The Personal Is Scientific, the Scientific Is Political: The Public Paradigm of the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

McCormick, Sabrina; Brown, Phil; Zavestoski, Stephen

doi:10.1023/b:sofo.0000003003.00251.2f

Cited by 71 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For example, breast cancer advocates in Long Island gathered hundreds of responses to a door-todoor survey about incidence (McCormick et al 2003), which is similar to other maps that have been localized in a fairly circumscribed community. The Crisis Map has been widely populated across the region.…”

Section: Crowdsourcing As the Next Step In Lay Mappingmentioning

confidence: 93%

After the Cap: Risk Assessment, Citizen Science and Disaster Recovery

McCormick¹

2012

E&S

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ABSTRACT. I used the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to examine how crowdsourcing is used as a new form of citizen science that provides real time assessments of health-related exposures. Assessing risks of an oil spill, or disasters more generally, is a challenge complicated by the situated nature of knowledge-generation that results in differential perceptions and responses. These processes are critical in the case of the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf Coast since the identification of risks promises to have ramifications for multiple social actors, as well as the health status and long-term resilience of communities in the area. Qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations, and video data were collected with local social movement organizations, grassroots groups, spill workers, fisherman, local residents, scientists, and government representatives within five months of the spill. Findings suggest that crowdsourcing is a new form of citizen science reflecting a transition from lay mapping to an online data gathering system that allows a broader range of participation and the detection of a broader range of impacts. Outcomes of this research promise to help demonstrate and theorize how citizen science relates to risk assessment processes and affects disaster recovery and long-term response.

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Section: Crowdsourcing As the Next Step In Lay Mappingmentioning

confidence: 93%

After the Cap: Risk Assessment, Citizen Science and Disaster Recovery

McCormick¹

2012

E&S

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“…Volunteerism is often conceived of as service provision, rather than collective mobilization, while the latter is stigmatized as too disruptive, unproductive, and idealistic. The citizen scientists found in the STS literature tend to be the "mischievous" type, activists who use citizen science to collectively challenge racism and politico-economic powers (Allen 2003;McCormick, Brown, and Zavestoski 2003;Brown et al 2003;Ottinger 2010b). But citizen scientists who take environmental and health issues into their own hands also frequently fit the neoliberal model of rational, capacious and self-responsible citizens (Ottinger 2010a).…”

Section: Neoliberalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of Participatory Research

2016

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Citizen science is an increasingly popular activity, from bird counts to amateur water sample collection to air quality monitoring. Researchers and theorists in the field of science and technology studies (STS) have typically applauded these efforts because they make science more participatory, providing an example of the democratization of science, or, at least, more equitable engagement between experts and the lay public. However, a broader review of the literature on citizen science suggests that participation is but one of many virtues that practitioners and observers find in the practices of citizen science. This literature review makes two interventions. First, we discuss the dimensions of citizen science that do not easily fit in a typology or spectrum of participatory practices. We identify seven different virtues claimed of citizen science: increasing scientific data; increasing citizens' scientific literacy and awareness; building community capacity for environmental protection; building more equal relationship between scientists and citizens; filling knowledge gaps and challenging official accounts; driving policy change; and catching polluters. Second, we consider the social and political contexts that often create contradictory situations or dilemmas for citizen scientists. Going forward, a robust framework for the analysis of citizen science would not only address the ways scientific data is collected and put to a particular use, but also situate the project in relation to broader structural forces of scientization, neocolonialism, globalization, and neoliberalization.

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“…The existence of this continuum of knowledge and information, transferred through the social movement for access to medicines from grassroots activists to civil servants and policy makers, played a prominent role in the issuing by the Thai Minister of Public Health of compulsory licenses in 2007 and 2008, when so many countries with the same needs chose not to do so (Krikorian 2009;2014). It is similar to "boundary movements," through which boundaries between active members of the movement and actors who are not part of the movement are blurred (McCormick, Brown and Zavestoski, 2003). A hybrid form of collective action has developed that goes beyond the movement and reconfigures itself constantly, depending on opportunities or pressures.…”

Section: A Hybrid Form Of Collective Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From AIDS to Free Trade Agreements: Knowledge Activism in Thailand’s Movement for Access to Medicines

Krikorian

2017

Engaging STS

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This article examines the movement for access to medicines in Thailand, a country that is a privileged site of observation of the new world order of pharmaceuticals and has been at the forefront in many international negotiations on intellectual property. The movement relies on the appropriation of knowledge and expertise about intellectual property laws, which developed in the context of the fight against HIV/AIDS. Treatment activism in Thailand is particularly vigorous and studying it allows us to grasp both the national and transnational dimension of this type of collective action: a global movement that is structured around the notion of "access to medicines," and is in close but rather orthodox relation to medical knowledge. The relations that one can draw between AIDS activism and the movement for access-to-medicines allows one to trace the origins of the latter and helps us understand key features at the core of this movement. But the analysis also shows that, from the outset, the access to medicines movement in Thailand developed through a new form of activism. The notion of knowledge activism is developed in this paper to seize the particularities of the activism at play in Thailand as compared with other forms of collective action relying on the use of knowledge. Knowledge activism is defined not only by the activists' relation to knowledge--authoritative and institutionalized knowledge, or lay expertise--but also by the inclusion in the movement of "expert activists" such as doctors, lawyers, or academics, together with "grassroots activists." Knowledge activism also implies a permanent circulation of knowledge and information between the various categories of actors involved inside, outside and on the fringes of the movement, and results in a hybrid form of collective action that develops beyond the movement and is constantly reconfigured, according to opportunities or pressures.

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The Personal Is Scientific, the Scientific Is Political: The Public Paradigm of the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

Cited by 71 publications

References 25 publications

After the Cap: Risk Assessment, Citizen Science and Disaster Recovery

After the Cap: Risk Assessment, Citizen Science and Disaster Recovery

Citizen Science: Probing the Virtues and Contexts of Participatory Research

From AIDS to Free Trade Agreements: Knowledge Activism in Thailand’s Movement for Access to Medicines

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