CAMFEM · Collective Action and Memory in the French Environmental Movement

Collective Action and Memory in the French Environmental Movement

Project context and objectives My research project pursues my long-term focus on civil society mobilisation in France, particularly with regard to environmental problematics, allied to developing interests in civil disobedience, the importance of collective memory, and the use of the court as venue for political challenge. Intra-European mobility enabled me to access key sites of social struggle, affording opportunities for qualitative data gathering, principally participant observation and interview fieldwork with civil society actors. The host laboratory afforded first-class support and resources, as well as opportunities for collaborative investigation and research production, notably with Dr Sylvie Ollitrault (CNRS-CRAPE). The CAMFEM project stems from concerns throughout my research activity with, on the one hand, the forms and outcomes of civic mobilisation and, on the other, the structure of relationships between state and civil society over contentious policy decisions, particularly those with perceived negative impacts on the physical environment. In an era defined above all by the effects of climate change and technological development on the social and economic organisation of society, the aims of my research project concentrate on furthering our collective understanding of: (i) the strategies, organisation and relationships with law of contestatory civil society organisations; (ii) the configurations of institutional power in the formation and implementation of a highly strategic area of (trans)national public policy; (iii) the exploitation of the trial court arena as a forum for the development of challenge to public policy, and the symbolic importance of trials for the development of the cognitive praxis - the ‘meaning-making’ - of social movements; (iv) the importance of movement tradition and collective memory in explanations of movement tactical choice. Project work My focus is on a contextually-grounded, comparative, qualitative research, questioning theoretical constructs through the close analysis of textual construction and narrativisation, and empirical enquiry via event observation and interview data collection. In practice, this has meant undertaking interviews with numerous actors from across civil society organisations engaged in public campaigns (against genetically-modified crops, against nuclear waste shipments, against airport construction, against advertising, and so on), observation of criminal trials (in France and, once, in Belgium), and observation of numerous meetings, demonstrations, campaign meetings, and rallies. Project results The key findings include: (i) the structural differences between criminal justice systems will have a significant impact on the prosecution outcomes of activists tried for non-violent direct action; (ii) however, the systemic properties of the judicial system do not seem to influence the likelihood that activists will undertake covert action; (iii) for social movement actors, the socialisation of criminal activity is one of the fundamental stakes of the trial process; (iv) expert testimony has both instrumental and symbolic functions, negotiating between identity and action; (v) at stake in trial testimony are the ways in which social claims are made, how scientific knowledge is produced and situated in the everyday, and how scales and registers of experience are constructed and negotiated; (vi) movement tradition and collective memory act as a bridge between structural and agency-oriented explanations of tactical choice. Socio-economic impact Taking as its base the importance and the prevalence of the criminal trials of citizen groups for their participation in 'direct' political action in order to create public challenges to public policy, the impact of my research is defined as: (i) creating a cross-national and inter-professional forum for discussion and mutual learning; (ii) participating in public events, including trials and media representations; and (iii) engaging with civil society representatives on strategic learning. More specifically, in collaboration with Sylvie Ollitrault, I ran a two-day workshop at Rennes in March 2012 which brought together academics, law practitioners and members of civil society organisations (25 in all, including representatives of Greenpeace and of law practices) from France, Belgium and the UK. The aim was to create and foster dialogue; the cross-national comparative perspective is designed to enable mutual learning and understanding, where practices and processes are common, where they diverge, and how actors in each system aim to cater for (and perhaps counter) them. The format was a series of round tables, with participants preparing short interventions in order to stimulate and provoke discussion, within a clearly defined theoretical, experiential and cross-cultural framework. My role was one of organisation, facilitation and interpreting, where necessary. The public discussion of my research on trial defences, legal systems and environmental problematics in mixed audiences is integral to expanding the range of impact. Notably, I was a studio guest on 'Du Grain à moudre l’été', a 45 minute magazine programme on France Culture radio, to discuss civil disobedience and the Pussy riot trial, in August 2012. I was the invited speaker before a large public audience (over 100) in Rennes, the day before the trial of seven members of an anti-nuclear movement (known as GANVA, Groupe d’actions non-violentes anti-nucléaires) for their occupation of electricity pylons in January 2011. Equally, I participated in a workshop of legal practitioners and academics at the British Academy in April 2012 on Climate Change Litigation, Policy and Mobilisation, delivering a paper on climate change defences in criminal prosecutions in France and the UK, and discussing the findings (concerning scale and negotiation of proximity, private property and the commons, and on movement traditions as a key factor in the social construction of grievance) to a public audience on the second day of the workshop. Following the preliminary court hearings for 11 Belgian civil society actors engaged in direct action against genetically-modified crops (with the criminal trial due to be held in January 2013), I participated in a seminar with legal professionals and civil society actors, and ran a seminar with the defendants on activists strategies, in Brussels, in July 2012. My contributions were based on my empirical observation of activist trials and the academic literature, and included a discussion on the implications of a 'necessity' or lawful excuse defence, or of 'freedom of speech' defences) in constituting a public policy challenge.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union