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Issue 7.1 Abstracts

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Risk, Mediation and the Stigma of a Technological Accident in an African-American Community

By Theresa A. Satterfield

Technological stigma -- the tainting of products or places as dangerous due to associated fears about health -- is gaining prominence in the social and policy sciences as a theoretical construct. The consequences of this new stigma is defined primarily in economic terms such as the devaluation of real property nearest a technological hazard or the demise of a product's value (e.g., British "Mad Cow" beef) in the wake of fears about contaminants. This paper argues that a preoccupation with market or economic impacts obscures the profound social and psychological repercussions for those exposed to technological hazards, of their inward reflections and outward responses to a world that has projected its fears and its lethal byproducts upon them. It will detail the physical, psychological and sociopolitical experience of living in a contaminated African-American community and in so doing paint a decidedly noneconomic portrait of the stigmatization of body and place.

Keywords: stigma, contaminated communities, African Americans and the environment, community studies of risk, social and environmental impact, environmental justice

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Race, Residence and Environmental Concern: New Englanders and the White Mountain National Forest

By Jennifer Morrissey and Robert Manning

This study explores the influence of racial identity and place of residence on environmental concern, as measured in terms of environmental values and ethics. A survey of representative samples of Massachusetts residents was conducted, and focused on the White Mountain National Forest. Objectives of the study were (1) to discover how environmental values and ethics vary across a diverse cross-section of New Englanders and (2) to explore the constructs of environmental values and environmental ethics as alternatives to environmental concern. Relatively few differences in environmental values and ethics were found between African American and white, and rural and urban subgroups. Environmental values and ethics were found to be potentially useful constructs that may measure a more fundamental relationship between people and the environment than environmental concern. Research and management implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords: race, residence, environmental concern, environmental values, environmental ethics, national forests

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Public Perceptions of Global Warming

By Adam Douglas Henry

This study explored public perceptions of global warming and the diverse meanings that lay people attribute to the phenomenon. The data came from six weeks of observation of visitors to a special Smithsonian Institution exhibit on global warming. The focus of the fieldwork was to document the meanings that people gave to global warming and related concepts during their tour of the exhibit by recording the comments, questions, and other narrative accounts of the visitors. Six weeks of field research yielded approximately 150 individual observations of visitor's interpretations of global warming, energy consumption, the greenhouse effect, nonrenewable resources, pollution, and ozone depletion. Three patterns emerged from the data: a gradient of knowledge with the attentive public falling between the average citizen and those who have become engaged, a catastrophism that represents a reverse availability heuristic, and a belief in the robustness of the biosphere. While each of these have some relation to previous work, it would be useful to see if survey-based or experimental studies confirm these tentative conclusions.

Keywords: global warming, climate change, lay perspectives, public knowledge, qualitative research, Smithsonian Institute

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Mainstreaming the Environment: Global Ecology, International Institutions and the Crisis of Environmental Governance

By Valerie de Campos Mello

The concept of sustainable development is now considered a guiding principle of national and international action. Yet the widespread acceptance of this concept stands in contrast with the inability so far to alter effectively the development model responsible for environmental degradation. The lack of many positive and concrete results produced by massive efforts in the field of international cooperation for the environment indicate the contradictory character of this new "global" environmentalism. The purpose of this article is to explore how environmental considerations were reframed so as to become compatible with global development. Adopting an international political economy perspective and based on interviews with the main categories of actors involved, it provides evidence that environmental concerns were remodeled by the joint action of technocratic environmentalists, the international UN-related development establishment and business and industry sectors. Analyzing the results of international cooperation and in particular the review of UNCED's implementation five years after the Summit, the article questions the nature of the 'sustainable development' consensus. The inability of the international community to deal with most global environmental issues reveals the limits of international cooperation in the name of the environment.

Keywords: global development, international institution, business, environmental management

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Community Development from the Ground Up: Social Justice Coffee

By Charles Simpson and Anita Rapone

This article examines the fair trade paradigm through a study of the Mexican coffee-producing cooperative UCIRI and the U.S. importer-roaster Equal Exchange. This alternative to conventional trade is a partnership aimed at satisfying the interests of small farmers, coffee roasters, and consumers. Farmers in democratic cooperatives collectively address crop and environmental improvement, organic certification, in-country processing, and the negotiation of contracts with roasters in the North. A portion of profits are re-invested in community improvements. Roasters pay a fair trade price, provide credit, and promote the community development context of the coffee in their marketing. We argue that the process is best understood as a social movement aimed at grassroots development. Roasters are both material beneficiaries and conscience constituents, linked to producers and consumers in a moral economy which promotes social solidarity and enhances the social capital of each sector in the movement.

Keywords: fair trade, coffee, alternative trade, moral economy, community-based development

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Redecorating Nature: Reflections on Science, Holism, Community, Humility, Reconciliation, Spirit, Compassion, and Love

By Marc Bekoff

Numerous humans - in my opinion, far too many - continue to live apart from nature, rather than as a part of nature. In this personal essay I discuss various aspects of traditional science and suggest that holistic and heart-driven compassionate science needs to replace reductionist and impersonal science. I argue that creative proactive solutions drenched in deep caring, respect, and love for the universe need to be developed to deal with the broad range of problems with which we are confronted. Simply put, I have had enough. I want the world to be a better place for all of its inhabitants and time is not on our side. I feel a deep sense of urgency and passionate impatience. We are worrying about wildness as it is disappearing right in front of our eyes - as I write and we discuss. Thus, I am willing to open myself to criticism, to be vulnerable for expressing views that are not part of main-stream science. Rather than take a doomsday view that the world will not even exist in 100 years if we fail to accept our unique responsibilities, it is more disturbing to imagine a world in which humans and other life coexist in the absence of any intimacy and interconnectedness. Surely we do not want to be remembered as the generation that killed nature. To illustrate some of my points, I discuss various aspects of translocation studies in which animals are moved about from one place to another in humans' attempts to "redecorate "nature. In these projects interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary and disciplinary boundaries must be trespassed. I also emphasize the importance of teaching children well for their and our futures rest on their developing a deeply-rooted caring ethic. My vision is to create a world-wide community in which humans perceive themselves as a part of nature and not apart from her, in which humans who are overwhelmed and whose spirits and souls have been robbed and squelched by living in and amongst steel, concrete, asphalt, noise, and a multitude of invasions of their private space reconnect with raw nature - with the wind in their faces, the odors of wild flowers, and the sounds, sights, odors, and touch of other animals and inanimate environs. A world in which sensing is feeling. Nature is our unconditional friend and reconnecting with nature can help overcome alienation and loneliness. The power of love must not be underestimated as we forge ahead to reconnect with nature.

Keywords: science, nature, holism, compassion, social responsibility

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Dogmas, Idols and the Edge of Chaos

By Tom Cheetham
(A John Templeton Foundation Exemplary Award Winning Essay)

Neither Modernism nor Postmodernism provides an understanding of the human person that is adequate to reveal our relationship to the non-human world. In particular, the science of human ecology is increasingly dominated by an abstract vision that only increases our alienation from ourselves and the natural world. To change this we have to realize the necessity and power of Not Knowing that is the deepest meaning of the open-endedness of the scientific spirit. We should understand that our primary task as teachers is not to transmit knowledge, but to nurture in our students the precise and sensitive attention which the mystery of the world demands.

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