Toxic Contamination and Communities: Using an Ecological-Symbolic Perspective to Theorize Response Contingencies

The ecological-symbolic perspective posits that community response to toxic contamination is shaped by both the nature of the environmental disruption and the interpretive frames through which those disruptions are apprehended. Full utilization of this perspective has been hampered by the deterministic underpinnings of the current chronic technological disaster model, which presents local conflict as a virtually inevitable outcome of these events. We draw upon the more contingent framing of the ecological-symbolic perspective to analyze the experiences of two communities that displayed consensual response patterns. We identify ecological and organizational factors that facilitated an interpretive framing of “limited danger”.