Search

Extant research regarding collective memory has established the importance of examining how socially constructed memories shape group identities, lived experiences, and realities over time. In addition, collective memory scholars have underscored the inextricable and co-shaping linkages between space, place, and collective memory. However, comparatively less is known about how collective memories are constructed and articulated in cases of environmental exposures. We argue that it is important to investigate the ways in which exposed communities preserve their stories and how their collective memories influence efforts to seek redress as well as push for broader social change. We examine a case of historical pesticide exposure and related illnesses and mortality among farmworkers in Central Florida. We ask how exposed communities translate their experiences into a cohesive collective memory, how cultural artifacts preserve their stories in the broader discursive context, and how they utilize various histories as a form of health activism. We draw on data including ten years of farmworker blog entries, in-depth interviews, and media coverage. Our analysis revealed how farmworkers created artifacts representative of their memories of environmental exposures and illnesses, as well as how they translated these experiences into a cohesive collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on social movements has highlighted activists' discursive tactics to challenge the state, yet little analytical attention focuses on elite efforts to dominate the discourse arena through the deployment of oppositional frames. This paper analyzes elite oppositional framing surrounding the placement of a highway bypass in the Czech Republic. Our research examines how democratic states deploy oppositional frames and enlist elite countermovement support for their efforts to obstruct challenges. Using a range of data sources, we delineate the mechanisms used by these elite actors to vilify and stigmatize environmental activists, paving the way for more violent forms of public harassment. The concept we initiate, "discursive obstruction", adds the critical dimension of power relations to analyses of both framing processes and discursive opportunity structures. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for social movement research.

We use in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to examine perceptions of environmental health and justice among Native Americans in a rural Oklahoma community. Residents live near the Continental Carbon Company, which manufactures a rubber compound know as "carbon black." Ponca tribal members believe their respiratory problems and other health concerns are directly related to the black dust emanating from the facility, but they have been unable to validate their health claims through institutional channels. We examine how Native American respondents interpret the environmental pollution as a threat not only to their health and well-being but also to their sense of community. We address the perceived pattern of institutional denial and highlight the obstacles facing an impoverished Native American community attempting to validate their environmental health claims.

The majority of the literature on contaminated communities indicates that environmental hazards lead to conflict and dissension. In this paper we examine the salient dimensions of conflict and factionalism in a rural Oklahoma community. The community is heavily contaminated from 80 years of commercial mining operations and was one of the first sites designated on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund List in 1983. Despite two decades of remediation efforts, the community remains polluted with lead and other heavy metals. Based on in-depth interviews with community residents, observation, and document analysis, we find that the community has splintered into two competing groups over the environmental controversy. One faction of the community supports a federally sponsored relocation campaign, while the other has organized to oppose relocation. The results of our study indicate that the contentious split is centered around the ambiguity of harm associated with the contamination, conflicting economic concerns, and variations in community attachment.

Extant research has established that low-wage workers of color are at higher risk for occupational exposures. While the medical sociology literature regarding contested illness provides insights into the dynamics surrounding workplace exposures, some environmental illnesses such as lupus have gotten scant analytical attention. This is a significant gap because women of color, who are more likely to hold these high-risk jobs, are disproportionately affected by the disease. We examine a case of pesticide exposure among Black women farmworkers in Florida. We investigate how race and occupation intersect to shape lived experiences with toxics and what role race plays in the process of contesting exposures and illness. Our data include in-depth interviews (N = 36), media coverage, and archival materials. Our findings indicate that race-related factors played an important part in shaping the farmworkers' experiences with exposures, illness, and interaction with elite actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on the management of environmental threats in risk communities highlights the control that state actors and other elites exercise over environmental risk assessments. However, less is known about the particular mechanisms of social control used by elected and other state officials to manipulate citizens' interpretations of risk. We use the case of coal ash contamination in North Carolina to analyze strategies of control aimed at discouraging residents from identifying possible links between contamination and illness. Drawing on a variety of data sources, including in-depth interviews (n = 55) with area residents, we argue that these strategies of control have been central in fostering quiescence, or a lack of activism, in the affected communities. Our findings demonstrate the success of social control mechanisms in forestalling collective community responses to environmental risks as well as the ways expert narratives of exposure influence the public's ability to identify environmental threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to examine perceptions of environmental health and justice among Native Americans in a rural Oklahoma community. Residents live near the Continental Carbon Company, which manufactures a rubber compound know as 'carbon black.' Ponca tribal members believe their respiratory' problems and other health concerns are directly related to the black dust emanating from the facility, but they have been unable to validate their health claims through institutional channels. We examine how Native American respondents interpret the environmental pollution as a threat not only to their health and well-being but also to their sense of community. We address the perceived pattern of institutional denial and highlight the obstacles facing an impoverished Native American community attempting to validate their environmental health claims.

Research indicates that social movements are shaped by increased opportunities and threats, yet this work rarely examines environments of intersecting opportunity and threat. This article extends the literature on political opportunity theory by explaining how shifting rights regimes influence the political context of movements. Specifically, we analyze how dissent in Communist Czechoslovakia responded to the expansion and contraction of rights across three political periods between 1948 and 1977. Our research delineates three key features of rights regimes and shows how variation across multiple scales creates "hybrid environments" of political opportunity and threat for social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2008.00258.x Byline: Thomas E. Shriver (1), Sherry Cable (2), Dennis Kennedy (3) Abstract: Drawing from extensive fieldwork and document analysis, we examine environmental illness claims in Oklahoma's Tar Creek basin, one of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) premier Superfund sites. Our findings indicate that contested illness in the Tar Creek Superfund site differed from typical cases in that the links between high lead exposures and permanent neurological damage were thoroughly and unequivocally documented. But, despite the certainty of these linkages, residents remained embroiled in controversy and they encountered obstacles in obtaining diagnoses, treatment, and compensation. The resultant environmental dispute took two forms: conflict between residents and EPA officials over the adequacy of the agency's remediation project and conflict among residents over ultimate responsibility for children's lead exposures and consequent learning disabilities. Author Affiliation: (1)Oklahoma State University (2)University of Tennessee (3)Oklahoma State University

The individual perceptions of environmental harms in Oak Ridge, Tennesse, a nuclear weapons base of U.S. are analyzed. The factors contributing to community dissension like employment, race and environmental health and illness are outlined.

The majority of the literature on contaminated communities indicates that environmental hazards lead to conflict and dissension. In this paper we examine the salient dimensions of conflict and factionalism in a rural Oklahoma community. The community is heavily contaminated from 80 years of commercial mining operations and was one of the first sites designated on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund List in 1983. Despite two decades of remediation efforts, the community remains polluted with lead and other heavy metals. Based on in-depth interviews with community residents, observation, and document analysis, we find that the community has splintered into two competing groups over the environmental controversy. One faction of the community supports a federally sponsored relocation campaign, while the other has organized to oppose relocation. The results of our study indicate that the contentious split is centered around the ambiguity of harm associated with the contamination, conflicting economic concerns, and variations in community attachment.