ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Of Pocket Acorns and Turtle Libraries: Science at the Valencian Environmentalist Movement (1977–1999)

• In Event: Activist Epistemics and Artefacts 2

English Abstract

This paper examines the role of science in the Valencian environmentalist movement (1977–1999), highlighting activist groups' ambiguous attitudes and shifting relationship towards expertise. I trace the changes from the heart of the Spanish political transition, when environmental protests and pro-democratic struggles had forged an intimate comradery in the fight against the Francoist dictatorship; to the consolidation of liberal democracy at the turn of the century, where the arrival of Green parties to the Valencian Parliamentary built on decades of successful environmental coalition-building.

I present two examples that address this session's interest in the dual forms of activist science. First, the practices of (relatively) undercover and prosecuted reforestations with indigenous forest species, particularly oak. Activists carried acorns in their pockets, produced leaflets on how to germinate and plant seeds, and conducted field trials to determine the best conditions for the survival of seedlings. These forms of activism opposed the science and policies of Francoist, productivist pine monoculture reforestations. University ecologists, Valencian cultural organisations, forest managers, and anti-nuclear activists constructed exchange zones for alternative forest policies rooted on a national-ecological defence of ‘la terra’.

Second, I examine the ‘Fons de Documentació del Medi Ambient’, an activist-run library that accumulated and sorted a hectic collection of scientific, technical, and legislative materials, meant to feed grassroots organisations with essential knowledge, and which eventually became a model for state-supported environmental documentation centres.

In this process of professionalizing environmental activism, science played shifting roles: from a commitment towards an anti-capitalist future, rejecting the image of science as neutral; to a nearly technocratic stance that refused to describe environmental catastrophe as capitalogenic.

Author

• Max Bautista-Perpinyà, Université catholique de Louvain