Call for Papers. Chemists as activists: From Linus Pauling to Green Chemistry, 14th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (14 ICHC), 11 to 14 June 2025, Valencia.

[Agustí Nieto Galan]

 

 

NEW DEADLINE: 20 DECEMBER

 

Call for Papers

 

Chemists as Activists: From Linus Pauling to Green Chemistry

 

A session of the 14th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (14 ICHC), 11 to 14 June 2025, Valencia.

 

The session aims to approach activist-chemists as epistemologically active actors and their role in the co-production of chemical knowledge. From the Cold War to the present, we want to explore exchange zones and public spheres in which chemists struggled for public recognition and scientific authority and opposed hegemonic chemical projects and practices of their time.

 

Instead of assuming that resistance contributes to the failure of a chemical project, it may become a constructive force in technological development (Bauer, 1995). In the framework of the new participatory turn, activists’ protests outside a research institute, the citizens’ vote on a waste disposal facility, or a public debate to submit results to policy makers, all express: “a profound change in the terms and conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced, discussed and legitimated” (Bucchi, Neressini, 2007, p. 449). Civic, citizen, democratic, green chemistry could be therefore related to alternative pathways of doing science that deserve further historical investigation (Hess, 2007).

 

The session will reflect some of the main targets of the recently funded project: “Exchange Zones of Epistemic Resistance and Alternative Innovation: Activism, Grassroots Movements and Expertise, 1970s-1990s” (EXCHANGEACTIV, PID2023-150413NB-C21, Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades). 2024-2029. PI: Dr Jaume Valentines-Álvarez.

 

We welcome contributions that address some of the following questions:

 

1. What was the civic role of chemists as intellectuals in the Cold War? Can Linus Pauling’s case be a general pattern or perhaps just an exception when compared, for example, with Adolf Butenandt’s?
2. What was the role of activism in the emergence and institutionalization of green chemistry as an academic discipline?
3. How activists with chemical degrees have shaped the identity and strategies of environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and others.
4. What was the role of activist-chemists in the international arena, especially after the impact of the UN Stockholm Conference in 1972?
5. In our historical narratives, where is the place for radical, alternative, green, or Communist chemists?
6. Where are the women-activist chemists? Can Rachel Carson’s case (1962) – a biologist- be a general pattern to follow, or perhaps Carolyn Merchant’s Death of Nature (1980) provides better food for thought for a gendered approach?

 

PLEASE SEND A TITLE, 200-300 WORDS ABSTRACT AND A SHORT PARAGRAPH OF YOUR CV, BEFORE 20 DECEMBER TO:

 

agusti...@uab.cat

 

Bauer, Martin W., (ed.), Resistance to new technology : nuclear power, information technology, and biotechnology, Cambridge University Press Cambridge, 1995.

Bucchi, Massimiano; Federico Neresini, “Science and public participation”, in E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch (eds.) Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass., 2007, 449-473, p. 449.

Hess, David J., Alternative pathways in science and industry : activism, innovation, and the environment in an era of globalization, MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass., 2007.