Subjectivities of risk and environmental uncertainty : residents, regulatory agencies, and corporate interests
Abstract
The West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Bridgeton, Missouri made for a compelling place to explore how risk was framed and contested by social groups and expert institutions in the context of environmental uncertainty. The landfill has been contested by various stakeholders, because Cold War era radioactive waste was dumped in the unlined landfill prior to regulatory oversight, and most recently an underground fire has been detected in portions of the landfill. Residents organized because they were fearful of the potential for a large-scale disaster and for their ongoing health and safety. The West Lake Landfill, thus, was an important context for investigating shifts in the framing and contestations of risks through time, as well as their multi-layered socio-technical entanglements. A case study design was used which included methods such as, the use of archival data, content analysis, participant observation, and ethnographic interviews. I investigated how environmental risk and its complex entanglements with scientific expertise and citizenship have unfolded since the second world war during which the regulatory structure, understanding of environmental risk, role of scientific experts, and voices of lay people changed dramatically. Local motheractivists have become central to countering expert claims by drawing upon their social media networks and traditional gender roles and have forged new ways of knowing in the process.
Degree
Ph. D.