By HENRI ACSELRAD & KARINE L. NARAHARA*
Presentation of the recently released book by Bianca Dieile da Silva
In the wake of the 12a bidding round by the National Petroleum Agency (ANP), a new horizon of concerns has emerged regarding the impacts of the oil industry. In parallel with the offer of “new frontiers” of exploration, warnings have been made about the risks of a particularly dangerous technology: high-pressure hydraulic fracturing for the extraction of gas and oil, better known as fracking.
The risks to public health justified the alarm. The famous scene of water coming out of the tap on fire, taken from the documentary gas country, by Josh Fox, spread across social media at the same speed as the music industry fracking expanded across different North American landscapes.
The book In the heart of the earth, resulting from research that received an honorable mention in the 2024 Capes Thesis Award, reviews in depth discussions on the use of fracking in Brazil. Based on the literature on the social construction of risks, the author discusses how the limits are drawn for the acceptance of technical practices that release polluting substances into the soil, the atmosphere, waterways and living organisms. The work is part of recent efforts to treat scientific controversies as a specific object of the history and sociology of intellectual life.
Innovative research such as that of Bianca Dieile has advanced the analysis of how scientific statements are developed, how the facts under study are constructed, how evidence is presented and how conflicts are resolved. The “choice of weapons” in this field is determined by the definition of a problem and its conceptualization. Although science thrives on controversy, in the case of high-impact technologies, different arenas are crossed by the discursive production of scientists, but also of science communicators, journalists, environmentalists, representatives of social movements or think tanks business.
Argumentative strategies legitimize or delegitimize subjects, articulate the scales of the processes under discussion, dramatize or dedramatize effects. There is always a presupposed audience that is taken as a witness, but also seen as a resource to be mobilized in the discussion. Scientific controversies sometimes change their form when they spill over into other arenas, involving the interests of broader social groups and governments. The boundaries between the different arenas and the very definition of the appropriate space for resolving conflicts are then called into question.
Controversy is part of a sequence of interactions in the fabric of scientific and intellectual production in specific contexts that integrate the historical conditions of expression of intellectual activity. It can occur through dialogic processes through rules accepted by all, with common objectives that value the institutional and peaceful dimension of knowledge. But it can also acquire a argumentative character that includes a competitive dimension in which the actors of scientific exchanges give each other credit and discredit each other.
By showing how new oil technologies advance – or, in this case, try to advance, since the use of fracking never took effect in the country – Bianca Dieile shows us how old strategies are updated or transformed to try to neutralize debate and social protest. Considering the peculiarities of the “natural gas” market, the author maps the advancement of this “new frontier”, showing how this debate fits into a global scenario of controversies and heated discussions regarding the dangers associated with the use of the technique.
One of the book's major contributions is its analysis of how academics are involved in these controversies; an extensive network of researchers from various institutions has been established in the country, with institutional and financial support from both the State and the companies themselves. Interweaving the threads of this network, the author presents a detailed description, with ethnographic overtones, of how a “revolving door” mechanism operates between industry and regulatory bodies, and how the discourse on impartiality was articulated with the idea of rationality in the elaboration of arguments in favor of fracking, expressed in particular in the construction of a distinction between “laymen” and “experts”.
These aspects make the book essential reading not only for those interested in the new hydrocarbon frontiers around the world, but for any reader seeking to understand how industries sometimes forge alliances with scientific sectors to reduce the strength of protests. Combining her training in the “hard sciences” with an analytical perspective from a critical Political Ecology, the author of this book invites the possibility of new dialogues that cross the boundaries between the humanities and natural sciences, increasingly necessary in times of increased violence perpetrated by large extractive projects.
In the contemporary environmental debate, metaphors have been used to point out the reckless use and destructive power of certain technologies. Since the metaphors of philosopher Walter Benjamin, formulated in the 1940s, we have heard warnings about the need to listen to “the fire alarm” and cut “the burning fuse” towards disaster. The ideology of progress at any cost could lead us, as this author warned in his Theses on the philosophy of history, a kind of “storm, which leaves ruins upon ruins at your feet”.
To what end, after all, do we appropriate the planet and produce planned disasters, in projects that displace mountains, rivers, flora, fauna and communities?
This is the urgent question discussed in this work. It leads us to reflections that reach the philosophical field based on the description of the raw materiality of a technology that penetrates the depths of the Earth in an unprecedented way, with its imponderable consequences. The controversy surrounding its use and its effects is treated in a well-founded and systematic way, raising problems that are currently disregarded or swept under the rug to satisfy large groups of interests.
In a counter-movement, the author calls us to question the senselessness of actions whose reach – in the heart of the Earth – cannot help but evoke the images of Joseph Conrad, for whom, in his work Heart of Darkness, the colonial project over the territories of the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere associated violence, ambition and devastation. With the instruments of the sociology of scientific controversy and, at the same time, with common sense as a citizen, the author exercises the right to speak out and gives a message that society needs to hear, reflect on and, based on it, act.
* Henri Acselrad is a retired full professor at the Institute of Research and Urban and Regional Planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR/UFRJ).
*Karine L. Narahara is a professor at the University of North Texas.
Reference
Bianca Dieile da Silva. In the heart of the earth: the fracking controversy in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro, Capital Letter, 2024.
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