ABSTRACT
This chapter draws some general conclusions on the logics of “contentious expertise” that emerged from the comparative analyses. It shows the processual aspect of expertise emerged in environmental conflicts as well as the delicate relation that expertise has with political activism and single-issue engagement. The empirical outcomes tell us that part of the explanation can be found in different disciplinary background and professional constraints. At the same time, while professional expertise can be “ignorant” on some issues, laypeople expertise is in some ways related to the virtues of political participation. To conclude, the entanglement of the conceptual tools of contentious politics and sociology of expertise suggests important paths for the reciprocal analysis of knowledge processes and collective action. In their way of putting together different forms of knowledge, broader social needs and challenges toward the established co-production of scientific and political authorities, social movements show us that, rather than being an individual property or skill, expertise is better understood as the outcome of a long-term collective process of participation to knowledge production and therefore definitively exposed to dynamics of democratic accountability and legitimation as much as to its tensions and conflicts.
