Bounded Communities: How A Local Technoscientific Environmental State Emerges in Community Engagement Efforts

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Urban Space, Development, and Gentrification

Abstract

How is community engagement practiced at the local level? How does it constitute and reconfigure technoscientific expertise on environmental health concerns and environmental cleanup actions? Drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork and more than 30 interviews, this paper examines local community engagement efforts as a case of technoscientific state formation. It argues that a technoscientific environmental state, which encourages diverse understandings of nature within its central reach while oppressing sporadic voices of environmental concern among peripheral participants, emerges through the social construction of a bounded community. This construction demarcates who counts as the affected community, distinguishes who are allies or competitors to community engagement efforts, and promotes or suppresses public narratives and scientific inquiries on what the environmental problem is and how to address it.

Authors

• Xinyan Wu, The University of Texas Medical Branch

• Stephen Molldrem, The University of Texas Medical Branch

• Lance Hallberg, The University of Texas Medical Branch

• Elise Smith, The University of Texas Medical Branch