| Every advanced technological society imposes environmental risks on its members. Allocating those risks involves a risk technology-related discourse between the institutions imposing the risk and the people who must bear it. This study concerns the role of social movement organizations in one such discourse involving the cleanup of hazardous wastes from the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.; The researcher conducted a census survey of the members of each of the 10 organizations involved, and obtained both quantitative and qualitative data. A combination of statistical and qualitative analysis indicated that the risk debate generated by the public participation process did, in fact, constructively function as a response to popular resistance to the imposition of risk by a powerful institution. The public participation process functioned as a basis of at least some social learning, as defined by new knowledge attained by crossing institutional frames of reference by building relationships with members of other institutions.; However, the researcher also found that using participants' willingness to compromise as a measure of social learning is overly simplistic. Willingness to compromise appeared to have different meanings to the technologically oriented participants and the community safety oriented citizens. This difference suggested that the risk debate has some of the characteristics of a closed discourse as described by Foucault. The legitimation of issues and definitions is controlled by a cadre of experts who share the same academic training and institutional affiliations. To disagree with these experts was to be designated untrained or less than rational, thus not admitted to their communications network.; The researcher also discovered that in addition to a risk-imposing and a risk-bearing faction, a third group existed in this risk debate, made up of news reporters, elected officials and local government officials. This third group may possess an unrealized role in facilitating effective social learning because their legitimacy is derived by their membership in the community and their lack of affiliation with the risk-imposing institution. However, in this risk debate members of this group were largely excluded from the communication networks of both of the dominant institutions and the citizen opposition. |
