Future of Facts in Latin America

The Future of Facts in Latin America was an interdisciplinary project funded by the SSRC and led by PI Andrea Ballestero (USC) and Co-PIs Eden Medina (MIT), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), and Andrew Lakoff (USC). It encompassed the creation of a hemispheric and interdisciplinary working group to explore the nature of facts in the 21st century, in the context of the ongoing redefinition of facts and truth claims amid compounding crises of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, rising religious fundamentalism and new forms of populism, and the acceleration of information technologies. The project posited the necessity of developing new concepts that go beyond dominant truth/falsehood and fact/fiction dichotomies. Instead, it expanded studies of disinformation with interdisciplinary approaches–especially those combining historical and ethnographic materials–that examine the emerging nature of facts in a global context.

During the project years of 2021-24, the working group established a collaboration infrastructure for scholars with expertise in different countries in the Americas, historical moments (from the conquest to our current time), and areas of public concern (urban planning, environment, health and medicine, computational technologies and literature). The objectives of the working group were (1) to create a comparative framework for analyzing the transformation of facts and truth-claims, (2) to establish a long-term hemispheric platform for interdisciplinary research, and (3) to increase scholarly exchange between researchers based in Latin America and those in Canada and the US. 

Key outcomes of this working group have included: (1) The publication of a thematic cluster in the journal Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. Read full-length articles by members of the working group as well as an Introduction essay by the project PIs. (2) The publication of a blog series on Cultural Anthropology‘s Theorizing the Contemporary. These blog posts explore the themes from the Tapuya articles in a short, more public-facing format that is also great for teaching. See more on the Future of Facts Publications page.

Find further information about the Future of Facts project here.

In addition to SSRC funding, the project is supported by the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life; the Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies; and the office of the Divisional Dean for Social Sciences at USC Dornsife.

Watch the 2023 Future of Facts roundtable that took place on April 12, featuring Andrea Ballestero (USC), Eden Medina (MIT), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Harvard), and Andrew Lakoff (USC).