A carregar...
Publicação
Tilting at 'Nuclearmills'?
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 381.91 KB | Adobe PDF |
Autores
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
In 1975, the death of dictator Francisco Franco opened the door to a turbulent period known as the “Spanish Transition.” In the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, national politics, political violence and social demands were interwoven with international shifts in science and technology and global debates on “energy transitions.” In close dialogue with foreign environmental groups, the anti-nuclear movement in Spain deployed a large repertoire of collective action; it ranged from pleasant activities to violent direct actions against nuclear technologies, but also included the making of technological alternatives. Counter-culture activists and counter-experts opposed nuclear energy and promoted renewable energy as two sides of the same coin. This paper explores the pioneering (and networked) initiatives of an anarchist-oriented group called Self-Managed Radical Alternative Technologies, created in 1976, and a group of young engineers who founded the cooperative Ecotècnia, which was behind the construction of the first commercial wind turbine in Catalonia in 1984. The paper focuses on the transnational circulation of grassroots knowledge, the epistemics of resistance, and the development of wind energy technologies as “technologies of protest.” Technologies of protest illuminate how the social construction of technology is intertwined with what I call the “social destruction of technology.”
Descrição
Ecotècnia also sought funding from the government. On November 14, 1981, Ecotècnia won a public competition for the design, construction and installation of a 10 kW wind turbine. The competition had been opened by the Center for Industrial-Technological Development under the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Energy, and was supported by the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Associations (Aerogenerador ). As the public funding was delayed and blocked for bureaucratic reasons, Ecotècnia decided to push this project forward with its own resources.
This research has been funded by: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (through CIUHCT, UIDB/00286/2020).
@2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Palavras-chave
Alternative technology Anti-nuclear movement Counter-culture Renewable energy transitions Social destruction of technology