Doctoral Disseration Research: Blue and Green Shades of Health: The Social Construction of Health Risks in the Labor and Environmental Movements

本学位论文研究了劳工和环境运动组织如何发现和社会构建工作场所和一般环境中的健康风险。通过研究健康风险的社会结构的相似性和差异，本研究将展示两个运动之间成功联盟形成的可能性，共同考虑职业健康和环境健康科学，这在历史上是离散的领域。本研究提出了几个研究问题，以探讨职业健康和环境健康的社会结构：1）疾病病因的社会结构在劳工组织和环境组织之间有何不同？2)社会发现过程中的差异如何导致社会运动组织和专业知识机构内的健康风险框架？3)劳工组织与环保组织在协商建立联盟的过程中，在环境健康问题的社会建构上有何差异？4)如何使用“公正过渡”和预防原则等概念来创建一个既吸引劳工团体又吸引环境团体的职业和环境健康合作方法？本项目将通过数据收集和分析两个阶段来解决这些问题。通过对学术和流行出版物的广泛搜索，以及对环境和劳工运动领导人的民意调查，将确定成功和不成功的劳工-环境联盟尝试。支持劳工工作的专业团体，如职业安全和健康委员会，也将接受采访。一旦这个描述性的任务完成，四个详细的案例研究，两个成功的联盟和两个不成功的联盟，将进一步详细审查。这四个案例将被检查和比较，以更好地了解导致成功的蓝绿联盟的背景和战略。该项目有几个更广泛的影响：该项目汇集了医学社会学，环境社会学，科学的社会研究，社会运动理论和劳动研究。该项目提供了一种新的方式来看待与科学，技术，健康和环境有关的两个关键社会运动。对于医学社会学来说，它为疾病的体验提供了新的见解，包括个人体验可以转化为集体疾病体验的方式。对于环境社会学和STS学者来说，该项目可以扩大对各种社会群体如何理解和处理环境问题及其背后的科学问题的理解。 此外，该项目可以帮助社会运动学者扩大他们的调查，包括科学，技术，健康，环境和工会的社会运动。透过探讨蓝绿联盟的不易达成性，本研究可以帮助我们更了解其他社会运动联盟，这些联盟正日益成为社会运动研究的焦点。此外，由于蓝色和绿色成分的道德和价值观往往是不同的，我们可以了解道德和价值观如何影响社会运动动员。 最后，本研究也有助于劳工研究学者了解劳工组织环保意识的障碍。

This dissertation project examines how labor and environmental movement organizations discover and socially construct health risks in the workplace and the general environment. Through examining the similarities and differences in the social construction of health risks, this research will demonstrate the likelihood of successful coalition formation between the two movements by jointly considering occupational health and environmental health science, which have historically been discrete areas. The research project poses several research questions to explore the social construction of occupational health and environmental health: 1) How does the social construction of disease etiology differ between labor and environmental organizations? 2) How do differences in the social discovery process lead to the framing of health risks within social movement organizations and within professional bodies of knowledge? 3) How are differences in the social construction of environmental health problems between labor and environmental organizations negotiated in the coalition-building processes? 4) How can concepts like "just transition" and the precautionary principle be used to create a collaborative approach for occupational and environmental health that appeals both to labor and environmental groups? This project will seek to address these questions through two stages of data collection and analysis. Both successful and unsuccessful attempts at labor-environment coalitions will be identified through an extensive search of academic and popular publications, as well as through the polling of leaders in the environmental and labor movements. Professional groups that support labor efforts, such as Committees on Occupational Safety and Health, will also be interviewed. Once this descriptive task is complete, four detailed case studies, two of successful coalitions and two of unsuccessful coalitions, will be examined in further detail. These four cases will be examined and compared in order to better understand the context and strategies that lead to successful blue-green coalitions. This project has several broader impacts: The project brings together medical sociology, environmental sociology, social studies of science, social movement theory, and labor studies. The project provides a new way to look at two key social movements that are concerned with science, technology, health, and the environment. For medical sociology, the offers new insights into the experience of illness, including the way that individual experiences can become transformed into collective illness experience. For environmental sociology and for STS scholars, the project can broaden the understanding of how various social groups understand and act on environmental issues and the scientific issues behind them. Also, the project can help social movement scholars to expand their inquiries to include social movements in science, technology, health, the environment, and labor unions. By examining the difficult-to-attain blue-green alliances, this work can help us to better understand other social movement alliances, which are increasingly a focus of social movement research. Further, because the ethics and values of the blue and green components are often divergent, we can learn about how ethics and values affect social movement mobilization. Finally, this project can help labor studies scholars better understand the obstacles to environmental awareness on the part of labor organizations.