Environmental Sociology - American Sociological Association

Seminar Description
CONTESTED ENVIRONMENTAL ILLNESSES
Sociology 187-25/Environmental Studies 188 (Research Seminar)
Phil Brown
Brown University
This research seminar derives from an ongoing four-year project, funded by the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation and the National Science Foundation, that examines “contested illnesses,” which
involve major scientific disputes and extensive public debates over environmental causes. That project
was carried out by a research group of myself, a faculty member from Providence College, two graduate
students, and there undergraduates; that group continues to work together, though two undergraduates
have now graduated. Much of what you will read in this seminar derives from the work of that research
group.
The seminar provides students with an opportunity to be part of this larger project through learning
about work completed so far and by engaging in research in the four areas of concern: Gulf War illnesses,
small air particles and asthma, environmental factors in breast cancer, and toxics reduction. By
examining the social problems formulation of these diseases, students will learn the importance of lay
disease discovery, and show how diverse interests shape environmental and medical knowledge and
social policy.
For each disease/condition (Gulf War illness, asthma, and breast cancer) we will examine how the
disease/condition came to be a social problem, by asking: 1) How have victims and their lay allies
identified diseases and organized to seek redress?; 2) How does the illness become contested? In
particular, what are the different perspectives of major players (government agencies, professional
organizations, scientific research groups, corporations, industry organizations, and public
advocacy/activist groups)? What is the role of mass media in these processes? 3) How have disputes over
environmentally induced diseases led to scientific and technological progress in disease detection and
etiology, and the development of less toxic products and processes? How do scientists and government
agencies deal with issues such as lay research participation, standards of proof, the quality of official
studies, disputes over the cost-benefit analysis of risks and hazards, the official acceptance of the
disease/condition and its etiology, and remediation and prevention approaches?; and 4) What has been
the effect of illness contestations on victims’ health and on public health policy? For the fourth
component – toxics reduction – we will examine alternative upstream approaches that seek to reduce the
substances that are implicated in environmentally induced diseases.
The core of the project was initially centered on:
1) ethnographic observation of Silent Spring Institute (Newton, MA - research on environmental causes
of breast cancer); Boston Environmental Hazard Center (Boston, MA – research on Gulf War illnesses),
Action for Community and Environment (Boston, MA – research and advocacy on environmental causes
of asthma), and Toxic Use Reduction Institute (Lowell, MA – lay-initiated state agency engaged in toxics
reduction).
2) interviews with researchers in those institutions, as well as with researchers, government officials, and
activists involved in those areas of concern.
The project expanded to include environmental breast cancer movement groups in two other locales,
an environmental justice/asthma in another locale, and the scientists and activists working on the
precautionary principle (a preventive approach to potentially dangerous substances).
Students in this seminar will also study examples of other contested illnesses. We will also study
writings on “critical epidemiology” that provide critiques of mainstream epidemiology and offer
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