This award supports research on knowledge production and claimsmaking-practices in the contested environmental health arena. Environmental health is widely viewed as one-of the most urgent problems of our time, and it is one in which the public and policymakers often look to science for answers. But because the impact of environmental pollution and degradation on-human health is very difficult to measure, there is controversy within the scientific and public-health communities about how to determine cause and effect. The perspectives and goals of-grassroots environmental and health activist groups often are very different from those of -scientists, and activist groups may diverge even from each other in the degree to which they-perceive ecosystem health and community health to be linked. The interests and goals of-policymakers and of the chemical, agricultural, and toxic waste industries further complicate the-picture.-This award allows the investigator to begin to explore the diverse, often contradictory meanings associated with-environmental health in the U.S. The investigator will conduct field work at two sites in which these issues are under debate. The cases have been selected to differ in important ways, so that she can compare their characteristics with those found in the literature on such controversies, formulate tentative hypotheses, think about how comparisons can best be made, and develop a meta-framework for thinking about the trajectories of these conflicts. The study is being conducted with the interrelated goals of advancing-knowledge about the social contexts and implications of environmental science and also informing-public debate about environmental health. The proposed project focuses on the kinds of knowledge created by different actors-in the environmental health arena, the contexts and ways in which that knowledge is produced and-used, and the relationship between and among multiple knowledges.-
