Work in Progress

Jaume Valentines Álvarez (Universidade Nova de Lisboa): “Tecnologies de la protesta: llocant sabers llecs i verds a les transicions ibériques”

Abstract : In the midst of the 1973 oil crisis, the outbreak of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal (1974) and the death of dictator Francisco Franco in Spain (1975) opened the door to the collapse of the longest right-wing dictatorships in Europe. The global debate on energy and technology arose in this context in close relation to the national political struggles. In dialogue with the European new social movements, counter-culture and environmental groups boomed and opposed to national energy programs underway and nuclear infrastructures (power plants, uranium mines and transport facilities) as they might represent both a fascist legacy and the embodiment of capitalist and communist policies.  

The grassroots movements in Portugal and Spain appropriated a heterogeneous repertoire of collective action, ranging from direct actions to leisure activities to alternative technologies. In collaboration with dissident experts and engineering students, anti-nuclear groups were engaged in transnational networks, shared technical information, cast doubt on scientific authority and promoted renewable energies and self-managed technologies, which were to pave the way towards more egalitarian societies and more democratic politics. This paper focuses on the transnational dimension of the anti-nuclear movement in South-Western Europe during the 1970s and 1980s in order to explore the use of “counter-culture forms of resistance” as epistemic tools, the circulation of “grassroots knowledge” and the promotion of innovative technologies such as solar devices and wind turbines as “protest technologies”.

Jaume Valentines Álvarez (Barcelona, 1977): Research Fellow / Adjunct Assistant Professor Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia Universidade Nova de Lisboa.