Peter K. New Award Winner, 2004
Perceptions of Risk from Industrial Pollution in China: A Comparison of Occupational Groups
Bryan Tilt
As economic reforms have transformed the People’s Republic of China over the past several decades, rapid industrialization has resulted in air and water pollution problems that threaten the health of China’s citizens and damage the environment. Small-scale rural factories called “township and village enterprises” play a major role in China’s growing pollution problem. However, very little is known about how rural Chinese citizens perceive industrial pollution. This paper examines how community members in an industrial township in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan perceive the environmental risks associated with industrialization. The paper first focuses on identifying salient risks from pollution, as defined by local informants. Next, the risk perceptions of three occupational groups in the community (industrial workers, commercial and service sector workers, and farmers) are compared. In contrast to the common view that poor individuals and communities worry less about environmental problems, most informants in this study perceived industrial pollution as posing considerable risk to themselves and the community, despite the community’s heavy reliance on industry. This study also finds that different occupational groups perceive industrial pollution quite differently, and that these differences in risk perception are related to a number of factors, including the distribution of financial benefits from local factories. The paper concludes with theoretical and applied considerations for the study of environmental risk perception and risk management.
Key words: environmental risk, perception, industrial pollution, economic development, China
Indigenization of Illness Support Groups in Haiti
Jeannine Coreil and Gladys Mayard
This paper examines the process of indigenization within peer support groups for Haitian women living with the chronic physical impairment of lymphatic filariasis. Five support groups established in a coastal community were studied over a period of three years to understand the adaptation of the Western illness support group model to the local cultural milieu. Unlike most support groups in affluent settings, the Haitian women showed minimal interest in talking about illness-related issues. The groups developed a distinctly Haitian style characterized by emphasis on religion and spirituality, artistic and expressive components, and acquisition of practical skills that offer income-generating opportunities. Members directed the greatest energy toward developing microenterprise activities. This pattern of adaptation is discussed in terms of indigenous traditions of mutual aid in rural Haiti, the compelling material needs of families living in stark poverty, and the ongoing challenge of coping with political and economic insecurity. Results are framed within a theoretical discussion of contextual factors that lead self-help groups into social action beyond the groups’ original purposes. The analysis also addresses the conditions needed for long-term sustainability of support groups, and the way in which fundamental needs shape group activity.
Key words: indigenization, support groups, Haiti, lymphatic filariasis, women
The Politics of Place: Practice, Process, and Kinship in Domestic Violence Courts
Mindie Lazarus-Black and Patricia L. McCall
This article describes the processing of domestic violence cases in Trinidad, with implications for the implementation of domestic violence law more generally in other common law courts, including the U.S. It is based on fieldwork in magistrate’s courts and a statistical analysis of domestic violence court records—the first of its kind for the English-speaking Caribbean. We identify a “politics of place” that makes courts “discordant locales” (Frohmann 2004), places in which persons requesting protection orders will encounter different forms of structural, practical, and ideological resistance to their claims to rights. We explore the extent to which applications for protection orders are dismissed, withdrawn, or awarded protective action, uncovering differences in case dispositions between the courts. Our analysis highlights the architecture, organization, and workloads of the courts, contrasting judicial styles, and the role of kinship ideology and practice in shaping litigants’ use of the courts. We reveal a “public secret” (Taussig 1999) about domestic violence litigation of theoretical and practical interest to anthropologists, scholars and activists concerned with domestic violence, and students of law and society research.
Key words: domestic violence, anthropology of law, courts, kinship, Caribbean
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Sirionó and Yuquí Community Forestry Projects
in the Bolivian Amazon
Allyn MacLean Stearman
Since the early 1990’s, “community forestry” has taken the spotlight in conservation and development initiatives in the Bolivian Amazon, particularly among indigenous peoples. This paper will examine the cases of two culturally related indigenous groups, the Sirionó and Yuquí, who are both stakeholders in community forestry management projects. The first project, carried out among the Sirionó by the NGO (non-governmental organization) CIDDEBENI (Centro de Investigación y Documentación para el Desarrollo del Beni), was funded by several international NGOs and governmental entities. It was small-scale and the staff had in-depth knowledge of the indigenous culture, practiced careful planning, engaged in participatory decision-making, and provided continuous monitoring and documentation for assessment. As a result, the project has contributed positively to the cultural continuity and integrity of the Sirionó people and their economic development. The second project, targeted at the Yuquí and carried out by the USAID-funded forestry project BOLFOR (Bolivia Sustainable Forest Management Project), was a minor part of this large-scale and complex project, and the staff was lacking in knowledge of the indigenous culture, carried out little planning, and provided virtually no monitoring or oversight. This paper compares and contrasts these two forestry projects and the management decisions that contributed to their relative success or failure. An analysis is provided that addresses planning and implementation issues that should be considered for similar projects in the future.
Key words: conservation and development, indigenous community forestry, Bolivian Amazon, Sirionó, Yuquí
The Possibility of Difference: Rethinking Co-management
Marc G. Stevenson
Many of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples have adopted the language, concepts and procedures of environmental resource management in order to advance their needs, rights and interests in co-management. Drawing on the author’s experiences in co-management, the advantages and disadvantages of this project for Canada, its Aboriginal peoples, and its landscapes are explored. Alternatives to the status quo, grounded in social, cultural and ecological sustainability, and modelled after the two-row wampum, are then considered. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parties to co-management must critically examine current management policies and practices in order to develop innovative approaches that will create the space required for the meaningful and equitable inclusion of Aboriginal peoples in decisions taken in respect to their lands and resources.
Key words: Aboriginal-state relations, management, conservation, relationships, two-row wampum
Garage Sales Make Good Neighbors: Building Community through Neighborhood Sales
Gretchen M. Herrmann
This article explores the community-building potential of neighborhood garage sales, focusing on case examples in suburban developments and city block sales, and contrasting them with student housing, town/rural, and cooperative sales. Under the auspices of attracting more shoppers and making some extra money by cleaning out unneeded goods, neighborhood sales get residents out of their dwellings and mingling among themselves, sometimes for the first time. Some neighborhood sales have been organized expressly for the purpose of getting the neighbors to know one another in areas undergoing transition. They provide a positive means to combat a perceived “decline of community” in the United States today, developing both bonding and binding social capital. The most successful sales for community building occur in neighborhoods that have: houses relatively close together with a high density of sales to facilitate walking; few other community integrating activities; capable organizers with a vision of community; some children and child-friendly events; festive touches, such as selling food; and other community organizations integrated into the sales. Neighborhood sales also define the neighborhood to the larger community, as well as promote internal solidarity.
Key words: Garage sales, social capital, community solidarity, U.S. neighborhoods
Building Community during HOPE VI Redevelopment: Lessons from a Seattle Case Study
Carolina Katz Reid, Edward Liebow, and Gabrielle O’Malley
In the United States, government policies concerning public housing changed dramatically in the early 1990s, leading to the passage of HOPE VI, an ambitious program aimed at overhauling the nation’s most distressed public housing developments. One distinctive feature of HOPE VI is that it incorporates a community and supportive services component designed to help raise the incomes of public residents and move them on a path towards financial self-sufficiency. This paper provides a detailed look at the community building and supportive services efforts at Rainier Vista, a HOPE VI redevelopment project in Seattle, Washington. Due to a unique set of circumstances, when granted a HOPE VI award, Rainier Vista was already part of Jobs-Plus, a demonstration project that aimed to increase the earnings of public housing residents. As a result, the staff at Rainier Vista had thought extensively about community and supportive services in advance of receiving the HOPE VI grant, already implementing innovative community building activities and efforts to increase employment rates and earnings of Rainier Vista’s residents. The blending of Jobs-Plus and HOPE VI into “HOPE-Plus” provides a window into the benefits and challenges of developing an effective community and supportive services component of HOPE VI redevelopment, one that is worth considering in the public policy debate over how public investment can be critical in re-shaping impoverished urban environments.
Key words: public housing policy, HOPE VI, community development, urban ethnography
Tomorrow is Already Here, Or Is It? Steps in Preventing a Local Methamphetamine Outbreak
Merrill Singer, Greg Mirhej, Claudia Santelices, Erica Hastings,
Juhem Navarro, and Jim Vivian
This paper reports on a research-driven community-based effort to assess the potential for a local methamphetamine drug epidemic and to build a public campaign to head off or at least minimize the potentially severe health and social costs of the spread of a powerful stimulant drug like methamphetame to a new area. Drawing on diverse national and local datasets, as well as on several years of monitoring changing drug use patterns and analysing illicit drug difussion, community researchers in Hartford, CT identified a reasonable likelihood that methamphetamine--which is rarely used in the city currently--would spread and cause a significant local drug epidemic. In response, community efforts were initiated to draw attention to this looming public health problem and to build a broadbased, citywide primary prevention campaign. Based on a review of the spread of methamphetamine nationally, and the considerable health problems that result from methamphetamine addiction, this paper describes the implementation phase of the Hartford prevention campaign, the challenges faced in this effort, and the implications for applied anthropology.
Key words: drug epidemic, primary prevention, public health, drug monitoring, applied anthropology
Redistribution and its Discontents: On the Prospects of Committed Work in Public Mental Health and Like Settings
Kim Hopper
Refusal of services has long been treated as prima facie evidence of a disordered mind; this paper inquires instead into the tainted nature of the offer. I first sketch the conflicted nature of relief in the American welfare state---hedged so as to ensure only the truly needy will apply—and the way symbolic means are deployed to that end. I then go on to suggest that refusal to accept aid on those terms (even among the street-dwelling, psychiatrically disabled homeless) may be a last-resort exercise of self-respect. This dynamic has an ancient pedigree, whose mythic prototype is Philoctetes. Equally striking is the legacy of the outlaw hero of the story, apparent in the ways frontline workers today contrive to outwit the system’s structural constraints. These anomalous forms of “committed work”--acts of resistance delivering both effort and benefit that cannot be bought--are my real concern. I review ethnographic work suggesting that such acts of common ministry are well-documented exceptions to the broad commodification of care and take their toll on the workers themselves. The paper closes, ruefully, with an acknowledgment of the contradictory valence of system-sustaining resistance that is so easily co-opted and integrated as compensation for “institutional bad faith” (Bourdieu).
Key words: resistance, emotional labor, homelessness, care work, recognition
