Latin American Catalysis: As Seen through the Ibero-American Catalysis Symposia

Abstract

One of the ways scientists from the world peripheries can attempt to overcome isolation and lack of visibility is by networking and associating themselves at different aggregate levels, both nationally and internationally. Scientific meetings are specially apt grounds where scientists have a chance to make contacts and become more visible. Taking as its point of departure the fact that meetings constitute a pervasive yet neglected aspect of science, this paper concentrates on the analysis of participation in a type of scientific meeting of a regional scope that has taken place periodically since 1968 and is still an ongoing operation. It is argued that meetings of this sort deserve the attention ofstudents for a variety of reasons, especially because through time one may observe the evolution of the cognitive field and its institutional and group correlations that the series of meetings helped to create in the particular space configured by the periodical meeting.