Anti-Scientization Movements: A New Framework for Understanding Mobilization and Contestation.

Many are concerned with the rise of the technology or information age. Part of this interest is generated by uncertainty regarding how this change in social landscape impacts other social processes. Studying social movements elucidates both the generation and resolution of conflicts particular to issues of science, technology and information. I propose a new framework through which we can understand social movements characteristic of the technology and information age: anti-scientization movements. These movements contest and democratize expert knowledge in order to achieve their goals. I hypothesize that these social movements have emerged to create institutions where science and knowledge is democratized in response to growing policy dependence on expert knowledge. In order to empirically explore the way such movements work, I compare the anti-dam movement (ADM) in Brazil and environmental breast cancer movement (EBCM) in the United States. Qualitative data in the form of interviews (128), ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these movements. Despite the very different internal and contextual aspects of these movements, they both employ similar tactics and institutional forms to legitimize lay knowledge and reconstruct official discourse. This framework elucidates a growing phenomenon critical to social movement theorists, science studies and political scientists. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]