Risk, Power, and Uncertainty in Environmental Health Controversies
Industrial chemicals are ubiquitous in contemporary life, yet significant controversy and scientific uncertainty surrounds how they are produced, studied, and regulated. I use mixed qualitative methods to investigate how chemical risk and safety are socially constructed and scientifically defended. In a completed project, I studied the risks of flame retardant chemicals, conducting a year of participant observation at five sites and over 100 in-depth interviews. In Toxic Safety and several articles from this research, I argued that stakeholders develop different “conceptual risk formulas,” risk definitions that evaluate and identify the relationship between hazard, exposure, and risk. All stakeholders engage in “strategic science translation,” the process by which stakeholders strategically communicate scientific evidence to an identified audience in order to influence policy outcomes.
I am currently working on a collaborative NSF-funded project with Phil Brown at Northeastern University to investigate the social and scientific discovery of perfluorinated compounds. We are tracking the scientific, regulatory, and advocacy actions around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), hazardous chemicals that are widely used in industrial production. This class of chemicals is unique and ripe for sociological inquiry because they impact contaminated communities downriver from PFAS manufacturing plants and near military establishments that used PFAS-containing firefighting foam, as well as a broad population exposed through consumer goods. In a 2016 paper in Environmental Science & Technology, we examine a regulatory decision by the Food and Drug Administration to remove three PFASs from their list of approved food contact materials. In a recent publication in Social Studies of Science, we argue that widespread industry knowledge of toxicity and exposure concerns did not lead to regulatory or social movement action because of a regulatory framework that creates areas of unseen science.
Social and Environmental Impacts of Wildfires and Wildfire Management
This project examines the social impacts of wildfires and wildfire management practices in the Pacific Northwest. The risks of wildfires involve complex intersections of social and ecological systems, and wildfire management practices face growing pressures from a hotter and drier climate, the changing wildland-urban interface, huge fuel stocks due to the legacy of fire suppression practices, changing occupational characteristics of wildland firefighting, and ecological health concerns about fire suppression technologies. The immediate and long-term impacts of wildfires are unequally distributed across populations and communities, yet there is surprisingly little environmental justice or sociological research on wildfires. This project investigates several research questions: How are wildfire impacts distributed across populations? What are the social impacts of wildfire management practices? What are the social impacts of wildfires? What social impacts are identified as priorities for fire management officials and agencies? What social impacts are identified as priorities by communities living in the Wildland Urban Interface, and by communities near active wildfires? I am examining these social aspects of wildfire impacts, wildfire risk assessment, and wildfire risk management by conducting ethnographic research on wildfire management in Central Oregon. I conducted three fire seasons worth of ethnographic observations, working with fire personnel with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management including firefighting crews, operations directors, and incident management teams. I am also conducting in-depth interviews with community leaders, fire professionals, industry representatives, and impacted residents in Central Oregon to learn about the social aspects of wildfire risk. A 2018 paper in Society & Natural Resources related to this project, co-authored with Whitman graduate Eliana Schwartz, examines media coverage, inequality, and firefighter safety issues related to the Carleton and Okanogan Complex wildfires in Washington State.
“How’s the Soil?”: Talking about Environmental Risk from Wheat Field to Vineyard
This project examines how farmers and other agricultural experts in the Walla Walla, WA area think about and respond to environmental risks, especially the risks of global climate change. The impacts of environmental risks like global climate change are far reaching and observable at the local level, yet research shows that even individuals with close and frequent interactions with their natural surroundings may underestimate or downplay such risks. Using in-depth interviews with local farmers and agricultural leaders, participant observation in agricultural processes, and GIS analysis of land use changes in the Walla Walla area, I am investigating how farmers talk about e`nvironmental risks, how they make decisions about conditions ranging from short-term erosion to long-term climate change, and what practices have come to predominate Walla Walla agriculture.
Civic Imagination and Political Culture, with Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Elizabeth Bennett, Peter T. Klein, and Stephanie Savell
Based on a one-year interdisciplinary ethnography of seven civil society organizations, we developed the concepts of ‘civic imagination,’ the ways in which people envision a better political, social, and civic environment and work towards achieving that future, and ‘political disavowal,’ a pattern of skeptical engagement that allows people to creatively participate in appropriate and desirable citizenship and civic engagement. The Civic Imagination was published in 2014 by Paradigm Publishers, and the project has a 2013 article in the American Journal of Sociology.
Industrial chemicals are ubiquitous in contemporary life, yet significant controversy and scientific uncertainty surrounds how they are produced, studied, and regulated. I use mixed qualitative methods to investigate how chemical risk and safety are socially constructed and scientifically defended. In a completed project, I studied the risks of flame retardant chemicals, conducting a year of participant observation at five sites and over 100 in-depth interviews. In Toxic Safety and several articles from this research, I argued that stakeholders develop different “conceptual risk formulas,” risk definitions that evaluate and identify the relationship between hazard, exposure, and risk. All stakeholders engage in “strategic science translation,” the process by which stakeholders strategically communicate scientific evidence to an identified audience in order to influence policy outcomes.
I am currently working on a collaborative NSF-funded project with Phil Brown at Northeastern University to investigate the social and scientific discovery of perfluorinated compounds. We are tracking the scientific, regulatory, and advocacy actions around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), hazardous chemicals that are widely used in industrial production. This class of chemicals is unique and ripe for sociological inquiry because they impact contaminated communities downriver from PFAS manufacturing plants and near military establishments that used PFAS-containing firefighting foam, as well as a broad population exposed through consumer goods. In a 2016 paper in Environmental Science & Technology, we examine a regulatory decision by the Food and Drug Administration to remove three PFASs from their list of approved food contact materials. In a recent publication in Social Studies of Science, we argue that widespread industry knowledge of toxicity and exposure concerns did not lead to regulatory or social movement action because of a regulatory framework that creates areas of unseen science.
Social and Environmental Impacts of Wildfires and Wildfire Management
This project examines the social impacts of wildfires and wildfire management practices in the Pacific Northwest. The risks of wildfires involve complex intersections of social and ecological systems, and wildfire management practices face growing pressures from a hotter and drier climate, the changing wildland-urban interface, huge fuel stocks due to the legacy of fire suppression practices, changing occupational characteristics of wildland firefighting, and ecological health concerns about fire suppression technologies. The immediate and long-term impacts of wildfires are unequally distributed across populations and communities, yet there is surprisingly little environmental justice or sociological research on wildfires. This project investigates several research questions: How are wildfire impacts distributed across populations? What are the social impacts of wildfire management practices? What are the social impacts of wildfires? What social impacts are identified as priorities for fire management officials and agencies? What social impacts are identified as priorities by communities living in the Wildland Urban Interface, and by communities near active wildfires? I am examining these social aspects of wildfire impacts, wildfire risk assessment, and wildfire risk management by conducting ethnographic research on wildfire management in Central Oregon. I conducted three fire seasons worth of ethnographic observations, working with fire personnel with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management including firefighting crews, operations directors, and incident management teams. I am also conducting in-depth interviews with community leaders, fire professionals, industry representatives, and impacted residents in Central Oregon to learn about the social aspects of wildfire risk. A 2018 paper in Society & Natural Resources related to this project, co-authored with Whitman graduate Eliana Schwartz, examines media coverage, inequality, and firefighter safety issues related to the Carleton and Okanogan Complex wildfires in Washington State.
“How’s the Soil?”: Talking about Environmental Risk from Wheat Field to Vineyard
This project examines how farmers and other agricultural experts in the Walla Walla, WA area think about and respond to environmental risks, especially the risks of global climate change. The impacts of environmental risks like global climate change are far reaching and observable at the local level, yet research shows that even individuals with close and frequent interactions with their natural surroundings may underestimate or downplay such risks. Using in-depth interviews with local farmers and agricultural leaders, participant observation in agricultural processes, and GIS analysis of land use changes in the Walla Walla area, I am investigating how farmers talk about e`nvironmental risks, how they make decisions about conditions ranging from short-term erosion to long-term climate change, and what practices have come to predominate Walla Walla agriculture.
Civic Imagination and Political Culture, with Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Elizabeth Bennett, Peter T. Klein, and Stephanie Savell
Based on a one-year interdisciplinary ethnography of seven civil society organizations, we developed the concepts of ‘civic imagination,’ the ways in which people envision a better political, social, and civic environment and work towards achieving that future, and ‘political disavowal,’ a pattern of skeptical engagement that allows people to creatively participate in appropriate and desirable citizenship and civic engagement. The Civic Imagination was published in 2014 by Paradigm Publishers, and the project has a 2013 article in the American Journal of Sociology.
