Roots of Distrust: Opposition to Science-Based Policy-Making during the Xylella Emergency in Salento

Abstract

This article examines the wave of resistance to science-based containment measures during the Xylella fastidiosa outbreak in Salento, Italy, an ongoing plant epidemic that has severely affected olive trees since the early 2010s. It challenges two dominant frameworks for interpreting anti-expert mobilizations: one focusing on the populist glorification of common sense and the illusion of understanding fostered by easy access to information; the other on the marginalization of local actors whose situated knowledge challenges technocratic decision-making. It also revisits interpretations of the Xylella case that reflect these perspectives. Moving beyond these accounts, the article shows how activists drew on longstanding imperatives rooted in Italy’s left-wing and environmental political cultures – such as care for the vulnerable, civil resistance, environmental stewardship, and opposition to mafia infiltration – to interpret scientific and institutional interventions as morally illegitimate. These interpretations sacralized the olive tree and cast mainstream science as complicit in authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and criminal collusion. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis and the strong program in cultural sociology, the article reconstructs the moral codes that shaped resistance to expert authority and shows how this framing both enabled public engagement with science and fueled conspiratorial thinking. The case complicates standard accounts of both science denialism and citizen science and highlights the need to attend to political values and cultural meaning-making in understanding opposition to science-based policy-making.