Sherry Cable

Acting Locally: Environmental Injustice and the Emergence of Grass-roots Environmental Organizations

Because of the contradictions inherent in a liberal democratic state, the environmental regulatory process often fails to protect citizens from corporate pollution. As a consequence, organizations have emerged in some contaminated communities to put pressure on the regulatory process. This paper examines the structural sources of the emergence of grass-roots environmental organizations. These organizations represent a new trend in the environmental movement, and are part of a broader historical process involving the evolution of the legal culture and the social control of corporate conduct in the United States.

Drowning in Inequalities Swimming and Social Justice

The authors argue that age, sex, and racial differentials in swimming participation are conditioned by the availability of swimming infrastructure and the principle of social exclusivity that limits access of lower status groupings, even where pools and programs are available. In turn, the authors argue that participation in swimming and where that activity occurs (pool versus open water) affect life chances (accidental drowning rates) across status groups. Multiple data sources were used to operationalize measures of swimming participation, social exclusivity, conditions associated with the development of swimming infrastructure, risk for a place to drown, and age, sex, and racial accidental drowning and submersion rates. Given that some progress has been made toward lessening social exclusivity with lower status groups now participating in many sports, and the under-reporting of deaths from accidental drowning and submersion, the authors believe that the confirmation of their hypotheses is conservative.

Production and extrapolation of meaning in the environmental justice movement

We analyze the structural determinants of social construction processes in the environmental justice movement. We argue that initial structural conditions legitimated environmental grievances that were transformed in the 1980s into a sense of environmental injustice. Environmental injustice was produced through perceptions of: the Love Canal and Three Mile Island disasters; the Reagan administrations environmental deregulation; and continuing discoveries of contaminated communities. In the extrapolation of meaning, the grievance of environmental injustice evolved into the goal of environmental justice through interaction between grassroots environmental activists and national civil rights leaders.

THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN INHIBITING MOBILIZATION: SOLIDARITY AND SUPPRESSION IN OAK RIDGE

On the basis of documents and in-depth interviews with 80 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, we analyzed the lack of collective mobilization against documented environmental problems. Collective identity is a central concept in new social movement theory and is seen as a major determinant of collective action. We borrowed the concept but examined the converse. Individual activism has consistently emerged in Oak Ridge without the development of the collective processes that mark mobilization. We examined the establishment of a special collective identity for the community in Oak Ridge, then analyzed the role of collective identity in the suppression of health grievances through heightened saliency, consciousness, and opposition to activism.On the basis of documents and in-depth interviews with 80 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, we analyzed the lack of collective mobilization against documented environmental problems. Collective identity is a central concept in new social movement theory and is seen as a major determinant of collective action. We borrowed the concept but examined the converse. Individual activism has consistently emerged in Oak Ridge without the development of the collective processes that mark mobilization. We examined the establishment of a special collective identity for the community in Oak Ridge, then analyzed the role of collective identity in the suppression of health grievances through heightened saliency, consciousness, and opposition to activism.

Economic Imperatives and Race Relations The Rise and Fall of the American Apartheid System

Drawing on secondary sources, the authors analyze how contemporary U.S. social institutions continue to produce racial differentials despite considerable pressures for institutional changes to reduce or eliminate those differentials. They argue that the post-Civil War industrial revolution brought economic imperatives that shaped the labor pool and created occupational segregation by race. The principle of racial segregation subsequently permeated other social institutions, most notably the political, educational, and residential institutions, to form the American apartheid system by 1918. Between the world wars, the United States strove for global economic dominance by a state collaboration with corporate interests to maintain the apartheid system. The apartheid system was the basis for the 1945 achievement of U.S. economic dominance. During the phase of unchallenged economic dominance, Black resistance combined with global criticisms of racism to dismantle the apartheid system. When U.S. global economic dominance faded in the 1970s and 1980s, a White back-lash occurred against Black economic and political gains.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF A MINOR SPORT: THE DIFFUSION AND COMMODIFICATION OF MASTERS SWIMMING

ABSTRACT We examine the global spread of Masters Swimming (MS) focusing on the economic, social, and demographic conditions associated with its initiation in the United States and its international growth. We characterize MS as a modern sport and look at its subcultural form, organizational structure, practices, and early pattern of organizational growth from bottom to top. Then we describe the top down role of La Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur (FINA) in supplying legitimacy, resources, organizational coherence, and corporate sponsors to spread the sport among FINA members. By establishing mutually beneficial relations with corporate sponsors, MS rapidly commodified and diffused to countries and territories with middle to high socio-economic development.

Social Control and Movement Outcome: The Case of Aim

Abstract The American Indian Movement (AIM) was one of several organizations within the modern Native American movement. We analyze AIM using current variants of resource mobilization approaches, new social movement theory and the political process model to explain the organizations rapid demise. We found AIM to be characterized by its urban roots, its militant tactics, and its efforts to produce a collective identity of pan-tribalism. We conclude that, because AIM was unable to foster a collective identity that could sustain the organization, the governments severe social control techniques were successful. The underlying cause of the states repression of AIM was economic. AIM represented a threat to government and corporate interests in energy resources on land with Native American title.

Sinking under the weight of corruption: Neoliberal reform, political accountability and justice

The United Nations adopted the 2003 Convention Against Corruption to reduce corruption in developing nations. Corruption’s determinants include political systems’ permeability to economic influence, state economic intervention, weak political competition and officials’ discretionary power to allocate resources. Corruption’s outcomes are slowed economic development, misallocation of government resources, income inequalities and, less frequently, disasters. Using archival and interview data, this article documents corruption’s shaping of the 2006 sinking of an Egyptian ferry in the Red Sea, which killed 1034; high-level corruption not only caused the disaster but exacerbated its impacts. The study’s findings confirm much of the empirical literature but contradict assertions that corruption is associated with high levels of government intervention in the economy. Based on the findings, the article gives a critique of neoliberal reform that associates it with high-level corruption.

Movement Outcomes and Dimensions of Social Change: The Multiple Effects of Local Mobilizations

We use case study materials on a community mobilization against a landfill proposal to test the notion that social movement outcomes are multidimensional. We find that outcomes of community mobilization at Tug Hill in New York occurred at four levels of the social structure. Outcomes at the individual level benefited activists and included the expansion of friendship networks and personal transformations. Outcomes at the social movement organization level were mixed; the landfill was built despite mobilization, but the group endured as a watchdog organization. The host community benefited from its revitalization and its heightened political consciousness. Outcomes at the macro level included passage of more stringent state regulations of landfills. Our findings suggest the need for an expanded conceptualization of movement outcomes in which levels of social change are distinguished by the recipient of change.

Professionalization in Social Movement Organization: A Case Study of Pennsylvanians for Biblical Morality

Abstract This paper is a report on a state chapter of Moral Majority, in which I analyze the professionalization of this social movement organization. Discussed are the structural conditions that influenced professionalization and the implications of such an organizational structure for tactical decisions, using the organizations anti-abortion campaign as an example. I conclude that the ideological nature of the social movement organizations grievances and its political and organizational environments helped to induce professionalization. As a result of these conditions and of the organizational structure itself, the social movement organization adopted the tactics of issue selection and lobbying to achieve its goals.