Contaminated Communities: Coping With Residential Toxic Exposure, Second Edition

by Edelstein,Michael R

• ISBN13: 9780813336473
• ISBN10: 0813336473
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this wholly revised Second Edition, Michael Edelstein draws on his thirty years as a community activist to provide a much-expanded theoretical foundation for understanding the psychosocial impacts of toxic contamination. Informed by social psychological theory and an extensive survey of documented cases of toxic exposure, and enlivened by excerpts drawn from more than a thousand interviews with victims,Contaminated Communitiespresents a candid portrayal of the toxic victim's experience and the key stages in the course of toxic disaster. The Second Edition introduces dozens of new cases and provides expanded considerations of environmental justice, environmental racism, environmental turbulence, and environmental stigma, as well as a fully articulated theory of "lifescape." The new edition moves past the well-charted role of reactive environmentalism to explore issues for a proactivist approach that employs a "third path" of social learning, sustainable innovation, consensus building, and community empowerment.

Author Biography

Michael Edelstein is professor of Environmental Pyschology at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where until recently, he convened the Environmental Studies major. Since 1979, he has conducted a continuous program of research on the psycho-social impacts of environmental contamination. He is the co-author of Radon’s Deadly Daughters, as well as co-editor of Radon and the Environment. Dr. Edelstein’s research has also involved the impacts of environmental change on indigenous peoples and the practice of environmental impact assessment. In recent years, he has become involved in environmental exchanges with Russia, serving as a project director for two grants from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the First Edition	p. ix
Preface to 2004 Edition	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Toxic Exposure: The Plague of Our Time	p. 1
The Plague as a Metaphor for Toxic Exposure	p. 2
Contaminated Communities	p. 6
Contamination as a Widespread Event	p. 7
Defining a Contaminated Community	p. 9
The Stages of Toxic Disaster	p. 19
Collateral Damage in the Risk Society	p. 22
The Theory of Environmental Turbulence	p. 24
Summary and Outline of the Book	p. 32
Legler: The Story of a Contaminated Community	p. 35
A Methodological Note	p. 35
Groundwater Contamination in Legler	p. 37
Period of Incubation	p. 38
Discovery and Announcement	p. 50
Disruption of Lifestyle: Water Delivery	p. 55
The Hookup of City Water	p. 59
Lingering Concerns	p. 59
Afterword About the Landfill's Afterlife	p. 62
Lifescape Change: Cognitive Adjustment to Toxic Exposure	p. 65
Defending Our Prior Assumptions	p. 65
Perceiving a Changed Status	p. 66
Perceptions of Health	p. 71
Inherent Uncertainty	p. 73
Confirmed Exposures	p. 78
Environment	p. 81
Loss of Personal Control	p. 89
The Inversion of Home	p. 93
Loss of Social Trust	p. 104
Conclusion: The Lifescape Impacts of Toxic Exposure	p. 118
Individual and Family Impacts	p. 119
Coping with Exposure: Individuals	p. 119
Outcomes: Positive and Negative	p. 122
Coping with Exposure: Couples	p. 136
Coping with Exposure: Children	p. 141
Case Studies of Family Dynamics	p. 147
Stigmatized Relationships: Outsiders Just Don't Understand	p. 152
Neighbors: Proximate Support	p. 158
Summary: Individual and Family Impacts	p. 159
Disabling Citizens: The Governmental Response to Toxic Exposure	p. 161
A Dialectic of Double Binds	p. 162
Communicational Distortion in the Institutional Context	p. 172
Distortion and the Communication of Bad News	p. 176
Differing Paradigms of Risk Between Citizens and Regulators	p. 178
Institutional Contexts	p. 189
Conclusion and Summary	p. 191
The Enabling Response: Community Development and Toxic Exposure	p. 193
Enablement Through Community Development	p. 193
Keys to Enablement: Leadership and Activism	p. 195
Key Benefits of Community Development	p. 197
The Consensus/Dissensus Continuum	p. 201
Consensus and Dissensus in Legler	p. 205
Consensus and Dissensus Elsewhere	p. 209
Toxic Victims: A New Social Movement?	p. 213
Sustainability as a Metaenvironmental Justice Issue	p. 242
Conclusion: A Radical Environmental Populism	p. 244
The Societal Meaning of Pollution	p. 245
Denial and the Culture of Contamination	p. 245
Rejecting a Contaminating Culture: Local Environmental Resistance	p. 253
Changing the Culture of Contamination	p. 274
Cultural Immunity: Last Defense of the Contaminating Culture	p. 279
Sustainability as the Third Stage of Modernity	p. 282
Notes	p. 293
Bibliography	p. 311
Index	p. 339
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