Renato Dagnino, Tecnociência Solidária: um manual estratégico, Marília: Lutas Anticapital, 2019, 161 pp. ISBN: 978-85-53104-36-9.
Renato Dagnino’s Tecnociência Solidária: um manual estratégico examines the relationship between the solidarity economy, self-management, and science and technology, asking whether a mode of production distinct from capitalist relations of production requires its own knowledge and technological infrastructure. According to Dagnino, the development of a solidarity economy based on collective ownership of the means of production and self-management requires not only changes in the ownership and management structures of enterprises, but also a rethinking of the knowledge and technology used in production in accordance with different social relations.
At the centre of the book is the concept of “Solidarity Technoscience” (Tecnociência Solidária), which is grounded in a critique of the idea that science and technology are neutral tools independent of social relations. Dagnino argues that capitalist technoscience is shaped by the interests and values of the actors who control the production process, while also questioning the conventional separation between science and technology. He relates the historical development of capitalist production to the gradual separation of productive knowledge from direct producers and its concentration in the hands of those who control the production process.
Dagnino defines Solidarity Technoscience as directly connected to the self-managed control exercised by the collective of producers over the labour process. Within social relations based on collective ownership of the means of production and cooperation, producers control the production process through voluntary and participatory cooperation, while also collectively deciding how the resulting material surplus is to be used. Technology thus becomes a question not merely of which tools are used, but of who produces the knowledge of production, who controls the labour process, and who makes technological decisions.
This approach also leads Dagnino to distance himself from the more widespread concept of “Social Technology” (Tecnologia Social). In his view, the existence of technologies that are low-cost, easily applicable, and intended to address social problems is not in itself sufficient to constitute an alternative technological paradigm. By placing the social relations within which technology is produced and producers’ control over this process at its centre, Solidarity Technoscience is developed as a more comprehensive approach aimed at constructing the solidarity economy’s own “cognitive platform.”
The book therefore does not limit itself to a theoretical critique of technology. Across its three sections, it first develops the analytical and conceptual framework of Solidarity Technoscience, then discusses methodological and operational tools for “engineering beyond capital,” and finally addresses the political struggles and public policies required by this approach. Among the book’s strategic proposals are the reorientation of knowledge production in universities and public research institutions towards the needs of the solidarity economy and the development of the necessary technoscientific knowledge together with those working in solidarity economy enterprises.
In these respects, Tecnociência Solidária is an important resource that extends the discussion of workers’ control and self-management to the question of control over productive knowledge and technology. Rather than treating collective ownership of the means of production separately from technological transformation, the book focuses on the relationship between producers’ control over the labour process and the production of knowledge and technology. It thus makes it possible to understand the solidarity economy not simply as an alternative model of ownership and enterprise, but as a field in which not only how production is organised, but also what kinds of knowledge and technologies are developed, by whom, and for what social purposes are redefined.