Citizen cartography,strategies of resistance to established knowledge and collective forms of knowledge building

Abstract

Cultivation of genetically modified soybeans with the use of herbicides is now becoming widespread in Argentina. This work addresses an emblematic case of knowledge articulation between experts, professionals and communities, namely, the case of an association of people affected by fumigation Grupos de Pueblos Fumigados (GPF). The GPF warns against agrochemical spraying in urban areas, and its activists collect and disseminate information about its impact with a view to banning the practice. Here, we apply Parthasarathy’s framework, used to analyse the strategies employed by activists to break the expertise barrier, to the case of the GPF, adding a new category to her original four strategies. There is an institutionalizing potential in these social and environmental movements, many of which are organized in the form of Civic Assemblies. The composition of the assemblies reflects a heterogeneous and multi-sectorial character; they articulate a new kind of knowledge that can be an appropriate interlocutor for traditional expert knowledge.

Keywords

agrochemical citizen participation expert knowledge genetically modified soybeans interaction experts/publics

1. Introduction

Currently, Argentina has more than 18 million hectares sown with genetically modified (GM) soy, to which between 180 and 200 million litres of glyphosate is applied each year, in particular Roundup™, a herbicide that includes a mixture of glyphosate and polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA), which is an irreplaceable component in the technology package of industrial agriculture (Bonaparte, et al., 2012; Pengue, 2005; Rulli, 2009; Vara, 2004). This involves the direct sowing of Roundup Ready (RR) seeds and is now the most widely used agrochemical practice throughout the territory. The RR transgenic seed variety was developed by Monsanto to resist the intense use of its Roundup herbicide, based on glyphosate (Bonaparte et al., 2012; Rulli, 2009; Vara, 2004). The widespread use of glyphosate is also due to the implementation of direct seeding technology. Direct seeding is the commonest tillage system and represents 91% of agricultural production nation-wide. Since conventional tillage is not used to prepare the soil, the possibility of allowing it to physically lie fallow (no herbicides) is eliminated, and hence, the use of pesticides becomes obligatory to eliminate weeds prior to planting; this is known as a chemical fallow (see Bonaparte et al., 2012).

The association of people affected by fumigation (GPF¹) emerged in the above context, and their most important action is the ‘Stop Spraying’ campaign, which began in 2005 as an act of solidarity with the struggle of the Mothers of the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood.² They are women who live in a suburb of the province of Córdoba that is severely affected by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, with 200 cases of cancer in a population not exceeding 5000. The fruit of this struggle was the first court case brought against the spraying of agrochemicals in Argentina, and possibly in Latin America (it began on 11 June 2012). The GPF purposefully used the term ‘agrotoxics’, based on the high toxicity of agrochemicals. As reflected in the GPF’s reports, it is a choice based on the desire to communicate their perspective, and not just a linguistic error when referring to ‘agrochemicals’.

The ‘Stop Spraying’ campaign was promoted from the beginning of 2006 by the Rural Reflection Group, and this was later joined by other social and environmental organizations, such as the Nature Protection Centre from the Region of Santa Fe (CEPRONAT), and other groups mainly from the provinces of Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Entre Ríos (Rulli, 2009). The campaign involves the identification of affected populations in areas where agricultural policies and technologies have been implemented. The objective of the campaign is to support self-convened citizens wishing to organize themselves against fumigation. The first step was to collect the testimonies of the affected people. Apart from this, data such as patient surveys and water and soil analyses were obtained to determine the negative effects of products such as glyphosate. The underlying aim is to make national authorities aware of the severe consequences of the use of agrochemical products in townships close to GM soy monocultures, demanding that appropriate action be taken (Rulli, 2009).

Claims against fumigation have multiplied at the same rate as the self-convened citizen groups affected by the situation have become organized. The possibility of contamination by pesticides is gaining attention both nationally and internationally. At the international level, television companies such as BBC London (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042ldz0) could be cited. The conflict is also publicized in a World Atlas of environmental conflicts (http://ejatlas.org/). In light of the findings reported in this Atlas, the BBC has made specific reference to the problems associated with the use of pesticides in Argentina (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2014/03/140319_ciencia_atlas_global_conflictos_ecologicos_np.shtml?ocid=socialflow_twitter). However, despite the dissemination of the topic in the media, GPF claims that neither significant changes in the Government’s attitude nor any efforts made to enact laws aimed at regulating pesticide application have emerged.

The membership of the GPF is difficult to quantify. Some citizens are more involved than others, and their participation varies according to the type of activity in question, such as the ‘Stop Spraying’ campaign or the ‘Stop Spraying Schools’ (rural schools) campaign, creating outreach materials and technical reports, Popular Epidemiology – Citizen Cartography, National Meetings of Physicians of fumigated Towns, GPF Meetings and informative meetings with the community. According to CEPRONAT (23 January 2014), between 30/45 groups in each province, representing 18/20 communities with approximately 80/100 citizens each, are participating actively.

This work presents a novel approach to knowledge articulation between experts, professionals and communities. Parthasarathy’s (2010) framework, used to analyse the strategies employed by activists to break the expertise barrier, is applied to the GPF case, and a new category (‘building expert knowledge’) is added to her four original strategies. With the new category, I argue that regarding expert knowledge, there is an institutionalizing potential behind the social and environmental movements currently emerging in Latin America, many of which are organized in the form of Civic Assemblies. The fifth category shows that such assemblies can articulate a kind of knowledge that may be an appropriate interlocutor for established expert knowledge. The composition of the assemblies is heterogeneous and multi-sectorial; independent expert knowledge is emerging among these movements, bringing with it a particular means of ‘truth production’ on behalf of the communities and Citizens’ Assemblies related to environmental impacts (Svampa and Antonelli, 2009). The term ‘independent’ denotes the presence of self-convened citizens who have no corporate links to publicly distrusted institutions (government, companies, international organisms, etc.).

Approach and strategy

Science and technology studies have suggested that ‘Science, if it can deliver truth, cannot deliver it at the speed of politics’ (Collins and Evans, 2009: 1). Evaluation standards are subject to political considerations and are, therefore, more diffuse and controversial. It is more difficult to find scientific consensus because the race for results requires decisions to be made when there is still little evidence to favour possible agreement, and hence, disputes among experts are becoming increasingly notorious (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993; Jasanoff, 1994; Nelkin, 1995). Currently, people tend to think of experts as being in one group and of the public as being in the other, without taking into account the variety of ways in which people can become experts in a given field. It is, therefore, necessary to consider the distribution of expertise within these groups and the relationships between them (Collins and Evans, 2009).

One of the main features of the GPF is that its members are required to understand and interpret technical and specialist knowledge. Parthasarathy (2010) suggests that the current traditional or technocratic model involves expert knowledge that is inaccessible to the average citizen and that the lay public is often blocked by what might be called ‘expertise barriers’, which exclude non-experts from full participation.³ Although many domains may have high expertise barriers due to the technical nature of the discussion and the social backgrounds of the participants, Parthasarathy’s (2010) framework focuses on the domains of scientific and technological policies:

The high expertise barriers of these domains are difficult for activists to confront for multiple reasons. The traditional participants are usually highly trained and the topics are difficult for non-experts to comprehend. Not only do stakeholders often have high levels of education and professional training, but also highly accredited experts play particularly important roles. (p. 356)

Thus, since the early 1960s, an increasing number of activist groups have become involved in the domains of science and technology policy. These groups have been developing a series of actions that have been partially studied in the United States and in some European countries (Epstein, 1996; Fischer, 2003; Irwin, 1995; Leach et al., 2005; Parthasarathy, 2010), and a new line of analysis of this phenomenon is currently being investigated in Latin America.

In the above context, I consider that the concept of civic epistemologies and co-production could help to reflect on the processes of knowledge production involved in specific controversies (Böschen, 2009; Jasanoff, 2004; Miller, 2008). Civic epistemologies, in the sense given by Miller (2008), are related to the political groups involved in certain specific controversies about policy. In complex political settings, different stakeholders adopt their own civic epistemologies, that is, their particular way of testing and deploying knowledge claims used as a basis for making collective choices within specific conflicts about policy-relevant ideas (Tironi et al., 2013).

As environmental conflicts grow, the number of self-convened citizen groups is also increasing. At present, in Argentina there are approximately 60 base assemblies, organized since 2006 in the Union of Citizen Assemblies (http://www.asambleasciudadanas.org.ar). These attempt to fight industries or technological projects with a high environmental impact and demand appropriate legislation and policies that will address their protests. These groups use assemblies as a way of organizing themselves. They arise from already existing groups (Delamata, 2009) and share traits and dimensions that today cross many Latin American social movements, including territoriality, a combination of direct action and institutional action, democratically run assemblies and a tendency to seek autonomy (Svampa and Antonelli, 2009).

Interestingly, the concept of territory goes beyond geographical space (Sack, 1986). Territoriality is expressed as a permanent state of conflict among political forces aimed at creating, conquering and controlling their territories. This is quite evident in the Latin American context, taking into account its past history of struggles for land rights by indigenous people, first against the conquistadores and later the creoles. In any case, the struggles for land and the use of territories in intra-state contexts are now at the heart of conflicts in Latin America, for example, landless workers’ movements, peasant movements and environmental movements, which fight against unilateral government decisions or the activities of mega-companies. In this regard, and paraphrasing Castells (1998), these movements call into question the excessive use of natural resources, biases in the emplacement of materials or undesirable activities in impoverished communities and peripheral zones, territorial alterations and breakdowns in local economies and ways of life. They also vindicate not only the right to a healthy environment and equity in sharing the load of technological/industrial development but also changes in state legislation and new ways of participating in decision-making.

The notion of territoriality is intertwined with the concept of citizen cartography. Here, it is noted that in the case of the GPF, citizen cartography plays a key role since it not only reflects the characteristics of the population surveyed (socio-demographic data, disease) but also recreates the mental representation of the territories. Broadly speaking, cartography is the production of two-dimensional scale drawings of a section of the Earth’s surface. Scientific and technical progress and the interest of countries in furthering their knowledge about and control over territories (for military, political and fiscal reasons) led – from the eighteenth century onwards – to ever more accurate, detailed depictions based on large-scale topographic charts that were combined to create large maps of entire countries. Mapmaking performed according to established knowledge (according to size and location) grants a privilege to dominant forces by positioning them as privileged centres of knowledge, power, development and production over territories (Corburn, 2005).

The past 20 years have witnessed an explosion of participatory mapping, citizen cartography and initiatives in collective cartography throughout the world (Alshaikh, 2013; Chambers, 2006; Iconoclasistas, 2012; Vajjhala, 2005), in both developing and developed countries (International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 2009). Although citizen cartography may tend towards the objectives of established scientific results, it may also lead to greater social awareness in individual participants. I argue that our representations of the world are extremely important when defining a critical position in respect of that world (Iconoclasistas, 2012). Regarding its methods and results, citizen cartography is transparent, transparency being understood as the ability to display and promote an understanding of the production process. Thus, citizen cartography attempts to document the process of the creation of maps and places both the process and the resulting map at the disposal of all citizens; its strength lies in the collaborative work of many members of the territory.

Mapmaking acts as a powerful metaphor for understanding the production of scientific knowledge itself since in the mapmaking process some information is selected while other is excluded (Gieryn, 1995: 406). Thus, the metaphor shows science

as an ‘empty map’ that becomes filled in by certain groups or institutions in order to gain influence over a particular audience. The mapmaking of science is the decision to include and exclude certain information, and thereby to create boundaries around what counts as science. (Corburn, 2005: 177)

Accordingly, it may be suggested that citizen cartography is an important tactic for communities since it empowers groups within the broader community and highlights their knowledge of the scientific controversy in question.

Methods and structure

The best strategy for this research, which aims to elucidate both a situation and a process, is to particularize the problem and consider a generalization intrinsic to the case itself. This study used active interviewing (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995), in which the participants were active and not passive. Accordingly, the person interviewed is not considered a mere repository of data; rather, both subjects – the interviewer and the interviewee – are active participants and contributors to knowledge formation.

A sampling was made by theoretical saturation and data redundancy, for example, when the interviews revealed already-identified repeated patterns or themes. This is not a statistical representation; instead, a strategic selection of cases was made, following theoretical sampling guidelines (Glaser, 1965; Glaser and Strauss, 1967). A review of the documentation, which contained information about activity logs (i.e. citizen assembly meetings) that could not be observed directly, was of great use. For this work, I selected interviews from the groups that have been most active and visible in protests against spraying. Six active interviews were held with representatives of these groups, and many interviews and public communications available on social network sites (e.g. blogs, videos, musical and artistic output, outreach materials and technical reports created by GPF) and from the University Network for Environment and Health and Reports from the National Meetings of Physicians of Fumigated Towns were analysed.

The GPF case is analysed using the framework of Parthasarathy (2010) to categorize the strategies used by activists to break through the expertise barrier. Parthasarathy identifies four categories of action: (1) deploying established expertise, (2) introducing new kinds of facts, (3). introducing new policy-making logics and (4) attacking bureaucracy. She applies her analytical framework comparatively to two cases of activism. These are breast cancer action (BCA) and activists against life-form patenting. Here, I pick up on the proposal made by Parthasarathy to extend the analysis to other cases of interest (see Parthasarathy, 2010: 328). Added to the above four categories is a fifth: building expert knowledge.

2. Analysis

In Table 1, the left-hand column contains Parthasarathy’s framework, while the shaded section represents the proposed analysis for the GPF case, with an additional category analysing the strategies used by activists to break the expertise barrier.

Table 1.

Attempts by the GPF to break the expertise barrier.

Activists’ attempts to break the expertise barrier (Parthasarathy, 2010)	How the ‘Fumigated Towns Group’ does it
Deploying established expertise	Using translational figures
	Learning insider language
Introducing new types of facts	Deploying environmental, epidemiological and health evidence
Introducing new policy-making logics	Arguing that ethically problematic technologies should be considered in an integrated way and asserting that the current agricultural production model is based on values that run against public interest
Attacking bureaucracy	Challenging the rules of participation in technical decision-making processes
Building expert knowledge	Creating collaborative research relationships
	Developing proposals such as alternatives to current production models
	Using citizen cartography

Deploying established expertise

The use of translational figures by activists is related to gaining support from insiders in science by taking advantage of those who are sympathetic to the cause. These insiders can facilitate people’s knowledge of highly technical and specialized language, such as that involved in science and technology issues. In the case of the GPF, the members need to master specialized terminology and be knowledgeable of chemistry, toxicology and medicine.

Dr Medardo Ávila Vázquez is a Professor at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) Argentina, who co-founded the ‘Physicians of Fumigated Towns’ group, and he played an important translational role in the early stages of the movement. He was the claimant of the injunction related to spraying activities in the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood in February 2008, when he was the Health Secretary for the Municipality of Córdoba. As a result, prosecutor Matheu ordered studies to be carried out on the courtyards of local houses. These confirmed the presence of endosulfan and glyphosate. Landholders and sheds were raided, and agrochemicals and empty drums were found. As a result, in addition to limiting spraying, a court in the Province of Córdoba began to prosecute a soybean producer, and the owner and the pilot of the aeroplane.

Another important figure in translation (of insider’s language) is Andres E. Carrasco, a Professor of embryology, Principal Investigator at the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and Director of the Molecular Embryology Laboratory. In April 2009, he presented research results regarding the lethal effects of glyphosate on embryos. When Carrasco first published his research, none of the companies or agencies related to the agricultural sector picked up on the theme, but later the Environmental Lawyers Association appealed before the Supreme Court for constitutional legal protection, asking for a ban on the use/sale of Roundup until its effects on health and the environment had been fully investigated. On 20 April, the Ministry of Defence banned soybean planting on government property, alerting stakeholders to the harmful effects of agrochemicals. It was an unprecedented political event: a National Agency acting on the perceived dangers of agrochemicals.

At that time, businesses, chambers of agroindustry, the media and political operators released their own communications with a campaign in defence of agrochemicals and simultaneously began a campaign to discredit criticism.⁴ Carrasco reported that he was threatened anonymously and had been subjected to a media smear campaign as a result of the dissemination of his research into the health effects of the current agricultural model. ‘I did not discover anything new. I only confirmed what other scientists had found […]. There is scientific evidence and, especially, there are hundreds of people who are living proof of this health emergency’, declared Carrasco.⁵ Besides providing scientific results (one of his most recent publications dating from 2012; see López et al., 2012), Carrasco became one of the most active researchers in spreading knowledge in both specialized fields and public arenas about the effects of agrochemicals on the population’s health, lecturing affected groups and offering various outreach activities to the community. He also publishes articles of opinion and excerpts from his own research on his personal website.

Considering that there are many social actors involved, other translational figures with a significant role in GPF’s struggle could be mentioned. However, for this analysis, we have selected public figures who have interacted most with the GPF and have performed highly coordinated and cooperative work with the GPF. Besides the use of translational figures, the GPF has also developed a series of actions to acquire the insider language and concepts used in the area of agrochemicals. Many researchers also typically acknowledge the gradual acquisition of scientific competence by key activists (Epstein, 1996; Fischer, 2003; Irwin, 1995). Some such actions include the ‘Stop Spraying’ and the ‘Stop Spraying Schools’ campaigns. These campaigns have achieved many of their objectives, such as the creation of materials for distribution at informative meetings within the community, as well as their dissemination in social networks, blogs, videos, music and art. The purpose of these outreach materials is to bolster citizen’s awareness about the issue, to provide information about how agrochemicals should be handled and to offer key safety measures about handling them, or in a worst-case scenario, how to act in case of poisoning.

Introducing new types of facts

As noted by Parthasarathy, in some cases, especially in environmental areas, individuals and groups have even tried to influence the policy process by engaging in ‘citizen science’ to generate their own technical evidence (Irwin, 1995). The GPF also tried to penetrate expertise barriers by introducing new kinds of evidence about the environmental effects of fumigations. Traditionally, epidemiological research has not been used in Argentina to establish relationships between exposure to pesticides and certain diseases (such as leukaemia, cancer, lupus, purpura, tumours, hepatitis, autoimmune haemolytic anaemia, endocrine disorders). One of the most important goals of the ‘Stop Spraying’ campaign is to collect the testimonies of affected people and data such as patient surveys and water and soil analyses that spotlight the negative effects of the use of products such as glyphosate.

In late 2001, in the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood (a suburb of the province of Córdoba), Sofia Gatica, the mother of a daughter who died soon after birth because of renal insufficiency, realized that many women wore scarves (covering their baldness) and several children wore masks. For nearly 4 months, she carried out door-to-door research, compiling a list of each of the sick neighbours, noting their name, age, address, diagnosis and the hospital where they were attended. Together with two other neighbours, Sofia Gatica presented the list to the Health Ministry, together with a map indicating the location of each patient and a set of soil, air, electrical transformer and water analyses. More people became aware of the situation and formed a group to pressure the authorities to carry out an in-depth study. The first analysis revealed the presence of agrochemicals such as endosulfan in the water. A few days after its publication, the Minister sent an interdisciplinary team (several physicians, a social worker, a psychologist, etc.) to conduct a survey of 150 people, but not all residents were surveyed and the study was, therefore, incomplete (Rulli, 2009).

One group of mothers conducted their own survey, and this demonstrated that the situation was extremely serious. They realized that the authorities had concealed some of the evidence. ‘We had to go to court as plaintiffs […]. We know that environmental degradation is inevitable, it is the price we have to pay for supposed progress that benefits very few people’ (statements by the mothers’ group for the Rural Reflection Group Report; see Rulli, 2009: 167). As a result, they presented the Córdoba City Council with a demand for the following studies to be carried out: an analysis of tank sediment, soil, electric transformers, air and magnetic fields. Initially, the mothers were unaware of the causes of the increase in diseases in their neighbourhood. Later, when they had created a map showing the location of the sick people, they realized that the people affected were living closer to the heavily sprayed crops than the rest of the population.

An important part of the results achieved by the mothers’ group was the creation of the map. The exercise of representing the data collected on a map can be considered an example of tactical ‘credibility struggles’ (Epstein, 1996). In Steve Epstein’s (1996) theorization, scientific ‘credibility’ refers to ‘the believability of claims and claims-makers. More specifically, credibility describes the capacity of claims-makers to garner support for their arguments, legitimize those arguments as authoritative knowledge, and present themselves as the sort of people who can voice the truth’ (p. 3). Citizen cartography and community health surveys were two of the most powerful actions used by these mothers to disseminate environmental, epidemiological and health evidence. The success of these actions probably influenced other communities and stakeholders with similar problems, who began to replicate the experience.

Essentially, citizen cartography has the same characteristics as collective mapping (Iconoclasistas, 2012) or social cartography. Through the collective production of maps, citizen cartography contributes to the communication process among participants and highlights the different types of knowledge that are amalgamated to reach a collective image of the territory. There are many similarities with the characteristics of popular epidemiology (Fischer, 2003). The basic strategy of popular epidemiology is the use and development of ‘community health surveys’.⁶ As Fischer (2003) puts it,

The most important aspect of such surveys, however, is their actual empirical impact on the understanding of an epidemiological problem. Such research has the ability to bring to the fore environmental data and circumstances – the facts of the situation – that traditional studies cannot or will not reach. (p. 156)

Introducing new policy-making logics

Like the two cases analysed by Parthasarathy (2010), the GPF calls into question the linear model of scientific and technological development and proposes more iterative processes that do not take the social benefits of innovation for granted. The GPF argues that the current agricultural production model, in particular the model used for transgenic soybeans, runs up against public interest since it is harmful to the health of the population and the environment and is expensive (not considered) over time. The central argument suggests that ethically problematic technologies should be considered in an integrated way. In the case of GM soy, this means that not only the assessment of the impact of transgenic seeds should be considered but also the whole technology package. This package comprises a set of transgenic seeds plus agrochemicals plus fertilizers, and it has a variety of impacts. Some such impacts are better formulated within the framing used by the GPF, such as the impact on the health of the population (‘agrochemicals kill’). Other impacts, such as changes in agricultural and livestock practices and the destruction of other forms of production, are currently being investigated. These practices, resulting in monoculture, are causing a chain reaction throughout the economy and society, and its outcome is still uncertain. For example, advances in agriculture and the subsequent need for more space for crops require the confinement of livestock and a change in livestock production from grazing to feedlot mode (Genoves, J. Agricultural Expert, National Institute of Agricultural Technology, 20 June 2013, personal communication).

It is worth mentioning that while awaiting the court’s decision regarding the demands of the mothers’ group, the Minister for Agriculture published a resolution that approved a new soybean ‘Intact RR2’ characterized by glyphosate resistance and the production of an insecticidal toxin (Bt). When tabling the RR2 seed, the Minister for Agriculture, Norberto Yauhar, announced a new law to limit ‘Own Use’ (the practice of allowing some seeds to be saved for the next harvest) in order to ‘show the world that [the government] recognizes the intellectual value of technology developed by the private sector’.⁷ The GPF considered this an act of provocation and a veiled message from the government. Distrust towards the authorities, as well as the experts who advised them, increased accordingly.

Attacking bureaucracy

Since bureaucracies play central roles in the domains of scientific and technological policies and have traditionally established and maintained their political legitimacy by emphasizing the rationality of their technical decision-making processes (Parthasarathy, 2010), activists have realized the importance of attacking bureaucratic rules. Accordingly, the GPF have focused their attention on the development of a draft law that would introduce innovations into current legislation in order to ensure that none of the agrochemical spraying activities will affect the population’s health. As a consequence of the presentation of the above legislative proposals to the local authorities and the organization of multiple citizens’ protests, many municipalities have established ordinances (local laws of limited scope) designed to move the crop line away from city limits. Some provinces, such as Entre Ríos, have issued increasingly restrictive legislation that even imposes an obligation to post warnings about fumigations 48 hours beforehand. Thus, they can ensure that any nearby population has been notified. Judicial presentations and claims have increased in the sphere of justice, but with variable success. In some cases, judges have ordered a halt in the application of these agrochemicals on the outskirts of affected territories, encouraging self-convened citizens.

Another front that has emerged within the legal framework involves court submissions demanding the fulfilment of existing legislative norms. As mentioned, one of the most important milestones achieved by the GPF was the first trial in Argentina against three people accused of inappropriate fumigation of fields bordering populated areas. The court case began on 11 June 2012, and the sentence was released on 22 August 2012. During these proceedings, a scientific report was presented that showed that at least 114 children, from a total of 142 living in the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood, had agrochemicals in their bodies. As a consequence of lawsuits filed by the neighbours, this study was conducted between 2010 and 2011 as part of a plan set up by the Argentinean government to determine the district’s health status.

The High Court of Córdoba condemned Francisco Parra, a farmer, and Edgardo Pancello, a pilot, to a 3-year suspended prison sentence on charges of inappropriate use of agrochemicals and malicious contamination in the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood. The third defendant, the farmer Jorge Gabrielli, was acquitted owing to lack of evidence. In addition to being conditionally sentenced to 3 years in prison, the men had to do 10 hours of community service per week in health-related public welfare institutions. Moreover, they were forbidden to use agrochemicals for 8 years. In the case of Parra, he was unanimously considered the perpetrator under Article 55 of the law of Serious Crimes Act, while the majority declared Pancello jointly responsible. The Mothers of the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood were disappointed with the sentence, considering that it did not match the severity to the offence; by contrast, in its communication, the GPF declared itself satisfied with the result, specifically praising the precedence set by this case.

Currently, neither significant changes in the national Government’s attitude nor efforts to enact national laws have been observed. In contrast, several municipalities have assumed this role, through by-laws, but these are only local and of limited scope. Nevertheless, as a consequence of citizens’ mobilizations, the government has begun to conduct a few public hearings about the problems involved in the use of agrochemicals.⁸ In these, the real participants are the experts and politicians delivering the presentations, and although the public may voice its opinions, such contributions have no legal standing. Despite their non-legal nature, I consider that they could well open the way highlighting the real interest of citizens in becoming involved in public political decisions and achieving full participation.

Building expert knowledge

While it is true that this additional category could not arise without the previous four, its formulation as a separate entity is necessary. Owing to their interactions, some actions included in the categories proposed by Parthasarathy have achieved added value, not in the sense of an increase in knowledge, but in that of a transformation of such knowledge. This knowledge, built collectively, could be characterized as being potentially compatible with scientific knowledge. However, the emphasis focuses on the process through which knowledge is produced and does not always follow the internal rules of science. The diversity of actors involved and the variety of types of knowledge entangled in furthering mutual knowledge allow the emergence of innovation and creative ways of generating knowledge.

The statements of affected people tend to be articulated with scientific evidence and to be related to the damage caused by the technological packages that accompany RR soy cultivation. In this sense, the ‘Physicians of Fumigated Towns’ Group (MPF, its Spanish acronym for ‘Médicos de Pueblos Fumigados’), as a link between the concerned communities and a number of researchers, academics and professionals who create tools to give voice to the testimonies of those affected in expert debates, is exemplary. As an MPF member says,

MPF is simply a place of discovery that different people, in different places and at different moments have been constructing for the same goal, without knowing it. Starting from MPF, knowledge gained the ability to become conglomerated, and to be outreached. (Loyacomo, N. personal communication, 21 August 2011)

The MPF initiative is interlaced in tandem with the efforts of the ‘University Network for Environment and Health’. The two groups met at the School of Medical Sciences, at National University of Córdoba (UNC) in 2010 and at National University of Rosario (UNR) in 2011. The ‘First National meeting of Physicians of Fumigated Towns’ took place in August 2010 at the UNC and hosted over 160 participants from eight provinces, as well participants from six other state universities. According to ‘The 1st Report of the National Meeting of Physicians of Fumigated Towns’ (MPF, 2010), the call was directed to physicians, health team members and researchers from different disciplines at national level to deliver their experiences, data, proposals and scientific papers. This was done in order to generate a space for analysis and academic and scientific reflection on the health status of the fumigated towns and to listen and support members of the health teams who have been denouncing and confronting this problem. Researchers and professional members of this network are involved in the claims of the affected communities, providing research results and academic and scientific arguments and, at the same time, collaborating to systematize the information provided by self-convened citizens, who in some cases have been involved for more than 10 years. This is the case of the Mothers of the Ituzaingó Anexo Neighbourhood, who began to mobilize in 2002. In other communities, it remains an incipient process, but thanks to the previous work of some of the groups affected, citizen mobilization is now growing exponentially.

Many of these researchers and professional members helped the GPF to reinterpret the data, develop the capacity to collect additional information and interpret this information credibly both inside and outside communities. These exchanges create significant collaborative research relationships, out of which develop various proposals, such as alternatives to current production models. The proposals include demands for the labelling of genetically modified organism (GMO) products (transparency, providing the right to choose), for the protection of food sovereignty, for support for local farmers, for the promotion of organic solutions (including ‘green’ pesticides and fertilizers), for the development of educational agro-ecological initiatives and so on. The GPF not only questions the production model in terms of its content but also in terms of the processes involved. In all cases, the proposals involve the conception of ‘open source’ information development. Their implications are far-reaching and also modulate the forms of internal organization of the groups studied, which include assembly democracy, horizontality and a tendency to autonomy. The notion of open access, which goes hand-in-hand with the concept of transparency and the right to choose, is used not only to make practices, connections and locations visible but also to denounce the absence of transparency underlying established knowledge.

In 2012, the National Audit Office of Argentina (AGN) released a report that offers a good summary of the most important contributions of the movement with respect to specific data and scientific evidence. Annex VI ‘Social Mobilization for the Problem of Agrochemicals’ and Annex VII ‘Academic Reports – CONICET/UNL’ (AGN, 2012: 94−101) address the statements and reports from GPF/MPF and public hospitals about cases of babies with congenital malformations whose mothers have a history of direct exposure to pesticides and also mention empirical studies and reports from the National University of Litoral, the National University of Rio Cuarto and the National University of Buenos Aires. This audit was a consequence of the mechanism of ‘AGN participatory planning’, and the case was proposed by civil society. In the final report, the AGN notes the ‘lack of coordination with provincial and/ or municipal authorities’ and highlights the evident ‘legislative anarchy’ and disparity in the different levels of jurisdiction (national, provincial, municipal). The report explains that agrochemical pollution can be seen as occult poisoning because repeated long-term exposure leads to chronic toxicity, causing injury and/or death. Transgenic crops subjected to systematic fumigation cover 22 million hectares belonging to the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Entre Ríos, Santiago del Estero, San Luis, Chaco, Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, La Pampa and Corrientes (this region is inhabited by 12 million people).

The GPF is an exemplary case of knowledge articulation between experts, professionals and communities. The composition of the assemblies reflects a heterogeneous and multi-sectorial character that combines, first, the presence of middle classes, generally comprising broad professional sectors and, second, the presence of peasant and indigenous organizations (who have situational knowledge owing to their special relationship with the land and the territory). Together, they articulate an innovative kind of knowledge that can act as an appropriate interlocutor for traditional expert knowledge in a complementary sense. This is collaborative methodological innovation (see Fischer, 2003: 168) as regards pesticide-due pollution in Argentina.

3. Discussion and future research

Expert knowledge does not speak with a single voice (Epstein, 1996; Fischer, 2003; Irwin, 1995; López Cerezo and Luján, 2004). There is growing resistance to allowing scientists’ voices to be more powerful than those of other social actors (Martin, 1991). From this perspective, the need to establish an ‘extended peer community’ is quite apparent (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993), and this means that participants who have not been considered previously would be required to transmit their skills and to ensure the quality of the results. The function of quality assurance and critical assessment can no longer be performed only by a restricted group of insiders. On the one hand, it is necessary to see the conflicts between scientific and non-scientific knowledge as a problem and, on the other, we must consider the internal plurality and conflict of scientific knowledge itself (Santos, 2004). Although this is an unconsolidated paradigm, there are several academic and scientific research works that have followed the same lines as the concerns expressed here (Bijker, 2009; Corburn, 2005; Davies, 2013; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Kurian and Wright, 2012; Leach et al., 2005; Parthasarathy, 2007).

Applying Parthasarathy’s framework in the case of the GPF revealed its usefulness for analysing the strategies employed by activists to break the expertise barrier in the Latin American context. As demonstrated in this article, current social and environmental movements, many of which are organized in the form of Civic Assemblies, articulate an innovative kind of knowledge that can be an appropriate interlocutor for traditional expert knowledge. This new form of knowledge is captured by the creation of an additional category in Parthasarathy’s framework to allow an analysis of GPF. Here, stress is placed on how the statements of the affected people are linked to scientific evidence and are related to the damage caused by the technological packages used in RR soy cultivation. Such exchanges create significant collaborative research relationships that can be considered a collaborative methodological innovation. In the case of the GPF, we see how social movements and stakeholders have emerged spontaneously as an ‘extended peer community’.

At the same time, these collaborative research relationships are used not only to denounce the damage caused by the technological packages accompanying GMO soy cultivation but also to develop proposals such as alternatives to the current production model. Although it is true that at national level the claims of the GPF are not being addressed, many changes and developments in legislation or government support have emerged at provincial and municipal levels. As a result of citizens’ mobilizations, seven provinces (out of 23: Salta, San Luis, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Formosa, Buenos Aires and Chaco) already have by-laws that limit or regulate crop spraying.⁹

The concept of co-production (Jasanoff, 2004) allows us to meditate on the knowledge production processes involved in the previous section since it emphasizes the constant intertwining of the cognitive, the material, the social and the normative. Co-production ‘is not about ideas alone; it is equally about concrete, physical things. It is not only about how people organize or express themselves, but also about what they value and how they assume responsibility for their inventions’ (Jasanoff, 2004: 6). In the case analysed here, citizen cartography allows us to visualize the possible existence of aggressive or toxic agents in the community and can also play the role of fostering a more aware and engaged citizenship. I agree with Fischer (2003) that this type of involvement can have a transformative and empowering impact on community members and could be even more important than conventional pressure tactics. Citizens engaged in activities such as community health surveys come to understand the responsibility of governments and industry in environmental degradation. Popular epidemiology can also be a strategy for political empowerment (Fischer, 2003: 157). In this sense, the use of citizen cartography by the GPF as a strategy of resistance to established knowledge is especially significant, insofar that it achieves an intertwining of the cognitive, the material, the social and the normative.

One powerful line of enquiry that could be explored would be geared towards the epistemological nature of collectively constructed knowledge. The starting point of this idea can be found in the additional category (see section ‘Building expert knowledge’). Increasingly, citizens’ assemblies use collective forms of knowledge building to resist established knowledge, and with this analysis, I hope to have contributed to elucidating this pressing issue.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Ana Cuevas Badallo for her helpful comments on the earlier versions of this article, as well as the anonymous reviewers who helped in improving this article.

Funding

This work received financial support from University Faculty Training Programme (FPU), Ministry of Education of Spain.

Notes

Author biography

Jorgelina Sannazzaro is Professor at the National University of Rosario (Argentina), Fellow Researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Studies, University of Salamanca, Spain (ECyT – USAL) and Visiting Fellow at Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, Brighton. Her current research focuses on public participation in socio-environmental conflicts, science policy and democracy.

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