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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledges in Campinas, Brazil, were historically excluded from scientific and technological recognition. Drawing on STS and epistemic justice, it analyzes "Pretos Velhos" traditions as forms of situated sociotechnical knowledge.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledges have been systematically excluded from dominant regimes of scientific and technological recognition in Brazil, despite their central role in shaping sociotechnical practices and territorial organization. Focusing on Campinas, a city historically marked by late abolition, the study examines how Black knowledge systems - particularly of Bantu and Yoruba origin- were relegated to the domains of folklore, rather than acknowledged as science and technology. The analysis draws on debates on epistemic justice, situated knowledges, and the co-production of science and social order to interrogate how boundaries between “science,” “technology,” and “tradition” are historically constructed. Empirically, the paper centers on the figure of Toninho, associated with the "Lenda do Boi Falô" and the spiritual tradition of the "Pretos Velhos", as a case through which botanical, territorial, organizational, and spiritual knowledge practices can be understood as complex sociotechnical systems. Methodologically, the research combines archival analysis, bibliographic review, fieldwork, and collective memory records, treating the territory itself as a living archive of knowledge practices. Rather than advocating for the mere inclusion of ancestral knowledges within existing scientific frameworks, the paper argues that recognizing these practices as science and technology requires a reconfiguration of dominant epistemic criteria. By foregrounding Afro-diasporic epistemologies, the study contributes to STS debates on decolonial science and the politics of epistemic and technological recognition.