Ingeniería y Estado: la red nacional de caminos y las obras públicas en la Argentina, 1930-1943

The article analyzes the work of the Argentinean Public Works Ministry's National Road Department (Dirección Nacional de Vialidad) during its earliest years, from 1932 to 1943, with a focus on formation of a technical bureaucracy composed of engineers and on the technical and political representations constructed around the field of engineering. The hypothesis is that creation of the Department represented both a culmination and a turning point in engineering's role as a scientific and professional field in the government public works structure, within the framework of the close ties between ...