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

这篇论文考察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。通过考察健康风险社会构建的异同，本研究将通过联合考虑职业健康和环境健康科学这两个历史上一直是独立领域的领域，来论证两个运动成功联盟的可能性。该研究项目提出了几个研究问题，以探索职业健康和环境健康的社会结构：1)劳工和环境组织之间疾病病因学的社会结构有何不同？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)在联盟建立过程中，劳工组织和环境组织之间在环境健康问题社会结构方面的差异是如何谈判的？4)如何使用“公正过渡”和预防原则等概念来创建一种对劳工和环境群体都有吸引力的职业和环境健康合作方法？该项目将通过数据收集和分析的两个阶段寻求解决这些问题。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，将确定劳工环境联盟的成功和失败尝试。支持劳工努力的专业团体，如职业安全和健康委员会，也将接受采访。一旦这项描述性任务完成，将进一步详细审查四个详细的案例研究，其中两个是成功的联盟，两个是不成功的联盟。将对这四个案例进行审查和比较，以便更好地了解导致蓝绿联盟成功的背景和战略。这个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、科学社会学、社会运动理论和劳工研究。该项目提供了一种新的方式来看待两个与科学、技术、健康和环境有关的关键社会运动。对于医学社会学来说，这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团体如何理解和行动环境问题及其背后的科学问题的理解。此外，该项目还可以帮助社会运动学者扩大他们的调查范围，将科学、技术、卫生、环境和工会中的社会运动包括在内。通过考察难以实现的蓝绿联盟，这项工作可以帮助我们更好地理解其他社会运动联盟，这些联盟日益成为社会运动研究的焦点。此外，由于蓝色和绿色组成部分的道德和价值观往往不同，我们可以了解道德和价值观如何影响社会运动动员。最后，这个项目可以帮助劳工研究学者更好地了解劳工组织部分环境意识的障碍。

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.