The Social Production of Risk Perceptions

该项目旨在了解和解释在社会上产生风险认知和环境抗议的潮起潮落所涉及的机制和过程。基于在三个被边缘化和受污染的社区进行的人种学实地调查，该项目将仔细审查对中毒风险的共同理解和环境集体行动随时间的变化。这项研究将：a)审查美洲三个污染严重的边缘化社区的环境污染对生命的威胁；b)解释贫穷居民赋予环境污染的意义(有时令人费解和矛盾)；c)审查对污染的共同理解与这些社区在过去二十年中经历的围绕环境问题的动员和非动员循环之间的联系。这个项目将解决的主要问题如下：穷人如何理解(和应对)有毒危险？他们什么时候以及为什么了解什么是客观上明确和迫在眉睫的危险？关于污染威胁的共同理解何时以及如何引发集体行动？更广泛的影响这个项目将汇集过去30年来在风险感知、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、风险和争辩之间的关系时，本研究将寻求在几个研究领域之间建立智力桥梁。这项工作将寻求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，扩展这些领域的边界以包括借鉴其他领域的相关动态，并推进这些领域的智力整合。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.