ABSTRACT
This chapter looks deeper into the question of the historical coproduction of Chagas disease as both a social and a scientific problem, but from an original point of view. Taking the form of an exercise or divertimento, it invites the reader to imagine how the “Chagas problem” could be constructed differently, using four well-known (and successful) sociological perspectives. The approaches taken for this exercise are Bruno Latour’s theory of actants, Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to the autonomy of scientific fields, Theodor Adorno’s conception of the essential sociological problems, and Joseph Gusfiled’s approach on the culture of public problems.
The goal is to persuade the (ever-skeptical, ever-leery) reader that there is no single way to formulate a scientific problem; rather, it depends on the disciplines or fields in question, levels of analysis selected, knowledge available, existing resources, or cultural, ideological, and other kinds of stimuli and barriers. Obviously, the same also applies to social issues.
