Abstract

Vaccines are technological artefacts. As such, they have a political content that reflects the norms and values of the contexts in which they are developed. Social studies of technoscience have mainly focused on artefacts produced in advanced capitalist countries, while less space has been devoted to analysing the social shaping of technoscience in different institutional contexts, such as Cuba, characterised by different norms and values. Despite poverty and the US blockade, Cuba has developed a powerful biotechnological innovation system, consisting of an inter-organisational network of 32 state-owned companies working together to develop original medicines and vaccines. A recent example is the success of the Abdala and Soberana 02 vaccines against Covid-19, with which the country has immunised its own population and supported vaccination campaigns in eight other countries. Using an original theoretical approach that combines STS (Science and Technology Studies), sociology of markets and value, and based on ethnographic research in the main Cuban biotechnology companies, this article analyses the norms and values that characterise the Cuban innovation path compared to the dominant one of techno scientific capitalism