“But I Know It’s True”: Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice, and Anthropology

Few social issues depend as heavily on scientific information as environmental problems. Yet activists, governmental officials, corporate entities, and even scientists agree that much of the science behind environmental risk assessments is controversial and uncertain. Using a low-income African-American neighborhood as a primary case example, this paper illustrates in concrete terms how environmental risk assessments can exclude the experiences of the poor and people of color. Further, race and class experiences intensify a community's susceptibility to, and perceptions of, risk. These experiences and perceptions underpin the ways that communities contest scientific biases in everyday practice. After discussing alternative approaches to contemporary risk assessment that combine ethnographic research with other kinds of scientific expertise, I conclude by offering a four-fold model for resolving some of the problems raised by this essay. This model draws upon multiple kinds of knowledge bases and includes ...