David J. Hess

Enhancing Justice and Sustainability at the Local Level: Affordable Policies for Urban Governments*

Abstract There are creative, affordable ways to address community development and also achieve goals of environmental sustainability. Approximately thirty case studies, based on interviews and usually also site visits, were completed during 2005. The case studies examined community gardening and urban agriculture, the greening of publicly controlled urban electricity and bus agencies, reuse centers and local business associations in the United States. Policy recommendations for city governments that emerged from the case studies are summarized here. There are many opportunities for financially pressed cities to assist the development of ‘just sustainability’ projects with minimal financial commitments. They can do so by rechannelling the purchasing decisions of public agencies, building partnerships with community organizations and developing the small business sector. *This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the grant ‘Sustainable Technology, the Politics of Design, and Localism’ (SES-00425039). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Environmental Reform Organizations and Undone Science in the United States: Exploring the Environmental, Health, and Safety Implications of Nanotechnology

Environmental organizations have raised concerns about the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) implications of the hundreds of products containing nanomaterials that are now on the market. In the process they have drawn attention to the ‘undone science’ of EHS research and called for changes in both research and regulatory policy. Environmental and other advocacy organizations have been active in three policy fields in the United States: funding levels for EHS research, moratoria on the production of new nanomaterials largely based on the precautionary principle, and negotiations over definitions of safe or responsible nanotechnology with the private sector and the federal government. During the administration of President George W. Bush, calls for more research and industry guidelines met with greater success than those that called for moratoria and enhanced mandatory regulation. The more successful strategies tend to reproduce scientistic politics associated with risk assessment, whereas the less successful strategies would open up a broader public debate on the extent to which nanotechnology is needed or socially desirable.

Declarations of Independents: On Local Knowledge and Localist Knowledge

Localist movements support increased local ownership of regional economies and oppose the colonization of local economies by corporate firms, franchises, and agribusiness. Events organized by a buy local and anti-big-box organization in upstate New York provide the point of departure for an exploration of the meanings of the terms local and independent. Drawing on the discussion of knowledge practices in this journal, the relationships among local knowledge, mainstream economic development knowledge, and the localist knowledge of social science research are explored. Strategic combinations of local knowledge and localist knowledge can provide a powerful basis for mobilizing political and consumer support for localist movements. Localist movements in the United States are situated in the broader currents of antiglobalization movements, new political coalitions, and neoliberalism.

The Raw and the Organic: Politics of Therapeutic Cancer Diets in the United States

There is a voluminous literature on the historical conflicts between advocates and critics of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) for cancer. Although the older literature documents the suppression of CAM therapies and advocates, since the 1990s, the politics of CAM have become more complex and subtle. For example, suppression has tended to shift to a politics of integration, that is, of selective uptake of CAM therapies when used as adjuvant modalities. In addition, there is an emergent politics of knowledge that involves (1) social networks with the CAM movement that represent various therapies, (2) value claims regarding the relationship between CAM therapies and religious and cultural viewpoints, and (3) political views regarding globalization and antiglobalization policies and movements. Focusing on three types of therapeutic diets that CAM cancer patients in the United States use, this article charts some of the emergent forms of the politics in CAM in the United States.

Suppression, Bias, and Selection in Science: The Case of Cancer Research

In recent years the long‐rejected theory of the bacterial etiology of peptic ulcers has been resurrected and transformed into consensus knowledge. The history suggests that the stability of consensus knowledge on the noninfectious nature of chronic disease may be open to question. Cancer research has a similar history in which alternative bacterial programs were not only rejected and forgotten, but actively suppressed. Two types of accountability are analyzed. On the one hand, while nonmainstream researchers are rightly held accountable to the strictest standards of their field, the standards themselves should be evaluated because they are defined hierarchically in ways that create biases against the nonmainstream research programs. On the other hand, the general research field is accountable to the public, and it should evaluate alternative research programs according to fair scientific standards. The cancer research field presents a massive policy failure on both counts; new policies are needed to allow...