Development politics and scientific expertise -- Climate and culture: constructing sertanejo marginality in modern Brazil -- Civilizing the sertão: public health in Brazil's hinterland, 1910s -- Engineering the drought zone: the birth of IFOCS, 1909-1930 -- Patronizing the Northeast: IFOCS under Vargas in the 1930s -- Watering Brazil's desert: agronomists and sertão reform, 1932-1955 -- Modernizing a region: economists as development experts, 1948-1964 -- Science, politics, and social reform.
Summary
This text examines Brazil's hard social realities through the history of science, focusing on the use of technology and engineering as vexed instruments of reform and economic development.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-269) and index.
