The Social Life of Pollution: How Social Narratives Shape Pollution Perceptions in Chicago, IL

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. Environmental Justice & Climate Policy

Abstract

In Chicago, Illinois, environmental pollution is distributed in markedly unjust ways. Shaped by a long history of racist and xenophobic policies such as redlining and zoning discrimination, environmental pollution is released in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West Sides at much higher rates than on the predominantly white North Side. Chicago remains one of the most racially and ethnically segregated cities in the United States, resulting in Black and Latino populations experiencing disproportionate exposure to environmental pollution in their communities. In this presentation, I will introduce key findings from my Masters of Arts thesis study, which excavates social processes shaping Chicagoans’ perception and meaning-making about uneven environmental pollution in Chicago. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic interview data from 19 participants living in Chicago, I uncover three main social processes that invoke various amounts of significance for Chicagoans’ pollution experiences: naturalization, contextualization, and reflection. Utilizing grounded theory methodology, my project constructs a theory of experiential and somatic knowledge production that adds to the literature of environmental social scholars to better conceptualize pollution knowledge and perception. I argue that pollution experiences are imbued with significance or insignificance for Chicagoans and are shaped by social narratives. While naturalization and contextualization work to decrease the significance and alarm in the face of a pollution encounter, the process of reflection often increases the encounters’ significance and related concern. These processes ultimately become important to understand, as meaningfulness of phenomena affect the action taken to address them.Thus, mapping the social life of pollution in Chicago through ethnography reveals opportunities for resistance against environmental injustice.

Author

• Megan Morrell, University of Chicago