ABSTRACT
The long campaign against the project to construct a waste incinerator near Case Passerini in the so-called “Florentine Plain” has involved a multiplicity of actors, from experts to activists and concerned citizens, participating in the process of expertise construction and diffusion. By exploring the interaction of the technological aspects of the project – a waste incinerator plant – and its social context, the social and political environment of the Florentine Plain, I will try to explain how conflict and participation spreads in a political process connoted by high cognitive costs. If techno-scientific arguments and institutional delegation to experts are commonly used to enclose political discussion, in this case, a set of conditions – previous similar conflicts, presence of grassroots movements with specific expertise on waste – produced a cycle of contention led by new citizen committees. The analysis sheds light on the mechanisms and dynamics affecting experts, citizens and activists in the development of a collective mobilization seeking to democratize a technical arena. Evidences show that citizen mobilization against the incinerator in Case Passerini can be considered a case where laypeople were able to politicize an issue that was confined in a technocratic discourse.
