Mapping Connections: Scientific Knowledge and Social Movements in a Socioenvironmental Dispute in Brazil

• In Event: Expertise, Assessment and the Effectiveness of Research

Abstract

We investigated the connections between citizen participation and scientific knowledge in the socioenvironmental conflict about the installation of the Apolo Project in Gandarela Sierra. Given the heterogeneity of the participants in the dispute, we combined the Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 1994; 2002; 2004; 2012) with Jasanoff's (2012) discussions about the ways science, technology and expertise relates to the politics and contributions of the cosmopolitical proposal by Stengers (2005). Apolo consists in the installation of a complex that includes iron ore, leach residues and railroad in Gandarela Sierra, located in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This project might be set in a place where are important aquifers and caves, endemic fauna and flora and a relevant palaeontological site. All elements of a technical-scientific controversy are present: activists, who produce and give visibility to the issue, the dispute between profitability, viability and dangerousness, a poor political organization pressured to make a decision, sometimes trying to avoid legality, sometimes trying to respect it. The analysis of the trajectory of Apolo provides insights about how science, technology and experts are related with politics in Brazil. In Western countries, expert’s assessments are recognized as legitimate authorities by many of the public agents, be they politicians or institutions (Jasanoff, 2012). However, in this latin-american dispute, the expert’s assessments were not recognized as legitimate authorities by many of the public agents. This suggests that the relations between science, technology, expertise and politics in Brazil are profoundly different from those observed in Western countries.

Authors

• Elisa Sampaio de Faria, Federal University of Minas Gerais

• Alessandra Rondina Fonatensi Gomes, UFMG

• Jéssica Alves, UFMG

• Francisco Ângelo Coutinho, UFMG