Collective Identity and Hazardous Waste Management

In addition to environmental and safety concerns, hazardous facilities pose threats to collective identity. For a community, such identity issues involve processes of negotiation rather than fixed change and impact. Qualitative research enables access to complex definitions and accounts of community change in dynamic settings. Using ethnographic, interview, and content analysis data from a case study, I show how informants offered insights about the relationships between stigmatization, community reputation, and development. Although community members did not seek stigmatization due to living near perceived threats, they imputed positive and negative consequences to such a reputation. For example, many respondents who identified with the local area hoped that the stigma attached to their community would prevent additional growth. These findings suggest that immediate and more tangible concerns, such as effects on the community due to rapid residential growth, may take precedence over concerns associated with the chronic uncertainties of risks from hazardous waste management facilities.