IJE Advance Access originally published online on April 30, 2007
International Journal of Epidemiology 2007 36(2):475-476; doi:10.1093/ije/dym059
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Book Reviews |
Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. Jason Corburn.
E-mail: phil_brown{at}brown.edu
E-mail: rebecca_altman{at}brown.edu
Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice. Jason Corburn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 256 , $24. ISBN: 0-262-53272-7
This is an excellent contribution to the growing literature that examines environmental health and justice by focusing on how laypeople and their community organizations detect environmental health problems, conduct research independently or in collaboration with scientists and then effectively press for remediation and future prevention. The ‘street science’ driven by ‘local knowledge’ that Corburn documents uses ‘local insights joined with professional techniques’ to examine four efforts in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York.
Corburn applies his theoretical toolkit to examine subsistence fishing in the East River and efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency and New York City officials to document cumulative exposures, asthma in the Brooklyn Latino community, childhood lead poisoning and efforts to address sandblasting of the Williamsburg Bridge and localized air pollutants in the region. He chooses them because they are contested environmental health hazards for which there is an organized sector of the community, because the activists use environmental health science and because laypeople challenge the descriptions and prescriptions of the situation offered by professionals. It is exciting to see the creative cultural, scientific and political efforts by groups such as El Puente and the Toxic Avengers youth group.
Several notable approaches to research have become prominent in citizen campaigns and in some government and academic grant programmes—participatory action research, community-based participatory research, popular epidemiology—and these have reshaped environmental health organizing. Many scholars working in this area have found kinships with environmental justice activists who press for action on unequal racial and class distributions of hazards. Together, the scholars and activists working in this arena creatively expand the notion of environmental health and justice to include community development, traffic patterns, crime and violence, school quality, food justice and virtually all elements of social life. However, a good deal of case study research on popular epidemiology and community-based research more narrowly focus on the conduct and translation of science; Corburn extends his analysis to the multi-faceted and creative ways groups not only conduct science, but also how they leverage it to support their organizing. Corburn richly describes how citizens group merge science with other cultural and political tactics, as most vividly seen in his portrayal of the Toxic Avengers youth group, whose wall murals breathe community life into their organizing activities.
This work is grounded in science, technology and society studies. From one of his mentors, Sheila Jasanoff, Corburn applies the notion of ‘co-production’ of science in which ‘science and politics are interdependent, each drawing from the other in a dynamic iterative process’. Corburn's case studies are great examples of this dynamic interplay. For example, Corburn effectively shows us that ‘street science’ contributes extensively to many groups of actors. It helps professionals reveal problems they may have overlooked, fills data gaps, facilitates access to otherwise unreachable officials or regulators, expands the scope of implementation practices and boosts their success and improves trust and credibility. Street science helps citizens in their community organizing efforts, neighbourhood empowerment, community control, ability to engage in solutions and capacity to expand the range of responses to environmental hazards.
Perhaps one of the most compelling themes in Street Science is Corburn's portrayal of the dynamic implications of research on organizing and politics. This is a tricky issue that many analysts have been unwilling to tackle, and it is good that Corburn raises it. Corburn wisely points to one of the problems seen in some communities that strategically leverage science around environmental health; the necessity to link up with scientific allies means that social movement organizations have much competition for research partners and funds, which can thwart movement- and coalition-building.
Another tricky issue is what comes out of the citizen–science alliance. As portrayed in Corburn's El Puente case, activists learned through participation in scientific research that air pollution was not the primary cause of asthma, though in their organizing campaigns, they had been making that claim. This is another liability of engaging in science—it might create knowledge that calls into question community/movement representations of environmental health risks, exposures, or the exposure–health connections. Still, the survey work helped redirect El Puente's work, better informed them of how their constituents perceived asthma, and put into place strong asthma management and prevention trainings. In another example, Corburn portrayed one instance where activists conducted research to elicit government response; and yet, as Corburn notes, even solid scientific knowledge can be ignored by officials, as activists learned after collecting information on lead hazards from sandblasting the Williamsburg bridge.
Finally, though Corburn usefully demonstrates how activists leverage ‘street science’ to interrogate scientific expertise, we wondered how different forms of scientific expertise altered the organizing campaigns and scientific debates he describes. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Corburn portrays a myriad of professionals with which activists must deal: EPA regulators, state-scientists, city planners, lawyers, academic-scientists, health care workers/doctors and public health professionals. We were curious to know a little more than the book tells us about the differences across these different institutionalized forms of expertise, since activists must adapt and change tactics and strategies depending on who they are dealing with. But that is a minor problem, perhaps for further specification of ‘street science’ in reshaping institutional knowledge, expertise and scientific practice. While all readers interested in environmental health and justice will find this book a major contribution to the literature, there is a special message for public administrators and urban planners as possible intermediaries in adjudication between professionals and communities.
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