Environmental hazards are ubiquitous in contemporary society, but little sociological attention has been paid to how competing stakeholders define, evaluate, and act upon the risks and hazards of environmental health problems, such as widespread but low-level exposures to industrial chemicals. This dissertation addresses three connected research questions: how do stakeholders use scientific evidence to make competing claims about environmental health issues; how do stakeholders develop and operationalize different definitions of risk; and what are the consequences of these strategic translations of science and definitions of risk for environmental policy in the United States? To answer these questions, I use the case study of ongoing controversies around flame retardant chemicals and interactions between four broad groups of stakeholders: industry representatives, regulators and scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, academic researchers, and social movement activists. I conducted multi-sited, multi-method qualitative research to cover the full range of stakeholders involved in controversies over flame retardant chemicals, including participant observation at five sites and114 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. <br/> I argue that the inevitable uncertainty of science means that research findings can be strategically used by different stakeholders for competing policy claims. I use a growing body of literature on the New Political Sociology of Science to examine how stakeholders evaluate environmental risks and interpret scientific evidence in ways that support their political, economic, and institutional goals. I find that controversies over the use of flame retardant chemicals are discussed by virtually all parties as contests over the state of the science, and all stakeholders engage in strategic science translation to justify their policy positions, often obscuring political, social, and economical factors that motivate their decisions. However, these controversies are also conflicts over environmental health futures—different perspectives on the ideal future of human society and the natural environment, whose interests should be prioritized, and how relevant decisions should be made.
Cordner, Alissa,
"Risk, Power, and Policy in Environmental Health Controversies: The Case of Flame Retardant Chemicals"
(2013).
Sociology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0V40SKB
