Networks of Knowledge and Fields of Power: The Jesuits, the Polytechnic School and the “Catholic Modernization” Project in Ecuador

Distancing itself from both the actor-network theory’s dominant conception of the articulation of knowledge whose development is considered as free and unproblematic in size and extension and independent of external power relations, and the more recent notion of “space of circulation” defined in somewhat ambiguous and equivocal terms, this article seeks to show the complex but precise relationship between the network of knowledge and the field of power in scientific-technical modernization within the context of nation building. Based on the case of the project of “Catholic modernization” promoted by President Gabriel García Moreno in Ecuador (1861–1865 and 1869–1875) and largely entrusted to the Society of Jesus, it examines the properties of the Jesuit epistemic network prior to its implantation in Ecuador, the power negotiations between the Church and the García Moreno government, and the establishment of the Polytechnic School and the Quito Astronomical Observatory that arose within the framework of that process. The article suggests that the Jesuit knowledge network not only benefited—for its expansion—from the space created by the government through the provision of material, economic, and symbolic resources, but also saw its structural and functional properties transformed as a result of these power negotiations.