Edisson Aguilar Torres
Science in Human Culture 2025-2027
Department of History
Areas of Interest Geographic Field(s): Latin American and Caribbean History Thematic Field(s): Environmental History; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Principal Research Interest(s): Global History of Technology, History of State Formation, History of Water Supply and Treatment, and Colombian History Biography Edisson Aguilar Torres is a historian of technology and Latin America. His research explores the interconnection between state formation and the construction of small-scale infrastructure for water supply systems in the Colombian countryside during the 20th century, as well as the global history of water treatment technologies.
His book manuscript, Pipes for the Community: Water, Infrastructure, and State Formation in Colombia, 1942–1989, challenges notions of the state as an overly centralising project that destroys local knowledge and practices by imposing large-scale infrastructures. Instead, it shows how the Colombian state decided to partially delegate water provision in rural areas to local communities, using a system that relied on state engineering, small-scale water supply systems, local management and maintenance, and Indigenous and peasant labour traditions. The rationale behind that decision combined ideals of citizenship participation with more practical concerns about the costs for the state of providing public goods directly. Insufficient investment, though, hindered full access to drinking water in the countryside, creating water inequalities that persist today. Pipes for the Community addresses the socio-technical system that came to dominate water supply in the Colombian rural areas as a way to understand the importance of small-scale technology in the landscape of modernity.
