ID: 1659
Presenting Author: Renata Moreira Fontoura
Session: 634 - The Other Side of Misinformation: When Collectors Create Bias
Status: pending
Area of expertise: Anthropology of Environmental Development
Based on a critical reflection on environmental impact assessment (EIA) practices, this proposal explores how entrenched epistemic hierarchies shape the daily practices of interdisciplinary work. While environmental governance celebrates multidisciplinarity, the social expertise remains marginalized, often framed as secondary forms of knowledge. This presentation invites a discussion of how social practitioners navigate symbolic violence, ethical tensions, and professional precarity in the construction of an idealized and hermetic “Corporate Environmental Science”. Ultimately, this analysis seeks to illuminate the liminal position of social experts, revealing the unequal knowledge regimes within the environmental assessment industry. The discussion proposed is part of the work Renata has been developing throughout her PhD research. Renata's PhD thesis examines how the marginalization experienced by social experts prompts them to engage in everyday, subtle forms of resistance to confront this marginalization and to establish themselves as a distinct professional field. In this way, they employ various strategic maneuvers that go beyond mere open dissent, or passive acceptance, negotiating with the environment market while resisting the forces acting upon them, with the aim of preserving the authenticity of their work. Through these processes, diverse forms of participatory environmental development are continuously shaped.
PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Montreal.