Mobilizing Science: Movements, Participation, and the Remaking of Knowledge

Introduction

❖ C laudia’s1 graying teeth and limp hair meant she came from the farmlands. Periods of intense drought made food scarce and nutrition limited. Those farmlands, I had heard, bred some of the most radical protestors. Claudia was a perfect example. A righteous attitude complemented her stubborn nature. Taking no for an answer was never an option. She told me that she had not married because it would hold her back; macho Brazilian men and their ideas about a woman’s place were not worth her time or energy. She had instead given her life to the church in a way I did not understand. Not a nun, exactly, but a dedicated worker in the path of justice. Her church actively supported the downtrodden, the marginalized, the many people pushed off their lands by stronger corporate interests. As one whose lands had been exploited, Claudia was indignant and, despite almost no education, brilliant. Claudia was one of the first people I met who protested the construction of large hydroelectric dams in Brazil. Our first encounter was at a roundtable held by local professors to discuss several dams with the community. I had not been to the interior of Brazil before and was fascinated by its inhabitants, not because of their customs or style of dress but because of their understanding of the land and their community. For the most part, they had never entered a formal 1 Claudia is a pseudonym used to protect the actual individual. Introduction school but had instead grown up learning the land. They knew how to make nourishment rise from lackluster soil and to catch the largest fish so that the smaller ones would be left for next season. They intimately understood the ebb and flow of the river from which they drew enough water to plant crops year after year. And they knew what the proposed dams would do to their river, their land, and their livelihoods. Claudia spoke eloquently and passionately at this first meeting. I watched the professors learn from her, and she from them. Despite her experience with protest, she did not fully understand reports the state had generated to argue that her land and people should be displaced . Meanwhile the professors had little knowledge of the crops produced in the area, where community members lived, or exactly how the proposed dams would shift the local economy. As they explained the report’s findings, she countered with what she knew to be the truth. The professors took notes. Her input was added to their critique of the inaccurate environmental impact assessment they held in their hands. The community did not have a copy. It had not, in fact, been offered one by the state. The researchers seemed to be the brokers of information, offering state studies to the community and working with this group to generate a new study. They would, in turn, offer the new impact assessment to the local environmental agency, suggesting that the dam not be built. Although I had seen the anti-dam movement occupy construction sites and effectively slow the progress of dam building, I knew that behind-the-scenes collaboration was a tactic critical to the movement . Activists invested great amounts of time and resources in working with the researchers to learn about the environmental impact assessment (EIA) format, make a new report showing all the missed information, and then share their perspectives at a public hearing. The hearing where this private deconstructing and reconstructing of the environmental impact assessment would become public was the only pathway for citizens to participate in the policymaking process. In addition, since the EIA was the main justification for the dam, it was an important terrain of contestation. At the hearing, arguments would be laid out by the local community , the government agency, and the representatives of the corporation that was funding the project. But the community would not have formal decision-making power. And ultimately, this community, which might be displaced by one of multiple dams being planned in the area, would most likely be flooded. Its participation in the process would make no difference, despite the organizing, educating, 2 ▪ Introduction Introduction ▪ 3 and collaborating. This case is not singular in nature. It represents a dilemma that spans the globe—movements engaging in long, drawnout processes of changing research in order to shape policy, but facing the possibility of complete inefficacy. Democratizing science in this way...