The Contentious Politics of Expertise

Experts, Activism and Grassroots Environmentalism

Riccardo Emilio Chesta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000334913
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sull'etnia

Based on mixed-methods research and ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Italy, this book examines the relationship between expertise and activism in grassroots environmentalism. Presenting interviews with citizens, activists and experts, it considers activism surrounding infrastructure in urban areas, in connection with water management, transport, tour- ism and waste disposal. Through comparisons between different political environments, the author analyses the ways in which citizens, political activists and technical experts participate in using expertise, shedding light on the effects of this on the structure and composition of social movements, as well as the implications for the mechanisms of participation and the formation of alliances. Bridging the sociology of expertise and contentious politics, this study of the relationship between contentious expertise and democratic accountability shows how conflict transforms, rather than inhibits, expertise production into a 'contentious politics by other means'. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in social movements, environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge.

1 Grassroots expertise and local environmental mobilizations

1 Expertise and local environmentalism

Expertise and politics are intertwined at various degrees of institutionalization, from public administration and structured civil society organizations through to citizen committees and social movements. This research focuses on the most spontaneous level of mobilization of expertise: local, grassroots mobilization. Local environmental mobilizations allow us to investigate how expertise and politics are entangled at a specific grassroots level, where loose networks of informal relations mobilize at the level of the city or the neighborhood. In the broader spectrum of civil society actors, the use of credentialed expertise is also a constitutive feature of structured environmental organizations, and one of the main motives of the so-called “scientific environmentalism”, in which protest campaigns are ideally based on credible evidence and alternatives.¹ Expertise is conceived in this context as the activity of scientific committees where experts have an explicit membership, thus following logics of scientific division and production that are similar to ordinary academic or research institutions (Rüdig, 2000). Moreover, the discourse of campaigns founded on “scientific evidence” reproduces a technocratic view of the use of expert knowledge that is similar to the top-down model of the public understanding of science (Bucchi, 2010).

While focusing on local environmental mobilizations, I investigate quite spontaneous processes of aggregation of political demands in the forms of social movement networks mobilizing at the level of the neighborhood or the city (Della Porta and Andretta, 2001). Focusing on localities that have displayed a high level of sustained, episodic environmental contention is advisable for various reasons. Relevant interactions between social actors involved in political activism often take place in territorially limited communities (Diani, 2015). The communitarian level of local politics is indeed a good vantage point, since it allows us to assess direct interactions among citizens, activists, civil society associations and the political power. This «reduction of scale» (Revel et al., 1996) allows us to investigate, through direct observation, the properties and motivations of the actors composing the mobilization processes, while collecting a variety and richness of ethnographic data that help in testing the main hypothesis as well as improving the accuracy of the explanations. The unit of analysis is a comparison among four mobilization processes against infrastructure projects in two localities with similar local economic structures but different political subcultures that allow us to look at some general tendencies and variations of grassroots expertise.

2 Local environmental mobilization potential in Italy

Tuscany and Veneto are the two Italian regions that show the highest concentration of spontaneous citizen committees involved in local environmental mobilizations against infrastructure projects all along the first decades of the 2000s. Looking at the Nimbyforum² dataset, a preliminary media analysis at the national level, more than other regions Tuscany and Veneto have been able to build sustained networks of local committees at a regional level.

Nimbyforum is a dataset explicitly conceived to ‘pinpoint the most efficient interactive methodologies across different stakeholders to manage and reduce the phenomenon of territorial and environmental oppositions and the Nimby Syndrome’.³

In 2014, the map shows 355 contested examples of infrastructure all around Italy. Local conflicts are concentrated in the Center–North regions: Lombardia, with 62 examples of contestation, is the most conflictual case, followed by Veneto (47), Toscana (38) and Emilia-Romagna (28).⁴

Although the dataset is a toolkit produced by the corporate stakeholders to map and reduce what is considered a sign of a deficit of civic culture, it shows some interesting tendencies about the centrality of Veneto and Tuscany that were confirmed by our first round of interviews with national environmental activists. Indeed, instead of focusing on a specific source of environmental threat – like networks of citizens against incinerators, railway projects, etc. – in both regions local activists have been able to coalesce into a common political platform, sustained in time, with a specific regional identity.

Behind this peculiarity, some aspects of the two regions are worth considering. Some trends are historically rooted in the development of the Italian environmental movements of the 1990s. The first attempt to create a new type of coordination of the local associations and groups involved in environmental and territorial politics dated back to 1981, with the creation of the green network called the “Green Archipelago” (Biorcio, 1992). One of the main representatives of the greens and lately founder of the Green party confirms how Veneto – and particularly Venice – played an important role in the rise of the political ecology groups, together with some other part of Italy like Trento, where the first congress of the green movements was held in 1985 (Boato et al., 1982):

After Trento, Venice was also very important in the rise of the Greens […] There was a moment in Veneto in the second half of the 1980s, beginning of the 1990s, when the Green party managed to achieve four regional councilors. In many parts, there were small green realities […] this is the reason it is called the “Green Archipelago”. But in some small places also the experience of the Green University emerged […] It was a sort of school, for cultural training with an ecological slant. They had two focal points: one was Venice […] and the other one, a small village next to Ravenna, called Lugo di Romagna.⁵

While the historical presence of green networks cannot entirely explain the potential emergence of specific sustained local mobilizations, it can contribute to add an important condition like the presence of networks, traditions and practices conducive to the birth of new environmental mobilizations. Indeed, the Italian environmental movement emerged as a conversion of networks of New Left political activists of 1968, particularly strong in the two cities of Trento and Venice where the student movement played an important role. In particular, these indications are in line with the media analysis conducted by Della Porta and Diani (2004) that confirms how environmental protests in the North–East regions of Italy have had more local traits.

The city of Venice plays a prominent role not only in terms of historical concentration of associations and civil society groups but also for its political centrality at the regional level. The proximity with the Regional Council – where the political elites meet and deliberate – makes it easier for social movements and civil society groups to mobilize and directly reach the political headquarters. At the same time, it is easier for movements to attract media attention and to gain public visibility, therefore earning a status of “relevance”. The relevance of the Tuscan case was first introduced to me by one of the founders of the Green Archipelago and a historical Venetian environmental activist:

The only two big networks in Italy are in Veneto and in Tuscany. Everywhere else, they have never been able to create a real regional network. Even in other places there are some networks but not like those [in Veneto and Tuscany]. First, a problem must arise; after that can experts get across to locals the point about where the problem comes from and the fact that alternatives are possible […]. Problems like the diffusion of cancer, water pollution, mines etc […] and in Veneto there are lots of problems. Like in Lombardia. In Lombardia even more than in Veneto, but in Veneto there has been the capacity […] to network.⁶

The perception of this environmental activist seems to confirm the hypothesis that has emerged from the various sources reporting a high level of local mobilizations against different types of infrastructure projects in both regions. Following Nimbyforum 2014 dataset, Veneto is the second most vibrant region followed by Toscana.

However, the data in the Nimbyforum dataset are not corroborated by what we know from activists and media reporting from the region. In this regard, interviews and further media analysis found no evidence of these kinds of platforms in the region of Lombardia.

Just a few articles report sporadic attempts – an assembly and some petitions – to create a regional network of committees in Lombardia,⁷ but no visible materials like websites with assembly reports or documents, nor a sustained regional debate triggered by local groups, nor any presence of a cycle of common and visible protest events can be found. An assembly in 2008 was sponsored by a leader–intellectual of the Tuscan network, but this ca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: speaking truth to society? The contentious politics of expertise
• 1 Grassroots expertise and local environmental mobilizations
• 2 The Venetian lagoon between prophecies and interests: expertise and civil society mobilizations against the MOSE project
• 3 Experts and activists in the “Florentine Node”: citizens expertise in the conflict over the Tunnel–TAV in Florence
• 4 Experts, citizens and activists in the “No Cruise ships” movement in Venice
• 5 Expertise and activism in the “Stalingrad of incinerators”: the mobilization against the waste incinerator in Florence
• 6 Conclusions: the contentious politics by other means – grassroots environmentalism and the politics of expertise
• Methodological appendix: notes on contentious fieldwork
• Appendix: intensive fieldwork and source list
• Index