Those Who Get Hurt Aren’t Always Being Heard: Scientist-Resident Interactions over Community Water

Abstract

This study is about the interaction of scientific expertise and local knowledge in the context of a contested issue: the quality and quantity of safe drinking water available to some residents in one Canadian community. We articulate the boundary work in which scientific and technological expertise and discourse are played out against local knowledge and water needs to prevent the construction of a watermain extension that would provide a group of residents with the same water that others in the community already access. We draw on an extensive database constructed during a three-year ethnographic study of one community; the database includes the transcript of a public meeting, newspaper clippings, interviews, and communications between residents and town council. We show not only that scientists and residents differ in their assessment of water quality and quantity but also that there is a penchant for undercutting residents in their attempts to make themselves heard in the political process.In our society, the stories of ordinary peoples' relationships to ordinary places remain largely a hidden and untapped resource for understanding the complicated, shifting connections between human behaviour and environmental conditions. (Bowerbank, 1997, p. 28) This article is concerned with the conflict between scientific expertise and local knowledge in the context of a case study that focuses on the attempt of some residents of one Canadian community to become connected to the watermain

Wal-Mart's presentation to the community: discursive practices in mitigating risk, limiting public discussion, and developing a relationship

“…Access to scientific and technical knowledge allows those with power to legitimate their political decisions (Fischer, 2000). At public forums, experts frequently speak using technical terms or ignore the vernacular discourse of the local residents (Roth et al, 2004). These technocratic ways of speaking create a divide between experts and the lay citizenry.…”

Drawing on the words of others at public hearings: Zoning, Wal-Mart, and the threat to the aquifer

“…The literature addresses the public's non-expert status in terms of a tension between "objective and subjective risk" or "technical rationality and cultural rationality" (Krimsky & Plough 1988;Rowan 1995;Peterson 1997, ch.5;Cox 2006, ch. 6), between "scientific expertise and (the public's) local knowledge" (Roth et al 2004), or between "factual claims and value claims" (Beck 2000). The public, associated with the latter terms in these dichotomies, is generally considered uninformed and0or irrational.…”

“…The public, associated with the latter terms in these dichotomies, is generally considered uninformed and0or irrational. Participants' "local knowledge" gets taken as mere opinion, not fit for decision making (Roth et al 2004). The one-way view of risk communication, from expert to public, closes off consideration of the public's beliefs, values, power, and influence on the meaning of risk.…”

Cultural Diversity Issues in Biodiversity Monitoring—Cases of Lithuania, Poland and Denmark

“…The unquestionable interrelation between nature and human society is widely discussed in various aspects: man-nature relationship, perception of environment, human adaptation to natural environment, nature conservation and environmental problems, explanation of causality of the arising problems, human factor and strategies for solving environmental problems [2][3][4][5][6][7]. Another important aspect of man-nature bounded relation is the concept of culture and cultural diversity.…”

“…Although nature conservation has a long and rich history in Eastern and Central Europe, former communist states face many obstacles while implementing the Natura 2000 structures [16]. One of the obstacles is the low level of public participation in monitoring activities [7,[17][18][19], i.e., in Lithuania, 89% (n = 28) of monitoring schemes were run by professionals only, whereas this proportion was 63.7% (n = 101) in Poland, 33.3% (n = 30) in Hungary, 28.3% (n = 93) in France, and 23.7% (n = 38) in Germany [20]. This situation possibly results from the late implementation of public involvement in the natural resources management programs after the communist system collapsed in the 1990s [21].…”