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

本论文项目探讨劳工和环境运动组织如何发现和社会建构工作场所和一般环境中的健康风险。通过考察健康风险的社会建构的异同，本研究将展示通过联合考虑职业健康和环境健康科学，这两个运动之间成功形成联盟的可能性，这两个领域在历史上一直是离散的。本研究为探讨职业健康与环境健康的社会建构提出了几个研究问题：1)劳工组织与环境组织在疾病病因学的社会建构上有何不同？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部对健康风险的界定？3)在联盟建立过程中，劳工和环境组织如何协商环境健康问题的社会建构差异？4)如何利用“公正过渡”和预防原则等概念，为职业和环境健康创造一种既能吸引劳工团体又能吸引环境团体的合作办法？本项目将通过数据收集和分析两个阶段来解决这些问题。通过广泛搜索学术和大众出版物，以及通过对环境和劳工运动领导人的民意调查，将确定劳工-环境联盟的成功和不成功的尝试。支持劳工努力的专业团体，如职业安全与健康委员会，也将接受采访。一旦完成这一描述任务，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成功的蓝绿联盟的背景和战略。这个项目有几个更广泛的影响：这个项目汇集了医学社会学、环境社会学、科学社会研究、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，它提供了对疾病体验的新见解，包括个人体验如何转变为集体疾病体验。对于环境社会学和STS学者来说，该项目可以拓宽不同社会群体对环境问题及其背后的科学问题的理解和行动。社会运动学者的研究范围也可以扩大到科学、技术、健康、环境、工会等领域。通过考察难以实现的蓝绿联盟，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伦理和价值观往往是不同的，我们可以了解伦理和价值观如何影响社会运动的动员。最后，本研究可以帮助劳工研究学者更好地了解劳工组织环境意识的障碍。

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.