From Access to Sovereign Science: COVID-19 Vaccines and Peripheral Technoscientific Promises in Argentina

Abstract

This article examines the political economy of technoscientific promises in peripheral contexts, focusing on the often-overlooked question of promise fulfilment. Drawing on Argentina's COVID-19 vaccine shortage, it explores how futures imagined through science and technology are shaped by scarcity and power asymmetries—constraining both promises and delivery. Amid a health emergency, national limitations, and a global vaccine race that sidelined developing countries, we show Argentina's response unfolding through three interrelated technoscientific promises—timely health access, industrial self-sufficiency, and sovereign science—interweaving expectations on science, technology, and the state. We trace how peripheral promise-making and delivery took shape, grounded in material foundations—coalitions, capacities, and technologies that conferred credibility—and symbolic ones—national imaginaries and development aspirations, framed as visions of the “public good,” which lent legitimacy to the chosen paths. We highlight the distinct dynamics of peripheral promising, where limited agency and structural asymmetries constrain both ambition and fulfilment. Under crisis-fueled public scrutiny, symbolic and material resources were mobilized to meet expectations around science, technology, and the state—ultimately narrowing broad aspirations into pragmatic, demonstrable outcomes. Fulfilment required constant adaptation, revealing the fragility, contingencies, and bounded possibilities of what peripheral nations can credibly envision, pursue, and achieve.