Il rifiuto della delega. Gruppi omogenei, validazione consensuale e contestazione del sapere esperto

This article critically engages with contemporary debates on “medical populism” and the opposition between expert authority and popular irrationalism, arguing that such dichotomies obscure alternative modes of articulating expertise, power, and participation from below. The article reconstructs a historically situated form of bottom-up contestation of expert knowledge in the field of occupational health, focusing on the Italian workers’ movement of the 1960s and, in particular, on the principle of “non-delegation” in matters of workplace health and safety. Central to this experience was the idea that homogeneous groups of workers exposed to similar risks possessed the most reliable experiential knowledge of those risks and therefore had to be integrated, on an equal footing, into processes of consensual validation alongside technical experts. By situating this experience within broader transformations in labour relations and healthcare reform, the article shows that non-delegation functioned not as a destabilizing or anti-scientific impulse, but rather as a constructive project aimed at democratizing the production and circulation of knowledge. The historical case discussed here thus provides insights for rethinking current controversies surrounding expertise and trust in applied science.