STS needs deeper frames of participation: historicizing public dialogues with technoscience from Latin America

This article introduces the concept of “deeper frames” to expand how Science and Technology Studies (STS) historicizes public participation with technoscience. While STS has called for sociological and historical “opening up” of technoscientific practices, its engagements with democratic participation remain historically thin and geographically Global North-centric. Drawing on Latin American participation traditions, particularly in Chile, this article reveals how participation practices are layered sedimentations of historical, geopolitical, and institutional framings, what I term deeper frames. By unpeeling these layers across three political periods, the article shows how radical participatory imaginaries from the twentieth century have been systematically depoliticized, not through epistemic failure, but through authoritarian interventions and neoliberal governance. Deeper frames thus serve both as a methodological lens to historicize participation design and as a critical resource to reclaim more emancipatory democratic imaginaries. The article concludes by outlining how STS can leverage deeper frames for a participatory return.