1665: Mnemonic Strategies of Resistance: Environmental Analysts Resisting Bolsonaro (10390)

We bring together literatures on occupations and memory to investigate the case of an invasion of one occupation by another, in which battles over memory constituted key strategies of the jurisdictional dispute. During Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential term in Brazil, he embarked on destroying the occupation of environmental analysts (EAs) as part of his anti-environmental agenda. This involved appointing the military to key leadership positions in the Ministry of the Environment (ME) to infiltrate and destroy the EAs’ mission and ethos from within. Drawing on 54 in-depth interviews with EAs, combined with document analysis, we explore the meaning and role of occupational memory in enabling and empowering the EAs’ resistance. We identify four strategies of mnemonic resistance involving occupational remembrance used by EAs to hold out against the strategies of occupational forgetting they saw the military employ against them. Our analysis highlights the importance of a deeper engagement between Occupations and Professions in Organizations (OPO) and Organizational Memory Studies (OMS) research. We argue for understanding occupations as mnemonic communities and jurisdictional battles as mnemonic battles, in which occupational memory – conceptualised as embodied mnemonic practices, routines, and shared remembering – can act both as a target and a weapon for the warring sides.

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