The Social Production of Risk Perceptions

该项目旨在理解和解释风险认知的社会生产和环境抗议的潮起潮落所涉及的机制和过程。根据在三个被边缘化和受污染社区进行的人种学实地考察，该项目将仔细研究随着时间的推移，对有毒风险的共同理解和环境集体行动的变化。该研究将：a）研究环境污染对美洲三个高度污染的边缘化社区的生命威胁，B）解释贫困居民对环境污染的（有时令人困惑和矛盾的）理解，以及c）研究对污染的共同理解与这些社区在过去二十年中目睹的围绕环境问题的动员和解散循环之间的联系。该项目将解决的主要问题如下：穷人如何理解（和科普）有毒危险？他们何时以及为什么理解什么是客观上明确和现实的危险？什么时候以及如何对污染威胁达成共识，从而引发集体行动？该项目将汇集过去三十年来在风险认知、环境集体行动和城市贫困研究中发展起来的往往分散的见解。在分析边缘性，风险和争论之间的关系，本研究将寻求建立几个研究领域之间的智力桥梁。这项工作将通过提供对环境苦难和争论的更全面的理解来丰富这些领域的话语，扩大这些领域的边界，以包括从其他领域借用的相关动态，并推进这些领域的知识整合。博士论文、学术文章和一本书将是这个项目的成果。

This project seeks to understand and explain the mechanisms and processes involved in the social production of risk perceptions and in the ebb and flow of environmental protest. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in three marginalized and contaminated communities, the project will scrutinize changes over time in shared understandings about toxic risk and in environmental collective action. The research will: a) examine the life-threatening effects of environmental contamination in three highly polluted marginalized communities in the Americas, b) explain the (sometimes puzzling and contradictory) meanings their poor residents ascribe to it, and c) examine the links between shared understandings about contamination and the cycles of mobilization and de-mobilization around environmental matters that these communities have witnessed during the past two decades. The main questions this project will address are the following: How do poor people make sense of (and cope with) toxic danger? When and why do they understand what is objectively a clear and present danger? When and how do shared understandings about threatening pollution trigger collective action? Broader ImpactsThis project will bring together the often dispersed insights that have developed over the past three decades in the study of risk perception, environmental collective action, and urban poverty. In analyzing the relationship between marginality, risk, and contention this research will seek to create intellectual bridges among several areas of study. This work will seek to enrich the discourse in these areas by offering a more comprehensive understanding of environmental suffering and contention, extend the boundaries of these fields to include relevant dynamics borrowed from the others, and advance the intellectual integration of these fields. Doctoral dissertations, academic articles, and a book will be the outcome of this project.