Divulgando la cultura científica en la ciudad: Asociación cultural Piratas de la Ciencia

Abstract

The associative movement and citizens platforms have been and will continue to be a major consolidation block of social activism. Laraña and Gusfield (1994) talk about a change in the context of social movements, from a field related to the capital-labour relationship, to a mobilization for the plurality of cultural and symbolic values. This is the case of environmental activism, consumer platforms, pacifist organizations, for example, where all of them look for alternative forms for social participation and decision making on matters of interest. However, it is not so easy to determine whether there is a direct social activism originated from scientific groups themselves. The Open Movement, the 'sceptico'(sceptic) among journalists, scientists and science writers, or R&D associations, could be understood as certain examples of activism or social movements. Piratas de la Ciencia (pirates of science) is an independent cultural collective, which has been working in the field of scientific communication, both in local and international scenarios. The activities proposed in our association are understood as group and collective actions, with social interest, aimed to promote contacts between different experts and citizens in various social scenarios. Particularly, we understand the scientist as one of the actors involved in the consolidation of culture inside different social and community frameworks. Here we report on some examples of the activities done by our association in this context along the last years.