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SUMMARY:Guerrilla warfare as sampling: Amílcar Cabral\, African independe
 nce and the writing of transnational history of science - Tiago Saraiva (D
 rexel University)
DTSTART:20210218T153000Z
DTEND:20210218T170000Z
UID:TALK156415@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Helen Curry
DESCRIPTION:The paper follows the convoluted transnational historical traj
 ectories of sampling techniques in the 20th century between the United Sta
 tes\, Southern Europe and West Africa. It makes the case for acknowledging
  the historical relevance of statistics in imagining political alternative
 s to capitalist and colonial forms of relating to the land. Sampling first
  embodied emancipatory promises in the New Deal enabling the reform of Ame
 rican agriculture to serve wider constituencies and restore the land it re
 lied on. The first part of the text explores the emergence of sampling tec
 hniques in the Statistical Laboratory at Iowa State University and the pro
 cess through which the extended federal network of the United States Depar
 tment of Agriculture made such methods into the watermark of a major exper
 iment with American democracy in the late 1930s. The second part follows t
 he trajectories of sampling out of the US into Southern Europe after World
  War II through the work of American experts that transitioned from New De
 al agencies into FAO (the UN food organization) advancing statistics as th
 e basis for European reconstruction under American hegemony. The paper end
 s by discussing how sampling methods learned by Amílcar Cabral in Portuga
 l from UN experts and later applied in the agricultural survey of the colo
 ny of Guinea Bissau became instrumental for his role as leader of the guer
 rilla that would lead to the country's independence in 1973.
LOCATION:Zoom
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