Hygiene and the nursing schools would be unthinkable. The foundation saw scientific production as a linear process, centered on universities and research centers. More than that, the faculty should integrate teaching and research, requiring full-time dedication from the subject, a model that would later be incorporated into public universities”, says the IG professor.

From the 1950s onwards, the Rockefeller Foundation began to abandon its activities in Latin America, closing offices in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. During the following decades, she turned her interests to Africa, investing in agriculture, and was responsible for implementing what was called the “Green Revolution”, a broad and controversial program to improve seeds and planting techniques, under the argument to combat hunger, which extended to Asia and the Middle East.

As political interests are never expressed in documents filed at the foundation, Maria Conceição da Costa lists some hypotheses for the agency to give up funding basic research in Brazil. “Looking only at the scientific side, Americans would have seen their activities in the sanitary and health areas as exhausted, given that diseases had been eradicated. The creation of local institutions – Capes, CNPq, Faeps – would also have made their presence in the country unnecessary. The field notebooks of those responsible for the projects also pointed to cash problems”, says the teacher. Today, Rockefeller maintains little financing in Brazil, even though it is low-cost and aimed at community projects, reproductive health, AIDS and social responsibility.

IDRC – From the 1960s onwards, other agencies came to the country. The Ford Foundation is currently the largest funder of research in several areas, including the humanities and arts. Maria Conceição da Costa, however, chose to detail the activities of IDRC, a Canadian government agency, as she considers it distinct enough to allow a comparison with the philanthropic Rockefeller of the first half of the 20th century. She reiterates that IDRC is among agencies that adopt a more participatory and “democratic” intervention style of research financing, seeing science as a social construction, carried out by different actors – universities, non-governmental agencies, communities – and aimed at local development.

Without the participation of these actors, there is no funding. “In the last decade, we have come across demands from the Canadian agency that there be some focus, for example, on gender and the participation of local communities, in different research projects”, illustrates the IG professor. “Science today is seen as a product of multiple realities, only one of which is generally accepted at a given time and among a given community. Scientific knowledge, then, is basically a socially accepted agreement about what is real, a consensus that is reached through negotiation processes”, she adds.

Bargain – Among the insinuations against the Rockefeller Foundation is that it seeks to disseminate the American way of life through projects financed in Southern countries. There is an understanding that, at least until the 1950s, this and other agencies began to “civilize” other countries for science, in which they occupied a prominent position as producers and disseminators. “Furthermore, most international cooperation agreements are only possible because they bring something that interests financiers. It is no wonder that so many agencies want to have Brazil as a privileged partner in biodiversity research. If the theme is astronomy, the best partner will be Chile”, compares Maria Conceição da Costa.

The researcher is aware, however, that today Brazil has a much larger structure, with research institutions and high-level researchers, which gives it much greater bargaining power vis-à-vis international funding agencies. “Although the asymmetric relationship between North and South remains, we can strengthen our institutions – federal agencies, universities and research institutes – to guarantee the return that the knowledge acquired here remains or even that the country proposes research that interests it”, he concludes.

Top