Inheriting the wind: Science, authority, and democracy in pollution politics

This dissertation is an ethnography of pollution prevention activists in the context of the environmental justice movement in a metropolitan area in the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The environmental justice movement addresses a pattern in which low-income and minority communities bear a disproportionate burden of industrial pollution. Inclusion of these groups in environmental advocacy and policy is commonly put forward as a solution. I sought to push beyond rhetoric of inclusion by examining social and cultural reproduction and change in (1) the expansion of an environmental group from research-based legal advocacy to community organizing in disproportionately impacted areas, (2) the collaborations that ensued between old-timer experts and newcomer lay persons in uneven fields of power, and (3) the policies the activists tried to influence. I drew on perspectives from practice theory and social studies of science, and used methods of participant observation and documentary analysis.; Regarding the dynamics within the organization, I found that although the environmental organization wanted to and did expand into community organizing, structures and practices remained and limited the changes the group was trying to make. Regarding the interactions of the organization staff and the residents of the neighborhoods they worked in, I found that there was much shared interest in pollution prevention and they worked easily together. I also found that although the organization staff wished to "empower" the newcomers, again, certain of their own practices and structures got in their way. Regarding the interactions of the activists and regulatory and health agencies, I have written about the weak implementation of toxic pollutant control laws and lack of accountability not only to low-income communities of color, but to the public. This is so despite requirements for public participation that are intended to be democracy-enhancing, and despite agencies' many good accomplishments and the enormous effort that has gone into them. I have traced throughout the dissertation the construction of, use of, and identification with "science" in trying to influence policy, trying to justify weak policy implementation, and in inhabiting roles of differential authority and status among the activists.