Toxicity and Complicity: Explaining Consensual Community Response to a Chronic Technological Disaster

Abstract

The absence ol' citiLcn mobilization following the announcement oP high levels of dioxin in a New England rivcr, and subsequent Superfund listing, is cxplained in light of previous research that stresses the conflict and controversy that surround community contamination. Interviews with area residents and government officials, observations of public meetings, and content analyses of newspapcr articles, EPA press releases, and other official documents provide three explanations for the absence of citizen mobilization: (1) shared knowledge of the community's industrial history meant the river's contamination did not disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about the community, (2) the "discovery" of the contamination by a government agency and its subsequent impression management served to defuse the public outrage that would otherwise lead to controversy and confrontation, and (3) elected officials, who were able to get resources to the agencies that could handle the problem, supported the decisions of the agencies rather than criticiring them or accusing them of negligence.

Who Speaks for the Place? Cultural Dynamics of Conflicts Over Hazardous Industrial Development

“…Place identities are especially powerful in motivating support and opposition to development, which can be interpreted as strengthening or risking a sense of place (Kreye et al 2017; Zavestoski et al 2002). In rural areas, an emotional sense of community is often linked to landscapes defined by industry such as mining and agriculture (Threadgold et al 2018).…”

“…Workers and residents may support development, even accept pollution, when industry animates emotional place‐based and class identities (Massey 1994; McAdam and Boudet 2012). In areas with a history of extraction, proposed development can be seen as protecting community, while environmental protections are seen as a collective threat (Messer, Shriver, and Adams 2015; Neumann 2016; Zavestoski et al 2002).…”

Collective Identity and Memory: A Comparative Analysis of Community Response to Environmental Hazards

“…In some cases, communities mobilize to protest local polluters and call for remedial action (Adams, Shriver, and Webb 2014;Almeida and Stearns 1998;Brown and Masterson-Allen 1994;Bullard 2000;Robinson 2009;Tarbell and Arquette 2000). Yet in other cases communities remain quiescent in the wake of discovered environmental threats, failing to collectively challenge either polluting industries or regulatory agencies (Cable, Shriver, and Hastings 1999;Couch and Coles 2011;Zavestoski et al 2002). Researchers have worked to explain this variation in community response, pointing to basic demographic variables such as race, gender, age, education, and length of residence in the community (Goodman, Vaughan, and Gill 1992;Hunter 2005;Jacques et al 2012;Shriver and Kennedy 2005).…”

“…In this vein, research points to the confusion and uncertainty among residents about contamination as they receive vague or even conflicting information from scientists, regulators, and other officials (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1993). Variables such as levels of contamination (Freudenburg 1997) or the type of industry involved (Zavestoski et al 2002) can influence whether a community challenges local polluters. In his examination of Times Beach, Freudenburg (1997) noted that residents living in a neighborhood with lower levels of dioxins were in "explanatory purgatory " (27) compared to another neighborhood with much higher levels of contamination, where the need for action was widely accepted among officials and experts.…”

Analyzing Complicity in Risk

“…Commentary on the risk society includes the idea that complicity arises from our increasing interdependence and increasingly diffuse nature of responsibility (Beck, 1992). There is a kind of complicity when a community—with a shared knowledge of its industrial history—produces a compliant and consensual response to the discovery of serious toxic contamination (Zavestoski et al ., 2002). And complicity gets a mention in cases where it looks like collusion of different groups against the wider public.…”