The Environmental Communication Yearbook: Volume 1 (Environmental Communication Year Book)

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The Environmental Communication Yearbook Volume 1

THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION YEARBOOK VOLUME 1 EDITOR Susan L. Senecah State University of New York College of Environmental Science & Forestry ASSOCIATE EDITORS Communication and Cultural Studies

Journalism and Mass Media

Stephen P. Depoe University of Cincinnati

Mark Neuzil University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)

Participatory Processes Gregg B. Walker Oregon State University EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Bernie Ankney, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Connie A. Bullis, University of Utah James G. Cantrill, Northern Michigan University Donal A. Carbaugh, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Julia B. Corbett, University of Utah Robert J. Cox, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill E. Franklin Dukes, University of Virginia, Charlottesville Sharon Dunwoody, University of Wisconsin-Madison Walter Leal Filho, Technical University of Hamburg William F. Griswold, University of Georgia Robert L. Heath, University of Houston Judith E. Hendry, University of New Mexico Patrick J. Lawler, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry Mark S. Meisner, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Mark Meister, North Dakota State University Gene (Olin E., Jr.) Meyers, Huxley College, Western Washington University Rosemary O'Leary, Syracuse University Tarla Rai Peterson, University of Utah Jean P. Retzinger, University of California at Berkeley Donny Roush, Idaho Environmental Education Association James Shanahan, Cornell University Brian C. Taylor, University of Colorado at Boulder Robert A. Thomas, Loyola University Craig Trumbo, University of Missouri Cornelius B. (Ben) Tyson, Central Connecticut State University Craig Waddell, Michigan Technical University Bruce J. Weaver, Albion College William W. Wilmot, University of Montana Michaela Zint, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

The Environmental Communication Yearbook Volume 1 Edited by

SUSAN L.SENECAH State University of New York College of Environmental Science & Forestry

LEA 2004

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey London

Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, NJ 07430 Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-4406-6 (alk. Paper)

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acidfree paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Introduction Susan Senecah, Stephen Depoe, Mark Neuzil, Gregg Walker

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Contributing to the Environmental Communication Yearbook

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1

Naming Interpretation, Policy, and Poetry: Communicating Cedar Breaks National Monument Christine L. Oravec, Tracylee Clarke

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Social Practice and Biophysical Process Tarla Rai Peterson, Markus ]. Peterson, William E. Grant

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Eulogy for Tobe West: On the Agitation and Control of a Salvage-Rider Timber Sale Mark P. Moore

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Blue Skies, Green Industry: Corporate Environmental Reports as Utopian Narratives Wende Vyborney Feller

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The Rhetoric of Autobiography in Women's Environmental Narratives: Lois Gibbs' Love Canal: My Story and Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment Diane Hope

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At the 20th Century's Close: Framing the Public Policy Issue of Environmental Risk Donnalyn Pompper

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Dialogue and Deliberation in Environmental Conflict: Enacting Civic Science Gregg B. Walker and Steven E. Daniels

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CONTENTS

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A Sense of Self-in-Place for Adaptive Management, Capacity Building, and Public Participation James G. Cantrill

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And the Beat Goes On: The Third Decade of Environmental Journalism Sharon M. Friedman

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Reasoned Action in Environmental Communication Research: Demonstration of an Augmented Model Craig W. Trumbo, Garrett J. O'Keefe

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Framing of Newspaper News Stories During a Presidential Campaign Cycle: The Case of Bush-Gore in Election 2000 Michael Nitz, Holly West

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Nonverbal Ways of Communicating With Nature: A Cross-Case Study Michelle Scollo Sawyer

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Author Index

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Subject Index

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Introduction You are holding the inaugural volume of a publication enthusiastically anticipated by scholars from diverse disciplines and professionals who practice in diverse arenas of environmental communication. The Environmental Communication Yearbook is a portal into environmental communication's many fields and a productive space in which we can build and share knowledge regarding our common quest to better unerstand the communication dynamics that influence the human relationship to the environment. Environment and communication are broad and multifaceted and yet, they hang together, overlap, intersect, and mutually inform and influence every area of life today. A quick and woefully incomplete tour demonstrates this point. It has been 265 years since William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, looked out from the deck of the Mayflower at the shoreline of what we now call Plymouth, Massachusetts on Cape Cod Bay and declared the place "a hideous and desolate wilderness." Think of the tragic ramifications of this framing of wilderness on First Nation people who called it home. It has been 155 years since the sage of Walden Pond and the philosophical patron saint of the modern environmental movement, Henry David Thoreau, asserted from the lecturer's podium, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." It has been nearly that long since George Perkins Marsh asserted in Man and Nature that the land could not continue to endure what he saw as a wholesale assault. There was a threshold, a carrying capacity, at which we would feel negative impacts. It has been about 102 years since the work of Ellen Swallow, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology food additive chemist who was denied her doctorate because of her gender, led to the United States' first food protection laws. She first used the term ecology in a public speech, framing its meaning in a metaphor fitting for a true woman of the day, a metaphor that the male-dominated policy and professional worlds could hear from her. She spoke about the earth as our home and extended the metaphor to depict the balance and attention needed by all the parts in order to preserve the harmony and health of the whole home. It has been nearly 62 years since the wildlife manager Aldo Leopold experienced an epiphany as he watched the "fierce green fire" of life go out of the eyes of a wolf that he and his colleagues had shot in New Mexico, believing that no wolves meant a deer hunter's paradise. He came to realize that the mountain did not agree with this paradigm, and his emerging philosophy contained in his essay "Thinking like a Mountain" led not only to the establishment of the first U.S. wilderness area, but also to his concept of what he called the land ethic, generally acknowledged as the vii

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ethical grounding of the modern environmental movement. At its heart, the land ethic asserts that contrary to Cartesian scientific method, the natural world is not comprised of independent machine parts that humans can move around at will without consequences. We are not separate from this interdependent system, we are part of it. Because of this, and our power and abilities, humans have an ethical obligation to act on behalf of the good of the whole system. His land ethic, which has become the basis for ecosystem management as we know it today, is profoundly simple. Action that tends to support the integrity of the whole is good, that which does not is not. It has been 40 years since Rachel Carson, a biologist acting on the reports of a friend who was distraught at the death of birds after aerial spraying of DDT, produced Silent Spring, the scientific-based indictment of DDT and other pesticides that led to the United States' first pesticide regulations. Many assert that it triggered the modern environmental movement. It has been nearly that long since the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, Lake Erie was declared dead, and Lady Bird Johnson, spouse of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, launched her mass media "Beautify America" campaign and taught us to change our behavior and not be litterbugs. It has been 37 years since astronauts stunned the world with their emotional words and exquisite photographs of the earth from space that depicted the beauty and fragility of our shared planet and launched the metaphor spaceship earth. It has been 34 years since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The National Environmental Policy Act had been signed into law in January of that year, and over the next decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created, and the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and most of the most salient federal and state environmental legislation was passed into law. This put federal and state governments into the regulatory role of a hammer over the for-profit industry sector: Powerful metaphors, the hammer and the hammered. It has been 26 years since a housewife went door to door asking her neighbors about their health in a community called Love Canal, New York leading to the creation of the commonly called Superfund program for cleaning up hazardous waste sites and triggering the grassroots environmental movement characterized by ad hoc citizen groups formed to influence local issues based on distrust of the hammer, the hammered, and the whole process of how the destiny of their community is determined. As long as it has existed, the mass media and popular culture have framed environmental issues. Consider just a few examples: • In 1988, when fires burned Yellowstone National Park's old forests and swept over Old Faithful, the media attention was enormous, and the story was framed as a severe, national loss. Americans grieved the loss and damage to what had become to many an intimate, symbolic part of who we are. Dan Rather's eyes misted as he reported the fires on the evening news. Many were

INTRODUCTION

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also angry when it was learned that arson was to blame for some of the fires because a close, intimate, iconic friend Smokey Bear had long warned against the irresponsible setting of forest fires. In 2003, Smokey's message was recast as fire suppression in general and the bear was blamed for the tinder box conditions that fueled massive forest fires in the western United States. Powerful images documented the sensational Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound of Alaska. Irreverent cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead debated recycling. Comic and cartoon characters Captain Planet and the Ninja Turtles defended the earth against evil polluters. Pop singer Billy Joel sang about medical waste and needles washing on the shores. Night after night, the national news featured the garbage barge wandering up and down the eastern U.S. coastline unsuccessfully looking for a willing taker of its load of incinerator ash. Homer Simpson continually fell asleep at the control board at the nuclear power plant.

It has been 18 years since the citizens of Warren County, South Carolina stood up against a proposed hazardous waste facility proposed for their community. Although unsuccessful in their local campaign, their boldness sparked a broad based U.S. and international environmental justice movement to protect the most politically impotent communities, often communities of color or poverty, from bearing a disproportionate share of the negative impacts of environmental policy or industry. It has been 13 years since the largest number of heads of state in history gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the Earth Summit, the United National Conference on Environment and Development. This also triggered the international explosion and networking of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and elevated their status in determining environmental policy. It has been but 2 years since the United Nations Johannesburg Summit 2002 benchmarked the decade since the Earth Summit. In between have been other numerous international gatherings and treaties concerned with global warming, forest depletion, water quality, and poverty. Based on the outcomes of the Earth Summit, it has been 9 years since international businesses and public interest groups cooperatively and voluntarily established the ISO 14,000 standards to guide certification of voluntary members in environmental best practices to surpass environmental compliance objectives and promote social and business sustainability. It has been 6 years since the U.S. Congress created a new federal agency called the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution to serve as an advocate and convener of consensus-based processes to avoid, minimize, or resolve environmental disputes involving federal agencies. The agency maintains a roster of over

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150 dispute resolution professionals who have met experience and training standards. This profession did not exist more than 25 years ago. It has been 21 years since Dr. Christine Oravec of the University of Utah published a paper out of her dissertation. The paper, published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, was titled "Conservationism vs. Preservationism in the Controversey over the Hetch Hetchy Dam" and examined John Muir and the nascent Sierra Club's rhetorical battle to prevent the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park to provide a public water source to San Francisco early in the 1900s. The nation's first chief forester Gifford Pinchot prevailed in directing the management of natural resources for the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time and O'Shaughnessy still stands today. Oravec analyzed the framing and power of the arguments around what constituted the greatest good and her published article marked the definitive emergence of environmental communication within the discipline. That debate about what is the greatest good continues. It has been 17 years since the first panel with an environmental theme was presented at the Speech Communication Association's (now the National Communication Association) annual convention. There is no doubt numerous additions to this scant list because environment and communication permeate every aspect of human life. Next to the Civil Rights Movement, the Environmental Movement has proven to be the most influential movement of U.S. society and perhaps the world, regardless of what perspective you hold. Environmental Communication has also evolved to achieve local to international levels of influence in just about every business, health, and natural resource public policy decision made today. It often demands unique communication arenas and structures that are simultaneously political, community-based, corporate, advocacy, and technical-scientific. In the process, a vocabulary and distinctive tradition, or a canon, it could be argued, has come to characterize it. Having built upon itself over at least the past 200-300 years, its canon is reflected in interconnected knowledge sets of people, events, campaigns, documents, mass media, legislation, and technical-scientific information and vocabularies. The struggles over and the dynamics that define the social construction of the parameters of human relationships with the environment have far reaching consequences. Thus, The Environmental Communication Yearbook strives to provide a forum where academics from various disciplines, professionals from different arenas of practice, and "pracademics" who straddle both can enhance and enrich each other's knowledge and understanding of those dynamics. So many people endeavored to bring The Environmental Communication Yearbook to reality over the past 7 years that we would surely miss several in any attempt to list them all here. Certainly the members and leadership of the Environmental Communication Commission of the National Communication Association hatched the idea and led the effort. In this effort, special appreciation is due James Cantrill of Northern Michigan University who crafted the initial proposal for The Environmental Communications Yearbook and the many who reviewed it and of-

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fered assistance in refining it. Thanks also goes to those who unanimously accepted our invitation to serve on the Editorial Board reviewers and those who graciously contributed their talents as adjunct reviewers when we needed them. Guest reviewers for this volume are: Terence Check, St. John's University Francois Cooren, SUNY-Albany John Delicath, University of Cincinnati Jennifer Hamilton, University of Cincinnati Steve Hoffman, University of St. Thomas Dennis Jaehne, San Jose State University Diane Hope, Rochester Institute of Technology Stacey Kanihan, University of St. Thomas Bill Kovarik, Radford University Marie Mater, Houston Baptist University Kandice Salomone, University of Rhode Island Brant Short, Northern Arizona University Caitlin Wills Toker, Gainesville College Heather Zoller, University of Cincinnati Carol Zuegner, Creighton University We also thank the many authors from many disciplines who, by submitting manuscripts, endorsed the timeliness and status of this publication. Ultimately, tremendous gratitude is due to the publisher of The Environmental Communication Yearbook, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. and its editor Linda Bathgate, for their confidence in and enthusiasm for this venture. Finally, thanks to you. Welcome to The Environmental Communication Yearbook. —Susan Senecah, Editor —Stephen Depoe, Associate Editor —Mark Neuzil, Associate Editor —Gregg Walker, Associate Editor

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Contributing to the Environmental Communication Yearbook The Environmental Communication Yearbook is a multi-disciplinary forum through which a broad audience of academics, professionals, and practitioners can share and build theoretical, critical, and applied scholarship addressing environmental communication in a variety of contexts. This peer-reviewed annual publication invites submissions that showcase and/or advance our understanding of the production, reception, contexts, or processes of human communication regarding environmental issues. Theoretical expositions, literature reviews, case studies, cultural and mass media studies, best practices, and essays on emerging issues are welcome, as are both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Areas of topical coverage will include: • Participatory processes: public participation, collaborative decision making, dispute resolution, consensus building processes, regulatory negotiations, community dialogue, building civic capacity. • Journalism and mass communication: newspaper, magazine, book and other forms of printed mass media; advertising and public relations; media studies; and radio, television and Internet broadcasting. • Communication studies: rhetorical/historical case studies, organizational analyses, public relations/issues management; interpersonal/relational dimensions, risk communication, and psychological/cognitive research, all of which examine the origins, content, structure, and outcomes of discourse about environmental issues. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis for inclusion in subsequent volumes of the Yearbook. The Environmental Communication Yearbook is intended for use by researchers, scholars, students, and practitioners in environmental communication, journalism, rhetoric, public relations, mass communication, risk analysis, political science, environmental education, environmental studies, public administration; and policy makers. Others interested in environmental issues and the communication channels used for discourse and information dissemination on the topic will also find it valuable.

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Information for Contributors: Manuscripts should conform to current guidelines established by the American Psychological Association. Send five copies of each submission to Dr. Susan Senecah, Associate Professor, Environmental Studies Department, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry, One Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210. Full guidelines for submitting work to the Environmental Communication Yearbook can be found at www.erlbaum.com.

CHAPTER ONE

Naming, Interpretation, Policy, and Poetry Communicating Cedar Breaks National Monument Christine L. Oravec University of Utah Tracylee Clarke University of Utah

There is a National Monument in southwestern Utah named Cedar Breaks. Far smaller than Bryce Canyon, its larger cousin to the east, Cedar Breaks imitates Bryce's iron-filled pastel limestone spires without reproducing them. Far less controversial than Grand Staircase-Escalante, its recently monumentalized neighbor to the southeast, it barely calls attention to itself. Perched on the edge of a semicircular bowl of hoodoos and spires eroded by prehistoric oceans, the visitor's center puts up an unassuming front, a cabin made of logs with picture windows out toward the view and a collection of the usual bird-and-flower identification books inside. Quiet and often overlooked, the monument and its parking lot hold more visitors and their vehicles from other parts of the country than from its native state of Utah. German, Japanese, and Spanish are heard as often as English on the trails and the campgrounds. Cedar Breaks is both usual and unusual; an international clientele flocks to a location most locals pass quickly on their way to Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon national parks. In a sense, Cedar Breaks thrives on the fact that it is found in only one certain irreducible location on the face of the earth, a place where all who want to know it must come and see for themselves. This essay is a catalogue of one week of events in Cedar Breaks and its surrounding attractions. It may also serve as an extended example of the way communication functions inextricably to shape, and be shaped, by the phenomenon it attempts to explain. The emphasis here is upon the concrete; for the study of the environment from a discursive viewpoint is inevitably abstract, and must be balanced by the texture of something palpably experienced. What follows the four descriptive sections of the catalogue (naming, interpreting, policy, and po1

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etry) is an explanation of how communication studies addresses each of these various functions with respect to the environment. Yet the importance of the description of Cedar Breaks for this discussion is signified by its priority within each section. None of the more abstract discourses would have been obtained were it not for the sheer local particularity of this golden jewel, isolated yet resplendent in its own specific place and time. NAMING: THE WAY WE KNOW AND CONTROL

In Cedar Breaks, names are important. Cedar, for example, is the local euphemism for juniper in parts of the West, although there are no junipers in this area (too high, too cold). Instead, Ponderosa and bristlecone pines (the oldest among them some 1,400 years) dominate the higher reaches of the cliffs. Breaks refers to openings in a wall of mean territory, taken from the explorers' treks through South Dakota badlands and imputed, oddly, to this collection of broken towers and arches with no true passage to the upland mesas that surround them. Yet say the words slowly. Cedar Breaks. Like a pleasing proper name, it has the right number of syllables, an easy-enough rhythm for a place of middle consequence. Compared to Bryce Canyon, (whose namesake was widely quoted describing the area as a hell of a place to lose a cow), Cedar Breaks harbors the seeds of poetry in its trochaic cadence. Cedar Breaks contains avian inhabitants that can cause casual weekend naturalists to scurry to their identification books. A black-and-white form on the ground displays a yellow cap and barred wings, unfortunately dead to this world, but more easily identified as a northern three-toed woodpecker in its present state than if flicking from tree to tree. (Audubon killed hundreds, if not thousands of specimens to produce his book of lifelike colored prints. Sibley, the current guide of choice, uses formulaic line drawings-not as collectable or dramatic, but easier on the population.) An article published in a city newspaper 2 weeks after the discovery of this bird will underscore the importance of the species' increase in population as it pursues its head-rattling search for pine bark beetles in older, diseasedravaged woods like Yellowstone and Cedar Breaks. A large brown hen stands in the fork of a bristlecone just around the bend. Two unwary hikers stir her up, and she elevates her tall, aristocratic neck and extends her head as if to be guillotined. A sudden "chuck, chuck, CHUCK," and she bursts away in a small storm of feathers. One member of the hiking party (the first author of this essay) insists that the bird is a wild turkey; only a demurral from the park ranger, a gentle suggestion that blue grouse are more populous here, and a check of two respected guidebooks convinces the amateur ornithologist that the bird is indeed a grouse after all ("Stupid birds," comments the ranger. "You can almost walk up to them and hit them with a stick.") Too bad. The sighting of a wild turkey has already become oral legend among other hikers in the immediate vicinity. To spot a wild turkey is much more difficult than to walk up to a blue grouse daydreaming

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in the shade. The novice naturalist wonders with embarrassment how long and how far the misidentification will travel. These are the spectacular sightings. Not much for a national preservationground, but important in their place, their time, their significance and their lack of significance. The requisite numbers of juncos (black, red patch on the back) and western tanagers (red head, yellow belly, and black and white wings) fill in the details. And of course the plants; pale blue, almost white columbines, with heads as big as elephant garlic; miniature strawberry linked to all its neighbors within a web of reddish synapses; something called elk weed, a tall stander, looks like a mullein only some of the leaves are chewed back by what must have been tough, yellow elk teeth; the brash early-sun brightness of arrowleaf balsamroot; and blooms of every shade of blue, penstemmon, lupine, long drooping fronds of western bluebell. Finding all the showy flowers in the guidebook might give an amateur the feeling she has a handle on the Breaks. Environmental communication views the discourse of naming as more than a means of persuasion. It is the study of the way we come to socially construct and know our natural world. A central tenet of this study is that language is epistemic—it is how we come to know, and thus becomes central to the creation of our reality. Within this system of study, symbols and language are conceived of as perceptual lenses. They indicate an orientation toward the environment and thus act to guide our behavior within the environment. That is, how we talk about the land or nature creates and influences our interaction with it. For example, if we speak of the environment as a last frontier, something wild or to be feared, our policies, or actions will most likely be those that are defensive or exploitative. Likewise, naming a particular kind of bird a grouse automatically depletes or elevates its position on the birdwatcher's hierarchy. Viewing the environment as something to be either aided or conquered justifies actions that can hurt or harm it. In the name of preservation or in the name of vindication, we affirm our mastery and control over the land. One of the intricacies of environmental studies is that there is no one definition of key words like environment, ecology or nature. There are certainly some benefits to such a lack of specificity, because it can break down ideologies of mastery and leave open alternative possibilities. Understanding how words are used differently, or how they play out in the environment, is a key step in creating better collective understanding and common ideology. Certainly, through their multiple uses, words create situations of miscommunication and opportunities for hegemonic euphemism. Indeed, one hopes that not too many others cross the path of a blue grouse and call the animal a turkey. The very act could result in the decimation of one particular high desert turkey population, not to mention a similar population of blue grouse. Yet shared ideology can be created also through communication in participatory contexts. Collaborating on an identification using authoritative and textual resources can increase everyone's knowledge of a place like Cedar Breaks. Understanding the power of key words used to describe

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our environment can help us better understand how to build on common ground as we work together to approach environmental problems. INTERPRETATION: THE WAY WE TRANSLATE WHAT WE KNOW

George Guest is the chief ranger at Cedar Breaks National Monument. In his previous life he ran a few companies, flew a few airplanes, traveled much of the world, and saw most of the United States. He spent the last 12 years as the ultimate representative of the U.S. Government upon the ancient chalky soil of this 60-millionyear-old preserve. By educated guess, he is in his late 60s or early 70s, his uniform fits, his creases are exact, and his Smokey Bear hat seems permanently glued to his silver-fringed head. So is his smile. He welcomes the world to his little domain as if beckoning long-lost relatives back home. George is a professional. Hard hit by budget cutbacks, the monument can afford only him, another career ranger who is a woman of about 30-35, and a rotating set of seasonals culled mostly from college students in Cedar City, the largest nearby local town some 3,000 feet below the monument. (Distances here are often marked by elevation, not mileage.) Being a professional means that if the weekend-guided trail hike is half an hour late, George will fill in by doing the hourly interp talk along the railings of the overlook behind the visitor's center a chore no longer in his job description but a necessity just the same. He does not mind. George was made for this job, and he knows it. He was schooled in the old-time style of Freeman Tilden, whose book on interpretation in the national parks was a standard of yesterday, a collector's item of today, and with the passing of one more generation, a forgotten art tomorrow. So to listen to George whale on for 45 minutes during what should have been a 20-minute exposition is a kind of natural phenomenon in itself. If George had done even half the interpretive talks made from these railings (3 times a day, 6 days a week, 4 months a year for 12 years), he would have told the same story some 3,500 times. However you would never know. There is a rhythm to it. First the classic "getting to know you" gambit, corny but useful, as when I discover a couple from Prescott, Arizona in the crowd and later ask them questions on behalf of a student of mine. (They are pleased to share the answers). During my turn, I announce that I am from Salt Lake City. George hangs his head, facetiously moaning "I'm really sorry for you." Then the geology, full of adjectives and analogies. The Flagstaff sea. The thrusting upward of the Rocky Mountain and Great Basin region. The Cretaceous mid-continent ocean. The laying down of limestone skeletons of tiny ocean dwellers. The filtering down of briny sea water into the hardened mudflats, creating limestone of varying consistency. The long slow etching away of less compacted rock to uncover towers, craters, bridges and balanced boulders in various colors from pink to green to orange. Then us. The end. George bows, and doffs his hat with a flourish. I wait until the crowd disperses, then I approach for some conversation.

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I cannot help share with George my experience of what I (still) consider the best job in the world—my one summer of interpretive speech coaching in the park system. He pleads mockingly for a grade on his elocution and enunciation, and I give him an A+. We commiserate over the sorry state of interpretation in the parks since the 1980s—anyone around back then would understand what we mean— and he makes knowing but silent gestures as I bring up the touchy subjects; how do you handle creation science, what happens if the wildfires approach the monument, tell me your opinion about the process of nationalizing the Staircase-Escalante. I realize I will not get answers to these questions. For a moment, I am within the charmed circle again; be a professional, interpret the scenery, but point to the landscape when you are confronted by differing political views. The land will always help you escape. The land will always be there. The land will always make you free. Suddenly there is no more to be said. Like hungry suitors, George and I look at the Breaks with lover's eyes. Interpretation is a tricky task, balancing on the edge between the Scylla of hard cold facts and the Charybdis of swirling language that threatens to drown presumed knowledge in its vortex. Perhaps for this reason, environmental communication is caught up in marking off sharp dualisms; human versus nature, anthropocentric utilitarianism versus biocentric moralism, deep ecology versus ecofeminism. Even though these dualistic binaries are, once again, a construction of language, they have made translation from one side to the other nearly impossible. A case in point; George's interp talks are gibberish to the university-trained geologist; dangerous in fact, since they perpetuate a Fantasia conception of earthly change. Yet though some visitors to the parks and most of the interpretive rangers read the more technical literature, they soon forget it unless it is accompanied by vivid images of cataclysmic geologic activity. The gap between specialized and popular interpreters becomes wider with time. Except for the rare instance of such a figure as Stephen Jay Gould, respected in both domains, interpretation remains a barrier not a bridge to further public understanding. Yet there are those who argue that we need to get beyond these divides and begin speaking to each other on a different dialectical level if we are to better understand and approach environmental issues. Due to the fact that rhetoric is viewed as epistemology, it necessarily suggests that there is no one truth. In fact truth or the one right way is not central in the focus, nor is it viewed as desirable. If there is no one way of thinking, then bodies of thoughts (deep ecology, ecofeminism, and biocentrism) can all be validated as epistemological approaches to the environment and understood as vantage points, not as having captured reality. The interpretive complexity in our current approach to the environment is that it is based upon the dualism of modernity versus post modernity. This duality, in turn, is based upon the dualism of mind versus body. The two spheres are pitted against each other. Either the environment is real and symbolism is discounted, or it is all a social construction. By studying the link between the symbolic and the

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material, communication illustrates the importance of real experience as well as the symbolic interpretation of that experience. This approach (termed ecological postmodernity), values both the power of the mind's capacity for symbolism and the experience of the real. Yet to rectify the imbalance toward the abstract, we need to get beyond the argument and back to our sense of the body, nature and place. By studying the symbolic construction of a specific, concrete material reality, environmental communication addresses the most fundamental linguistic relationship of them all—the coupling of verba and res, or words and things. POLICY: THE WAY WE TAME THE UNMANAGEABLE

During a week in Cedar Breaks, nothing much can happen and then everything can happen. The first week of July 2002 was unprecedented in its heat, lack of moisture, and propensity for wildfires. Hundreds of thousands of acres were burnt in Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah. A fire crawling up a watershed that feeds Zion National Park south of Cedar Breaks had been burning for more than a week, and it was possible to drive to an overlook near the monument and watch the smoke rise from the black patches of charcoal that spotted the green carpeting of the forest. Fortunately, the fire was contained to those patches, and barring further incitements, the watershed, made up primarily of National Forest land, was safe for another year. The scene at the overlook was rich with the residue of preventative firefighting. One of the pockets of fire had actually made it up the slope to the blacktopped road, which served as a firebreak rimming the curve up to the next wooded ridge. Just beyond that ridge was land nominally belonging to Cedar Breaks Monument. Yet fire is no respecter of human boundaries; should the leading edge have jumped the road, continued up the other side and gone over the ridge, it would have blackened Department of Interior land above as easily as it had blacked Department of Agriculture land below. The evidence was eloquent. On the lower slope, a large white-dead tree trunk had taken on a wildly reddish color on one side, as if lit by a private setting sun. This trunk was only several feet from the curbside. On the upper slope, where Civilian Conservation Corps workers in the 1930s had sliced the road cut cleanly to allow for the passage of cars around the ridge, the pink limestone supporting the forest took on a painted crimson glow, much the same as the tree opposite. In fact, the entire pullout, the slopes on both sides, and particularly anything close to being lighter in color had been splashed with fire retardant just the day before. The overlook was the target of the retardant, and all of us, tourists, locals, park employees, and firefighters found ourselves standing in the grimly sanguine foreshadow of a potential firestorm. The firefighter and his truck stood at the overlook and watched. While answering questions and bantering with travelers, he never looked away from the panorama of patchwork black and green just below his feet. That was his job for the

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day, to inform, yes, but more importantly to enforce the violent suppression of a wild fire that had been finally stopped and tamed. Quietly, he exuded a kind of subdued admiration for the pattern of dark and light sketched by the fire below. "If only we could do controlled burns that way," he commented, ruefully acknowledging the inability of human organization on a massive scale to accomplish exactly what the wildfire had already done. Yet the fire had been controlled, since the road and the retardant prevented the flames from skipping up the hill and into even less protected landscape. The arbitrariness of boundary lines kept human intervention from mimicking exactly those beneficial processes let loose by the fire. On another slope up the mountain to Cedar Breaks, another kind of human intervention occurred that week. Ranchers were moving their herds of sheep from lower, warmer winter range (at approximately 5,000 feet) to the higher, cooler plateaus (from 8 to 10,000 feet). When cowboys move stock, whether cattle or sheep, they own the road, and they know it. They can be nice about it or ornery, but "Pardon my dust" is the gist of their undertaking. Over the course of 4 days, by taking the same paved road from the small town of Parowan to the sky-high ski lifts of Brian Head and on to the park boundary, one could have passed the same herd of sheep, the same single rider, the same three herding dogs (two border collies and a befuddled-looking yellow lab) and the same car pulling a small aluminum trailer, all going in the same direction, higher and higher each day. One day I turned a corner on the way down to Cedar City and saw a lamb or two in the opposite lane, coming towards me. Then 10. Then 50. Then what must have been 500 sheep and their lambs, newly sheared and painted with identifying letters on their hatched, wooly sides. They charged toward me from a distance, like a bay full of whitecaps. I stopped as one would stop at the edge of a seashore, just to feel the impact of wind and dust and motion and bodies surrounding the car in a relentless cavalcade, accompanied by the sound of sad, aimless bleating and sharp whistles meant for dogs' ears. After chasing down a pocket of wayward ewes that had detoured into a copse of mesquite, the cowboy circled back to bring up the rear, and he called out, "What a blazing circus, huh?" There was a look in his eyes that showed that he was happy, maybe happier than he had been all year. On my return journey that night, I passed his trailer tucked up on an overlook, obviously cozy and appropriately dark, his bay horse tethered to the side and the dogs ranging around looking for night prey. The sheep were scattered, but safe, and the drive would continue the next morning, right through the ski resort and over to the very boundary of the national monument. There the sheep would eat anything chewable right up to the borderline. This, in as dry a season as ever seen, when mule deers' ribs showed right through their dirt-brown coats. Shortly after the release of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, President John F. Kennedy created a panel to study the accuracy of Carson's claims and this led to the banning of DDT as a pesticide. Similarly, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to the implementation of better health laws and higher regulations of food-meat handling in Chicago meat-packing plants, although this was not exactly the intent of the au-

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thor. (He was more concerned with the working conditions of those in the industry). These two examples, however, illustrate the power of the word not only to shape consciousness but also effect policy formation. One might even say that the rhetoric of environmental advocacy groups or lobbyists has more to do with influencing policy than does scientific data or technical reasoning. It is how arguments are framed that determines what gets done with policy. This function of shaping practical action with respect to the land places the study of communication central to environmental policy formation. For example, the great fires associated with Yellowstone in 1988 sent policymakers back to their legal pads to sketch new guidelines for handling wildfires on fuel-filled public lands that were read, interpreted, and implemented in various ways, in different local conditions, across the United States. Similarly, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Monument and National Park lands follow slightly different policies where it comes to grazing rights for cattle and sheep, policies that are affected as much by local politics and personalities as by the centralized bureaus themselves. The impact of communication on policy is multifaceted, but much of it exists within three domains: 1. Environmental communication helps us understand the process of generating public opinion and what influences it. Understanding how the public perceives the environment is crucial to understanding how they will interact with it as they proceed to frame environmental scenarios. For instance, the power of communication to shape public opinion and action is evident in the vast field of green consumerism and environmental advertising. Without a rhetorical understanding of the importance of audience analysis, examinations of future symbolism intended to influence would be limited to source, channel, and content. The opinion of a lone firefighter or a shepherding cowboy would not be a factor in considering the policy's results. Further, the presence of a larger public who has a stake in environmental issues would be considerably depleted. 2. Environmental communication helps us disempower hierarchies of oppression. The business of critical rhetoric is to understand, unpack, and break down hierarchies of oppression. So-called natural hierarchies, as well as social hierarchies, are formed through communication. Yet rhetoric also acts to warrant positions of power and hierarchies of domination. Thus knowing how the link between power and language is made creates possibilities of change. One minor instance, but an important one, illustrates this fact. When the nearby Staircase-Escalante National Monument was proclaimed, it became the first monument in the history of the United States to be placed under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, which implements policy that succeeded the Homestead Act, rather than the Department of Interior, where the National Parks reside. Local inter-

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ests now will expect more intervention from the Bureau of Land Management, a far more varied bureaucracy than the Department of Interior, which might be seen as a revolutionary victory on one hand, or a confiscation of traditional rights of usage on the other. 3. Environmental Communication helps us understand environmental conflict. The very language used to frame an environmental issue can ignite a group to action, pacify a potentially volatile public, or create a space for possible discussion between opposing factions concerned with a specific aspect of our natural world. The study of environmental communication can help us understand how environmental controversies are conceptualized by those involved in their construction, maintenance or management. Not only does language shed light on the motives of those involved; it gives theoretical justification for the public's participatory facilitation of environmental conflicts. Should there be conflict among stakeholders over environmental policy, whether it be managing wildfires, initiating controlled burns, issuing grazing permits, or setting bag limits for the year's deer hunt, communication constitutes the substance out of which mediation of these conflicts is achieved. Language then becomes the empowering process that can either enhance the constructive management of environmental disputes, or further create cleavage between groups engaged in a decision-making process. With the complexity of natural resource issues, heightened scientific uncertainty and an increasing need for social legitimacy of political actions affecting our environment, environmental policy formation will increasingly become a participant-based public activity. Understanding how language functions in the creation of public opinion, the assembling or dismantling of hierarchies of power, and the maintenance or management of environmental conflict becomes a crucial activity for researchers and practitioners. POETRY: THE WAY WE EXPRESS THE INEXPRESSIBLE Cedar City, Utah hosts a Shakespeare festival every summer, with plays going on all week and every week from June to October. The juxtaposition of high culture and a natural setting is part of the festival's appeal, and it is possible to take in a comedy, tragedy or a history play one afternoon, and count the stars from the top of nearby Brian Head mountain that night. The performances are good—the festival has been named one of the best of five from around the nation, winning a Tony Award for regional theater—and as authentic as south central Utah can afford to be. A playhouse based upon the dimensions of the Globe Theater has been built, with the lower seating open to the sky. As might be expected, nature has its way with the playgoers. Both groundlings and performers have been drenched by unexpected monsoon downpours that charge through this part of the desert late in the season.

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The play for the week is "As You Like It." It is set in the forest of Arden. All manner of humanity inhabit this forest, the aristocrats staying on the farm fields edging the woods, the shepherds finding pasture in the high meadows, and the hunters camping deep in the forest. All classes use Arden for their own needs, and for the most part they are unconscious of the impact of their presence there. All except for Jaques—the melancholic, skeptical social critic who serves as the intelligence of the play. Part philosopher, part religious figure, the direct inverse of the laughing Fool, Jaques speaks his mind and finds folly in all unconscious actions. Here is his portrait, drawn by a hunter companion before setting out to catch the day's complement of game: First Lord

Indeed, my lord, The melancholy Jaques grieves at that, And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself Did steal behind him as he lay along Under an oak whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood: To the which place a poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish, and indeed, my lord, The wretched animal heaved forth such groans That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting, and the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, Augmenting it with tears. DUKE SENIOR But what said Jaques? Did he not moralize this spectacle? First Lord

O, yes, into a thousand similes.

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First, for his weeping into the needless stream; 'Poor deer,' quoth he, 'thou makest a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much:' then, being there alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends, 'Tis right:' quoth he; 'thus misery doth part The flux of company:' anon a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him And never stays to greet him; 'Ay' quoth Jaques, 'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;' 'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?' Thus most invectively he pierceth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life, swearing that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants and what's worse, To fright the animals and to kill them up In their assign'd and native dwelling-place. DUKE SENIOR And did you leave him in this contemplation? Second Lord We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer. (Shakespeare, 1993, Act 2 Scene 1) It may come as somewhat of a shock to a contemporary student of Shakespeare that, in addition to all of the playwright's other accomplishments, he managed to smuggle an environmentalist into one of his best-known comedies, and an animal-rightist, at that. By reading the position into which Shakespeare places his characters, we can get a sense of the significance of their pronouncements. Jaques is not a hero, as is Henry V; nor is he a tragic figure like Hamlet. He is much too ridiculously cynical for those roles. Yet dark and overwrought as he is, he illuminates the comedy by articulating the almost unrecognized commonalities between us and the creatures that inhabit the living world. He chastises us for our foolish pretense to moral superiority above the hart and the hound; he spells out the conse-

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quences of Darwinism before we are aware of them; and he pricks our conscience with a larger, longer-lasting view, beyond the filling of our stomachs at the evening meal. His more famous speech later in the play, "All the world's a stage," might seem frivolous in its conceit had not Jaques first displayed the ability to transcend the stage and, through mere secondhand report, make us weep for a dying deer. Yet, all is not lost among the more prosaic members of the human species. Duke Senior, against which Jaques' diatribe is directed, does have the grace to comment that the woods are good for something more than a backdrop for a noble adventure. Rather, the forest speaks, if we are in a condition of listening to it: Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing. (Shakespeare, 1993, Act 2 Scene 1) Yet most of us reside no higher than Duke Senior's level when it comes to appreciating the environment for itself. The pragmatic Duke bluntly states a utilitarian position. As long as the adversity is not too venomous, we are willing to embrace nature for a little while in order to revel in the good things that come to us as a result. Many of us would consider his poetry moderate, if a touch romantic. Yet compatible as Duke Senior appears to be, his logic is unhinged by the biting diatribe and physical activism of a Jaques. By the end of the play, Jaques abandons the customary wedding party celebrating in the woods and strides offstage, seeking an isolated cleric who, it is rumored, is capable of effecting instantaneous conversions. The road will be rutted, the weather variable, and the pilgrim dispirited by the time he reaches the cleric's hut. No one said that environmental criticism would lead to the most pleasant of destinations. Yet the fact that a conversion is possible for and even sought after by the apocalyptic and radical Jaques gives the modern student of environmental communication some hope. As conscious and hyperrational as he is, Jaques is searching for a natural Utopia as urgently as anyone else wandering through Arden woods. The difference is that Jaques knows that true conversions happen in the darkness of the confessional inside one's heart, not among the revelers and merrymakers at a sylvan wedding party. In addition he knows that conversions do not count unless a radical change of behavior results, whether it be intervening in the hunt or directly chastising the hunter. If environmentalists, particularly environmental critics, are to be effective in the practical world, they need to place their consciousness within the perspective of nature itself rather than human use of

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nature, as Jaques does with the dying deer. This is a kind of conversion that can only be described as spiritual. In the character of Jaques, Shakespeare recognizes the power of a transcendent language that enables those devoted to their natural surroundings to praise or blame, affirm or change, describe the present scene or imagine the impossible. CONCLUSION

The story of one's vacation trip to Cedar Breaks, of course, does not account for the many dimensions that environmental communication studies have displayed in the last decade. Urban planning, environmental justice, ecofeminism, nuclear studies, and many other particular subjects add to and even overshadow conventional expositions of place and space. Yet this experiment in written expression illustrates one way of approaching a challenge constantly faced by most scholars in the field of communication. The challenge is representing the relationship between the material world and the language we use for identifying, making sense, administering, and imagining it. The innovation of this essay is not so much its content but its effort at presenting content in a different way. Juxtaposing academic understanding with description, personal observation, and commentary can help make scholarship not only interesting, but also real. Such a juxtaposition also highlights the grounding effect of studies in environmental communication within the ongoing discussions of ontology and epistemology, semiotics and phenomenology that pervade current academic discourse. Perhaps most importantly, scholarly work in environmental communication can record experiences gained through interaction with the environment and show how they affect the interrelationship of the symbolic, abstract reasoning of academia and the existence of the concrete and tangible. Toward these ends, there needs to be a place for academic discourse that is demonstrably familiar with specific local places, times, conditions, and experiences as environments. We as scholars of environmental communication need to reveal our intimacy with the world to say anything of interest to those outside our field and to keep our own discipline vital and active. As participants in the activities of the field, we want to display through this essay one way of going about such a task. We hope that our efforts result in a lightening of the often-dreary environmental message, an infusion of enjoyment and wonder, and even a working partnership with imaginative and creative environmental discourse in order to bridge the gap between experience and research. Perhaps the future of environmental communication will unleash a continuing discovery of those places, both metaphorical and literal, that allow for new ways of sensing, new modes of experience, new frames and formats, and new connections between the environment, language, and ourselves. Let us hope that one of these places is the unfolding content of many successive volumes of the Environmental Communication Yearbook. Here may we find not only superior examples of our

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scholarly expertise and academic research, but also descriptions of the experiences of our natural lives, and manifestations of our love for the planet we stand upon. NOTES

This essay is dedicated to the memory of David C. Williams, former Chief of Planning for the Bureau of Land Management and a key influence in the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. REFERENCES The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Tech (Cambridge: MIT, 1993). Available: http://www-tech.mit.edU/Shakespeare/asyoulikeit/asyoulikeit.2.1. html (original work published c. 1598).

CHAPTER TWO

Social Practice and Biophysical Process Tarla Rai Peterson University of Utah Markus J. Peterson Texas A&M University William E. Grant Texas A&M University

INTRODUCTION

The ability to understand the relations between human society and the biophysical world has become increasingly critical in the face of rapidly increasing numbers of humans , desires among this population for higher standards of living, and increased human technical ability to alter the fundamental processes upon which all life depends. Whenever scientists, politicians, or other groups attempt to address concerns that human society has labeled as environmental, they become simultaneously enmeshed in both societal and ecological issues and processes. In essence, however unwillingly, those who study social practices both influence and are influenced by biophysical processes; just as those who study biophysical processes both influence and are influenced by social practices. As we (Peterson & Peterson, 2001) noted previously, applied ecologists rarely address human society with the intellectual or analytical rigor they normally employ for evaluating ecological processes and functions, and social scientists and humanists rarely analyze nonhuman nature. Further, although numerous studies have quantified the monetary value of wildlife and other natural resources, these efforts fall short of representing the total value of the environment to human society (Peterson & Peterson, 1993, 1996), let alone illuminating societal responses to ecological conditions or human-induced impacts on biophysical processes. We are not arguing that quantifying the monetary value of natural resources is without merit. Rather, such efforts do not address in any holistic manner whether or how human society and the biophysical environment interact. Because it focuses on the social practices that constitute knowl15

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edge, relationship, and identity in the world, environmental communication seems particularly well suited for developing more integrative approaches to environmental issues (Peterson, 1998). Toward this goal, we suggest a model grounded in Luhmann's (1979, 1989, 1992) theory of communication as one means of beginning an integrative analysis of biophysical processes and social practices. Both the development and suggested uses of this quantitative model are attempts to promote rhetorical realism, "or an awareness that although rhetoric may structure our lived relation to the real, conditions of existence remain, [for the purpose of encouraging] rigorous interrogation of constructionism that is needed for rhetoricians to offer significant opposition to powerful social orthodoxies" (Peterson, 1998). In this essay, we first outline the social theory that informs our model of communication. We then describe a quantitative model that simulates human society as communication, based on Luhmann's concept of social function systems (Grant, Peterson, & Peterson, 2002). Lastly, we suggest how this societal model can be used to simulate relationships among various social practices and biophysical processes. Our attempt to explicitly integrate the biophysical and social, while no doubt simplistic, should stimulate debate and further understanding of how human communication emerges from this strange concoction of the symbolic and the material, and how those communication practices constrain human society's responses to its environment, thus enhancing our understanding of how communication figures into environmental policy formation and implementation. SOCIAL THEORY INFORMING MODEL

Debates among social theorists reflect an ongoing controversy over the relative significance of symbolic action and material existence in constructing social situations. There is growing agreement, however, that it is imperative to understand the complex interactions between symbolic and material dimensions of reality (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1979, 1984). In order to create a model that focuses on the social driving forces underlying land-use changes, we emphasize the communication practices whereby people construct social reality, rather than the accuracy or precision with which they portray this reality as compared to some set of biological or physical facts. The challenge is to understand how, as people mutually create the multiple social realities within which they live, that symbolic activity both influences and is influenced by material flows. Many communication scholars have joined other social theorists in turning from the focus on subject-object notions of knowledge, toward an examination of how meaning is constructed within interpretive communities. The best of these efforts also offer critical analyses of the relations between material and symbolic dimensions of sociality (Blair, 1999; Selzer, 1999). Pezullo (2001) noted that the material theorized by these scholars generally relates to biophysical processes, suggesting rich possibilities for those who study environmental communication. Cox

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(1982), for example, positioned materiality centrally when he explored what it means to do something that cannot be undone to a species or a place. Peterson (1998) argued further that, because "human actions and social structures associated with [nature] function rhetorically... environmental communication must maintain the integrity of both verbal and natural systems since both are essential: our existence depends on nature, and we use language to conceptualize and discuss the natural systems on which we rely" (p. 372). Discourse constitutes reality, but nature is not a text. While invention and the symbolic are important facets of environmental communication, they do not constitute its entire domain. Even the symbolic construct of transcendence versus immanence cannot eliminate the materiality of life and death. Luhmann (1979,1989,1992) offered a social theory that places communication at a center for the study of human society. He defined society as a self-organizing system that is distinguished from its environment by communication, and proposed a radicalized functionalism as a theoretical perspective toward society and its environment. Rather than viewing functional relations as causal, he characterized cause as a special, and singularly opaque, case of function. Functional relations exist between a problem and a range of possible responses, and problems that do not acquiesce to such a range are not social problems (Peterson & Peterson, 1993, 1996; Peterson, 1997). Thus, a social problem is defined as such by its multiplicity. Luhmann's approach also introduced the potential for confusion regarding the term environment. Thus far, we have used the term to describe the biosphere, including human life. More specifically, environmental communication refers to social interactions among humans regarding the biosphere. Luhmann used the word environment to designate anything beyond those social interactions. This dual sense of the environment is not necessarily contradictory. Rather, communication (or social interaction) defines society as a system, which, as with all systems, exists within an environment. The environment refers to everything beyond communication, including, but not limited to the biophysical world. The presumption that before society can act upon an issue, that issue must first make it onto the public agenda provides significant justification for our decision to model society as communication. Stone (1988) noted, "the conversion of difficulties into problems is said to be the sine qua non of moving policy problems onto the public agenda" (p. 281). That conversion cannot occur without communication. Kingdon (1995) concluded that the policy-making process consists of three streams: problems, policies, and politics. These three streams are largely distinct and independent. People discuss problems when they do not have policy solutions and people work on solutions to issues that are not considered problems. Sometimes the streams flow in opposite directions, lead to different conclusions, and thus hinder substantive progress down any path. When these streams flow together and join forces, the greatest policy changes are possible. Research on political agenda setting indicates that before an issue can be acted on, people must single it out for attention. Both Kingdon (1995) and Baumgartner

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and Jones (1993) worked from the assumption that issue definition can be changed, thus becoming a catalyst that causes the three policy-making streams to join. For example, policy development proceeds even when no perceived problem seems imminent, and people identify problems with no immediate policy solution in mind. Kingdon noted that more work needs to be done to understand the complex processes that enable agenda setting to proceed. Because humans largely understand the world through the language we use to describe our experiences with it, language creates the meaning we assign to the world (Burke, 1966). As politicians and ecologists define problems and discuss policy options, they not only influence their listeners' perceptions, they recreate and develop their own understanding of those issues. Further, the manner in which they define issues necessarily directs their attention towards certain ways of understanding the problem and thus particular policy solutions, while excluding other options. In other words, there is no predetermined point at which a condition becomes a problem. It is, rather, a matter of presentation and interpretation. A condition becomes a problem when the presentation of facts enables society to see it as one. For this reason, a model that explicitly recognizes the complexity of the relationship between human society and the environment must be fully grounded in communication practices into the policy-problem definition relationship. Therefore, Luhmann's (1979, 1989, 1992) social theory, which focuses on communication as the means whereby society defines itself as an entity, is particularly appropriate as the basis for modeling how people set social agendas. Society as Communication Luhmann (1989, 1992) argued that human society is defined by communication, and that whatever is not communication is external to the social system. While this interpretation recognizes that society has an environment, it presumes that social relations with the environment are internally driven responses to, rather than interactions with, the environment. Further, response to the environment comes only in the form of communication. According to his theory of function systems, late modern society is best conceptualized as a loosely coupled set of subsystems that recognize each other's existence only through reliance on intrasystem and intersystem communication, or resonance. Luhmann (1992) argued that, "there is no information outside of communication, no utterance outside of communication, no understanding outside of communication—and not simply in the causal sense for which information is the cause of the utterance and the utterance the cause of the understanding, but rather in the circular sense of reciprocal presupposition" (p. 254). Thus, society is a closed system that creates the components out of which it arises through communication practices. Luhmann's decision to focus at the system level may explain why he never explained how communication fulfills its function of constituting society. He does differentiate his perspective from social theorists such as Austin (1962), Habermas

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(1979), and Searle (1969), who focued on communication's success or failure in transmitting messages or understanding. Rather than interpreting information, utterance, and understanding as communication functions or speech acts, Luhmann (1992) postulated that communication occurs "through a selection ... of information, selection of the utterance of this information, and a selective understanding or misunderstanding of this utterance and its information" (p. 252). No communication exists unless all three of these components are present, for without their presence we remain in the realm of perception. Luhmann used the concept of autopoiesis, which explains how systems shape themselves according to their own internal structures, to posit an alternative to both the assertion that society adapts to its environment, and that the environment selects the social systems that survive. Rather, he argued that society shapes its own future according to internal structures. Society is thus a simultaneously closed (organizationally) and open (structurally) system. As an autonomous, closed system, society strives to maintain an identity by subordinating all change to the maintenance of its own organization as a given set of relations. It does so by engaging in circular patterns of interaction (within itself) whereby change in one element of the system is coupled with changes elsewhere, setting up continuous patterns of interaction that are always selfreferential. Society's supposed interaction with its environment is both a reflection and a part of its internal organization—it responds to the environment in ways that facilitate its own self-production. Although society is organizationally closed, it remains structurally open. Systems maintain stability by sustaining processes of negative feedback that allow them to detect and correct deviations from operating norms, and can evolve by developing capacities for modifying these norms to account for new circumstances. The source of change then, is located in random variations occurring within the system. This structural openness allows seemingly unrelated aspects of a system to interact with each other. The structural openness specified by the theory of autopoiesis encourages us to understand transformations of society as the result of internally generated change, rather than as adaptation to external forces. Chaos theory, which began developing in the 1960s, suggests that random changes in a system can lead to new patterns of order and stability (Kiel & Elliott, 1996). Random variation within society, then, generates possibilities for emergence and evolution of new system identities. Of course, possibilities do not necessarily translate into practices, and the attendant potential for importing negative entropy does not always result in its importation. Erratic changes can trigger interactions that reverberate through the system. The final consequences of these changes, however, are determined by whether the current identity of the system dampens the effects of the disturbance through compensatory changes elsewhere, or whether it encourages a new configuration of relations to emerge. Since the aspects of social systems that enable these transactions to occur are communicative interactions, society is structured by self-referential operations

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(communication) that are produced within society's subsystems. These operations (communicative interactions) are the sole means for differentiating human society from its environment. Communication, which refers to "the common actualization of meaning," rather than to information transfer, provides society's "mode of operation, and the environment includes everything that does not operate communicatively" (Luhmann, 1989 pp. x, 7). Despite Luhmann's (1992) claim that when studying society, "one must not begin with the concept of action but with the concept of communication. For it is not action but rather communication that is an unavoidably social operation," he never clearly explains how or why communication should be the sin qua non of society (p. 252). Communication remains for Luhmann, the ubiquitous black box that defines the social system. For an elaboration on the practice of communication we turn to Burke (1966, 1969), who posited that to be human is to feel estranged from, yet desire identification and socialization with, others of our species. Burke argued that, in a vain attempt to overcome our perpetual state of estrangement or separation, people develop elaborate social hierarchies that simultaneously enable and constrain our interaction. The social hierarchies we construct to achieve unity, however, simultaneously result in more estrangement and divisiveness, for members of the hierarchy differ, both symbolically and materially, from each other. As humans, we communicate to express the common interests needed to achieve the social unity we desire (Burke 1966; 1969; Peterson, 1997). Mouffe's (2000) claim that human society cannot escape the political resonated with Burke's theory of communication. Mouffe political theory suggested that whatever means people use to achieve a sense of community carries with it the seeds of conflict. The task of those who would encourage the exercise of democracy is not, therefore, to achieve acceptable compromise so much as it is to make use of conflicts among distinct interests. Supplementing Luhmann's rather sterile definition of communication with concepts drawn from Burke and Mouffe suggests that members of society use the resonance among function systems to define issues according to their interests. Communication neither minimizes nor maximizes resonance among function systems; rather it constitutes resonance. Without it, society does not exist. Communication (or resonance) is a process as fundamental to human society as photosynthesis is to plant communities. At the same time, however, it is a practice social actors use in conscious attempts to secure their own shifting and contradictory interests. Further, neither political power nor personal abilities are uniformly distributed within society. Within this rather unruly space, increased resonance among function systems enables social actors to examine issues from multiple perspectives, while decreased resonance minimizes such opportunities. Social Function Systems Luhmann described the society wherein these communicative transactions take place as a centerless set of function systems that constrain both what can be com-

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municated and how it is communicated. Because each subsystem fulfills only one primary function (hence, the name function system), it cannot substitute for another, as was the case within traditional societies that were differentiated through stratification. In Medieval Europe, for example, the authority of the Pope, who occupied the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, could be brought to bear on any sort of problem. Whether the issue was religion, economics, or education, the same ultimate authority ruled. However, because modern society recognizes no single authority figure that can cut across all questions and social issues, individual functions assume primary authority for resolving problems. Function systems sort experience into information according to a binary code that obtains system closure by assuring that every choice refers exclusively to its opposite. Luhmann (1989) designated economy, law, science, politics, religion, and education as the most important function systems in contemporary society. He then identifies a grammar for these function systems. Society only can discuss economy in terms of ability-inability to pay; law in terms of legality-illegality, science in terms of truth-falsity, politics in terms of in-out of office, religion in terms of immanence/transcendence, and education in terms of better-worse. Like any grammar, these codes reproduce system closure by resolving tautologies and paradoxes, and by limiting further possibilities. Through their grammar, "society's function systems constrain both what experience becomes information, and what kind of information it becomes" (Grant et al., 2002, p. 145). Luhmann (1992) wrote that because "self-reference (or reflexiveness) is not a property peculiar to thought or consciousness but instead a general principle of system formation ... there are many different possibilities for observing the world, depending on the reference system that is taken as basic" (pp. 251-252). For example, within the function system of science, a claim that is not true is false, and a claim that is not false is true. Members of society are spared both the tautology that truth is truth, and the paradox that one cannot truthfully maintain that one is truthful. The principle of negation imputes binary codes with universal validity because something that is not identified by one term, must be identified by the other. Thus, the binary code of truth-falsity precludes the consideration of criteria such as goodness or practicality or legality when evaluating an event that has been interpreted as scientific. Alternately, if people label the same occurrence as an economic issue, they understand it solely in terms of ability or inability to pay. Its goodness, practicality, or legality is not at issue. The identical grammatical principle applies for each function system. The principle of negation (as materialized in the binary code) that ensures organizational closure, however, also ensures structural openness by inducing society to examine the possibility of that which does not exist (Peterson & Peterson, 1996). Each function system's programs, which refer to its binary code, yet are not terms of the code, further retain the system's openness. At the same time they operationalize the system's binary code, they must remain variable because determining the relative suitability of one or the other binary value when appraising an

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experience requires information from outside the system. Programs, then, refer to the conditions necessary to determine the selection of one binary term over the other. Structural openness then, allows social systems to utilize terms from within other function systems, without losing their previously determined identities. Luhmann (1989) argued that functional differentiation constrains society's potential responses to environmental disturbances, for it can respond only in terms of existing function systems. As with any system, society often remains oblivious to environmental disturbances. When it does notice a disturbance, the resulting resonance between society and its environment is channeled into a function system and treated according to the grammar specified by that system's binary code. Social experience that is not translated into the binary code of a function system does not become information. The same principle constrains society's internal processes, where function systems form each others' environments. The same function systems that produce organizational closure by sharply reducing what counts as information within human society also produce structural openness by causing resonance at the internal boundaries of society—where communication across function systems defines society. Although function systems communicate with each other, however, their distinct binary codes mitigate against complete integration, and maintain the possibility of multiple responses to any event. Because events rarely fit neatly within the framework of one function system alone, social responses may appear erratic, as they shift from the code of one function system to another. The structural openness obtained through resonance among function systems maintains a precarious balance with society's organizational closure, ensuring that operations can switch quickly from the code of one function system to the code of another. Thus, although function systems rarely produce coordinated responses, their communicative interdependency prevents society from becoming completely isolated from its environment. Luhmann (1989) allowed for the fact that some function systems will exhibit greater strength than others, but cautions that we endanger society's structural openness by allowing any function system to eclipse all others. He claims that attempting to derive the near totality of phenomena from any one sphere makes no sense because the grammar of each function system's binary code provides different constraints. After all, each function system experiences the environment through its own programs and codes. For example, when observation of the natural environment is interpreted in light of ability-inability to pay the costs for preserving a landscape, the social system can only observe interpretations of that landscape after arbitrarily decontextualizing it from its noneconomic milieu. The Bush administration's recent proposal to open "the nation's largest remaining block of unprotected public land to oil and gas development," which also will constitute "the largest single on-shore offering to industry in the history of the American Arctic" appears relatively uncontroversial when viewed from within the economic function system (Seelye, 2003). As a spokesman for the Bureau of Land

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Management explained, "the price of oil has gone up, and our domestic supplies have gone down, so there's a renewed interest by industry in leasing" (Seelye, 2003). By accepting only the grammar of the economic function system, we limit the information considered relevant to the debate, and risk ignoring important environmental perturbations. When the criteria and program of any function system are privileged over all others, the number and variety of experiences that count as information in a society are sharply reduced. Because society's ability to find resonance with its environment is almost completely dependent on the secondary resonance that develops among its function systems, this boundary activity is essential to the perception of environmental disturbances. Secondary resonance enables society to compensate for its inability to interact directly with its environment. Only through recognizing the limitations of each function system can society benefit from the internal complexity of the integrated system into which it has evolved. In summary, Luhmann provided a basis for developing a model of society that is cognizant of environmental perturbations, but does not reduce to the oversimplification of attributing a singular causal relationship between society and the environment. Because society's ability to find resonance with its environment is almost completely dependent on the secondary resonance that develops among its function systems, this boundary activity is essential to the perception of environmental disturbances. Secondary resonance enables society to compensate for its inability to interact directly with its environment. Only through recognizing the limitations of each function system can society benefit from the internal complexity of the integrated system into which it has evolved. Using this conceptual foundation, we constructed a computerized model that enabled us to simulate multiple possible futures by specifying how society's primary function systems resonate with each other to constrain and enable social responses to environmental disturbances (Grant et al., 2002). GENERAL SOCIAL MODEL Drawing on Luhmann's theory we (Grant et al., 2002) developed a quantitative simulation model where human society is represented as simultaneously closed (organizationally) and open (structurally). Our model consists of six submodels, each representing one a centerless set of the six primary subsystems of modern society, economy, law, science, politics, religion, and education. In turn, each submodel consists of seven state variables, each connected to all others by material transfers. Six of the state variables represent active entities that can randomly exchange units of information daily; the seventh represents a repository of potential information. We use the terms total information, active information, and inactive information when referring to material flows or transfers. Luhmann (1989) argued that environmental inputs do not become information for human society unless they become the subject of communication. In other words, before inputs

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from society's environment can matter, society must select and understand (or misunderstand) something about them (Luhmann, 1992). Thus we refer to these materials collectively as total information. Active information refers to that upon which society can base decisions, because it has been translated into the code of a function system. Inactive information has not yet been translated into such a code, and might eventually disappear without ever becoming active. The daily probability that inactive information becomes active increases, and the probability that active information becomes inactive decreases, as the strength of the subsystem increases (Grant et al., 2002). Strength is determined by the relative distribution of active information units among the state variables, with maximum strength attained with uniform distribution. Communication among the six subsystems depends on the relative strengths of the subsystems and the frequency with which they resonate with other subsystems. Subsystems communicate externally at the following frequencies: politics once yearly, economics and education once every 3 months, legal once a month, and religion and science once daily. We programmed the model inSTELLA®6.0 (High Performance Systems, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA) using a Pentium-based microcomputer with a time step of one day. We investigated model behavior by running a series of replicate stochastic simulations and monitoring system and subsystem strength and robustness and over a period of 10 years (Grant et al., 2002). The simulated society was both stable and robust. Both stability and robustness of subsystems were inversely related to the frequency of communication with other subsystems, and both strength and robustness were more variable for subsystems with higher external communication frequencies. System strength and robustness were most sensitive to changes in factors affecting the resonance among subsystems. Subsystems open to communication with others on a daily basis (religion and science) exhibited more frequent occurrence of extinction than did subsystems open to external communication less frequently. We explored the model's usefulness in simulating societal constraints on environmental action by coupling it to a simple ecological model that simulates use of a common forage resource (Grant et al., 2002). We coupled the models by linking the economic, political, and legal subsystems of society to the environment via a community of resource managers composed of six pairs of ranchers, with each pair sharing a common forage resource. We structured the linkages of the economic and political subsystems with the environment to represent the Prisoner's Dilemma; and the linkages between the legal subsystem and the environment to represent the concept of mutual coercion. We ran two series of simulations in which we unlinked and then re-linked the environment to the legal subsystem. Results from the first series of simulations demonstrated the classic ecological tragedy of the commons. Results from the second series of simulations demonstrated the effect of periodically imposed (by mutual coercion) legal restrictions on stocking rates, which allowed recovery of forage resources and supported sustainable profits for ranchers. We also

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examined the sensitivity of simulation results to changes in the values of key parameters affecting the dynamics of premises as they are communicated between the environment and society and among the subsystems of society. For a more detailed description of the model, results of baseline simulations, representative sensitivity analyses, and the an example of model use see Grant et al., (2002). Our model successfully simulates human society as a system that closes in on itself, to maintain stable patterns of internal relations, a process that enables it to maintain itself as a system. As proposed by Luhmann, our simulated society closes in on itself—thus maintaining reasonably stable patterns of relationships within and among function systems—ultimately enabling it to maintain itself as a system. In modeling society as closed and autonomous, we are not characterizing it as completely isolated from the environment. The closure and autonomy is merely organizational. As a functionally closed loop of interaction, society has no clear beginning or end point. Because the system envisioned by Luhmann cannot escape this closed loop, it makes no sense to say that society directly interacts with its external environment. Rather, as indicated by our simulations, apparent transactions between society and its environment are prompted by resonance among society's function systems, which in turn is a function of relative system strength. That resonance enables society to respond to its environment while maintaining its own boundaries. Increased resonance brings both increased responsiveness and increased vulnerability to environmental stimuli. Despite the model's focus on symbolic activity, that symbol use is grounded in materiality. As Burke maintained (1978), the material and the symbolic realm are inexorably linked together by the intermediate realm of human experience. He directs our attention to those symbolic acts that are constrained by social and natural structures, but still are voluntary. The fact that resonance among function systems is grounded in perturbations from the natural system that forms part of society's environment indicates that society (through its communication) remains constrained by structures that extend beyond it, both in time and space. In other words, the human proclivity toward communication is grounded in biophysical processes, which are entailed in communication. Arguably, human society's goal is not to minimize the variety of possible environmental outcomes per se, but rather to reduce the difference between possible and favorable environmental outcomes to an acceptable level. To achieve this reduction, in addition to increasing the variety of possible social actions, society can redefine the set of environmental outcomes it finds favorable. Thus, just as a natural system may adapt in order to simplify its task of self regulation, a societal worldview may be changed to reduce the stress on an observer (Weinberg, 1975). In our model, the interpretation of an environmental signal by a given subsystem of society may change in a binomial fashion (from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0) as a result of changes occurring within that subsystem. Further, resultant changes in subsystem strength alter resonance among subsystems, thus altering both the responsiveness and vulnerability of a given subsystem.

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SOCIAL RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS We now illustrate how our quantification of Luhmann's (1979,1989,1992) social theory could enable us to construct an integrated account of social and biophysical processes, an account that could be used to construct a more complete explanation of natural resource management decisions. We offer two illustrations, both of which focus on management of natural resources held in common among many members of society. Managing the Commons Our first illustration is the frequently modeled common pasture for livestock. Both observed and simulated results of this commons have supported the thesis that when livestock managers are free to place as many animals on the commons as they wish, the resultant mean number of animals on the commons is much greater, and the mean available forage and animal weight much less, than what would be best for the long-term viability of the grazing resource unless they are legally constrained from doing so (Grant & Thompson, 1997). Essentially, society interacts with the pastureland to influence forage levels, which, in turn, influences the ranchers' profits. This interpretation, however, misses the resonance, or communication interactions, within society itself (Grant et al., 2002). Our social model provides additional information, both regarding internal relations among function systems within the social system, and regarding potential interaction with the commons (Peterson & Peterson, 2001). When biomass or forage decreases to levels that negatively impact the weights of their livestock, our social model assumes that managers notice that something detrimental to their operation has occurred. Although no individual rancher can significantly alter the situation, if enough members of this society determine that they are receiving insufficient profitability from their livestock, an environmental signal may be translated into the code of the economic function system. The group then may mutually agree that the shrinking vegetative biomass available for their animals has weakened their ability to pay (economic strength). Human society may then reframe this economic problem as a political issue in an attempt to achieve redress by the mutually agreed upon coercion suggested by Hardin (1968). The motivation to seek a political solution to the problem of decreased vegetative biomass resulting in decreased profitability might well be rooted in a religious belief that the economic good of society as a whole transcends the economic good of individual ranchers, that the good of future generations transcends the good of the small number of those imminently involved, that the transcendent value of the family ranch is such that society as a whole should assume the responsibility of paying to ensure the continuation of this way of life, or some combination of these rationales. Voting, as well as other means of influencing the composition of office-holders, enables society to legislate a potential solution to

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the problem, in this case either a ranching subsidy, a statute requiring removal of livestock from the commons when forage becomes depleted, or some combination of these approaches. If voters passed a statute requiring removal of livestock from the commons when forage levels decreased to some predetermined level, statements of truth developed within the scientific function system would be used to determine the level beyond which no individual rancher is allowed to deplete the vegetative biomass available in the commons. Educational achievement would come into play in determining which persons are more or less qualified to determine the methods most appropriate for determining these truths, as well as which persons are allowed to select the exact threshold. To legislate a subsidy, society also would use statements of truth regarding minimum acceptable levels of profitability needed to ensure that ranchers are able to function positively within the economy. As in the livestock removal ruling, educationally based certifications of expertise would determine which persons are considered better able to determine the level of subsidy required, and appropriate procedures for providing it to livestock managers. Not every individual, however, voluntarily cooperates, which leads into the legal function system. Here, members of society bring suit against those who choose not to abide by the law, thus coercing them to remove animals from the affected environment until the forage recovers to a previously agreed upon level. As in the case of determining appropriate minimum levels of forage, certification based on educational achievement is used to determine which persons are better able to determine the legality or illegality of an individual miscreant's behavior. Resonance among function systems does not always lead to harmonious social activities. Power relationships and conflicting interests may result in the passage of both a subsidy and a lower limit on forage beyond which livestock must be removed from the commons. When both policies become law, society is faced with conflicting meanings being simultaneously constructed by its function systems. The subsidy encourages managers to place more animals on the common pasture because they require less forage to make a profit, yet they are simultaneously prohibited from doing so after forage decreases to the predetermined level. This increased potential for profitability discourages managers from removing livestock from depleted pastureland, even when forage levels drop below those required by law, which stimulates the legal system to activity. Although society itself neither encourages nor discourages maintenance of a healthy tension among function systems, awareness of its systemic character can enable individual (or groups of) actors to develop political currency, and shape the issue by drawing public attention to imbalances among competing function systems. Global Warming Our second example is one that has long maintained a hazy, yet persistent presence in conflicts over environmental policy. The conflict over management of social be-

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haviors within the United States that contribute to global climate change illustrates the difficulty with which environmental perturbations penetrate the social system's boundary, as well as the multiple opportunities for resonance within society once the system has recognized the existence of a biophysical process. Climate system models, which generally include a full suite of representations for air, water, land, and ice, provide policy makers with opportunities to compare various futures (for examples begin with the EPA web site at http://www. epa.gov/). They attempt to match planetary-scale circulation, seasonable variability and temperature structures. Although they are limited by uncertainties in formulation, calculations, and interpretation, they are accepted as important tools for assessing future possibilities for human life on Earth. Truth claims regarding causal patterns across short time periods and small spatial extents remain uncertain, as does the exact match between model results and observed changes. Scientific methodology provides strong support, however, for the truth claim that the heat-trapping properties of rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels play a significant causal role in existing rates of climate warming. Both modeled and observed data provide "mounting evidence of human contributions to climate warming" (Revkin, 2002). Society could use the truth claims from this scientifically validated information to initiate actions aimed at mitigating current rates of climate warming, and the political dislocations they will bring—a relatively weak example of such action being the Kyoto Protocol. Simultaneously, without disputing the truth of climate warming, the electoral program of the political function system in the United States places individuals in office. The economic interests of those who hold office (or exercise direct influence on office holders) might suggest that certain policy changes are likely to weaken the economic system (in terms of ability to pay). Especially if the economic function system has sufficient strength relative to other function systems, it could block the political system from communication with non-economic function systems. Our social model suggests that the Bush/Cheney administration has distorted the U.S. conversation about global climate change by attempting to eliminate resonance between the economic and other function systems. Although the administration has attempted to construct competing truth claims, the scientific community has been largely uncooperative, perhaps due to legitimate fears that claims not supported by appropriate "scientific methodology" could damage its credibility. Failing a competing truth claim, the administration has resorted to the economic function system, arguing that it a more immediate issue. The concomitant claim that mandatory motor vehicle or industrial emissions controls could damage the economy, has provided political leaders with sufficient justification to postpone mandatory emissions controls. Thus governmental personnel might well use the codes of additional function systems, but only to buttress their eco-

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nomically based decision. For example, they could argue that mandatory controls would be illegal or that there is insufficient scientific information to adequately ground the control systems. As long as the social system in a modern, industrialized nation such the United States retains a balanced tension among its function systems, however, no single societal system is completely free of complications; it is in these "complications" that hope for an informed social response to environmental perturbations lies. Some members of society may demand education, in order to better their relative position in the system. For example, a shareholder coalition formed from the State of Connecticut Plans and Trust Fund and members of the New York-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, contends that the release of carbon dioxide, which is strongly linked to climate warming, by power companies constitutes a hidden risk to shareholders' economic status because of potential litigation (Banerjee, 2003). The coalition contends that, since power companies have acknowledged climate change as a risk factor internally, it is illegal for them to fail to provide their shareholders with education regarding how they plan to address this risk. The Interfaith Center justifies religious intervention in this legal question by labeling it an issue where responsibility to the public good transcends any benefits or harms that may occur to specific companies. Additionally, the interpretation of an environmental signal by a given function system of society can transform as a result of changes occurring within that function system. As elections loom, candidates for office struggle to demonstrate their cognizance of scientific truth, which, again, can take many forms. Some may seek out individuals whose educational status enables them to legitimately state an alternative truth (social behaviors do not significantly contribute to climate warming) that does not seem to put existing economic premises in jeopardy. Others might attempt to demonstrate that the existing link between the economic and political systems has been falsely articulated, because it has failed to account for other function systems (establishment of mandatory emissions controls may negatively impact certain individual's economic strength, but a more transcendent view suggests that they would actually benefit society's economic strength). Further, these changes alter resonance among function systems, thus altering both society's vulnerability and responsiveness to environmental perturbations. Climate modelers are not unaware that human society is an important aspect in their efforts. For example, Hansen et. al. (2000) simulate alternative scenarios based on social dynamics such as human population growth rates, life style choices, and energy sources. They do not, however, account for choices made within the social system. Given increasing evidence that "most of the global warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities" (IPCC, 2001, p. 10), the utility of climate models might be increased if they could be coupled to a model that accounted for decisions made within the social system; decisions that directly influence human activities.

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COMMUNICATION PRACTICE IN THE BIOSPHERE

The social model we propose is relatively abstract and simplified, and, as with any model, it does not explicitly account for all the richness that defines social construction. It can, however, provide the basis for an explanation of how society's internal resonance (both among and within function systems) enables and constrains its ability to respond to environmental perturbations ranging from global climate change to communally held pastures. Traditional natural resource management incorporates concepts from several fields in the physical and biological sciences. No matter how elegant the scientific theories upon which management plans are based, however, they cannot reach their full potential until they become effective public policy and are implemented. We are not arguing that social sciences or humanities are more important than biophysical sciences when formulating and implementing management policy. Rather, the development of effective policies for managing natural resources requires integration of the humanities as well as both social and biophysical sciences. Both examples described above demonstrate that resonance among the six primary function systems enables society to respond to its environment while maintaining its own boundaries. Increased resonance brings both increased responsiveness and increased vulnerability to environmental stimuli, while decreased resonance decreases both responsiveness and vulnerability. Arguably, human society's goal is not to reduce vulnerability by minimizing the variety of possible environmental outcomes per se, but rather to reduce the difference between all possible and favorable environmental outcomes to an acceptable level. To achieve this reduction, in addition to increasing the variety of possible social actions, society can redefine the set of environmental outcomes it finds favorable. Thus, just as a biophysical system may adapt in order to simplify its task of regulating, a social practice may be changed to reduce the stress on society (Weinberg, 1975). We think it worth emphasizing, however, that society's systemic goal is not necessarily identical to (or even complementary with) the interests of its members. The examples we have offered suggest how groups or individuals can inadvertently weaken the social system's resilience to environmental perturbations by minimizing resonance among function systems to achieve their own interests. Used critically, our model can help decision makers and other community members identify and respond to this danger. As the human population on Earth doubles yet again, the importance of holistically understanding how social structures and practices both influence and respond to the biophysical world becomes increasingly critical. Despite our model's focus on communication, it remains grounded in materiality. As Burke maintained (1978), the material and the symbolic realms are inexorably linked by the intermediate realm of human experience. The fact that resonance among function systems is grounded in perturbations from the biosphere indicates that society remains constrained by structures that extend beyond it, both in time and space. "In

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other words, the human proclivity toward communication is grounded in ecosystems, which are entailed in communication" (Peterson & Peterson, 2001 p. 301). We offer this analytical interpretation of Luhmann's social theory as a small step toward a more holistic analysis of humans in the biosphere. REFERENCES Austin, J. L. (1962). Sense and sensibilia. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Banerjee, N. (2003, December 31). Utility shareholders demand liability disclosure. New York Times. [on-line] Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/business/17POWE.html Baumgartner, F. R., Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and instability in American politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. M. Ritter, (Trans.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Blair, C. (1999). Challenges and openings in rethinking rhetoric: Contemporary U. S. memorial sites as exemplars of rhetoric's materiality. In J. Selzer & S. Crowley, (Eds.), Rhetorical bodies: Toward a Material Rhetoric. (pp. 16-57). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action: Essays on life, literature, and method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,. Burke, K. (1969). A Rhetoric of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1978). (Nonsymbolic)motion/(symbolic)action. Critical Inquiry, 5, 401-416. Cox, J. R. (1982). The die is cast: Topical and ontological dimensions of the locus of the irreparable. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68, 227-239. Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Grant, W. E., Peterson, T. R., Peterson, M. J. (2002). Quantitative modeling of coupled natural/human systems: simulation of societal constraints on environmental action drawing on Luhmann's social theory. Ecological Modelling, 158, 143-165. Grant, W. E., Thompson, P. B. (1997). Integrated ecological models: Simulation of socio-cultural constraints on ecological dynamics. Ecological Modelling, 100, 43-59. Habermas, J. (1979). Communication and the evolution of society. Boston: Beacon Books. Hansen, J., Sato, M., Ruedy, S., Lacis, A., Oinas, V. (2000). Global warning in the twenty-first century: an alternative scenario. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, 9875-9880. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science 162, 1243-1248. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 2001. Summary for policymakers. Based on the Third Report of Working Group 1 of the IPCC. [on-line] Available: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/UniqueKeyLookup/SHSU5BWIE7/ $File/wgl_science-sum.pdf Kiel L. D., Elliott, E. (1996). Chaos theory in the social sciences: Foundations and applications. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Kingdon, J. W. (1995). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (XXXX), 2nd ed. New York, HarperCollins. Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power. (H. Davis, J. Raffan, K. Rooney (Trans.). Chicester, UK: Wiley.

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Luhmann, N. (1989). Ecological communication. (J. Bednarz, Jr., (Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luhmann, N. (1992). What is communication? (J. Bednarz, Jr. (Trans.). Communication Theory 2, 251-259. Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic paradox. New York: Verso. Peterson, M. J., Peterson, T. R., (1993). A rhetorical critique of 'nonmarket' economic valuations for natural resources. Environmental Values 2, 47-65. Peterson, M. J., Peterson, T. R. (2001). Communication practice and environmental decision making: an application of Niklas Luhmann's social theory to Garret Hardin's tragedy of the commons. M-F. Aepli, J. W. Delicath, & S. P. Depoe, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Biennial Conference on Communication and Environment (pp. 298-302). (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati, 2001). Peterson, T. R. (1997). Sharing the earth: The rhetoric of sustainable development. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Peterson, T. R. (1998). Environmental communication: Tales of life on earth. Quarterly Journal of Speech 84, 371 298-302. 393. Peterson, T. R., Peterson, M. J. (1996). Valuation analysis in environmental policy making: How economic models limit possibilities for environmental advocacy. In J. G. Cantrill, C. L. Oravec (Eds.), The symbolic earth: Discourse and our creation of the environment (298-302). Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. Pezullo, P. (2001). Toxic tours: Communicating the presence of chemical contamination. In M-F. Aepli, J. W. Delicath, & S. P. Depoe (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Biennial Conference on Communication and Environment (pp. 1-12). Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati, 2001. Revkin, A. (2002, December 31). Temperatures are likely to go from warm to warmer. New York Times [on-line] Available: Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/ 12/31 /science/earth/31 /warm.html Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Seelye, K. Q. (2003, January 18). U. S. may open oil reserve in Alaska to development. New York Times [on-line]. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/18/politics/18ALAS.html Selzer, J. (1999). Habeas corpus: An introduction. In J. Selzer & S. Crowley, (Eds). Rhetorical bodies: Toward a Material Rhetoric (pp. 3-15). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Stone, D. A. (1988). Policy paradox and political reason. Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman Press. Weinberg, G. M. (1975). An introduction to general systems thinking. New York, NY: Wileys.

CHAPTER THREE

Eulogy for Tobe West: On the Agitation and Control of a Salvage-Rider Timber Sale Mark P. Moore Oregon State University

In July of 1995, President Clinton signed a budget rescissions bill into law that included a salvage-timber rider to remove dead, dying, and diseased trees from forests in the United States for the purpose of restoring forest health and reducing future damage from potential forest fires. The rider, which was a special piece of legislation placed on an unrelated spending bill, originally called for the logging of only diseased and damaged timber stands, but the final version allowed for some pre-1992 timber sales that were blocked by federal courts under the Endangered Species Act to be logged as well. After the rider passed, federal judge Michael Hogan further ruled that the rider would allow other timber sales to go forward even if they did not meet the environmental regulations of what had become known as The Forest Plan, that is, the plan created by President Clinton in 1993. As a result, the rider freed 27 timber sales suspended previously since 1991. Three of the 27 were in Oregon. One of these three was located in the Coastal Range near the small town of Alsea, Oregon, an area called Tobe West. Tobe West stood as an ancient, old-growth forest grove with trees said to be over 400 years old. These trees provided habitat for the threatened marbled murrelet and surrounded what a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) study classified as one of the best spawning grounds for the threatened coho salmon in the entire Alsea River system. When the logging began, environmentalists protested. This chapter examines the environmental protest over Tobe West within the context of the Northwest forest controversy in general, and the timber salvage rider in particular. The critical perspective for the study is informed first, by the theory of protest rhetoric offered by Bowers, Ochs, and Jensen in, The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control (1993), and then by the theory of the institutionalization of environmentalism forwarded by Eder in The Social Construction of Nature (1996).1 This study argued that while the protest rhetoric surrounding the timber sale at Tobe West reflects various 33

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strategies of agitation and control identified by Bowers et al. (1993) a greater understanding of the protest as a rhetorical response to the social and cultural imperatives of its time can be generated by placing the strategies of agitation and control within the context of what Eder (1996) described in the late 1990s as a "post-environmentalism and the emergence of a post-corporatist state" (p. 192). This study attempts to contribute to the understanding of environmental rhetoric in social protest by demonstrating that the industry, the media, and the state (establishment or authority) function in this case as a form of control against environmental protest that suppresses, subverts, and co-opts the environmental movement. The rhetoric of agitation in this case can be viewed as more ceremonial or eulogistic than as an instrument for significant social change, one that stems from what Cox (1982) refered to as "the Locus of the irreparable" in environmental discourse (p. 227). However, references to the irreparable in this case signal more of a lament or resignation over the loss of nature than the environmentalist hysteria, for example, that Killingsworth and Palmer (1995) identified as characteristic of discourse by activists committed to life in the present as well as the future. As such, a greater understanding of the protest rhetoric in this case can be gained by elaborating on the strategies and tactics identified by Bowers et al. (1993) (more of a focus on how goals are pursued through agitation and control) with Eder's (1991) frame analysis of ecological communication, which centers more on the content or substance of the discourse itself and the underlying values that motivate the construction of it. This study also considers the implications of the control of social protest over Tobe West for the freedom of speech, protest in the forest controversy, and environmental communication in general after examining how the letters-tothe-editor section of a local newspaper suppresses and subverts protest while providing a political venue for industry supporters to co-opt environmental communication for their own purpose. This chapter examines letters to the editor by protesters and timber supporters regarding Tobe West as additional forms of agitation and control that develop and function instrumentally in public forum. The function of the letters-to-the-editor sections in daily newspapers as a forum for public deliberation is informed by Wahl-Jorgensen (2001) and others to illuminate the ways in which the media, the public, and democracy intersect with regard to environmental protest. Wahl-Jorgensen (1999, 2001) observed that the editors of these letters often privilege individual expression over that of activist groups and prefer emotionally charged, personal stories by individuals that come from the heart to forge emotional bonds between readers and writers. Thus, the letters-to-editors section of local daily newspapers can control agitation as well by avoiding and suppressing letters that speak on behalf of or represent activist groups. It is argued in this chapter that an emphasis on individual expression can diffuse the collective voice of protest while also allowing opponents to co-opt the language of environmental communication to convey their personal (individual) views.

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In addition, research by Hynds (1976, 1991, 1984, 1994) found that editors continue to remain positive about the role of letters in editorial pages and believe they provide useful benchmarks and public forums for taking action on issues. Also, according to Hynds (1994) editors received more letters today than in 1975 and that on average smaller newspapers print 70 percent of the letters they receive (though large and small newspapers edit the letters for length, libel, taste, and style). The chapter begins with brief overviews of Bowers et al. (1993) on social protest and Eder (1991) on the institutionalization of environmentalism, describes the context of protest, then examines the discourse, including letters to the editor from environmental activists and timber supporters, and finally discusses implications of the study. AGITATION, CONTROL, AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF PROTEST

In the vocabulary of Bowers et al. (1993) protesters agitate to achieve social change and the establishment (or what will be referred to in this study as the state) controls agitation in order to resist change. In specific, they observed that "Agitation exists when (1) people outside the normal decision-making establishment (2) advocate significant social change and (3) encounter a degree of resistance with the establishment such as to require more than the normal discursive means of persuasion." With such cases, "Control refers to the response of the decision-making establishment to agitation" (p. 4). A legitimate democratic state has social powers in the form of legislation and law enforcement. Attempts at significant social change by either a protesting group or the state stem typically from substantive issues (whether to raise or lower timber harvests in the Northwest), procedural issues (whether to develop a plan that would ease the conflict over forest management), or some combination of the two. Accordingly, agitation would occur after a group has attempted to seek change through the proper legislative or legal channels but has been denied. At this point, strategies can be adopted by the group that fall outside the normal discursive means of persuasion. Bowers et al. (1993) identify seven strategies used by protest groups in their attempt at social change. They are: (a) petition; (b) promulgation; (c) solidification; (d) polarization; (e) non-violent resistance; (f) escalation/confrontation; (g) Gandhi and guerrilla. Petition involves all of the normal discursive means of persuasion and would not in and of itself be considered agitative. However after petitioning the state and being denied, a group would move onto other strategies that follow petition, more or less in the order listed aforementioned. As such, promulgation is an attempt to gain public support through informational picketing, displays, leaflets, and protest meetings. Solidification is the promotion of unity within the protest group itself through the development of songs, slogans, and in-group publications. The polarization strategy involves an effort to draw any uncommitted individuals into the ranks of the agitators. Nonviolent resistance in-

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creases the tension of a protest situation through the physical presence of agitators who are violating the law and therefore must be removed by law enforcement officers (sit-in) or the physical and economic absence of agitators who willingly remove themselves from a particular situation (boycott). Escalation-confrontation as a rhetorical strategy prods the state to an unsavory public display of physical violence against protesters, as Short (1991) examined in an analysis informed by Bowers and Ochs (1971) on the nondiscursive forms of persuasion adopted by Earth First! Gandhi and guerilla combines nonviolent resistance with physical destruction to force a no-compromise, win-lose situation upon the state. To cope with agitation, Bowers et al. (1993) suggested that the state used four strategies of control: (a) avoidance; (b) suppression; (c) adjustment; (d) capitulation. As with agitation, Bowers et al. (1993) observed that these control strategies unfold primarily in the order stated. That is, when confronted with agitation, the state will first avoid, then suppress, then adjust, or finally capitulate to the changes sought by the protesters. The state can avoid, for example, by engaging in counter persuasion or denying protesters their means of agitation. They can suppress by harassing protest leaders, denying agitator's demands, or banishing the agitators. The state can adjust by accepting some of the means of agitation without response or retaliation, or incorporating part of the personnel or ideology of an agitating group. By capitulating, the state finally concedes to the demands. As stated, the cycle of strategies in agitation and control move in opposite directions. While agitation becomes increasingly aggressive and more violent in each strategy, the control becomes increasingly submissive. While the control spends its aggressive energy early, agitation builds and conserves it for later. By exerting its greatest resistance early in social protest, the control seems to encourage the agitation to become increasingly aggressive as the control becomes more passive or receptive to the demands. It would also seem to encourage agitators to stay the course, because the longer they endure the more likely they are to succeed. Theoretically, then, it would seem that when the cycles of agitation and control strategies are compared, in and of themselves, time is on the side of the agitators and the cards appear to be stacked against the state. In the long run, with other things being equal, it also seems safe to say that the cycle of agitation strategies are more effective in achieving social change than the cycle of control strategies are at preventing it. This may be an oversimplification of the theory, but if the agitation and control strategies proceed in cycles at least generally, and these cycles are more or less progressive, there is a certain determinism implied by the theory, if loosely so (see Bowers et al., 1993, p. 20): as agitators become increasingly aggressive in their persistence, the control becomes increasingly submissive in their resistance. This view of agitation and control in the context of social protest therefore explains how change may or may not come about, but how well does this model explain protest rhetoric in the environmental movement? Although certain changes in life are inevitable, they are not always achieved through social protest. Yet while environmental protesters engage many of the

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strategies described by Bowers et al. (1993) there are situational and contextual factors involved in environmental protesting that render the forms and outcomes of agitation and control unique. Lange (1993), for example, observed that even in the absence of direct interaction, rhetorical and communication strategies in the environmental (as in agitation) and timber industry groups (as in control) during the spotted owl controversy were "co-created" in a unique system of necessity and constraint (p. 239). In addition, environmentalism is being considered responsible for ushering in the likes of a postcorporatist, postmaterialist, and even a postenvironmentalist order (Eder, 1996; Kempton, Boster, & Hartley, 1995). In doing so, Eder believes that environmentalism is no longer a protest movement but a dominant (mainstream, domesticated) ideology, though the goals of environmentalism were far from being realized. As a result, environmentalism has been institutionalized (trumped) by political and economic interests before it has produced significant social change. To illustrate the institutionalization and cultural normalization (or domestication) of environmental concerns, and their integration with established patterns of ideological thought, Eder (1996) tied environmentalism to a cyclical wave of social protest that had reached its end. Furthermore, the end of this cycle of social protest is marked by the fragmentation rather than universalization of environmental ethics and concerns. Instead of a general and comprehensive ideology or philosophy, environmentalism has evolved into multiple cultural responses to specific social conditions. During the protest era of the 1960s and 1970s, environmental protest groups put the environment on the public agenda. Yet since this time, opponents to the environmental movement have appropriated environmental issues for themselves. As Eder (1996) observed, "the environmental movements no longer have to struggle to voice their concerns; they have actually become topical. Ironically, there are now so many voices that it is difficult to be heard" (p. 165). What this means is that environmentalism must now struggle to maintain its sense of urgency, vigilance, and significance in the marketplace as a unique and legitimate voice for ecological concern and social change. Under these conditions public environmental discourse has been transformed, according to Eder, into political ideology that must compete with other ideologies (Marxism, capitalism), and environmentalism as a movement has survived in the marketplace by transforming itself into well-organized public interest groups. So the conditions under which environmental protesters protest have changed. To be successful they must defend their image as one of sensitizing environmental concerns. However, opponents and competitors of environmentalism have co-opted the green image in the marketplace as well, making it increasingly difficult for the environmental protesters to distinguish themselves as the true legitimate voice for the environment.2 In other words, there are now many shades of green in the marketplace and the environmental protesters must compete with them. In doing so, environmentalism is now emerging from and integrating into what Eder (1996) called "ecological communication," which is transforming the environmental

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movement into "cultural pressure groups" (p. 166) that force industries to present themselves as public interest groups. Ecological communication can be identified and examined through a frame analysis that has been established recently by sociological researchers (Garnson, 1992; Snow & Benford, 1988, 1992). In such analysis, frames are patterns of experiencing and perceiving events that structure a social reality. For example, frames allow readers to identify what and where items are written in newspapers, to sort out the world and reduce a continuous stream of events to a more limited set of significant events (Eder, 1996, p. 166). To analyze ecological communication in such frames, Eder followed three steps. The first step is the identification of cognitive devices for constructing frames, of which there are three that dominate in public discourse: moral responsibility; empirical objectivity; and aesthetic judgment. The second step is the analysis of this construction of frames as a process of symbolic packaging (Eder, 1996, p. 167). Symbolic packaging refers to the way that narrative structures of collective actors (environmentalists, industry spokespersons, political representatives, experts, or members of the media) are constructed within the context of specific, empirical social situations. The third step involves an analysis of the way this environmentalisrn is communicated to the public and then exposed to public discourse. As a function of ecological communication, agitation and control strategies not only serve to encourage or resist social change, but moreover, as Eder (1996) suggested, reinforce environmentalism as a dominant ideology in modern industrial societies. With ecological communication, protesters apply pressure on industry, while industry responds with ecological communication to convey its concern for the environment and its commitment to the public interest. The cognitive devices of moral responsibility, empirical objectivity, and aesthetic judgment can be viewed as the organizing principles of the discourse that carry strategies of agitation and control. The first framing device produces a humane sense of moral responsibility toward nature. The second device organizes the empirical observations and scientific modes of objectification. The third involves the qualities that are inherent in the expressive relationship that humans have with nature. All three of these frames are present in environmental discourse, and they organize the rhetorical strategies of agitation and control over the environment in a way that transforms environmentalism into an ordinary element in public discourse. In other words, Eder (1996), described a redefinition of modern society as "an order which constitutes collective action for solving collective problems" (p. 172). The presence of all three framing devices in ecological communication has contributed to a crisis of legitimacy in institutions that rely primarily on one frame to define nature. Scientific facts do not speak for themselves and must compete in the marketplace as commodities along with the likes of political opinions and pop art. The more these frames are combined, the more institutions with only a single frame are questioned. Therefore, framing devices not only organize discourse, they propel environmentalism as a cultural force that is redefining modern society

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not as capitalist or socialist, but in terms of collective problems that call for collective action. However, collective action is subverted by media and industry in forums for deliberative action as in the letters-to-the-editors sections of daily newspapers. In doing so, environmentalism takes on and allows for many different rationalities, so that it becomes a medium for clashing claims. Thus, this essay will also consider the modes of publicity in this particular forum that regard the protest.3 In what follows, environmentalism as a cultural force is examined by considering the way that agitation and control strategies are organized by the framing devices with respect to the forest controversy, the timber-salvage rider, and the protest at Tobe West. THE FOREST CONTROVERSY AND SALVAGE RIDER Management practices of forests in the American Northwest have been questioned and in dispute since the turn of the 20th century, when geologist Gannet (1900) estimated that the national timber stock would continue to meet demands for less than two generations and described harvesting practices of his day as mere butchery (Moore, 1997). At this time, Forest Inspector, Kellogg (1907) accused the industry of extreme mismanagement and neglect, and implored that the nation, in using more timber than ever, would face a shocking reality if radical changes in timber use did not occur. Although muckrakers tried to expand on such themes in accusing the likes of Frederick Weyerhaeuser of devastating the forest with greedy management operations, predictions of a bleak future with a timber famine by Gannet and Kellogg had little effect on timber industry practices. Weyerhaeuser biographers Hidy, Hill, and Nevins (1963), for example, described the muckraking directed at America's greatest lumber baron as having a "popgun quality" in comparison to the large cannons then being leveled at the Harrimans, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Morgans (p. 36). Nevertheless, by the 1980s the dreary predictions of scientists like Gannet and government inspectors like Kellogg were materializing right before the dismayed eyes of the Pacific Northwest. After little more than a decade of record harvests during the Carter and Reagan years, Oregon experienced, as Northwest historian Robbins (1988) noted, a not so surprising "rash of mill closures, [and] a severe recession in the forest products industry" from, among other things, the over cutting and increased exploitation of hinterland areas dependent on timber for their sustenance (p. 168). What then followed on the heels of this recession during the late 1980s was a much more unpredictable battle over a bird that all but froze the industry for the first half of the 1990s, and in doing so, fueled an intense controversy over forest management in general. This battle involved protection of the northern spotted owl and diminishing ancient or old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. While focusing on the loss of timber jobs and the loss of ancient forests, it raised the general issue surrounding the transformation of human life style, from the changes in the natural environment that have resulted from the extension of natural resource

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industries in the region. In recent years the forest and timber crisis has involved Congress and the federal government in such efforts as maintaining or rewriting the Endangered Species Act, as well as making exemptions to environmental laws, such as the salvage logging rider, to open temporary windows of opportunity for what Northwest environmentalists labeled, logging without laws. As of 1990, less than 10% of the old forest remained undisturbed (and recent estimates place the figure at less than 5%), yet Northwest timber harvests set record numbers during the 1980s ("Environment's little big bird," 1990). According to The Oregonian, 70,000 acres of old-growth was cut in Northwest national forests during each year of the 1980s (Durbin & Koberstein, 1990). However, when the economy and environment were weighed in the late 1980s, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, one of the original authors of the Endangered Species Act, stressed that timber sale reductions due to the forest controversy should be avoided, because it could cost "Oregon and Washington 27,000 jobs, and as many as 54,000 jobs overall" (Hager, 1989, p. 2306; see Moore, 1993). In the 1990s, President Clinton played a brief yet critical role in the forest controversy that ignited a gamut of emotions from optimism to despair that reinforced what everyone but the President already seemed to know, that being you cannot please everyone, you cannot save jobs and trees. After he promised to end the controversy during his 1992 presidential campaign by doing just that, Clinton attended a forest conference and then developed his forest plan in 1993. However the salvage rider, with what Clinton called its unintended consequences, ended his involvement in the forest conflict (Moore, in press). The salvage rider was introduced by House Republican Charles Taylor of North Carolina in March of 1995. Those who supported the bill argued that it would "create thousands of jobs for workers who have been displaced by restrictions on tree cutting [as well as] provide forest health," but the opponents claimed that "the bill would also allow cutting live, healthy trees as part of a salvage operation" (Benenson, 1995, p. 797). When Clinton first arrived at the forest conference in 1993, he said he was stunned by the scientific reports indicating how little timber could be cut under spotted owl protection. In an interview with The Oregonian, he explained that the first thing he asked in response to the report was, "'Can't we harvest more timber and save some more jobs consistent with the law' " (Durbin, 1993, p. Al)? Yet he went on to say he could not. After 3 months of contentious debate in Congress (and after Clinton vetoed an earlier version of the bill, his first veto as President) Clinton signed and endorsed the 1995 rescissions bill that contained the salvage-logging rider. He objected to the original version of the rider because it required, with language that would override existing environmental laws, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to sell more than 6-billion board feet of salvage timber over a 2-year period (Clinton, 1995, p. 2). After the veto the salvage rider was amended so as to eliminate requirements to sell a specific amount of timber, with the Forest Service agreeing to sell roughly 41/2-billion board feet over 2 years. One important exemp-

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tion to the law that the salvage rider created was that it protected timber companies from being sued for salvage logging during the life span of the rider. This would prevent environmentalists from using courts to stop the salvage timber sales authorized by the federal government. However, timber companies were still suppose to abide by the Endangered Species Act while logging the trees, the same Endangered Species Act that environmentalists used in federal courts to block timber sales during the first half of the decade. Yet as soon as the salvage rider passed the timber industry went to court for the release of green sales in addition to those deemed as salvage which had been blocked by federal court since 1990. Then, many of these sales, particularly those that occurred before 1992, were approved by federal court under the salvage rider (Moore, in press). By September of 1995, merely 2 months after Clinton signed the bill, federal judge Michael Hogan ruled that the salvage rider applied to all unawarded timber sales in Oregon and Washington, and ordered the government to release an additional 250-million board feet of timber. As the industry resumed limited logging of the remaining old growth (not all of the sales were old growth) environmental protesters returned to the woods in Western Oregon. One area of concern for the environmentalists was the 77 acres of ancient forest to be logged at Tobe West. SALVAGE LOGGING PROTEST AT TOBE WEST

To refer to the protests at Tobe West as eulogistic is not to suggest that all environmental activists responding to the salvage rider in the Northwest were out mourning the loss of ancient forests with public demonstrations. Logging protests to the north at Enola Hill, in the Mt. Hood National Forest, and to the South in the Oregon Cascades at Warner Creek and along Elk River, where the Oregon Cascades meet the Siskiyou Mountains, many protesters challenged the salvage logging in an attempt to save what was left. At Warner Creek, for example, where a portion of the forest protected as spotted owl habitat had been burned in an arson fire and thus designated as a salvage sale, activists led by Earth First!, established a logging road blockade to halt traffic by digging two deep trenches in the road, erecting two teepees, setting up a field kitchen, and laying boulders in the road that spelled out "Warner Creek Sucks" in September of 1995. The plan was to stick out the Winter, which they did. By January, under 10 feet of snow, the blockade grew to include a drawbridge over a deep trench and a wall of logs set vertical to the ground. By July of 1996, protesters took to tree sitting and other nonviolent activities to prevent logging. However, several forest activists did mourn the loss of ancient forests with public rituals at designated salvage-logging sites. In her book Tree Huggers, Durbin (1996) described how members of the Quilcene Ancient Forest Coalition gathered in Washington's Olympic National Forest on the day after Thanksgiving in 1995, where they "collected rocks, branches, and leaves and made small shrines beside a

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nameless creek ... held hands in the rain and sent their respects to the doomed forest" just before the salvage logging began (p. 278), Durbin (1996) also documented the lament over salvage logging with a quote by Jim Rogers, founder of the Friends of Elk River, who had worked for 20 years to protect the ancient forest. In a letter to the Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor, Mike Lunn, Rogers lamented that after viewing the salvage logging in January 1996, "The sadness I feel, and the rage at the injustice and stupidity of it all is profound" (Durbin, 1996, p. 279). Helen Engle, member of the board of directors for the Audubon Socity, was quoted by Durbin (1996) as saying that "We really believed when we signed on the Clinton Forest Plan that the war would be over.... We just feel that we've been cheated" {p. 279). The mixture of activism, eulogy, and lamentation seemed to create a new environmental perspective in the Pacific Northwest that rendered the logging of the ancient forest as no longer acceptable. Organizations like Witness Against Lawless Logging and Green Fire Productions arose in response to the salvage rider to establish a strong presence in and communications link with activists in the woods, where the site-specific protesting was taking place. On April 21, 1996, in observance of Earth Day, the Witness Against Lawless Logging sponsored rallies at Enola Hill, the sacred ceremonial ground for several native American communities, and at Tobe West. With respect to the forest controversy and salvage-logging rider, the framing devices of moral responsibility, empirical objectivity, and aesthetic judgment organized agitation and control strategies in varying degrees. These framing devices can serve as the basic units for explaining and understanding the environmental protest as a cultural force.

The Cognitive Framing Devices of the Protest Rhetoric The major cognitive framing device for protest at Tobe West to be considered is the moral responsibility that humans express for the environment. Moral responsibility as a framing device for environmentalism can be anthropocentric or biocentric. Anthropocentric moral responsibility can be utilitarian, for example, or future generational. It is interesting to note that while utilitarian views on the environment where, that is, the value of nature is considered proportional to the way humans use it, has been reinforced in North America since the seventeenth century (Opie & Elliot, 1996), based on Judeo-Christian theology established centuries before that (White, 1967). Yet recent studies show that they are no longer dominant views (Kempton et al., 1995, p. 102). Instead, concern for the future of children and descendants now ranks, according to research by cognitive anthropologists, Kempton et al., (1995) as one, if not the strongest, of values and hence reasons, for environmental protection. A biocentric moral responsibility, however, can be based on humanity as a part of nature that shares the same fundamental capabilities and is subject to the same ethics, the rights of other species to be able to continue, or simply the intrinsic rights of nature itself. The principle of intrinsic rights of nature itself is perhaps biocentric in the strictest sense and

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stressed most often by environmentalists, but in the study by Kempton et al., (1995) previously mentioned above, the responsibility to preserve rights of species to continue or survive was the biocentric moral responsibility most often cited in their research. Not surprisingly, moral responsibility is the dominant cognitive framing device for protest at Tobe West, but it combines with empirical and aesthetic framing devices to advance the idea of what might be called the good life beyond principles of justice alone. The empirical or factual framing device is based on scientific objectivity and carries considerable weight but the critique of science coupled with an increasing dependence on science has left the facts about environmental disputes in an ambivalent state. In short, environmental experts produce contradictory facts such that objective knowledge no longer provides the certainty necessary to control the vision of the world. The aesthetic framing device constructs nature as an object of sensibility where the idea of paradise or an unpolluted nature serves as a model for the good life. It is a prominent feature of environmentalism that mobilizes action over environmental concerns and also gains importance as communication about the environment increases (Eder, 1996, p. 175). In all, the moral, empirical, and aesthetic framing devices are used in ecological communication by environmentalists to create an image of themselves as collective protest actors. In the protest surrounding Tobe West, then, the moral framing device dominates with the empirical and aesthetic framing devices playing more subordinate or supplemental roles that, when combined, extend the notion of the salvage-logging rider (logging without laws) beyond a mere act of injustice to one that threatens the very idea of what it means to live the good life. With the good life at stake, about 200 protesters met on April 21, 1996, in Alsea, Oregon for what the Corvallis Gazette-Times called, "A day of protest without hostility at Tobe Creek" (Manring, 1996, p. Al). This peaceful rally, which coincided with Earth Day celebrations, was insured by federal court, police and the Hull-Oakes Lumber Company long before the event took place. For example, under an emergency federal closure act, the public was barred from the actual logging site. Also, organizers of the rally, the Corvallis Forest Issues Group, paid a $500 bond for a rally permit that spelled out the number of vehicles that the protesters could bring to the area, how long they could stay, and how tours in the timber parcels would be conducted. For further insurance, BLM said they would hold the rally organizers responsible for the protester's behavior. The constraints stood as intimidating control strategies for avoiding and suppressing any demands lodged by protesters. In fact, they were very effective if even needed at the remote, wilderness protest site. Finally, it is of interest to note that video cameras were abundant, but not in the hands of the protesters. Law enforcement officials taped people taking the guided tours into the area and the BLM even asked one individual, who said he was not associated with the protest, to leave when he parked his van and prepared to videotape the event (the lumber company was worried that he might be an extremist who wanted to tape the locations of equipment for future sabotage).

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Under such controlled conditions, the limited protest rhetoric that emerged was somewhat hopeful, but for the most part resigned. In addition, the media coverage was limited to one paper, the Corvallis Gazette-Times. A few scattered signs saying, "Restore Our Laws," could be seen, while the comments from protesters questioned the utilitarian values of the industry in general and the salvage sale in particular. One in attendance, Kitti Gale, seemed uninterested in the event as a protest. She said, "I'm here just to listen and get more information." However, she also expressed her concern by admitting that "We keep thinking the land has to pay for itself.... I'm trying to turn that around" (Manring, 1996, p. Al). Scott Stouder, a former logger turned outdoor writer was more specific about addressing the loss for future generations: "It's the end of endlessness. It's too simple to think things will remain the same" (Manring, 1996, p. A6). Finally, 12-year-old, Luke Mallery, stressed the cognitive framing device of moral responsibility by joining the future generational argument with the biocentric view of humans as a part of nature, with nature having intrinsic rights of its own. In an articulate fashion, he said, "If you take the trees, you take apart the web of life. I think it will get better. But there's a great chance it could get worse" (Manring, 1996, p. A6). Since only one local newspaper covered the event and only 200 people were in attendance (not counting lumber company representatives, BLM representatives, the police, and a few timber industry supporters), the local newspaper served as the media outlet for environmental protesters. In terms of protest rhetoric, there were two outstanding consequences of the limited media available to exploit. First, the timber industry was able to diminish the impact of the protest and avoid any financial adjustment or modification of goals by providing local media with counter arguments from a divergent construction of social reality. For the Hull-Oakes Lumber Company, the cognitive frame of moral responsibility was strictly utilitarian and could be wrapped up in one word, money. In contrast to the concern for future generations or intrinsic rights of nature, Oakes referred instead to the $800,000 worth of blown-down timber lying on the ground in unit three of the timber sale. Simply put, he said that "It's too much money to leave out there on the ground" (Manring, 1996, p. A6). In addition, Oakes noted the $10,000 a week his company was paying in security costs at the site, which included round-the-clock watchmen, and the $30,000 invested by the BLM and others for habitat improvements along Tobe Creek for the threatened coho salmon. These clashing values led to what can be described as a no-lose situation for the lumber company. While protesters carried signs saying stop the logging, the Corvallis Forest Issues Group would be hoping for a negotiated settlement at best, not an end to the logging. The second consequence of the limited media exposure was in essence the relegation of a more lamentable protest rhetoric to the local newspaper, in the form of letters to the editor that privileges individual voices over activist groups. Wahl-Jorgensen (2001) identified the difficulty activists face in this forum by observing that while "activist publicity captures the actual forms of public interaction likely to occur in stratified societies such as ours," others, such as "dialogistic" facili-

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tate public discussion, assume that public deliberation is central to democracy and orient the public more toward consensus (p. 305). Hence, the problem for the environmental activists with regard to Tobe West is that collective, activist protest is marginalized to create a sense of fairness and drama for newspapers that cast collective protest as a dialogue among competing individuals. In this way, the promulgation of environmental rhetoric against the salvage-rider timber sale after the April 21 rally can be questioned in terms of its effectiveness as protest rhetoric. However, it provides useful evidence of the cognitive framing devices by the environmentalists to express the sense of optimism, pessimism, or resignation. Furthermore, Wahl-Jorgensen (2001) admited that "while the emphasis on individual display does not square with democratic ideals, we must also be cognizant of how such display can be conducive to the creation of social solidarity" (p. 304). Such possibilities notwithstanding, letters to the editor from timber industry supporters were also published at the same time as the protest letters. The combination of letters from protesters and timber supporters created a sense of dialogue that obscured the protest rhetoric as environmental activism and therefore appeared to have a leveling effect on the protest rhetoric. For example, on April 25, 4 days after the protest rally, the Gazette-Times published two letters with regard to Tobe West. One, by Monica Bond, supported the protest and opposed Oregon Congressman Jim Bunn for his role in suspending laws so that timber industries can clear-cut more ancient forests: Ancient forests are more than isolated fragments where we can enjoy the scenery for a few hours. All of Oregon's forests deserve care and respect. Healthy forests prevent soil erosion and protect salmon, drinking water, medicines and other vital resources. Healthy forests have younger trees, old trees, dead and dying standing and fallen trees, and a fantastic variety of species, from insects to fish and birds, each playing its own part to support the way God created them. Forests are not tree farms. (Bond, 1996, p. A9)

In the above passage, Bond began with what appears to be a biocentric argument for saving Tobe West based on the intrinsic rights of the forest itself. The argument then shifts to the utilitarian by suggesting that healthy forests "do things" for humanity and nature, and then returns to a holistic, biocentric argument from part-to-whole ecosystem reasoning. The passage finally ends with a religious or spiritual reference to forests playing a proper role as God's creation, as opposed to the role of tree farms, which are created by humans. This interweaving of utilitarian, anthropocentric arguments with the biocentric is common in the protest rhetoric surrounding the Tobe West salvage sale. Following these comments, Bond offered a utilitarian and future generational argument to close out the letter in a sense of resignation: I am not opposed to careful, selective logging for wood products. However, once clear-cut, forests will never regain their health—because the trees will continue to be

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It is important to note that timber workers rely on many future generational and utilitarian arguments as well, but they heavily emphasize economic survival. For example, on the same day that the Gazette- Times published Bond's letter, a letter by logger M. L. Vogt appeared. While the utilitarian argument is clear and a future generational argument appears to be present, the contrast between Bond and Vogt reveals the divergent world views held by each group, as Vogt suggested: ... people that don't agree with the logging don't seem to have a problem with living like the loggers do. That's right. You know, a house made of wood. Paper to do all those things that paper is good for, and the other many uses for wood. Whatever happened to the environmentalists' phrase "Split wood not atoms"? I just wish they would shut up and let the loggers do their job and support their families. (Vogt, 1996, p. A9)

The pattern of giving equal time to both protesters and timber workers continued over the month of May that followed. On May 1, the Gazette-Times published two letters from protesters and then one on the following day by a timber supporter. The first letter was written by a Tobe West protest activist, Krista Donaldson: After attending the rally at Tobe West on Sunday (April 21), I am more convinced than ever that these life-giving trees must be saved. After viewing the spectacular ancient trees close up and seeing Tobe Creek, one of the only remaining natural streams in Oregon that beckons wild coho salmon, I feel very strongly about the fact that the steep slopes of Tobe West must be saved from the chain saws of clearcutting ... Please help us save Tobe West. (Donaldson, 1996, p. A9).

This passage from Donaldson's letter combines the biocentric argument of saving the forest for the forest's sake with a strong aesthetic appeal on behalf of whatever natural beauty remains in Tobe West with its spectacular view. If the message is not one of resignation, though, the plea for help does not smack with optimism. Compare this, then, with another letter published on the same day by environmentalist Jim Draper, who described clearcutting throughout his letter as evil and compared it to the Ku Klux Klan lynching Negroes in Natchez, Mississippi: The issues are much the same. Clearcutting forests everywhere is regarded as evil by a growing segment of the population—after centuries of unquestioning acceptance. Perhaps we are late in realizing the evil of a system which is leaving the streams and land and air despoiled and uncounted species destroyed. But evil it is, nonetheless, just as denying human beings their rightful place in society and the economy is evil. The time is to stop now. (Draper, 1996, p. A9)

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Once again, there is nothing optimistic about Draper's letter. It draws from a dark side of America's past to create a dark picture of America's present. Furthermore, in a biocentric fashion it equates an immoral treatment of nature with that of fellow human beings with an analogy that would probably be difficult to accept by those affected in any way by the legacy of lynching. Yet the analogy, if outrageous, illustrates a moral problem described as nothing less than evil, reference to which appeared in the letter five times. The Gazette-Times countered this argument the next day with a letter by logging supporter, Agnes Ann Vomocil, in the following manner: ... the protesters' intentions is to stop all logging on public lands (as I predicted years ago) even though there are millions and millions of acres in set-asides already either as state or federal parks or as sensitive habitat for animals. I certainly do believe that the protesters' next target will be no logging on private lands. (Vomocil, 1996, p. Al 1)

Vomocil's allusion to the empirical or factual cognitive frame ("millions and millions of acres in set-asides") is not specific, but it serves the purpose of discounting the environmentalist argument that clearcutting will eliminate the ancient forest. In addition, these facts come in the support of an argument by direction, or slippery slope as it might be taken, that environmentalists want to prohibit logging on private lands as well as public. This can also be viewed as pessimistic, even though the facts concerning set-aside acres on public lands has little or nothing to do with the future prospects for logging on private lands (one reason why logging on public lands is such an issue is because there is virtually no old-growth on private lands left to cut). On the following day, May 3, more facts are introduced by logger Mike Payne to contradict claims by protesting environmentalists about the destruction caused by the salvage rider: No roadless areas will be developed via the salvage rider harvests. It's generally accepted that only after the ice age, about 10,000 years ago, has Douglas fir existed here. Forest ecosystems do not exist only in delicate balance, but are in a constant state of change and evolution. Natural ecosystems often change through dramatic events, far more destructive than small patch clearcuts scattered over the landscape. (Payne, 1996, p. A9)

The fact that Douglas fir has only existed in the Pacific Northwest since the ice age does not support the claim that no roadless areas will be developed through the salvage rider, nor does it speak to the effects of clearcutting. What it does is minimize the significance of human activity in the timber industry by placing it within a 10,000-year span of natural history. To suggest that the effects of cleacutting could match the effects of the ice age is absurd, but so is the comparison. On the same day, the Gazette-Times also published a letter by Joseph P. Borowski, who attended the April 21 rally and questioned the cut in more immediate terms:

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After referring to his own future generations, Borowski is indeed resigned to the fact that Tobe West will be lost as an ancient forest and saddened by the mere economic incentive that has motivated the action. Moreover for the environmentalist, the anthropocentric value of economy and future generations are at odds, but because of the cash value of the trees, the future of neither utilitarianism, future generations, or wildlife is bright with respect to the forest. On May 6, 1996, a second protest rally took place at the Tobe West salvage site. This time 25 protesters were arrested for crossing an arbitrary line in a logging road drawn by law officers that designated the point at which federal land was closed to the public. The resistance was nonviolent; protesters were cited for trespassing after they marched down a gravel road chanting "Save Tobe West," and were released a short time later on a nearby road. One protester, Jim Fairchild, a member of the Audubon Society, said, "We have no other legal recourse.... This is illegal cutting of our forests" (Allen, 1996a, p. A1). Another protester and member of the Audubon Society explained that "We have to make a stand here because we expect five square miles of old-growth timber to fall in the area, much in critical bird and salmon habitat" (Allen, 1996a, p. A10). Finally, protester Stephanie Bergstrom of the Oregon Natural Resource Council (ONRC) emphasized that "We're not saying stop all timber cutting or destroy the industry. We want to work together and get balance—when you've cut 95 percent of the old-growth, how much more can you take" (Allen, 1996a, p. A10)? The protest rhetoric from the May 6 rally published by the Gazette- Times struck the same chords of disappointment and resignation as on the April 21 rally. How does one achieve balance when 95% of the old forest has already been cut? Letters to the editor in the Gazette-Times followed the same pattern. For example, the Gazette-Times published a letter by Katy Stokes on May 8, 2 days after the second rally, that ended in the following manner: We are on the threshold of witnessing the end of a beautiful, intricate and powerful natural system.... A huge tide of citizen opposition is needed to stop the irresponsible sale of timber from our public lands. Our silence condones the hasty destruction by man of nature's thousand-year gift to us and our children. (Stokes, 1996, p. A7)

In the previous passage, Stokes combined an aesthetic and future generational argument to express her sadness and concern over the salvage sale in much the same fashion as in previous letters. After Stokes' letter, the Gazette-Times pub-

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lished seven more letters in the month of May on the Tobe West salvage sale, five from environmentalists and two from timber supporters. On May 9, for example, Foster lamented that "Ancient ones are leaving.... The salvage rider is allowing old growth alive for 400-plus years to fall" and then offered a biocentric plea of moral responsibility in thanking "all those who volunteered their lives for such a brief moment to save this ecology... Give something back to our Oregon and Washington" (Foster, 1996, p. A l l ) . For industry sympathizers, the utilitarian argument remains most prominent. In response to Jim Draper's May 1 letter in which he compared clearcutting to the Klan's lynching of African Americans in the South, Diane Ratliff explained in a May 12 letter that even though it "can look pretty ugly ... clearcutting is just part one part of the natural cycle of birth, growth and death, one which allows us to use the wood products and promote the rapid regrowth of the forest" (Ratliff, 1996, p. A9) .4 Then she reinforced the utilitarian argument, saying that "clearcuts will provide forest products, recreational opportunities and beautiful habitat in the future" (Ratliff, p. A9). On the same day Pam Hamsher stated: If they'd [protesters] stop and realize the importance of the forest industry they'd also realize how easy the industry had made their life. Forest by-products—not just sawdust. Paper products such as toilet paper, Kleenex, notebooks, envelopes, the books their children read in school, coffee filters, tea bags, wallpaper, formica counter tops, pencils, stamps, greeting cards, food products in boxes, pop in 12-count boxes, labels on jars, timecards, pay-checks, computer paper, and let us not forget newspaper. It could go on and on and on. Get real, people, give it up. (Hamsher, 1996, p. A9)

On the other hand, Fred Sieger countered the industry's position with his condolences on May 14 in a way that summarizes the sense of sadness and resignation expressed by protesters since the first rally when he stated that "The forests have been mismanaged by the good stewards of the land so badly since 1492 that we've reached the end of ancient forests. Maybe it's time to stop chopping the oldies and figure out how to sustain ourselves with a little less" (Sieger, 1996, p. Al 1). Then On May 23, Linn observed that "It is easy to see, when driving through the Cascades, that our forests are becoming crops—replanted areas all look the same, with identical trees of identical height" (Linn, 1996, p. A9). Following this, she challenged the timber industry claims about privileging jobs and people over trees in a lament about life now and in the future by stating, "There are no guarantees for a job ... There are even fewer guarantees for resource-based jobs, ask the fishermen, miners, loggers around the world" (p. A9). Finally, ex-logger Will Gehr explained his internal conflict between utilitarian needs and moral responsibility toward the forest, as he admitted that "my desire to exploit the trees was often at odds with my appreciation of forest ecology issues," and added that a clearcut is not a snapshot in time, as Hull-Oakes forester, Tod Nystrom stated, but rather, "the practice of

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clearcutting and old growth eradication are eliminating the range needed to sustain threatened and endangered species" (Gehr, 1996, p. A7).5 On May 24, 1996, the Corvallis Gazette-Times reported that Hull-Oakes Lumber and the federal government struck a deal to preserve 9 acres of old-growth Douglas fir, as a 150-foot-wide buffer of trees, above a logging road at Tobe West. In exchange, Hull-Oakes would receive a less sensitive 4-acre tract in another part of the state. In response to the trade, Oakes stated that "we try to do what's best," but environmentalist Jim Fairchild submitted that "It's just a dumb place to clear cut. They wouldn't be cutting those hillsides at all without the salvage rider." He then adds that "This area is not going to look good ... Even this buffer zone is not adequate protection for this kind of unstable soil" (Allen, 1996b, p. Al, A12). A week later, 600 people attended a third rally at the foot of the Tobe West sale site with signs saying "Zero Cut", "Repeal the Salvage Rider", "Stop the Clearcut", and "Money Buys Congress" (Klopfenstein, 1996, p. Al). Views at the rally varied from the zero-cut demand to a cautious sympathy for loggers, but resignation and a sense of sadness permeated comments by protesters now witnessing the bald and steep hills that lined Tobe Creek and the blankets of felled timber lying on the hillsides below. One protester said "Mr. big corporate man's doing all this. He doesn't care. He doesn't live here." Another stated, "I see beautiful land here. And I see natural beauty. I don't want to see that change." Finally, a third commented, "It took 400 years for those trees to get w[h]ere they are. Do you know how many generations that is? We'll never replace them in our lifetimes" (Klopfenstein, 1996, p. A8). The media, that is, the Corvallis Gazette-Times, did not specify whether the protest rallies at Tobe West influenced the rare timber exchange between the Hull-Oakes Lumber Company and the federal government, but it was clear that the BLM did. Not only had the BLM invested $30,000 in habitat protection along Tobe Creek, for what they called some of the best coho salmon spawning and rearing grounds in the Alsea River system, but they reported that the hillsides above the creek where the 9-acre swap would leave a buffer zone were prone to erosion and landslides whether they were logged or not. As a result, it was in the best interest of the federal government via the BLM to keep a buffer zone for the threatened coho salmon. In 3 weeks after the swap, wildlife biologists with the BLM observed a pair of marbled murrelets fly out of a tree canopy at the Tobe West sale. Since the BLM is required to protect known sites of the threatened marbled murrelet under the Endangered Species Act, the siting stopped the 78-acre sale after only half of the acreage had been logged (Sanders, 1996a, p. Al). With about half of the unit's timber on the ground, Don Oakes of Hull-Oakes Lumber questioned if murrelets were nesting at Tobe West at all and asked if it was appropriate to leave 1.5-million board feet of timber worth $500,000 just to rot and collect insects. No marbled murrelets had been seen at Tobe West before the June 20 siting and none since. Yet since federal guidelines state that once official biologists observe nesting behavior, the area is considered an occupied site and no more surveys need to be conducted. Thus the logging at Tobe West came to an end.

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IMPLICATIONS/CONCLUSIONS The implications of this study for the nature and criticism of protest rhetoric concerning the Tobe West salvage-timber sale are twofold. First, the agitation and control over Tobe West varies considerably from the model of protest rhetoric offered by Bowers et al. (1993). In particular, the actions taken by the establishment, decision makers, and police do not sufficiently account for the control of the protest. While the state established the conditions under which the protesters could legally protest, the industry and media also exercised significant control; the former with their physical presence and counter arguments at the protest site, and the latter with their limited and exclusive coverage of the rallies and protest rhetoric. With the added dimension of the remote protest site, the authorities, the timber company and the local media would easily (if not intentionally on the part of the media) control the protest through avoidance and suppression strategies. The lumber company and media not only subverted, but co-opted protest rhetoric through the media coverage itself. In addition to the letters to the editor that were published in a way that nullified attempts by protesters to promulgate their messages, Hull-Oakes Lumber characterizes themselves during the protest as environmental sympathizers with discourse that chimes with environmentalism. During the second rally, Oakes stated, "If they let us have 40 percent of the federal timber, we'd be happy to let them have the other 60 percent for parks, wildlife, or whatever ... We are good stewards of the land" (Allen, 1996a, p. A10). After the second rally, Oakes notes that the timber swap negotiated by the federal government was "the right thing to do ... we're trying all kind of new things anymore, and we try to do what's best" (Allen, 1996b, p. Al). After the marbled murrelet siting that halted the logging, Oakes stated his concern by saying, "I'm a forester before I'm a businessman" (Sanders, 1996b, p. Al). In terms of agitation strategies, it is clear that the Tobe West protesters relied primarily on promulgation (letters to the editor, rallies with informational picketing), and limited nonviolent resistance (trespassing), on one occasion. Since the salvage rider prohibited lawsuits or other such forms of legal intervention to halt logging during the rider's life span, petitioning was irrelevant at the time. Since the protesters sought a balance between logging and preservation instead of zero-cut policy as suggested by one sign that was photographed at the last rally and printed by the Gazette-Times, polarization was also inappropriate. Since the themes of the protest were sadness and resignation, escalation to confrontation or Gandhi and guerilla made little sense either. As a result, the protest rhetoric did not develop as Bowers et al. (1993) suggested, perhaps because both the location (physical context) and goals of the protest rallies were unique. Second, with the letters and the salvage-rider protests at Tobe West, the cognitive framing of moral responsibility that is described by Eder (1996) surfaces as a predominant feature of the protest rhetoric that further illuminates the discourse in this case as eulogistic. It is through the cognitive frame of moral responsibility

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that protesters emphasize both anthropocentric and biocentric values for utilitarianism, future generations, humans as a part of nature, and the intrinsic rights of nature itself. Also, the expressiveness of these particular values do not characterize the protesters as either anthropocentric or biocentric, but both. In speaking to one of the protest rally organizers, Krista Donaldson told me that the purpose of the protest was to communicate just that, the value and the need for balance (personal communication, October 9, 1997). The strategy, as she explained, was indeed to communicate a deep sense of sadness and loss. For Donaldson, the protests were a success in the sense that the one local paper covered them as well as they did and provided an ongoing medium for protest and dialogue in its op-ed section. Although the empirical and aesthetic cognitive frames could be identified in support of the moral responsibility frame, the moral frame best suited the interests of the protesters. It allowed them to establish a clear emotional tone of sadness and create a collective protest identity based in the more rational appeals to balance. Also it is in this way that they defend their image as one of sensitizing the public to environmental concerns. However, the protests did not bring the salvage logging to a halt and the logging would have probably continued if the marbled murrelet was not sited on the premises. Furthermore, the lumber company was successful in co-opting the voice of environmentalism to convey an image of environmental concern and the letters written in response to the protests by timber supporters effectively neutralized the environmental communication from activists. Through demonstrations and letters to the editor, protesters do convey enough sadness and resignation to characterize their discourse as a eulogy for Tobe West. Unfortunately, it is a eulogy that laments rather than prevents the logging of what little remains by those who call themselves good stewards of the land. NOTES 1. Originally published in 1971 by John Waite Bowers and Donovan Ochs for the purpose of sharpening analytical skills and predicting the outcomes of agitational events, The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control (1993) offered a lucid theoretical frame of reference for understanding the instrumental and symbolic acts constructed in both social protest and the attempts by authorities (or establishment) to control such activity. By defining rhetoric as "the rationale of instrumental, symbolic behavior" (p. 1), the authors focused attention on the impact of messages in agitational events that lead to the production of other messages, which then lead to other messages, until the event passes. By identifying the specific rhetorical strategies used in agitation and control, the authors carefully illuminated the interaction between these two groups. In doing so, the agitational event can be viewed as a product of instrumental interaction between the symbolic efforts that promote social change through agitation and the attempts to thwart such efforts when they arise. This theory widens the scope of rhetorical criticism, because any social change that occurs from protest and agitation (or does not occur) results from the symbolic interaction of agitation and control (not a symbiosis, but more like a synergism). As with McGee (1980), for example, this critique of the Tobe West protest considered control to be "fundamentally rhetorical" (p. 6) and as such it demands critical attention.

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Murphy (1992) observed that critiques of social movements based on theories such as the one forwarded by Bowers et al. (1993) are limited, because they tend to focus on agitational strategies at the expense of control strategies. In addition, when control strategies are the object of study the issues examined are too broad, "such as the 'public vocabulary' available to rhetors, rather than the encounters between authorities and agitators" (Murphy, 1992, p. 61). Murphy (1992) prefers to critique social movements according to the concept of hegemony in order to consider how the symbolic strategies of dissent develop in ways that are compatible with the "'dominant systems of meaning' " (p. 65). With this in mind, the critique on the rhetoric surrounding Tobe West in this chapter responds to Murphy by focusing on both agitation and control in a particular case, one with agitational rhetoric that is compatible with dominant systems of meaning. In addition, however, this chapter examines how this rhetoric is nevertheless subverted and co-opted by authorities with the aid (if even unwittingly) of the media. If the protest over Tobe West was domesticated as Murphy suggested, then this domestication can be viewed as a consequence of agitation, control, and the media coverage of the protest. Such domestication of dissent furthermore illustrates what Eder (1996) called the institutionalization of environmentalism. This chapter expands the view offered by Bowers et al. (1993) to consider how media coverage of the Tobe West protest also serves as a form of control that interacts with strategies of suppression and subversion employed by the establishment (and industry) that not only co-opt the environmental movement, but shape (reduce) the protest rhetoric to eulogy. To do so, this chapter also draws from Eder's (1996) theory of the institutionalization of evironmentalism, which posits that environmental communication is constructed with cognitive framing devices, such as moral responsibility, that are conveyed through the narratives of the collective actors (for both agitation and control). These frames organize and complicate an environmental communication that calls for collective action (as seen in agitation), but as argued in this chapter, the collective action on the part of protestors is also subverted by media and industry (as seen in control) in forums such as the letters-to-editors sections of local daily newspapers, a domesticated or institutionalized form of dissent in which the rhetoric develops in ways that are not only compatible with the dominant systems of meaning, but also absorbed by them. As such, Murphy's focus on hegemony in social protest can serve as a bridge that can connect the theory of agitation and control with that of the institutionalization of environmentalism, for the critique of the Tobe West protest. Finally, the letters-to-editors arise in a larger context of protest within which other strategies and tactics are employed. Eulogy is felt in the demonstrations but articulated most profoundly in the letters. 2. Greenwashing, or the exploitation of environmental values and concerns in commercial and political advertising by those who exploit (as in the excessive extraction of natural resources such as timber) the environment for economic and political gain, appears regularly in the media. For example, after acquiring Willamette Industries, a major producer of wood products in the state of Oregon, the Weyerhaeuser industry ran ads in the Oregonian declaring that they have learned "to make the forests more productive. And how to produce the wood and paper products people need, while protecting fish and wildlife habitats" (see Anonymous, 2002, March). After the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality stopped mining at The Ross Island Sand & Gravel Co. after finding chemical contamination, the company ran ads in the Oregonian to explain that "All of us have a stake in the environmental safety of Ross Island and we know that continuing to operate the island complex in a responsible manner is good for the entire community" (see Anonymous, 2002, February). In addition logger Bruce Vincent recently launched a program called "Provider Pals" that will allow middle school students across

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the nation to adopt a logger, farmer, or miner in the same manner that children adopt endangered animals in classes to follow their adventures (see Bohrer, 2002). For a critical examination of the rise of green advertising, see Corbett (2002). 3. This chapter examines publicity for agitation and control in letters to the editor of a local newspaper, but also agitation and control publicity as it filters through the news coverage of the support and objection to demonstrations, informational picketing, nonviolent demonstration, the salvage rider, the timber sale, and timber harvest. The purpose here is to illustrate that the letters arise within a wider context of agitation and control over a remote wilderness site, publicity that is largely mediated by the press. 4. As in other letters, the Ratliff specifically cites Draper and discusses his letter in her own, lending a rather clear sense of public debate and deliberation to the letters-to-editor forum. 5. Specific references to such concerns as the Hull-Oakes Lumber Company, harvesting practices at Tobe West, the salvage rider, the Tobe West location, the protesters, environmental and economic impact at the local level of the timber sale, and threatened species at the site, give the letters and the forum an overal sense of being site specific, where the rhetoric of competing interests (protesters and industry) are significant, personal, relevant to the actors involved, and heart felt.

REFERENCES Allen, C. (1996a, May 7). Logging protesters arrested at Tobe Creek. Corvallis Gasette-Times, pp. Al, A10. Allen, C. (1996b, May 24). Deal reduces Tobe West logging. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. Al, A12. Anonymous Environment's little big bird. (1990, April 16). Time, p. 21. Anonymous. (2002, February 28). An open letter about environmental safety at Ross Island. The Oregonian, p. B7. Anonymous (2002, March 19). We've discovered that the best way to grow trees in the forest is to put down roots in the community The Oregonian, p. A3. Benenson,B. (1995, March 18). Environmental laws take a hit. Congressional Quarterly, p. 797. Bohrer, B. (2002, September 15). Logger adopts new technique. Albany (OR) Democrat-Herald, p. C3. Bond, M. (1996, April 25). Keep healthy forests. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Borowski, J. (1996, May 3). Why cut Tobe Creek? Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Bowers, }., & Ochs, D. (1971). The rhetoric of agitation and control. Reading, MA: Addision-Wesley. Bowers, J., Ochs, D.,& Jensen, R. (1993) The rhetoric of agitation and control (2nd ed.) Prospect Heights, Il: Waveland Press. Clinton, W. (1995). Veto of H.R.. 1158. A Message from the President of the United States Transmitting His Veto of H.R. 1158, A Bill Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Additional Disaster Assistance, for Antiterrorism Initiatives, for Assistance in the Recovery from the Tragedy that Occurred at Oklahoma City, and Making Rescissions for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1995, and For Other Purposes. 104lh Congress, 1st. Sess., 7 July 1995 (Washington, DC: Government Printing office). Corbett, J. (2002) A faint green sell: Advertising and the natural world. In M. Meister, & P. Japp (Eds.), Enviropop: Studies in environmental rhetoric and popular culture (pp. 141-160), Westport, CN: Praeger. Cox, J. (1982). The die is cast: Topical and ontological dimensions of the Locus of the irreparable. Quarterly Journal of Speech 68, 227-239. Donaldson, K. (1996, May 1). Save Tobe West. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Draper, J. (1996, May 1). An evil system. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9.

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Durbin, K. (1993, April 4). President aims high for forest solution. The Oregonian, p. Al. Durbin, K. (1996). Tree huggers: Victory, defeat & renewal in the northwest ancient forest campaign. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers. Durbin, K., & Koberstein, P. (1990, September 20). Survival hinges on old-growth habitat. The Oregonian, pp. Al, A17-A18. Eder, K. (1996). The social construction of nature: A sociology of ecological enlightenment. Introduction, Part I and II (M. Ritter, Trans.) London: Sage. Foster, R. (1996, May 9). Ancient trees falling. Corvallis Gazette -Times, p. A l l . Gamson, W. (1992). Talking politics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gannet, H. (1900). Is the timber famine imminent? Forum, pp. 147-156. Gehr, W. (1996). Public must protect forests. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A 7. Hager, G. (1989, September 9). Small owl incites big battle over environment, jobs. Congressional Quarterly, pp. 2306-2309. Hamsher, P. (1996, May 12). Forest by-products. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Hidy, R., Hill, F., & Nevins, A. (1963). Timber and men: The Weyerhaeuser story. New York: MacMillan. Hynds, E. C. (1976). Editorial pages are taking stands, providing forums. Journalism Quarterly 53, 532-535. Hynds, E. C. (1984). Editorial opinion pages still have roles at most newspapers. Journalism Quarterly 61, 634-639. Hynds, E. C. (1991). Editorial page editors discuss use of letters. Newspaper Research Journal, 13, 124-136. Hynds, E. C. (1994). Editors at most U.S. dailies see vital roles for editorial page. Journalism Quarterly, 71, 573-582. Kellogg, R. (1907, May 7). Our forest balance sheet. Nation, pp. 425-426. Kempton, W., Boster, J., & Hartley, J. (1995). Environmental values in American culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Killingsworth, J., & Palmer, S. (1995). The discourse of "environmentalist hysteria." Quarterly Journal of Speech 81, 1-19. Klopfenstein, E. (1996, June 3). Protesters return to Tobe West. Corvallis Gazette-Times, pp. A1, A8. Lange, J. (1993). The logic of competing information campaigns: Conflict over old growth and the spotted owl. Communication Monographs 60, 239-257. Linn, J. (1996). Forests becoming crops. Corvallis Gazette Times, p. A9. Manring, K. (1996, April 22). A day of protest without hostility at Tobe Creek. Corvallis Gazette-Times, pp. Al, A6. McGee, M. (1980). The "Ideograph": A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly Journal of Speech 66, 1-16. Moore, M. (1993). Constructing irreconcilable conflict: The function of synecdoche in the potted owl controversy. Communication Monographs 60, 258-274. Moore, M. (1997). Tycoons, lumberjacks, and the notion of "corporate hero" in the American timber industry. In I. Hoover (Ed.), Corporate advocacy: Rhetoric in the information age (pp. 32-47). Westport CT: Quorum Books. Moore, M. (In press). Colliding ironies and Clinton's salvage rider rhetoric in the northwest timber controversy. In T. Peterson (Ed.), Symbolic transformations of the material world: Key interactions between presidential rhetoric and environmentalism in the twentieth century (pp. 240-278). College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press. Murphy, I. (1992). Domesticating dissent: The Kennedys and the freedom rides. Communication Monographs 59, 61-78. Opie, J., & Elliot, N. (1996). Tracking the elusive jeremiad: The rhetorical character of American environmental discourse. In I. Cantrill, & C. Oravec (Eds.), The symbolic

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earth: Discourse and our creation of the environment, (pp. 9-37). Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press. Payne, M. (1996, May 3). Biased writings. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Ratliff, D. (1996). Clearcuts part of cycle. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Robbins, W. (1988). Hard times in paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850-1986. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Sanders, R. (1996a, June 21). Murrelet sighting halts logging at Tobe West sale. Corvallis Gazette-Times, pp. Al, A10. Sanders, R. (1996b, July 17). Timber on ground stirs concern. Corvallis Gazette-Times, pp. Al, 8. Short, B. (1991). Earth First! And the rhetoric of moral confrontation. Communication Studies 42, 172-188. Sieger, F. (1996, May 14). Stop chopping the oldies. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. Al1. Snow, D., & Benford, R. (1988). Ideology, frame reference, and participant mobilization. In B. Klandermans, H. Kriesel, & S. Tarrow (Eds.), From structure to action: Comparing social movement research across cultures (Vol. 1) (pp. 197-217). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Snow, D., & Benford, R. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In A. D. Morris & C. M. Clurgh Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 133-155). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stokes, K. (1996, May 8). Protect natural system. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A7. Vogt, M. (1996, April 25). Moronic coverage. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. A9. Vomocil, A. (1996, May 2). PR for environmentalists. Corvallis Gazette-Times, p. Al1. Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (1999). Letters to the editor. Peace Review, 11, 53-59. Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2001). Letters to the editor as a forum for public deliberation: Modes of publicity and democratic debate. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 18, 303-320. White, Jr., L. (1967, March 10). The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science, 155, 1203-1207.

CHAPTER FOUR

Blue Skies, Green Industry: Corporate Environmental Reports as Utopian Narratives Wende Vyborney Feller College of St. Mary, Moraga, California

Imagine a world that creates sustainable growth without harming the environment. That is a sustainable world. Imagine corporate citizens enriching their communities. That is a sharing world. Imagine all employees leading fulfilled, balanced lives. That is a healthy world. Imagine a world filled with intelligent devices—devices that think and share information—making people's lives easier, safer, more productive and more fun. That is an amazing world. Now, imagine all of it together. That is the world Motorola is bringing to life—Motorola Corporate environmental report (2001, p. 7)1

Although libertarian humorist O'Rourke once commented that big American corporations represent "the true basis of the American character: Utopian greed" (1992, p. 181), most corporate self-promotions contain far too little social commentary to qualify as true Utopian discourse. Utopias do not merely offer selfgratification. They challenge the dominant culture by providing alternative values and lifestyles (Goodwin & Taylor, 1982) and implicitly demand that the status quo justify itself (Ricoeur, 1986). In a society in which corporate advertising is often portrayed as "the ground on which we live, the space in which we think, and the lens through which we come to understand the world that surrounds us" (Jhally, 1993, 1

Supplying a date for a corporate environmental report can be difficult. In most cases, the date provided is the copyright date on the print version of the report; when a copyright date was not provided, I have estimated a probable publication date about four months after the date of the newest data provided, based on my experience with corporate environmental reporting systems. The relationship between the copyright date and any date included in the report title is tenuous, as a '2000 report' may be published in early 2000 with 1999 data, in mid-2000 with partial 2000 data, or in 2001 with complete 2000 data. There is also no standard publication cycle for these reports; as of December 2001, some companies were publishing partial 2001 data, while others still presented, as their newest report, data from 1999 or even 1998. 57

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p. 806, italics original), the appearance of Utopian qualities in corporate discourse should point to areas in which corporations are insecure in their control of the space in which we think. The opening excerpt, taken from Motorola's 2001 corporate environmental report, pointed to these reports as channels through which corporations offer Utopian narratives as a means of challenging dominant perceptions of the relationships among big business, government, and the environment. Corporate environmental reports—glossy brochures discussing environmental performance, distinct from government-mandated emission reporting or Environmental Impact Reports—were first issued by major United States corporations in the early 1990s (Skinner, 1993). Since then, "environmental reporting has gone from the exception to the norm," reported the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a not-for-profit portfolio-screening firm (IRRC Reports, 2000, p. 3). Corporate environmental reports, which typically include information on health and safety performance, as well as environmental performance, have been the subject of advice (e.g., Azzoni, Brophy, & Noci, 1997; Morhardt, 2002; Propper, 1998; Rose, Brownlie, & Simpson, 1995), research on aspects of environmental cost accounting (Crowther, 2002; Gray, Owens, & Adams, 1996), and quantitative reports on trends (Elkington, Kreander, & Stibbard, 1998; Krut & Moretz, 2000; Thomas & Kenny, 1997), but have not been considered as texts that demonstrate rhetorical strategies. While corporate environmental reports are presumably like other environmental communication in providing an opportunity to set agendas and to frame issues internally and externally (Esrock & Leichty, 1998; Heath, 1990; Killingsworth & Palmer, 1995; Nitz, 2000; Pezzulo, 2001), to apologize for perceived wrongdoing or to defend oneself from demands for apologies (Tyler, 1997), and to influence stakeholders (Major, 1993), existing research has not dealt with corporations' efforts to provide an elaborated explanation of their entire range of environmental activities. I would like to suggest that corporate environmental reports function as narratives that unfold a free-market Utopia, and that this strategy is an attempt to re-vision environmental issues. To elaborate on this position, the remainder of this chapter is divided into five major sections. The first section sets corporate environmental reports within the framework of Sproule's new managerial rhetoric (1988) and explains why these reports cannot adequately be understood as factual reports or as conventional justifications for environmental performance problems. The second section provides an overview of theories of Utopian narrative. In the third section, this theory is used to explore three central themes of corporate environmental reports; the fourth section discusses what is omitted from the corporate environmental Utopia. Finally, the fifth section considers the implications of the shift toward combined environmental and social reporting in 2001—2002 reports. The corporate environmental reports used here as examples were issued by the 38 companies that were members of the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) (http://www.gemi.org) as of December 2001. GEMI members were

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chosen because the organization has been recognized by environmental management and policy professor Piasecki as especially well-positioned to lead environmentally friendly change from within industry (Piasecki, 1995, p. 119). Thirty of GEMI's members issued a corporate environmental report between 1998 and 2001. About two-thirds of the member organizations are in the electronics, Pharmaceuticals, energy, petroleum, or chemical manufacturing industries—all industries that have been especially motivated to produce corporate environmental reports so as to provide a context for publicly available Toxic Release Inventory data (Plummer, 1998). GEMI companies include both experienced reporters with established environmental management systems, such as Intel, and organizations producing their first and only environmental reports, such as Enron. OVERVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING

The term report suggests that corporate environmental reports are similar to the annual financial reports issued to shareholders by publicly held companies. In practice, the similarity is more a matter of style than substance. Like annual financial reports, corporate environmental reports are issued as professionally designed brochures laden with eye-catching photos, messages from corporate leadership, mission and vision statements, descriptions of corporate divisions and products, human interest stories, summaries of trends, and colorful graphs, tables, and pie charts. Also like annual financial reports, corporate environmental reports have migrated to the World Wide Web; while half a dozen GEMI members provided only printed reports in 2000, all of the companies that produced environmental reports made them available on the Internet by mid-2001. For reports issued in the United States, the critical difference in substance stems from the fact that annual financial reports are regulated by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), while corporate environmental reports not regulated at all. SEC rules require that every public company report the same categories of financial data, gathered under the same rules, with the accuracy verified by a third-party firm, and with the format of some sections also tightly controlled. Financial report data are thus comparable across companies and meet standards that are conventionally agreed to be objective and truthful. The collapse of Enron has, of course, highlighted how these conventions can be evaded or abused. The point is not that SEC standards are unambiguous or unimpeachable, but that there is a legally mandated framework within which to dispute whether financial reporting is accurate and ethical. No such framework exists for corporate environmental reports. To understand the legal demands on corporate environmental reporting, it is important to distinguish between corporate environmental reports and general environmental reporting. In the United States, most companies are required to report air and water emissions, waste disposal, hazardous waste management, and toxic chemical use to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state pollution control agencies, or both. These reports are public docu-

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ments in the sense that the U.S. EPA makes the data available to the public on their Web site, as do some state agencies. Environmental activist projects such as Environmental Defense's Scorecard (http://www.scorecard.org) also provide this data, although industry representatives have argued that the online data is neither current nor interpreted fairly (Fairley & Mullin, 1998). While this general reporting is regulated, corporate environmental reporting in the sense of a published discussion of environmental performance, created for shareholders and the general public, is not. Corporate environmental reports are not required to include all—or any—of the data from the corporation's government- mandated environmental reporting. Corporate environmental reports are thus not so much reporting tools as potential issues management tools. Issues management is an effort to reconcile business practices and public expectations, not only through public relations initiatives but also through policymaking and strategic planning (Heath, 1997, p. 16). Corporate environmental reporting, with its supporting measurements, responds to internal and external pressures for organizations to achieve a higher level of corporate responsibility. The term corporate responsibility includes human rights and community development issues, as well as environmental performance, but in practice, many organizations started by reporting environmental, health and safety performance in isolation and only later broadened their reporting to include social issues. Finding Common Frameworks Efforts to create an accepted, mutually comparable framework for corporate environmental reporting have taken two forms: establishment of environmental accounting practices and development of voluntary reporting procedures. Environmental accounting procedures attempt to quantify the impacts of environmental practices in the profit-and-loss terms of traditional accounting. While environmental accounting has potential for informing management decisions, marketing semiotician Crowther (2002) argued that proponents of environmental accounting do not provide evidence of any link between environmental accounting practices, environmental management strategies, or responses to environmental activitists. Rather, said Crowther, "the prime use of environmental accounting data is for the production of reports for external consumption" (2002, p. 59). Environmental accounting thus becomes an internal process serving not management strategies, but the production of what Sproule (1988) termed the new managerial rhetoric. In contrast to the classical public rhetoric of enthymemes, argumentation, and debate on issues, this managerial rhetoric focuses on providing a prepackaged ideology through images, identification, and entertainment. Appropriately, Sproule characterized this new rhetoric as a form that "creates its own facts" (p. 473). While Sproule's point is that public relations is the business of cre-

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ating events to serve as synecdoches for issues, environmental accounting literally creates facts in the service of environmental reporting. Widespread adoption of voluntary reporting standards would at least allow these manufactured facts to be compared across companies, yet few companies follow any of the several voluntary reporting standards available. Of the 10 companies that sponsored the Public Environmental Reporting Initiative (PERI) in 1993 (Skinner, 1993), only IBM still professed allegiance to PERI standards in 2001. In the late 1980s, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (better known as CERES) had set out principles for environmental performance; these principles included reducing wastes and emissions, restoring environmental damage, and informing the public of environmental impacts. Although more than 50 companies endorse the CERES principles for environmental conduct (http://www.ceres.org/our_work/principles.htm), fewer than half that number used CERES' guidelines to prepare a 1998 or 1999 corporate environmental report. By mid-2001, only five GEMI companies claimed to be following any voluntary standard in their most recent reports (Bristol-Myers Squibb, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, and Anheuser-Busch followed Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, created in coalition between CERES and the United Nations Environmental Program; Pitney Bowes followed PERI). One member, Phillips Petroleum, was a PERI founder and had followed PERI standards in its 1997 and 1998 reports, but no longer did so in its 1999 report. Although environmental accounting systems generate data for corporate environmental reports, voluntary reporting standards seem to demand data that corporations cannot or will not share with the public. A comparison of six reporting or scoring systems with 106 corporate environmental reports from the mid-1990s found that, in relation to reporting standards, corporate environmental reports typically overemphasize corporate vision and policy while underemphasizing or omitting environmental performance goals, environmental costs, environmental initiatives, performance indicators, and discussions of the larger environmental impact of the organization's activities (Morhardt, 2002). When Morhardt's team rated 40 reports from major companies against the GRI standards that were gaining currency in 2000, the average score was 17% of the possible total. Of the five GEMI members included in the study—Intel, Lucent, Motorola, Phillips Petroleum, and Duke Energy—only Intel scored above 20% (2002, p. 48). The gap is not necessarily the result of a deliberate or malicious omission. Environmental performance data may be unreported because it reveals proprietary information, because the data collected under government-mandated reporting programs does not match the data desired by environmental activist audiences, or because the organization has chosen to manage some complex and controversial environmental issues through other channels. Corporate environmental reports are thus reports primarily in the sense of telling about the company's performance. Whether in environmental reports or financial reports, there is no clear relationship between quality of environmental

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disclosures and actual environmental performance (Stagliano & Walden, 1998), little discussion of environmental performance outside the United States (Thomas & Kenny, 1997), and little external verification of environmental data (Krut & Moretz, 2000; Piasecki, 1995). Norms for telling about have developed in the absence of legal requirements or voluntary standards: at least 37 of the 44 pre-2002 reports analyzed include a statement of environmental principles or commitment, a message from corporate leadership, a list of environmental awards, stories of successful environmental projects, stories of community service projects or environmental philanthropy, graphs showing emission reductions, health and safety performance data (that is, performance under Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules rather than environmental rules), and photos of children, employees, plants, or animals. In contrast, only four reports prior to 2002 mention third-party verification of data (Dow, 1999; DuPont, 2001; Novartis, 1999, 2000). Reporting Without Justifying Lapses Although it might be expected that storytelling in corporate environmental reports would be used to justify troubling corporate environmental behaviors, very little space is given to explaining Notices of Violation for environmental performance that failed to meet state or federal standards. Companies reporting violations—and some simply do not provide this data—typically offer little comment. Ashland's 130-odd 1999 Notices of Violation for health, safety, and environmental problems are presented with less explanation of what went wrong, why, and what was done about it (1999, p. 8) than Intel's two noncompliance citations (2001, p. 13) or Motorola's four environmental violations (2000, p. 21) during the same period. Proctor and Gamble is unusual in devoting almost two pages of its 1999 report to compliance problems—perhaps because the number of violations had not decreased significantly over the prior 3 years, nor had the value of fines—but four separate explanations do little more than reassure the reader that the problem has been fixed and will not recur (2000, 23-24). This image restoration strategy of corrective action, or showing that the problem is being fixed (Benoit, 1995), is performed with minimal elaboration, in a reduced-size typeface. Phillips Petroleum, in its brief 1999 report, demonstrated one of the more explicit justifications, minimizing most violations as "minor alleged procedural, equipment and operational violations" while introducing its section on compliance with an effort to evade responsibility for seemingly poor performance (2000, Compliance): [I] t is growing increasingly difficult to be in absolute regulatory compliance. Regulations and permit requirements continue to change in scope and complexity, and some are subject to different interpretations. It is not unusual for a company's environmental performance to improve, but its compliance record not, because of changes in reporting requirements.

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While other justification strategies such as denial, reduction or redirection of responsibility, and reframing of actions in terms of larger goals (Benoit, 1995) are vestigially present, they fail to account for the bulk of the typical environmental report. For most of its length, a corporate environmental report simply does not recognize problems with environmental performance. Whether the company has an outstanding environmental record like Intel, a spotty one like Ashland, or a troubled one like Koch Industries, the corporate environmental report speaks the same language of commitments to an ideal standard of environmental responsibility: Intel Corporation and its subsidiaries are committed to achieving high standards of environmental quality and product safety, and providing a safe and healthful workplace for our employees, contractors, and communities (Intel, 2001, p. 7). Ashland is committed to operating in a manner respectful of the environment. We take special care to protect our employees, our customers and our neighbors by continuously seeking ways to improve our environmental, health and safety (EH&S) performance (Ashland, 1999, p. 3). We will strive to be associated with unmatched environmental performance as seen through the eyes of our employees, customers, regulators, and the public (Koch Industries, 1998, "Environmental principles"). OVERVIEW OF UTOPIAN NARRATIVE

Utopian narratives present an alternative society that has definitively solved the critical problems of today. Literary theorist Morson, who has written widely on Utopia, satire, and the novel, argued that Utopian narratives are a form of wisdom literature, in which the plot is driven by the disclosure of the secrets of how to a solve a seemingly unsolvable problem (1981, p. 84). Depictions of literary Utopias are characterized by the principle that "seeing is believing": traditional Utopian narrative is a travelogue, in which the process of the narrative is "unveiling the tableau to the non-utopian audience," posited feminist literary critic Ferns (1999, p. 65) in a way that presents seemingly incredible claims as undeniable accomplished facts (Morson, 1981). The narrator, a visitor from the non-utopian here-and-now, is conducted through Utopia by a tour guide who has opinions, beliefs, and a role in the surrounding society, Frye (1965) explained that the narrator "is completely identified with his society and seldom admits to any discrepancy between the reality and the appearance of what he is describing" (p. 26). This reality is founded on "unqualified, absolute truths about morality and society" (Morson, 1981, p. 77) that are no longer connected to time or progress. Difference from the past is not a differentiation strategy, but an expression of faith in the "ceaseless innovation and growth" that characterized 19th century Utopias (Ferns, 1999, pp. 68-69). Thus, Ferns explained, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of chronotope: "[I]n the traditional Utopian narrative, the absence of any

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real sense of time can only be compensated for by a corresponding extension in space. All the traveler can really do is visit, moving from place to place in a random and arbitrary order to witness the various excellences of Utopian society" (1999, p. 21). This visit, Morson argued, sets up a metaphorical equation of the journey to the Utopian world with the reading of the Utopian work. That equation, in effect, places readers in the traveler's position, so that they can then be urged to repeat the traveler's conversion (1981). Readers learn, through the process of reading, to anticipate the narrator's naive questions and objections, to predict and enjoy the guide's answers, and to avoid identifying with the scoffers who are condemned by both narrator and guide. The reader also learns what questions not to ask. It is thus critical to ask what Utopias choose not to say, especially what aspects of the contemporary world are left unquestioned (Ferns, 1999, p. 27). CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL UTOPIAS

The vision of responsible environmental performance promoted through corporate environmental reports centers around three themes: solving the unsolvable problem of sustainability; asserting unqualified, absolute truths about corporate responsibility; and providing an array of vivid images and stories for the visiting reader. Each of these themes is considered in the following. Solving the Unsolvable Problem: Sustainability

Corporate environmental reports are constructed around the secrets of achieving sustainable growth or sustainability, a term that appears in most of the GEMI companies' reports and is featured in titles such as Sustainable Growth 1998 Progress Report (DuPont, 1999), The Journey to a Sustainable World (Motorola, 2000), On the Path to Sustainability (Bristol-Myers Squibb, 2001), and Sustainability Report (Proctor & Gamble, 2001). Although proponents of sustainable growth characterize it as the linchpin of "a societal transition on a scale comparable to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions" (Fried, 2002, II. 2), the term seems to function as one of Weaver's rhetorical absolutes, the words that are accepted as imbued with importance even when their meaning is left obscure (Weaver, 1956, pp. 211-213). The Department of Energy's definition is typically broad: "Sustainable development is a strategy by which communities seek economic development approaches that also benefit the local environment and quality of life" (http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/overview/ ovintro.shtml). Although the Department of Energy, SustainableBusiness.com (http://www.sustainablebusiness.com), and other pro-sustainability organizations can define sustainability operationally by pointing to recycling programs, materials reductions initiatives, cleaner energy sources, and reduced pollutant emissions, the term is recruited in corporate environmental reports to describe any virtually any corporate environmental practice. Petroleum refining is inher-

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ently an industry based on using up a nonrenewable resource, but Ashland Petroleum defined itself as a sustainable business: "Sustainability, as we see it, means reaching today's goals in ways that strengthen the ability to set and reach new goals in the future" (1999, p. 1). The opening excerpt from Motorola's 2000 report implied that sustainability is not merely compatible with Motorola's business practices, but inextricable from Motorola's business philosophy. Unqualified, Absolute Truths Statements of "unqualified, absolute truths about morality and society" (Morson, 1981, p. 77) are a staple of corporate environmental reports from virtually the first page. Presented as environmental principles, these statements assert commitments: Ashland is committed to operating in a manner respectful of the environment. We take special care to protect our employees, our customers and our neighbors by continuously seeking ways to improve our environmental, health and safety (EH&S) performance (Ashland, 1999, p. 3). At Olin, we sum up our commitment to achieving excellence in the realms of workplace health and safety with one phrase: The Goal is Zero (Olin, 2000). As a good Corporate citizen, we [Bethlehem Steel] are dedicated to the continuous improvement of the environment in which we all live (Bethlehem Steel, 1999).

In his recommendations to writers of corporate environmental reports, Morhardt (2002), director of the Roberts Environmental Center, encouraged opening messages that take a brief, visionary approach. His favorite, from the 1999 report of non-GEMI member Canon, is even more Utopian in tone than those of the GEMI members studied: In the years to come, we will continue fostering environmental protection activities with the aim of contributing to world prosperity and the happiness of people everywhere (Morhardt, 2002, p. 80).

Morhardt (2002) noted that "visionary statements are more believable if they openly discuss the business advantages of adopting them, but few firms do" (p. 81). This practical emphasis on persuading through a compelling vision, rather than through a compelling argument, is consistent with Sproule's new managerial rhetoric. Instead, use of absolute statements carries into the report's discussion of the organization's environmental impacts. A typical statement is Dow Chemical's "We believe that chlorine chemistry is one of the most important contributions to society in this century" (1999, p. 31) or 3M's "3M begins with the premise that all workplace accidents and illnesses are preventable" (1999, p. 8). Rarely, if ever, do

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such statements lead to discussions of practical environmental management concerns such as trade-offs among environmental goals, disagreements over which environmental goals are most desirable, conflicting voices on whether environmental goals are costeffective, or struggles to achieve environmental excellence; rather, they are assertions of faith from which company activities follow. Environmental excellence follows directly from simple principles; the corporate environmental report is Utopian in that it reveals that "the world is not as complex" as one might expect (Morson, 1981, p. 78). Seeing is Believing: Visiting the Corporate Environmental Utopia Corporate environmental reports do not present a sustained, developed argument for the organization's position on environmental issues. Rather, the report is a bricolage of stories, graphs, photos, lists of awards, diagrams of systems, pull quotes, and principles. If it seems unlikely that manufacturing companies in historically high-emission, high-waste industries can become environmental leaders simply by implementing measures that are good business anyway—a common claim in environmental reports—then here are the stories and awards that show success after success as accomplished facts. Consistent with Sproule's new managerial rhetoric, "proof is contained not in ideas, but in verbal and visual images (1988, pp. 472–473). This seemingly random organization of images and slogans can be understood as tableaux for the visitor to the Utopia. Unlike corporate financial reports, which historically have moved from an emphasis on accounting of profit and loss, reliant on spreadsheets, to a focus on accountability for business activities and results, reliant on stories, to an emphasis on strategic management, reliant on vision (Crowther, 2002), corporate environmental reports mix accountability and strategic management with relatively little use of comparable quantitative data. The bulk of a corporate environmental report is a series of snapshots of environmental, health, and safety performance, rich in immediacy but low in context. Thus Occidental Petroleum told the story of successful remediation of a Niagara Falls landfill without volunteering information about how the company became responsible for the environmental contamination or how the remediation program fits into other corporate environmental responsibilities (1998). Phillips Petroleum ended its 1997 report with the tale of how a Phillips crew rescued a baby seal near one of its England terminals but explains nothing of its role in why "seals abandoned the area in the 1860s, not to return for another 100 years" (p. 32). Proof is made a matter of vivid faits accomplis. Consistent with the travelogue theme, journey and progress figure in a noticeable minority of report titles. At the same time, corporate environmental reports are consistent with Utopian literature's presentation of Utopia as a "static social vision" in which perfection has already been achieved (Ferns, 1999, pp. 20-21). Although almost all reports show graphs of decreasing emissions, these decreases are presented not as changes from the past, but as proof that the organization has al-

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ways been committed to environmental excellence. Adhesive manufacturer 3M, for instance, displays graphs showing substantial emission reductions since 1990 but traces its environmental commitment to 1975 (1999). Texas Instruments in 1999 had a $10 million reserve for handling "environmental liabilities related to past operations" (2000, p. 9), but proudly announced that, despite "dynamic changes in the world economy that TI's products are helping to drive, ... what hasn't changed is our commitment to excellence in environmental safety and health" (p. 1). Difference from the past is not a differentiation strategy, but an expression of faith in the "ceaseless innovation and growth" that characterized 19th century Utopias (Ferns, 1999, pp. 68-69). WHAT ISN'T SAID: CRITIQUING ENVIRONMENTAL IDEOLOGY

The Utopia unveiled by corporate environmental reports centers on three principles. First, good environmental practices are good business practices. Pitney Bowes explained: "As we continue to integrate the environmental, health, and safety functions within the business, the link between the company's EH&S performance and its financial performance becomes increasingly apparent" (1999, p. 1). Koch Industries goes further: "Our management philosophy requires us to produce superior value for our customers using the fewest resources. Our management philosophy is our environmental philosophy" (1998, "Environmental principles"). While graphs of reduced energy use, reduced waste, increased recycling, reduced air and water emissions, and reduced compliance problems figure in most corporate environmental reports, and some reports discuss substituting less toxic substances in products or making products recyclable, absent are statements such as we discontinued this product because its harms outweighed its benefits or we are considering changing our core business. Paper manufacturer Temple-Inland can argue that it replaces trees as it uses them, but petroleum-refiners Koch and Ashland inherently base their profits on exploitation of a nonrenewable resource. None of GEMI's petroleum-refining members discuss the environmental impacts of increased driving and longer commutes; indeed, in a separate campaign after its 1998 corporate environmental report was issued, Koch Industries touted its lower-sulfur Blue Planet gasoline with an ad campaign that encouraged Minnesotans to drive for recreation (http://www. blueplanetgas.com/advertising_ launch.htm). A second central principle of corporate environmental Utopias is thus that environmental friendliness is a matter of reducing the direct production impacts of existing industries, not a matter of questioning whether some industries, or the lifestyles those industries support, inherently produce more harms than benefits. A third central principle is that government regulatory agencies, which hold considerable power to inspect and fine companies, are redefined as equal partners at the negotiating table, along with other stakeholders such as environmental groups, workers, community leaders, and neighbors of production facilities.

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When required by GRI standards to identify stakeholders explicitly, Johnson and Johnson (2001), Anheuser-Busch (2000), and Proctor and Gamble (2001) place regulators below workers, customers, and neighbors, and Bristol-Myers Squibb includes relations with regulatory agencies in a mixed bag of environmental issues (2001). A staple of corporate environmental reports is the story of a successful environmental project achieved by the issuing company discussing the problem with many stakeholders—sometimes including government regulators, but as often not—and reaching a mutually satisfying and economical solution. In contrast to the government-dominated Utopias of fiction (Frye, 1965), corporate environmental Utopias assume a government that is wisest when it respects dialogues between business and community. While corporate environmental reports can certainly be characterized as selfserving, the way in which they are self-serving points to a disconnection between corporate and commercial dominance of entertainment media and profound insecurity about the corporation's role in managing environmental issues. This insecurity is grounded in three aspects of corporate environmental performance as a public issue. First, corporations have traditionally found themselves in an adversarial role with the U.S. EPA and its state-level equivalents, with the regulatory agencies potentially wielding the power to inspect facilities at will and make public-relations hay out of routine minor violations. While the EPA touts initiatives like 7-year-old Project XL as a turn away from "command and control" regulation (http://www.epa.gov/projectxl/), the prominence and separateness of these programs suggests that collaboration in search of better environmental outcomes remains novel. Second, corporate capitalism is arguably cast as the villain in the prevailing ideology of environmental issues. Statistician Lomborg argued that environmental groups such as Greenpeace have successfully kept increased environmental protection on the public agenda by promoting myths of declining resources and impending doom (2001). Although several critiques of environmentalists' claims of impending environmental doom have been published (e.g., Bailey, 1993), Lomborg was hardly alone in initially dismissing them as "simple American right-wing propaganda" (Wade, 2001). If stakeholders most trust organizations who seek to achieve "a balance of mutual interests" (Heath, 1997, p. 119), then many organizations can scarcely enter discussion with their stakeholders until these stakeholders are moved to reevaluate the organization's interests and hopes. Third, corporate access to political ears—an issue highlighted by Enron's collapse—is no guarantee of success in promoting corporate agendas. In the case of Koch Industries, a GEMI member that is both the second largest privately held company in the United States and a significant contributor to Republican campaigns, the perception of undue political influence was probably a factor in turning air emissions at Koch's Texas refinery into a political football that could only harm the company's public image. In August 2000, at roughly the same time that

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the U.S. EPA was congratulating Koch on its cooperativeness in resolving environmental issues, the company was indicted on 97 felony counts for violating emission standards for cancer-causing benzene. While the Al Gore campaign told the Washington Post that Koch's performance showed how the oil industry was buying influence with then-governor George W. Bush ("Alleged Texas polluter," 2000), the Daily Oklahoman argued that the indictment had been timed to discredit the Bush campaign ("Clinton-Gore justice," 2000). In April 2001, the charges were reduced to a single count, and Koch agreed to pay $20 million in penalties ("All charges," 2001). Although Koch's case is a single example—and only one episode in a series of environmental compliance difficulties that were pursued by state and federal government in the late 1990s—the company's misadventures illustrate the lack of a necessary connection between efforts at political influence and avoidance of environmental penalties. In 1999, regulatory actions against GEMI members just in EPA Region 5 included a $143,800 fine against 3M for hazardous waste violations at its Cordova, Illinois, specialty chemicals facility (U.S. EPA, 1999b); citations against Ashland Petroleum for violating its air emission permit at a Detroit, Michigan, refinery (U.S. EPA, 1999a); a lawsuit, in tandem with the Department of Justice, against Ashland for illegal benzene emissions at its Robinson, Illinois, refinery (U.S. EPA, 1999c); and a proposed $661,237 fine against Dow Chemicals for failure to report hazardous chemical releases (U.S. EPA, 1999d). These enforcement actions represent only the most highly publicized violations of federal environmental regulations. Paradoxically, these actions are taken against companies that are also winning acclaim as examples of environmental excellence. At the same time that Koch's Texas refinery was allegedly emitting excess benzene, the same facility was part of the Clean Air Responsibility Enterprise program; the company also won awards for pollution prevention at its Louisiana ammonia facilities, for safe chemical transportation, for "best overall reclamation" of a Virginia mining site, and for environmental stewardship at its Montana ranch. 3M's honors include a 1996 Presidential award for pollution prevention; Dow earned a 2000 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for a termite control product and has a record of presentations on sustainable development at industry conferences ("Top award," 2000). It is apparently possible to be both a serious environmental offender and a benchmark of environmental excellence. This paradox highlights the complexity of managing both environmental performance and public perceptions of environmental performance: being an environmental leader may involve inviting more public scrutiny—and more criticism—than the organization would ordinarily face. Presenting a Utopian narrative, rather than a conventional argument or apologia, allows corporations to suggest that environmental issues are governed by ideology as much as by science, simply by demonstrating that an alternative is conceivable. Like political use of Utopian narratives related to family values, corporate environmental reports attempt to recode social disputes as issues of private

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voluntary behavior (Cloud, 1998). Voluntary projects with community and government input are thus staples of corporate environmental reports. REVISITING UTOPIA

Between mid-2001 and mid-2002, few of the GEMI companies updated or reissued corporate environmental reports; many still had 1999 or even 1998 reports posted on their Web sites as the most recent reports. This gap in reporting suggests that, despite their visible allegiance to environmental excellence, GEMI members were reconsidering some combination of business strategies, environmental management strategies, and corporate issues management strategies. Although the cost of producing a corporate environmental report is not onerous—GRI representatives estimate about $200,000 for a large company and perhaps $50,000 for a small company (http://www.globalreporting.org/Events/Decemberl999Taiwan/ TaiwanBriefing.htm)—the explanation may be as simple as redeployment of corporate communication staff to tasks related to shoring up the company's image during layoffs, decreased profits and dividends, or financial investigations. A cursory scan of the GEMI members' annual financial reports for 2001 finds repeated themes of difficulty, challenge, and change, confirming that explaining disappointing corporate financial performance may have been the higher priority. One alternative explanation is, of course, that a new Presidential administration's less demanding environmental policies decreased the perceived need for producing corporate environmental reports. Within GEMI, there is some support, albeit ambiguous, for this claim. Of the 15 GEMI companies that did not produce a corporate environmental report to cover 2001 performance, six had never provided full corporate environmental reports. Two companies stopped reporting for obvious external reasons: Enron went bankrupt following a well-publicized financial scandal; Compaq was bought by HP, which folded Compaq's environmental performance data into its own extensive reporting. Of the remaining seven noreporting companies, five still post older corporate environmental reports on their Web sites, as if they might return to reporting at some future date (Abbott, Bethlehem Steel, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, Louisiana-Pacific, and Temple-Inland); two provide general information on environmental commitment but not full reports (Coca-Cola and Olin). Louisiana-Pacific, at least, may have been distracted by the woes that led to its ranking among the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, with $37 million in environmental and consumer fraud fines (http://www.corporatepredators.org/topl00.html). While there seems to be little incentive for GEMI members to start producing environmental reports if they did not have one before 1999, there is less a pattern of dropping environmental reporting than a wait and see attitude. Similarly, there seems to have been little incentive to move toward using voluntary reporting standards. Although all of the companies that followed GRI standards in 2000-2001 did so in 2001-2002, only two companies shifted to GRI

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(Anheuser-Busch, 2001; Dow, 2001); Pitney Bowes, which had previously followed PERI guidelines, dropped voluntary standards altogether (2001). While the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards are consensus-based, actively marketed to corporations, and expected to become the worldwide reporting standard (Morhardt, 2002), their specificity and detail may intimidate companies that cannot document superior environmental performance, a problem that may stem as much from inadequate measurement and reporting systems as from poor performance. Although there are companies, such as Intel (2002), that do not claim allegiance to GRI standards but nonetheless seem to follow the spirit of the Sustainability Reporting Standards, it is more typical that companies that do not follow GRI retain strong Utopian narrative strategies in their reporting. Most striking, though extreme, is Koch Industries' 2002 report, which relies almost entirely on narrative even though the company implemented extensive environmental management systems in 1999. The most provocative trend in corporate environmental reporting is the move toward integrating environmental and social reporting under the broad heading of corporate citizenship or social responsibility. While the 1970s saw the first arguments in favor of broadening the scope of corporate accounting from the internal activities of the business to the larger impacts of the business on its community and society (Crowther, 2002), methods of social accounting and social reporting remain ill-defined. Deborah Doane of the New Economics Foundation argues that social reporting has already been taken over by marketing departments (Cowe, 2000), but some companies have used social reporting as an opportunity to engage stakeholders in critiquing both company policies and the way that these policies are presented to the public (Pike, 2000). Within GEMI membership, integrating environmental performance into a larger picture of social accountability seems to have intensified Utopian themes. Two examples—one from a company that had struggled with environmental reporting, one from a company praised for its thorough environmental reporting—illustrate the triumph of Utopian fantasy over measurable results. Phillips Petroleum, which merged with Conoco in August 2002, becoming the sixth largest energy company in the world (http://www.conocophillips.com/ news/nr/-083002_complete.asp), was one of the original sponsors of the PERI, the first voluntary reporting standard. PERI guidelines are looser and less specific than CERES or GRI standards (Morhardt, 2002) and essentially ceased to be used in the late 1990s. After using PERI guidelines in its 1997 and 1998 reports, Phillips limited its 1999 reporting to a brief Web site. In 2002, Phillips returned to print reporting with its 2000-2001 Social Investment Report, a 24-page brochure that covers education and youth programs, arts and culture, environmental performance, health and safety performance, acquisition of another petroleum company, and corporate contributions. While the 1999 Web report included metrics of environmental performance, many showing mixed success, the Social Investment Report is virtually metric-free. The two-page environment section omits the

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type of data on releases and penalties found in earlier reports, in favor of stories about wildlife preservation. The more social sections are similarly devoid of metrics other than measures of spending, and the entire report is tied together with the theme of daring to dream. Phillips seems to be trying to transfer discussion of environmental performance from the mundane world of compliance and measurements into a dream world of aspirations. The compelling and detailed dream is, of course, one of the conventional means by which the visitor enters Utopia. Pharmeceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb was one of the early adopters of the GRI voluntary reporting standards; the company's 2001 sustainability report was chosen by strategic management consultancy SustainAbility as one of the 50 best reports worldwide (http://www.sustainability.com/publications/engaging/trust-us-50.asp). This 2001 report included substantial metrics and quantifiable goals, not only for environmental and health and safety performance, but also for nondiscrimination in hiring and socially responsible investment. Quantitative measures were organized into a single chart containing 4 years' data on key indicators, then analyzed in detail later in the report. Although the company retains similar, updated information in the sustainability portion of its Web site (http://www.bms.com/-ehs/index.html), its official 2002 Social Responsibility report contains no comparisons, no graphs, no quantifiable goals, and few numbers of any sort; it is composed entirely of success stories. Environmental performance is reduced to two pages of positive stories, devoid of measures. The stated theme of building a better tomorrow turns the focus away from accounting of the past toward the Utopian future. Environmental reporting thus seems to be moving away from accountability, defined by Crowther as "reporting the activities and results of the business... primarily concerned with the past" without moving toward financial reporting's next stage of strategic management, "concerned with the planning of the business's activities and evaluation of its subsequent performance" (2002, pp. 18-19). Consistent with Utopian narrative and the new managerial rhetoric, the proof of social responsibility is not activities measured against goals, but emotionally gripping tableaux with which the visitor is encouraged to identify. CONCLUSION

As Utopian narratives, corporate environmental reports attempt to elicit re-visioning and renewed trust, rather than rational agreement. Despite a decade of calls for adoption of environmental accounting procedures that measure the financial consequences of the company's environmental impacts (summarized in Lesourd & Schilizzi, 2001) and some evidence that sound financial and environmental performance are not incompatible (Crowther, 2002), corporate environmental reporting among self-identified environmental leaders is moving away from accountability. The disconnection between financial accounting and environmental—social reporting is reinforced by how environmental and social responsibility reports are clas-

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sified on the reporting companies' Web sites. Of the 25 GEMI members who posted 2001 or 2002 reports, not one placed the environmental report in its section of information for investors. Ten companies classified their environmental reports in the "About Us" or "Corporate Information" sections. One linked the report directly from the main home page. Five classified it with "Community"; six with "Environment"; three with "Citizenship"; and the remainder with some mix of "social responsibility," "leadership," "commitment," or in a general list of publications. This symbolic separation of environmental performance from economic performance obscures the practical reality that economic considerations influence environmental decisions, despite the popularity of doing well by doing good themes in reports and the U.S. EPA's open promotion of economically feasible environmental protection. The symbolic separation of environmental and economic performance also, of course, implies that, while economic performance is, in a public company, a public matter, subject to government regulation, environmental and social performance is a community matter, dependent on the goodwill of the sponsoring company. Judging from GEMI members' lack of enthusiasm for adopting voluntary reporting standards, the only way to assure comparable, quantitative, benchmarked environmental reporting would be for the U.S. government to follow the lead of European nations, such as the Netherlands, in adopting environmental reporting regulations. Such regulations would place corporate environmental performance squarely in the realm of public debate—but would place reporting standards themselves beyond the debatable. Utopian narrative strategies, conversely, open the issue of what constitutes environmental protection to re-visioning, but provide no means for comparing one vision to another, or for measuring whether the proffered vision is feasible and desirable. The reader can rethink the corporation's role in environmental and social responsibility, but cannot become a decision-making citizen of Utopia: we can only visit. REFERENCES All charges against Koch Industries, Koch Petroleum and employees dropped. (2001, April 9). [Press release, on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002, from http://www.kochind. com/articles/372.asp Alleged Texas polluter is indicted; Charges against pipeline firm quickly become campaign issue. (2000, September29). [on-line]. Washington Post (Final edition),p. A4. Retrieved December 27, 2002 from Lexis/Nexis. Azzoni, G., Brophy, M., & Noci, G. (1997). A stakeholder's view of environmental reporting. Long Range Planning, 30, 699-709. Bailey, R. (1993). Eco-scam. New York: St. Martin's Press. Benoit, W. (1995). Accounts, excuses, and apologies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Clinton-Gore justice: Bizarro [on-line]. (2000, August 9). Daily Oklahoman, p. 8-A. Cloud, D. (1998) The rhetoric of Retrieved December 29, 2002, from Lexis/Nexis: Scapegoating, Utopia, and the privatization of social responsibility. Western Journal of Communication, 62, 387-419. Cowe, R. (2000, November 9). Social report spin attacked: Marketing departments accused of manipulation The Guardian, p. 29. [on-line]. Retrieved December 27, 2002 from Lexis/Nexis.

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Crowther, D. (2002). A social critique of corporate reporting. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Elkington, J., Kreander, N., & Stibbard, H. (1998, Spring). The third international survey on company environmental reporting. Greener Management International, 21, 99-112. [on-line]. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from Lexis/Nexis. Esrock, S. L., & Leichty, G. B. (1998). Social responsibility and corporate web pages: Self-presentation or agenda-setting? Public Relations Review, 24, 305-319. Ferns, C. (1999). Narrating Utopia. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press. Fried, R. (2002). About SustainableBusiness.com: Accelerating momentum toward a green economy. SustainableBusiness.com. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27,2002, from Lexis/Nexis http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/info/aboutus.cfm Frye, N. (1965). Varieties of literary Utopias. In F. E. Manuel (Ed.), Utopias and Utopian thought (pp. 25-49). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Goodwin, B., & Taylor, K. (1982). The politics of Utopia. London: Hutchinson. Gray, R., Owens, D., & Adams, C. (1996). Accounting and accountability: Changes and challenges in corporate social and environmental reporting. London: Prentice Hall. Heath, R. L. (1990). Effects of internal rhetoric on management response to external issues: How corporate culture failed the asbestos industry. Journal of Applied Communication, 18, 153-167. Heath, R. L. (1997). Strategic issues management: Organizations and public policy changes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Investor Responsibility Research Center [on-line] . (2000, February). IRRC reports increase in e n v i r o n m e n t a l r e p o r t i n g in the USA. R e t r i e v e d May 27, 2002, from http://www.enviroreporting.com/news_int/news_i_78.htm Jhally, S. (1993). Commercial culture, collective values, and the future. Texas Law Review, 71, 805-814. Killingsworth, M. J., & Palmer, J. S. (1995). The discourse of'environmentalist hysteria.' Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81, 1-19. Krut, R., & Moretz, A. (2000). The state of global environmental reporting: Lessons from the Global 100. Corporate Environmental Strategy, 7(1), 85-91. Lesourd, J-B., & Schilizzi, S. G. M. (2001). The environment in corporate management. Northamption, MA: Edward Elgar. Lomborg, B. (2001). The skeptical environmentalist. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Major, A. M. (1993). Environmental concern and situational communication theory: Implications for communicating with environmental publics. Journal of Public Relations Research, 5, 251-268. Morhardt, J. E. (2002). Clean, green, and read all over: Ten rules for corporate environmental and sustainability reporting. Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press. Morson, G. S. (1981). The boundaries of genre. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Nitz, M. E. (2000). The public communication of organizations in the environmental arena: An attempt at theoretical explanation and integration. Electronic Journal of Communication, 10 (1-2) [on-line]. Retrieved luly 24, 2001, from http://www.cios.org/ getfile\nitz_v!0nl200 O'Rourke, P.J. (1992). Holidays in hell. New York: Vintage Departures. Pezzullo, P. C. (2001). Performing critical interruptions: Stories, rhetorical invention, and the environmental justice movement. Western Journal of Communication, 65, 1-25. Piasecki, B. W. (1995). Corporate environmental strategy. New York: Wiley. Pike, A. (2000, April 12). Management social reporting [on-line]. Financial Times (London edition 1), p. 18. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from Lexis/Nexis. Plummer, L. (1998). Corporate environmental reporting: An interview with Douglas J. Lober, Duke University. United States—Asia Environmental Partnership [on-line]. Available at: http://www.usaep.org/compadv/compad4.htm

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Propper, S. (1998, November 16). Are we getting the message? Chemistry and Industry, 22, 944. Ricoeur, P. (1986). Lectures on ideology and Utopia (G. H. Taylor, Ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. Rose, E., Brownlie, M., & Simpson, J. (1995, November). Preparing a stakeholder-focused environmental report: the Nortel Networks perspective [on-line]. Available at: http://www.nortelnetworks.com/corporate/community/habitat/commsol/cer/cer.html Skinner, L. (1993, December 20). Corporate environmental reports: Guidelines grow, as do questions Greenwire [on-line]. Retrieved December 27, 2002 from Lexis/Nexis database. Sproule, J. M. (1988). The new managerial rhetoric and the old criticism. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 74, 468-486. Stagliano, A. J., & Walden, W. D. (1998, August). Assessing the quality of environmental disclosure themes. Paper presented at Asian-Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting conference, Osaka, Japan. Retrieved April 4, 2000, from http://www 3.bus.osakacu.ac.jp/apira98/archives/htmls/75.htm Thomas, P. B., & Kenny, S. Y. (1997, July). Environmental reporting: A comparison of annual report disclosures and popular financial press commentary. Paper presented at Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Practice conference, Manchester, England. [on-line]. Retrieved April 4, 2000, from http://les.man.ac.uk/ipa97/papers/thomas61.html Top award goes to Termite Control. (2000, September 22). [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002, from http://www.dow.com/dow_news/feature/2000/09_22_00/index.htm Tyler, L. (1997). Liability means never being able to say you're sorry: Corporate guilt, legal constraints, and defensiveness in corporate communication. Management Communication Quarterly, 11, 51-73. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999a, January 21). EPA cites Marathon Ashland Petroleum for air pollution. EPA News Release 99-OPA019. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from www.epa.gov U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999b, January 25). EPA settles with 3M on alleged haz. waste violations; includes $143,800 fine. EPA News Release 99-OPA025. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from www.epa.gov U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999c, February 23). EPA, DOJ sue Marathon Ashland for air pollution violations. EPA News Release 99-OPA049. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from www.epa.gov U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999d, April 29). EPA cites Dow Chemical for multiple chemical reporting violations; proposes $661,237 fine. EPA News Release 99-OPA119. Retrieved December 27, 2002, from www.epa.gov Wade, N. (2001, August 7). Scientist at work: Bjorn Lomborg; From an unlikely quarter, eco-optimism [Electronic version]. New York Times, p. Fl. Weaver, R. (1953). The Ethics of Rhetoric. Chicago: Henry Regnery.

Corporate Reports 3M. (1999). Environmental, health and safety progress report, 1998-99. Abbott Laboratories (2000). Improving lives around the world: The 2000 environmental, health and safety update. Retrieved December 26, 2002, from http://abbott.com/community/2000Update.pdf. Anheuser-Busch Companies. (2000). Anheuser Busch Companies environmental, health and safety report 2000. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.abehsreport.com/docs/AB-EHS-full.pdf Anheuser-Busch Companies. (2001). Anheuser Busch Companies environmental, health and safety report 2001. [on-line]. Retrieved December 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.abehsreport.com

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Ashland. (1999). Moving forward: Environment, health and safety, 1999 annual report. Bethlehem Steel Corporation. (1999). 1998/99 Environmental progress report. Bristol-Myers Squibb. (2001). On the path toward sustainability: 2001 Sustainability progress report. [On-line] Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http.//www.bms.com/static/ ehs/report/data/sust01.pdf Bristol-Myers Squibb. (2002). Social responsibility at Bristol-Myers Squibb, [on-line]. Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at: http://www.bms.com/ehs/index.html Dow. (1999). Public report 1999. Dow (2001). The Dow global public report. [on-line].Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at: http://www.dow.com/publicreport/2001/stewardship/index.htm DuPont. (1999). Sustainable growth 1998 progress report. DuPont. (2001). Global progress report, [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.dupont.com/corp/social/growth/usa/us3.html Intel. (1999, April). Commitment around the globe: Designing for the future. Intel. (2001, April). Leadership is in: 2000 EHS performance report. Intel. (2002). Environmental, health and safety report 2001. [on-line]. Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at: http://www.intel.com/intel/other/ehs/index.htm Johnson. (2001). Healthy people, healthy planet: 2000 Environmental health and safety sustainability report. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.j ohnsonandjohnson.com/who_is_jnj/2000_enviro/2000_Environmental_Report.pdf Koch Industries, Inc. (1998). 1998 Environmental report. Koch Industries, Inc. (2002). 2002 Environmental, health and safety report. [On-line] Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at: http://kochenvironment.com/ehsreport/ default.asp Motorola. (2000). The journey to a sustainable world: Progress 1999. Motorola. (2001). It's about people and the planet: 2000 Global corporate citizenship report. Novartis. (1999, March). Innovation et responsabilite: Rapport 1998 sante, securite et environnement. Novartis. (2000). Innovation and accountability: 1999 Health, safety and environment. Occidental Petroleum. (1999). Annual report on health, environment and safety 1998. Olin. (2000, January 22). The goal is zero. [on-line] Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.olin.com/environment/default.asp Phillips Petroleum. (1997). 1997 Health, environmental and safety report. Phillips Petroleum. (1999). 1998 HES report: An internet summary. [On-line] Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at http://www.phillips66.com/hes98/homepage/98default.htm Phillips Petroleum. (2000). 1999 HES report. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.phillips66.com/hes99/Layouts-99/99results-safety-layout.htm Phillips Petroleum. (2001). 2000-201 social investment report. [On-line] Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at http://www.phillips66.com/Community/socialreport01/ Pitney Bowes. (1999). Strength in numbers: A progress report, measuring our efforts to protect the environment and the health and safety of our employees. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.pb.com/downloads/US/ENG/ehs_98.pdf Pitney Bowes. (2001). Environmental, health and safety progress report 2001. [on-line]. Retrieved December 26, 2002. Available at: http://www.pb.com/downloads/US/ENG/ EHS_report.pdf Proctor & Gamble. (2000). Embracing the future: 1999 Sustainability report. Proctor & Gamble. (2001). 2000 Sustainability report. [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.pg.com/content/pdf/01_about_pg/corporate_citizenship/sustainability/reports/sustainability_report_2000.pdf Texas Instruments. (2000). Environmental health and safety annual report, [on-line]. Retrieved May 27, 2002. Available at: http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/citizen/esh/english.pdf

CHAPTER FIVE

The Rhetoric of the Autobiographical Voice in Women's Environmental Narratives: Lois Gibbs' Love Canal: My Story and Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment Diane Hope Rochester Institute of Technology

INTRODUCTION

In 1997 and 1999, respectively, Lois Gibbs and Sandra Steingraber participated in the Caroline Werner Gannett Lecture Series at the Rochester Institute of Technology exploring environment and citizenship. Gibbs, the founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, was thrust into environmental consciousness in 1978 from her quiet neighborhood near Niagara Falls, NY, when she learned that her son's elementary school sat atop a toxic dump covering 21, 000 tons of chemical waste. The attempted cover-up of the dangers at the Love Canal propelled Gibbs into confrontational activism with local, state, and federal officials that finally resulted in the relocation of 833 families. Gibbs' work as a citizen activist with the Love Canal Homeowners Association eventually led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund. Her narrative of the experience, first published as Love Canal: My Story in 1982 was reissued as Love Canal: The Story Continues in 1998.1 Steingraber's role as an environmental activist began with her own examination of possible connections between the bladder cancer she had endured as a young woman and the plains of central Illinois where she grew up. A biologist and poet, Steingraber (1997) elaborated a human rights approach to disease, especially cancer, in her award winning book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment, in which she brought together data on toxic All citations are from the 1998 edition, Love Canal: The Story Continues. 77

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releases and U.S. Cancer registries. Serving on President Clinton's National Action Plan on Breast Cancer she was internationally recognized for her work on the relationship between illness and environment and won a wide spectrum of accolades. In 1997, Ms. magazine named her "woman of the year," in 1998 she received the Altman Award for "the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer," and in 1999 the Sierra Club deemed her "the new Rachel Carson" (Steingraber, 2002). The two speakers provided strong contrasts in delivery. Gibbs built an emotional performance, pacing the stage with microphone in hand, often shouting as she relived her anger over events at Love Canal while exhorting her audience to become change agents in their own communities (Gibbs, 1997). Steingraber stood calmly behind the podium and in a soft, well-measured voice delivered an inspired lecture on ecological science, punctuated by humor and bits of poetry (Steingraber, 1999). Both women used evidence of the proven and potential health consequences of environmental toxins to encourage audience members to become citizen-activists and both used autobiography as a powerful rhetorical strategy. The speeches provided compelling, but differently focused demonstrations that for these women at least, the personal was indeed the political, and added new layers of meaning to the feminist principle of social activism. Gibbs spoke passionately of how her children's illnesses and the ensuing events at Love Canal transformed her from a young suburban mother into an internationally recognized leader in the environmental justice movement. Steingraber revealed intimate details about her experience with bladder cancer as a 20-year-old college student, and how her suspicion that the illness was related to environmental toxins changed her life. Both Gibbs and Steingraber immediately engaged the student audience who stayed to talk with the speakers long after the lectures had ended. As a powerful source of identification between rhetor and audience, the personal testimony in both speeches was especially effective as motivation for environmental action. Gibbs and Steingraber also chose to use autobiography as the structure for their written narratives. Yet unlike the face-to-face experience of audience and speaker, rich with nonverbal cues and charged with charismatic exchanges between speaker, performance, and audience members, written texts are disembodied and must rely on language for affect and identification. In the written autobiography, the narrator can only be imagined. Rhetorical style, narrative, argument, and organization must construct a persona for readers. This chapter compares the rhetoric of Gibbs' Love Canal (1982, 1998) and Steingraber's Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (1997) to explore the appeal of the autobiographical voice in environmental advocacy. How do the personal stories of Gibbs and Steingraber, so compelling in public address, structure the written narratives? How does the rhetoric of the autobiographical voice inform the advocacy of environmental activism in these texts? The critique is

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part of a larger project examining the rhetoric of the autobiographical voice in women's environmental narratives. 2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE RHETORIC OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Formal autobiography holds a significant place in the discourse of social change. Strongly associated with political and social movements, the genre has been termed a "democratic literary form" (Stone, 1972, p. 26), a description that presumes rhetorical, as well as literary motives. Beyond literary intents, movement autobiography works as instruction and inspiration for readers who would be activists. In movements for equality and human rights especially, the autobiographical voice has been a major source of rhetorical power. For example, works of autobiography have enlivened African-American liberation movements and continue to serve as touchstones in the continuing struggle toward human justice. From the slave narratives of abolitionists Frederick Douglas (1845) and Harriet Jacobs (1861) through to the compelling Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), myriad autobiographical texts have been written and read as calls to action by members of marginalized groups. Rhetorical studies of movement autobiography by Charles Griffin (2000), Martha Solomon (1991), and Thomas Benson (1974) illustrated the significance of narrative form and style if the movement autobiographer is to empower readers as agents of change. In these narratives, movement goals, self-identity, and agency are linked through the structure of autobiography. No matter why the tale is told, the rhetoric of autobiography narrates individual change. Movement autobiography is further distinguished by the intersecting stories of personal change and social change, especially when movement figures chronicle their own transformations in tandem with historical events. If movement goals are motivation for the story's telling, the narrator must invent a rhetoric that credibly links transformed identities and social cause. Whether such changes are read as gradually emergent (Solomon, 1991) or as sudden conversions (Griffin, 1990), autobiographers must overcome the rhetorical problems implicit in narrating stories of transformed self-identities. The effective movement figure turned autobiographer resists self-aggrandizement or martyrdom (Benson, 1974). Further, in order to offer a model for agency, the autobiographer must find a voice that articulates change through choices made and actions taken that readers may emulate. Voices under study include Marjory Stoneman Douglas, (Voice of the River); Sally Carrighan (Home to the Wilderness;) Lois Gibbs, (Love Canal: My Story); Sandra Steingraber (Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment); Susanne Antonetta, (Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir); Terry Tempest Williams, (Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place); Helen Caldicott, (A Desperate Passion); Irene Diamond, (Fertile Ground); T. Louise Freeman-Toole (Standing Up to the Rock); and Julia "Butterfly" Hill (The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods).

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Benson (1974) illustrated the inadequacy of the "passive figure of growth" (p. 9) to explain the transformative changes recounted in the Autobiography of Malcolm X and proposes the term enlargement to best describe the rhetorical structure of Malcolm's autobiography. To account for the enduring appeal of The Autobiography in spite of the apparent contradictions in Malcolm's rhetoric, Benson (1974) read the changes in Malcolm's life as a drama that encompasses the defeat of racism, white and black, and the embrace of a common humanity (pp. 12-13). The term enlargement best captures the "drama—an enactment of conflict," in Malcolm's defeat of racism's power as a motivation for action (Benson, 1974, p. 9). In this sense, the term enlargement provides a locus for reading autobiography that moves beyond the individual accomplishments or failures of the narrator and offers readers a rhetoric of personal agency and social change. As Gerda Lerner (2002) wrote of her autobiography, Fireweed: A Political Autobiography, "When I think of writing about my life, it has to do with ordering, finding a form, even though one knows precisely the pretense of such an effort, its artifice (p. 1)." The critic of movement autobiography must discover the rhetorical form in the writer's voice that best elucidates the relationship between narrator, reader, and social action. Benson (1974) distinguished a rhetorical reading of autobiography from a literary one: "In a rhetorician's view, the aim is not to purify the work of any taint of the real world. It is not how close to pure form the autobiography becomes, but how the work relates form to audience and external world that holds the interest of the rhetorical critic" (p. 8). This chapter borrows Benson's use of the figure of enlargement to examine the rhetoric of autobiography in Love Canal and Living Downstream. In different ways and for different reasons, both Gibbs and Steingraber felt constrained as public advocates. Gibbs experienced her role as mother and wife as confining and sought to enlarge her activities as a citizen. A scientist, Steingraber resisted the sanctions against personal history as evidence in ecological debate and argued for a human rights approach to public health in which individual ecological histories are shared as data. For Gibbs, the enlargement of her public voice paralleled an expanded movement into places of power central to her narrative. Finally, an enlargement is an image whose detail and beauty are enhanced through reproduction of increased scale, a metaphor that figures prominently in Steingraber's work. In the analysis that follows, the term enlargement is used to explore the autobiographical voice of Gibbs, housewife turned agitator for environmental justice, and Steingraber, survivor, scientist, and public advocate. Because the autobiographical voices of these rhetors are female, the history, constraints and stylistic devices of women as public advocates must be considered. WOMEN AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The autobiographical voice is fundamental to the style of discourse identified as consciousness-raising and of particular significance in women's advocacy. "It pro-

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ceeds inductively, moving from personal experiences toward generalizations that reflect the systemically shaped conditions of women generally" (Campbell, 1994, xix). Women's autobiographical writing is an important source of feminist critique and theory (Brownley & Kimmich, 1999; Jelinek, 1980) and is of special interest to rhetorical critics concerned with the discourse of movements to extend women's rights. The autobiographies of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Mary Church Terrell, Gerda Lerner, and others are primary sources for historical, sociological, and critical work exploring women's rights discourse and for explication of the formation of an activist consciousness in women. For example, Martha Watson's critical examination of women's autobiographies directs readers to women who "wrote their autobiographies precisely because of the roles that they played in efforts for women's rights" (1999, p. 2). Autobiography written by women's rights activists most commonly presents the status of women as rationale for personal disclosure and for the self-centered explorations autobiography demands. Women whose economic, social, and public lives were constrained by patriarchal traditions argue for change in women's status from traditional principles of human rights. Often they construct personal narratives in terms of freedom, equality, and justice denied. Although neither Gibbs nor Steingraber define themselves as feminists in these texts, their autobiographical rhetoric is replete with references for a reading of their work that privileges gender. Read in the context of women's history, the two decades that separate the writing of these texts contribute to the differing circumstances of each woman as a public advocate for environmental justice and each text adds to our understanding that public advocacy by women, no matter what the cause, cannot be realistically separated from issues of gender (Campbell, 1993, 1994). Gibbs was vilified as a "hysterical housewife," a derogatory term reserved for women only. A child of the fifties, she grew up with traditional expectations for herself as a woman. Yet her working class neighborhood was not far from Buffalo, New York, a city marked by political protest and confrontation throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Especially dominant were the activities associated with SUNY University at Buffalo and SUNY College at Buffalo State, including the early emergence of radical feminist groups and women's studies programs. Liz Kennedy, a founding mother of Women's Studies at the University, described the scene in the 1970s: Campus activists were making connections among various forms of social and political oppression. Learning was connected to activism, to building a movement for change, to challenging the state. Most important, faculty, students, staff, and community members had the idea that their action would make a difference. (p. 246)

Although during the Love Canal protests of 1978-79, pickets organized by Gibbs were frequently joined by activists from Buffalo (Hope, 2001), Gibbs described her community as one that distanced itself from political radicals. Before the crisis at Love Canal, and in sharp contrast to the feminists down the road, she

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repeatedly talks about herself as a traditional housewife with a high school education, happy with domestic life. In a preface to Gibbs' book, Levine wrote of Gibbs world, "Women's liberation was a subject for raucous humor among her friends" (Gibbs, 13). As shall be demonstrated in this paper, Gibbs' activism was marked by a troubled awareness that in 1978 to assume a public voice was to redefine herself in ways habitually disdained by family and friends, a change that immeasurably altered her personal relationships and her life. Steingraber, born in 1959, grew up in the 1960s, attended college and graduate school and planned early for a profession in science. By the time she wrote Living Downstream in 1996, two decades after the publication of Gibbs' Love Canal, Gibbs' work and that of other women had paved the way for citizen-activism in the cause of environmental justice. The voices of female public advocates were commonly heard for a variety of social and political causes and popular media had unabashedly declared a postfeminist age. Steingraber made strong appeals to women readers with a focus on women throughout her narrative. Rachel Carson's work and death is central to Steingraber's argument as is the death of her friend Jeannie Mitchell; she devotes pages of text to each. She writes passionately of the anonymous victims of breast cancer whose cell tissue is numbered for research and whose lives are compiled into statistics of death. Steingraber gives no indication in her book that she felt constrained by her sex, nor does she imply that environmental advocacy changed her life as a woman or as a wife. Neither Gibbs nor Steingraber define themselves in their work as ecofeminists. Neither argue that woman's identity is fundamentally connected to nature, or that women's oppression and environmental degradation are related, as many scholars postulate (Diamond, 1994; Griffin, 1978; Kolodny, 1975; Warren, 1997). Instead, Gibbs and Steingraber each use personal history to write herself as an evidentiary character in support of citizen action and environmental policy reform. RHETORICAL CONSTRAINTS

The primary subject in both Gibb's and Steingraber's narratives is the relationship between the autobiographer, a specific place and human health. Each advocates for environmental justice, citizen action and changes in public policy. Although separated by two decades, their similar focus reveals a shared pair of rhetorical constraints. Unlike the discourse of women's rights, rooted in traditional principles of human justice, the relationship of health to environment is primarily informed by scientific debate and frequently centered on a geography unremarkable as environmental landscape (Bruner & Oeschlaeger, 1998). Gibbs and Steingraber thus faced two rhetorical problems: first is the severe constraint against recasting the personal experience of private lives as evidence in the public discourse of science, and second is the gendered construction of what constitutes an environment worthy of public policy. As advocates for environmental justice both Gibbs and Steingraber chose to structure their narratives with autobiography in spite of the

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risks to their scientific credibility. In both works, geographies well outside traditional environmental concerns are the sites of their arguments. Because claims and counterclaims regarding the health consequences of environmental degradation are rooted in interpretations of scientific data, advocates who use personal experience and emotional appeals are open to charges of subjectivity, emotionalism, ignorance, and incredulity. Although the pure objectivity of scientific claims has long been a subject of debate and has emerged as an important issue in feminist theories of knowledge and rhetorical style (Campbell, 1994), the use of personal anecdote as evidence in scientific discourse is clearly problematic. (Keller, 1982; Rosser, 1988, 2000). When women attempt to redefine the terms of scientific discourse through the lens of their own lived experience, they are easily vilified, a problem confronted by Gibbs, a housewife and nonscientist, and the biological ecologist, Steingraber. Another rhetorical constraint for both Gibbs and Steingraber was the gendered division of place into pairings of domestic-female and wilderness-male, with only the latter understood to be environmentally significant (Hope, 2003). Historically the activities of traditional conservation and environmental organizations have worked to associate environmental issues with pristine sites and wilderness ecologies. Mountains and forests purported to be far removed from routine domesticity of habitation 3 have been primarily associated with men and traditionally male middle-class leisure adventures such as hunting, camping, fishing, and hiking. Women like Julia "Butterfly" Hill, who presumed to boldly occupy a wilderness site and make a redwood tree her dwelling, confounded perceptions of environmentalism, as well as gender (Schaumann, 2001; Wilson, 1999). Domestic places of home and community, traditionally associated with women and women's roles entered the environmental lexicon only in the last quarter of the 20th century, largely due to the advocacy of women (Changing face of the environmental community, 2001). The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice founded and directed by Gibbs was in the vanguard of environmental justice organizations and provides a compelling model for community organizing. Such organizations are frequently founded, organized, led, and staffed by women, including an increasing number of women of color (Taylor, 1997) and focus on what Layne calls the toxic assaults of domestic spaces—communities, homes, workplaces, and farms (2001). As both cause and consequence of the dominant role of women in environmental justice organizations, issues that fall within the traditional topoi of 3

Many scholars explore the making of the myth of 'uninhabited wilderness.' For example see Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory, (1995): Like all gardens, Yosemite presupposed barriers against the beastly. But its protectors reversed conventions by keeping the animals in and the humans out. So both the mining companies who had first penetrated this area of the Sierra Nevada and the expelled Ahwahneechee Indians were carefully and forcibly edited out of the idyll. (pp. 7-8).

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domesticity, for example, children, nurturing, health, and community, have slowly entered the mainstream of environmental discourse. Internationally the Goldman Prize recognizes grass roots activism for the environment, and at the national level politicians speak to issues of health and environment, as evidenced by a speech to the National Press Club by Senator Hillary Clinton: "I believe the time has come for us to fight back at the national level.... In that way we can learn more about the linkage between disease and the environment and we can begin to do more to break the connection and improve public health" (2001). A number of sources report on potential connections between illness and environmental toxins and attempt to teach citizens to conduct and organize their own local research. For example the internet site, Health-Track, provides information on "your heath, your community, and your right to know" (http://www.health-track.org). A plethora of highly publicized legal battles and confrontational citizen actions have become common items in the press (DeLuca, 1999). In popular films such as "Erin Brockovich," and "A Civil Action," debate about environmental degradation has increasingly been framed within the context of human illness, environmental justice and citizen action. Given this shift in public consciousness, it is instructive to recall that in 1978, when the crisis at Love Canal linking community illness and a toxic dump was first reported in the media, Lois Marie Gibbs was dismissed as a hysterical housewife. THE HYSTERICAL HOUSEWIFE AT LOVE CANAL

For women, aspersions of emotionalism easily conflate into hysteria, a term historically tainted with uterine derivations that linger even in post-Freudian times. As Killingsworth and Palmer pointed out in their study, "The Discourse of Environmentalist Hysteria" (1995), when applied to environmentalists, hysterical implies a phobia of technological progress. The label hysteric attacks intellectual character and questions the very ability of the advocate to separate objective fact from egocentric fictions. Housewife is a term that epitomizes the wedding of women's bodies to places of indoor confinement and encapsulates the traditional gender divisions of spatial boundaries. In addition, the term housewife codifies economic dependence, powerlessness, and an existential purpose narrowed to repetitive chores. The terms homemaker and stay-at-home mom attempt to redeem the derogatory housewife by presenting women as the owners of domestic nurturing space, but by implication these terms strongly reinforce a border between the private space of wives and mothers and the public sphere of civic engagement. 4 Thus, the combined pejorative hysterical housewife denies the subjective, emotional voice of the feminine style as appropriate to objective scientific discourse For a classic visual representation of the homemaker see Nickolas Muray's photo shot for McCall's Magazine, "Homemaking Cover," 1939. George Eastman International Museum of Photography. Rochester, New York.

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and at the same time demeans the confines of domestic place as feminine, weak, and irrelevant to environmental policy debate. In spite of being vilified as the original hysterical housewife, Gibbs made Love Canal, toxic dumps, and the connections between environment and community health a national issue. Like Love Canal, the place, Lois Gibbs, the person, became a highly charged symbol in public discourse. As an outspoken, young suburban mother-her frustration, outrage, and pathos lent the Love Canal news story an attractive human face. Murray Levine's introduction to the 1982 edition of Love Canal: My story was reprinted in the 1998 edition4, and stressed Gibbs' youth, (she was 27), and her ordinariness as a women busy with her life as wife and mother: Harry and Lois both worked to save for the down payment for their home, but when their children were born, Lois stopped working and stayed home, cooking, cleaning, gardening, and sewing. Women's liberation was a subject for raucous humor among her friends. Neither she nor Harry was involved in community organizations, nor did either have more than a passing interest in politics (pp. 13-14).

Reissued as Love Canal: The Story Continues, the reprinted text included a new forward by Ralph Nader who testified to Gibb's working-class background, "She grew up in a blue-collar community just outside of Niagara Falls and was one of six children. Her father was a bricklayer who worked in the steel mills and her mother was a full-time homemaker" (Gibbs, 1998, p. xii). Nader also wrote of the wide influence of Gibbs' work on the environmental justice movement: "At Love Canal, with the nation watching, Lois proved that an 'average' person could become empowered enough to change not only her life, but also the lives of others" (Gibbs, 1998, p. xiv). Both Levine and Nader use the opportunity to promote citizen action as they make rebuttal to those who attempted to discredit Gibbs and the "housewife's data" her organization gathered (Gibbs, 1998, p.102). Yet the hyperbolic promotion of Gibbs threatens to reduce her to a mythical hero, weakening the potential of her influence as a realistic model for action. In this chapter, I argue that the rhetoric of Gibbs' autobiographical voice in Love Canal succeeds in providing readers a model who is neither hysterical housewife nor working-class hero, but a woman who overcomes the constraints of traditional womanhood in order to achieve public agency. Gibbs' experience and that of others at Love Canal set the mark for grassroots community organizing by women who were first and foremost mothers and wives and created the agenda for the burgeoning environmental justice movement. In writing Love Canal, Gibbs demonstrated few literary aspirations beyond accessibility and inspiration, stating that her overriding goal was to empower "ordinary" readers: "I want to tell you our story—my story—because I believe that ordinary citizens ... can influence solutions to important problems in our society" (1998, p. 19). Gibbs's appeal is built on strategies of identification that include both the substance of her story and the style of her telling. She reminded readers that she was

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"just a housewife with a high-school education" (1998, p. 158) but that "we won the fight" (1998, p.19). If Gibbs is to achieve her goals, readers of Love Canal must be convinced that they too can overcome the powerlessness of their own situations through the agency of community action. Reading the text as a drama of enlargement reveals the rhetorical power and strategy of Gibbs' autobiographical voice. Two enlargement narratives are connected throughout the text. The first is the story of Gibbs's changing moral vision, from that of a woman "interested only in myself and my child," (1998, p. 28) into one of a national leader for environmental justice. Gibbs's expeditions from the security of her small suburban home into increasingly public spaces provide a second drama of enlargement and supports her widening vision. It is on the streets of her working-class neighborhood, motivated by frustration, shock, and rage, where Gibbs first finds her voice as community organizer. The use of public places as the sites for her transformative conflicts with institutions of power is particularly effective for readers similarly situated, and detailed descriptions of each confrontation provide a step by step manual for overcoming self-doubt. Gibbs offers her experience in the voice of an intimate friend; as a woman speaking to other women, a mother to mothers, and as a working-class neighbor she invites readers to experience what she experienced and to respond the way she responded—with outrage and action. Initially, the more she learned about Love Canal the more incredulous she became, and the early sections of the book resound with colloquialisms to register her shock with her readers. She confided and highlighted the naivete of her early responses: on the historical collusion between Niagara Falls city officials and Hooker Chemical to profit from the site at the expense of school children, "I was stunned" (1998, p. 28); on the inaction of New York State officials, "I couldn't believe what I was hearing," (1998, p. 38); and especially on the toxicity of the dump, and the sickness all around her, "Everything was unbelievable," (1998, p. 34). Much later, in 1979, when events have led to direct confrontations with Governor Carey and the State Health Commissioner she wrote: "I never thought anything I heard from the state would surprise me again, but I was wrong" (1998, p. 144). Gibbs detailed the private moments when her intellectual and emotional surprise turned to outrage, motivating the young mother's development of a social conscience and propelling her into the larger society as a moral leader. Her transformation is presented to readers as a drama in which she conquered her own ignorance and moreover, she abandoned her innocence as a trusting wife and citizen. Love Canal: My Story (1982) covers the few years from 1978 to 1980 when President Carter finally signed the order to relocate more than 800 families out of the toxic neighborhood. The initial episode of Gibbs' story contains the major acts of the drama: A widening of her concerns about her child's health to include the health of people everywhere threatened by toxic assault; the concurrent unraveling of her faith in government officials and her determination to do something, the throwing off of her confines as a housewife; and her developing skill as a public advocate in ever larger places of power.

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Gibbs is slow to connect her life with a series of news stories in the Niagara Falls Gazette about a nearby chemical dump written by reporter Mike Brown in 1978. She pointedly described her inattentiveness and apathy: "Although I read the articles, I didn't pay much attention to them"(1998, p. 27). Thinking the contaminated area was across town, she thought it "terrible" that a school is built on the dump,"... but I lived on the other side ... Those poor people over there ... were the ones who had to worry. The problem didn't affect me, so I wasn't going to bother doing anything about it, and I certainly wasn't going to speak out about it" (1998, p. 27). After realizing that the 99th Street school her son attended was the school on the dump, Gibbs's first response was to get her child out. She called the superintendent of schools and the president of the PTA for help in transferring the boy. When neither obliged, she obtained letters from physicians attesting to the child's susceptibility to chemicals, his asthma and his newly developed epilepsy. Again, her request was denied on the grounds that, "if the area were contaminated ... then all the children should be removed and ... that they weren't about to close the 99th Street school" (1998, p. 29). Furious, Gibbs decided to talk to the people who live on 99th Street to see if any other parents felt as she did, and to see "if something could be done," remarking, "At the time, though, I didn't really think of this as 'organizing' (1998, p. 29). Gibbs account of her venture out into the neighborhood frames and situates her transformation. She recalled the decision to leave the kitchen, the house, and her street to "knock on doors" as "terrifying": "I had never done anything like this and I was frightened. I was afraid a lot of doors would be slammed in my face, that people would think I was some crazy fanatic" (1998, p. 30). No one answered the first door and "perspiring," Gibbs thought: "What am I doing here? I must be crazy. People are going to think I am.. Go home, you fool! And that's just what I did " (1998, p. 30). Gibbs retreats back to her house, to her kitchen table and sits, to "build my self-confidence". The following day she tried again, this time going only to the homes of close friends and people she knew. Finding many people wanted to talk, hearing more and more stories of sickness, dying pets and vegetation, Gibbs is moved to spend the summer knocking on doors with a petition to have children transferred from the school. She "develops a set speech" (1998, p. 32) and alerted her readers to the changes she felt as she covered more neighborhood territory. "Something began to happen to me as I went around talking to these people" (1998, p. 31). As she spent more time on the public streets, she described the problems of keeping up with her domestic chores, and appealed to her readers for sympathy in understanding her transformation from housewife to organizer and the conscious abandonment of her previous identity. As is characteristic, her voice is intimate and confessional: It was hot and humid that summer. My mother kept saying I was crazy to do it. I was losing weight, mainly because I didn't have much time to eat. My house was a mess because I wasn't home. Dinner was late and Harry sometimes was upset. Between the kids and the heat, I was getting very tired. But something drove me on (1998, p. 31).

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Her dutiful attention to household and motherly chores weakened as her commitment to the Love Canal crisis increases. Once, coming home late, hungry and exhausted from a crisis meeting, she absentmindedly ate three quarters of a cake her neighbor had prepared for Gibbs' 26-year-old son's birthday that Gibbs had forgotten. She told the story in two poignant pages and ended with this emotional entreaty to her son and, by implication, to her readers: "I was angry. I could have cried ... It was Michael's birthday and I didn't have a gift. No cake. Nothing ... I hope Michael will understand and that he will forgive me someday" (1998, p. 74). Gibbs' continuing journey through her community increased her anger. The new awareness that her moral responsibility goes beyond her son and the 99th Street school began a career of agitation that is marked by movement into public places of power. Section titles throughout the book reflect the significance Gibbs gave her new mobility: "Knocking on Doors," (1998, p. 30), "A Meeting in Albany" (1998, p. 45), "A Street Meeting" (1998, p. 52), "A Meeting at The White House" (1998, p. 68), and "Another Trip to Washington" (1998, p. 155), signaled her newly emerging self. She began in Buffalo at the University and at Roswell Park Cancer Center, to seek help and information. After months of inaction, state officials finally hold a public meeting about Love Canal in Albany, over 300 miles away. With a group of neighbors Gibbs traveled to Albany—her first visit to the capital—and confided: We were flabbergasted ... There we were in the state capital with its large beautiful buildings that reminded us somewhat of a city in a science-fiction movie. They must have cost billions. On the other side, however, right next to the state capital, were poor people who spent their lives in crowded dingy buildings. Something is wrong with the way we do things, I thought. (1998, p. 48)

During this first Albany meeting, Gibbs found herself publicly confronting state officials. The group had been told that pregnant women and children under two should leave the Love Canal area. "With that I almost lost my cool... I was furious. I jumped up and said to Commissioner Whalen, If the dump will hurt pregnant women and children under two, what for God's sake, is it going to do to the rest of us!? What do you think you're doing?' Now very emotional, I said, 'You can't do that! That would be murder!'" (1998, p.49). Elected president of the Homeowner's association, Gibbs learned to run a meeting and handle the media, and overcame accusations by other homeowners at Love Canal that she was "in it for the publicity" (1998, p. 142). Undeterred by advice to go back to her kitchen, she is coached in public speaking by her brother-in-law, and becomes a noisy irritant to Governor Carey, the State Health Department and many legislative committees. As a guest on the Phil Donahue television show, she travels to Philadelphia and argued with the mayor of Niagara Falls on national television. Finally Gibbs appeared at hearings in Washington, DC and eventually meets with President Carter.

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As Gibbs moved out from her house and into places of power, she continued to report her anger, determination, and tactics in the voice of the neighbor next door. But she is no longer the housewife she was; by 1981 Gibbs had created and entered a much larger world than that she inhabited in 1978. By book's end, Gibbs occupies a higher moral ground as a result of moving beyond the housewife role that had earlier kept her silent. As Gibbs occupied a larger and larger moral space, so too could others move out of domestic confinements and into the largeness of the public world. Gibbs opened her life for examination by other citizens in a chronology of the events at Love Canal. However, as an autobiographer, she leaves much unsaid. For example, it is a full 17 years later, in a brief afterward to the second edition of Love Canal that readers learn of her divorce "as a result of Love Canal" (1998, p. 220). She wrote: Harry wanted me to return home and pick up where we had left off. This meant being a full-time homemaker. I, on the other hand, felt I had a serious responsibility to share what we had learned through our struggle at Love Canal with members of other communities who called almost daily asking for information and help (1998, p. 221).

Although keeping private the details of her dissolving marriage, Gibbs reported that she had become a different person, larger than what she was before, "I grew through the Love Canal process and, to a certain extent, outgrew my husband ... The whole world had changed for me" (1998, p. 221). Richard Newman (2001), currently at work on a 100 year environmental history of Love Canal writes: "Gibbs's autobiography is ... the first grassroots rejoinder to the classic environmental literature in that it is aimed specifically at the ordinary citizen trapped in a precarious environmental state" (2001, p. 78). Educating herself about the connections between government, politics, and media, about toxic waste disposal and about community organizing, Gibbs' recreated a larger self through a dramatic story she offered as one her readers can emulate. Gibbs continued influence is testimony to the success of her rhetoric. A 1990 winner of the prestigious international Goldman Prize in Environmental Activism, Gibbs is the founder and executive director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. She continues to tell her story, providing information, training, and inspiration for environmental justice groups all over the world. THE SURVIVOR FROM CENTRAL ILLINOIS

Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment is described by Steingraber as a search for her "ecological roots" (1997, p. xv). Her decision to "include the deeply personal" in her book (1997, p. xv) confronted directly the constraint on using the subjective voice in scientific discourse. Likewise, her focus on the deep ecology of the "utterly unexceptional" place of central Illinois (p. xv) challenges traditional assumptions of landscape as pristine spectacle common in environmental discourse. Like Gibbs, Steingraber created two narratives, both of

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which can be read as rhetorics of enlargement. The first narrative is Steingraber's challenge to the scientific community to enlarge the scientific voice. The second story of enlargement is to turn a magnifying lens on herself and the place of her youth. Steingraber's rhetorical strategy is analogous to that depicted in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blow-Up, in which a murder is accidentally uncovered through information revealed by multiple enlargements of a photograph. In this sense Steingraber enlarges private ecological snapshots of herself and one place in Illinois to make visible hundreds of clues otherwise concealed—clues connecting environments and cancer. Steingraber's story is told as a mystery in which she is both victim and scientific investigator. In this dual role, she challenged the confining demands of scientific impersonality, and framed her cancer narrative in a voice enlarged by her individual history and by her extraordinary knowledge of place. Unlike Gibbs, Steingraber's public voice was not constrained by the traditional female role, but as a scientist she confronted a strong tradition of professional silence about personal experience—a tradition she determined to break open. Addressing both "ordinary citizens" and "sympathetic researchers," (1997, p. 79) Steingraber's careful balance of scientific instruction and autobiographical reference provided pragmatic and poetic guidance for readers to conduct similar investigations of their own histories of place. Metaphors of detection inform the text: "... brilliant environmental sleuthing ..." and "heroic perseverance by ordinary citizens" working together with "sympathetic researchers" have resulted in some success at documenting links between cancer and toxins, she wrote (1997, p. 79). Steingraber used two investigative tools related respectively to space and time; data on environmental contamination newly available through federal right-to-know laws, and data on cancer incidence rates, available through cancer registries. She is careful to refrain from premature claims: "Like the assembling of a prehistoric animal's skeleton, this careful piecing together of evidence can never furnish final or absolute answers" (1997, p. 29) but she argues that in the face of incomplete evidence, precautionary policy regarding environmental toxins is a human right. Scientists who construct argument from autobiographical reference are harshly disparaged as unscientific and subjective; when the scientist is a woman, such accusations can easily negate her professional identity. Michael Bryson described some responses to Living Downstream from critics who "claim that Steingraber's scientific critique is poorly executed, unpersuasive and contaminated ... by her personal narrative" (2001, p. 177). Yet Steingraber refused to be reduced to a scientist without human history. Instead she argued for a human justice approach to cancer research, based on scientific methods, individual knowledge and experience, and the right of people to know their ecological roots. Like Gibbs, Steingraber refused to accept the confines of an identity demanding silence, and presented her personal history as an enlargement of the scientific voice. However it is her references to Rachel Carson that best make clear the reasons Steingraber

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chose to risk her credibility as a scientist in order to more powerfully make her case as a survivor and advocate. Carson was an inspirational source for Steingraber's writings and the subject of much consideration in the text. Carson is both mentor and accomplice to Steingraber's disclosures, and Steingraber alternates reflections on Carson's life and work with her own. Like Steingraber and her friend Jennine Marshall, Carson fell victim to cancer and like Marshall, Carson died of the disease. Well aware of the pitfalls of 'contaminating' her scientific persona, Carson meticulously avoided self reference in The Silent Spring and Steingraber mused over Carson's decision in the chapter titled "Silence": "Rachel strictly forbade any discussion, public or private, about her illness. This decision was intended to retain the appearance of scientific objectivity as she was documenting the human cost of environmental contamination" (1997, p. 25). Yet Carson's attacks on corporate and chemical interest groups, and the apocalyptic "Fable for Tomorrow," were used to brand her an hysteric; a charge still alive: While granting the beauty and challenge of Carson's accomplishment, then, we must on final analysis admit that there remains a trace of unresolved hysteria in the rhetoric of Silent Spring, which if left unexamined, is liable to prove detrimental to the health of the emerging environmentalist ego. (Killingsworth & Palmer, 1995, p.15).

Steingraber was ready to confront similar accusations when using her private life to enter public debate, but the professional risk did not compare to the pain she read in the correspondence between Carson and Carson's friend Dorothy Freeman: "Rachel instructed Dorothy to say nothing of her condition ... If need be, Dorothy was to lie.'... Say ... that you never saw me look better. Please say that.'" (1997, p. 25). For Steingraber, there is "a personal price each of these women paid for upholding the code of silence ..." (1997, p. 25). Further, Steingraber insisted that personal silence allows public complicity in ignoring the truth: Carson's state of health should have been obvious to anyone who cared to look at her ... In ... photographs [Carson] looks for all intents and purposes like a woman in treatment for cancer. She wears an unfortunate black wig. Her face and neck exhibit the distorting puffmess characteristic of radiation. She holds herself in the ginger, upright manner of one who has undergone surgery. (1997, pp. 25-26.)

Using the language of vision to oppose the self-censuring silence of others, Steingraber added, "But not seeing is another form of silence" (1997, p. 25). Steingraber then, takes the opposite tack from Carson's silence and refuses to present herself as a scientific voice without a body or a past. Visual metaphors and the language of looking are stylistically significant in the rhetoric of Living Downstream and occur throughout the book. "Making visible the links between cancer and environmental contamination was challenging for Carson, and the task continues to be daunting" (1997, p. 27). In her autobiographical references, Steingraber "makes visible" her life's connection to the land, water, and air of Il-

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linois as a model for her argument that we all have the "right to know our ecological histories." For Steingraber, a "human rights" approach to cancer research depends on the abilities of individuals to reveal and share environmental histories of place. "In this, the story of central Illinois is utterly unexceptional. It receives my scientific attention not because its history is so unusual but because it is so typical. It receives my devotional attention because central Illinois is the source of my ecological roots, and my search for these roots is part of the story "(Steingraber, 1997, p. xv). Steingraber wished to reveal what can only be seen by extremes of magnification. In a chapter detailing the occurrence of cancer in animals, Steingraber wrote, "I wish the [diseased] flounder beds were as visible to us as the bright interior of a Smithsonian diorama" (1997, p. 144). She analyzed the impact of pesticides and herbicides prevalent in Illinois-grown soybeans and corn but led readers to their invisible presence by describing in painterly language her own Boston kitchen. "I like fruit in the fruit bowl, greens in the crisper, a sack of onions in the cupboard, potatoes under the sink, a wreath of garlic bulbs nailed to the wall. The more dirt on the carrots the better. I like to visualize my food growing in the field" (1997, p. 149). Explaining the research of epidemiologists, Steingraber wrote, "Epidemiologists investigate patterns of diseases in human populations. They look at the world through a wide-angle lens" (1997, p. 73). By concentrating her eye on the prairie of Illinois only because she grew up there, Steingraber confronted directly the tradition of mainstream environmental organizations to focus on places extraordinary in geographic and ecological features. "In Illinois, a capillary bed of creeks, streams, forks, and tributaries lies over the land.... And this is only the water that is visible. Under your feet lie pools of groundwater held in shallow aquifers—interbedded lenses of sand and gravel—and in the bedrock valleys of ancient rivers that lie below" (1997, p. 2). She also offered her readers poetic ways to reexamine personal geographic histories. In addition to the visual images presented as enlargements of scientific fact, Steingraber presented childhood memories of her home state as a place of magic and visual mystery: On a clear night after the harvest, central Illinois becomes a vast and splendid planetarium ... When I look out the window, the black sky is so inseparable from the plowed, black earth—which dots are stars and which are farmhouse lights?—that it seems I am floating in a great, dark, glittering bowl. (1997, p. 1)

The vivid descriptions of land, earth, space, and water enlivened her scientific investigation of growing up downstream from pollutants and provided relief from the careful interpretation of data. As a place, Illinois is neither pristine nor wild, but ordinary and commonly polluted. The book's chapters telescope in and out between the devotional attention of the survivor and the scientific attention of the researcher. Some chapters provide tightly focused close-ups of a personal event before opening out to view a scientific pattern, others loosely describe a small personal memory before magnifying a complicated scientific detail. Transitions from personal to scientific and back

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again make the links visible. For example, the chapter explaining cancer registries is titled Time and opens with this sentence: "Like a jury's verdict or an adoption decree, a cancer diagnosis is an authoritative pronouncement, one with the power to change your identity" (1997, p. 31). A brief description of Steingraber's emotional reaction to her diagnosis of bladder cancer follows: The scene I happen to remember most vividly—and this must have occurred weeks after my discharge from the hospital—is unlocking my door and discovering that my roommate had moved out. She did not want to live with a cancer patient. This was my redefining moment. Fifteen years later, the sight of a bare mattress can still cause me to burst into tears. (1997, p. 32).

While the bulk of the chapter described methods of statistic gathering, the problems, findings, research funding, data, and expert conclusions, Steingraber's transitions from the voice of the young cancer patient into the voice of the scientist illustrated her ability to infuse even the driest text with human affect." In 1995, an estimated 1.2 million people in the United States—thirty-four hundred people a day—were told they had cancer. Each of these diagnoses is a border crossing, the beginning of an unplanned and unchosen journey. There is a story behind each one" (1997, p. 32). Although bladder cancer was the disease she fought within her own body, it is Steingraber's stories of breast cancer that are particularly powerful for women readers. Although generations apart, the lives and deaths of Rachel Carson, Steingraber's intellectual mentor, and Jeannie Mitchell, Steingraber's friend, shape the narrative and motivate Steingraber's determination to enlarge her own voice. Five pages of thick numerical analysis of cancer incidence over time are interrupted by memories of Jeannie Mitchell's death in Boston, "The whole concept of time was unbearable. I wanted to be back in Illinois in the middle of winter. I wanted to walk across frozen fields. No ocean. No leaves. No boats. She was gone" (1997, p. 40). More pages of analysis of cancer types; lung cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, are interspersed by a short description of Steingraber's visit to Jeannie's grave and another memory: Last summer she waited with me for hours at the ultrasound clinic. 'They had a hard time seeing what they wanted to see,' I reported back to her as we finally walked out the door. 'And then one of the technicians looked at the image in the monitor and whistled.' She laughed. 'You know that ranks right up there with 'Hey, nice tits!' (1997, p. 46)

Steingraber's autobiographical voice is thus insistently human and especially female, giving readers a way to connect individual lives to scientific data. The mystery of environmental links to cancer is not solved in this text, but the rhetorical strategy of enlargement provides readers an understanding of the complexities of place and the tools to begin their own investigations. Steingraber's latest book continues to reach out to women. Having Faith: An Ecologisf's Journey to Motherhood

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(2001), chronicled stage by stage her own pregnancy (with her daughter Faith), an investigation of fetal toxicology and the effects of environmental toxins on fetal development and health. CONCLUSION

The autobiographical voice creates a compelling rhetorical structure in Gibbs' Love Canal and Steingraber's Living Downstream. Both authors use the experience and history of illness in their own lives to advocate for environmental actions that connect citizens to science and geographic place to human health. Gibbs confessed her psychological and intellectual journey from parochial housewife to international leader for community organizing in environmental action. Her transformation is further marked by a physical liberation from the domestic space of her home to sites of public power and policy. Steingraber rebels against the silence of her intellectual mother, Rachel Carson, and refuses to keep the secrets of her own bodily illness from the public eye. In rejecting the traditional separation of scientific data from lived experience Steingraber developed what she called a human rights approach to ecology and disease. Her meditations on breast cancer, especially, invite women to reconcile their own sense of privacy with public action. Her moral stance positions the right to know our ecological histories with good science. The figure of enlargement provides a reading of both narratives that enables readers to use the texts as inspiration and models for action. As Benson (1974) indicated in his original analysis of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, for autobiography to work as a rhetorical form, the motive for the narrator's actions must be made "available to ... readers, who are invited to assume their roles as actors in the drama of enlargement and reconciliation" (Benson, 1974, p. 13). Both Gibbs and Steingraber invited their readers to overcome political indifference (and potential victimization) by overturning constraining roles through citizen action. Gibbs overcame these obstacles by giving readers a dramatic story of her personal conquest as evidence of the crisis. Even as she is initially motivated by her role as a mother, she moves beyond the silence of the housewife to community organizer and public watchdog. Intentionally throwing off a confining identity, Gibbs inspired her readers that they could do the same. She challenged traditional perceptions of a woman's place and in spite of her early timidity, occupied larger and more public spaces, turning the "typical ... lovely neighborhood ... of neat bungalows," and "lots of trees," that was Love Canal into a nationally publicized battleground for environmental responsibility (Gibbs, 1998, p. 26). Steingraber's professional credibility as an ecologist is the identity she brings to her narrative and the scientist's voice dominates the book. Yet because she is determined to make real the possible connections between cancer and environment she alternates the voice of the scientist with her own voice as a cancer survivor. Pres-

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enting herself as the intellectual daughter of Rachel Carson, Steingraber enlarged her identity as a scientist by putting her individual self back into the discourse, a diseased self Carson had purposefully held silent. By creating herself inclusive of illness, passion, and sorrow, Steingraber's autobiographical voice works as a lens for readers to see what has previously been invisible in science and in the environment. Steingraber thus defies the constraint against subjectivity in scientific discourse by giving a voice and a life to the scientific persona. In the same way, she enlarges the details of ecology and cancer, striving to make the clues of mysterious connections visible. Both women also subvert the gendered construction of place traditional to the history of environmentalism by focusing on ordinary communities far from the wilderness of conservation posters. Although both titles indicate physical spaces, Love Canal: My Story merges Gibbs' identity with the crisis of a place. Living Downstream: An Ecologist looks at Cancer and the Environment, immediately identifies the author as a scientist—indeed an ecologist with expert credentials. In describing their relationships with place, Gibbs and Steingraber see their two environments differently. The Love Canal neighborhood is but minutes from the magnificent geology of Niagara Falls, but Gibbs never mentions its beauty or the position of the Niagara river in the flow of Great Lakes water. Steingraber, writing about what she called the "unexceptional nature of Central Illinois," dwelled on the wonder of landscape, rivers and sky, "the extraordinary beauty" of this "ordinary" place (1997, p. xiv-xv). There are other differences between these two books. Chronologically the narratives work from opposite points: Gibbs presses forward, starting with her own crisis in 1978, she keeps the promise of the future as motivation. She must get the families out, she must prepare for the next event, and she must plan finally her own departure from Love Canal, leaving the past and her past self behind. Steingraber moves the reader backwards, opening the text with her adult visit back to Illinois, she revisits the scenes of her childhood and her early cancer, and in exploring possible roots of her disease in the waters and lands of Illinois she even reconstructs geological time for her readers' instruction. Gibbs, charismatic community organizer, was a self-identified "housewife with a high-school education" from a working-class culture as different from Steingraber, an accomplished poet-scientist with a Ph.D. in biology, as they both are from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Julia Butterfly Hill, and the countless others of women environmentalists around the globe who have elected to tell their stories in the service of environmental advocacy. Yet their narratives echo each other, resounding with the power of autobiography as dramas of enlargement for readers across the globe. No doubt, upon investigation, the writings of other women environmentalists will reveal different rhetorical strategies, but in these two authors advocacy for environmental justice has been enlarged immeasurably by the autobiographical voice.

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REFERENCES Antonetta, S. (2001). Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir. NY: Counterpoint Press. Benson, T. W. (February 1974). Rhetoric and Autobiography: The Case of Malcolm X. Quarterly Journal of Speech, V. 60, p.1-13. Brownley, M. W. & Kimmich, A. B. (Eds.). (1999). Women and autobiography. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc. Bruner, M., & Oelschlaeger, M. (1994). Rhetoric, environmentalism and environmental ethics. Environmental Ethics, 16, 377-396. Bryson, M. (2001). It's worth the risk: Science and autobiography in Sandra Steingraber's Living Downstream. Women's Studies Quarterly: Earthwork, 29, (1 & 2), 170-182. Caldicott, H. (1996). A Desperate Passion. NY: W. W. Norton. Campbell, K. K. (Ed.) (1993). Introduction. In Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925: A bio-critical sourcebook. (pp. xi-xxi). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Campbell, K. K. (Ed.) ( 1994). Introduction. In Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1925-1993: a bio-critical sourcebook. (pp. xi-xxiii). Westport CT: Greenwood Press. Carrighan, S. (1973). Home to the wilderness. NY: Houghton Mifflin. Changing face of the environmental community, (2001) The Wilderness Society's Quarterly Newsletter, 3, (3), 6. Clinton, H. R. (2001, July 19). National Press Club luncheon remarks. Available at: http://clinton.senate.gOv/~clinton/speeches/010719.html. Davis, A. Y. (1974). Angela Davis: An Autobiography. NY: Random House. DeLuca, K. M. (1999). Image politics: The new rhetoric of environmental activism. New York: Guilford Press. Diamond, I. (1994). Fertile ground. Boston: Beacon Press. Douglas, Frederick. (1845). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas, an American slave. Boston: Anti Slavery Office. Douglas, M. S. (1987). Voice of the River: An Autobiography. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press. Freeman-Toole, T. L. (2001). Standing Up to the Rock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gibbs, L. M. (1982). Love Canal: My story. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Gibbs, L. M. (1997). Taking action in your community. Caroline Werner Gannett Lecture Series, Environment and Citizenship. Undistributed videotape. Educational Technology Center, Wallace Memorial Library, Rochester Institute of Technology. Gibbs, L. M. (1998). Love Canal: The Story Continues. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers. Griffin, C. J. G. (1990). The rhetoric of form in conversion narratives. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 76(2), 152-163. Griffin, C. J. G. (2000). Movement as motive: Self-definition and social advocacy in social movement autobiographies. Western Journal of Communication, 64(2), 148-164. Griffin, S. (1978). Woman, and nature: The roaring inside her. NY: Harper & Row. Hill, J. B. (2000). The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a tree, a woman and the struggle to save the Redwoods. San Francesco: Harper. Hope, D. S. ( 2003). Gendered environments in advertising images. In M. Helmers, & C. Hill (Eds.), Defining visual rhetoric, pp. 155-177. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hope, D. S. (2001). The places of earthwork: women and environments. Women's Studies Quarterly ( D. S. Hope, Guest Editor) Earthwork: Women and Environments, 29, (1 & 2), 6-11. Jacobs, H. (1861). Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Temacula: Classic Textbooks. Jelinek, E. (1980) Women's autobiography: Essays in criticism. Bloomington, IN: University Press Keller, E. F. (1982) Feminism and science. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 7, (3), 589-602.

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Kennedy, E. L. (2000). Dreams of social justice. In F. Howe (Ed.), The politics of women's studies. (pp. 244-263) NY: The Feminist Press. Killingsworth, M. J. & Palmer, J. S. (1995). The Discourse of Environmentalist Hysteria, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81, 1-19. Kolodny, A. (1975). The lay of the land: Metaphor as experience and history in American life and letters. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Layne, L. (2001). In search of community: Tales of pregnancy loss in three toxically assaulted U.S. communities. Women's Studies Quarterly (D.S. Hope, Guest Editor) Earthwork: Women and Environments, 29, (1 & 2), 25-50. Lerner, G. (2002). Fireweed: a political autobiography. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Malcolm X. (1965). The autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Grove Press. Newman, R. (2001). Making environmental politics: Women and Love Canal activism. Women's Studies Quarterly: Earthwork, Women and Environments. 29, (1 & 2), 65-84. Rosser, S. (2000). Editorial. Women's Studies Quarterly: Building Inclusive Science, XXVIII, (1 &2), .6-ll. Rosser, S. V. (1988). Feminism within the science and healthcare professions: Overcoming resistance. Elmsford,, NY: Pergamon Press. Schama, S. (1995). Landscape and Memory. New York: Vintage Books. Schauman, S. (2001). Gender/ethnicity/landscape: Evolving a personal environmental ethic. Women's Studies Quarterly: Earthwork, 29, (1 & 2), 261-274. Solomon, M. (1991). Autobiographies as rhetorical narratives: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anna Howard Shaw as new women. Communication Studies, 42, 354-370. Steingraber, S. (1997). Living downstream: An ecologist looks at cancer and the environment. New York: Addison-Wesley. Steingraber, S. (1999). Living downstream: cancer & the environment. Caroline Werner Gannett Lecture Series, Environment and Citizenship. Undistributed video tape. Educational Resource Center, Wallace Memorial Library, Rochester Institute of Technology. Steingraber, S. (2001). Having Faith: An ecologist's journey to motherhood. New York: Oxford: Perseus Books. Steingraber, S. (2002). Website/biography, [on-line] Available at: http://www.steingraber.com Stone, A. E. (1972). 'Autobiography and American culture," American Studies: An International Newsletter, 12. Taylor, D. E. (1997). Women of color, environmental justice, and ecofeminism. In K. J. Warren (Ed.), Ecofeminism: Women, culture, nature. (pp. 38-81). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Warren, K. (Ed.) (1997). Ecofeminism: Women, culture, nature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Watson, M. (1999). Lives of her own; rhetorical dimensions in autobiographies of women activists. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Williams, T. T. (1991). Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. NY: Vintage Press. Wilson, N. (1999). Butterfly triumphs. Albion Monitor, [on-line]. Available at http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9912a/butterflydown.html

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CHAPTER SIX

At the 20th Century's Close: Framing the Public Policy Issue of Environmental Risk Donnalyn Pompper Florida State University

INTRODUCTION

This longitudinal study examined environmental risk1 representation among competing sources involved in complex environmental policy debates by scrutinizing how risk was framed for specific newspaper audiences during the late 20th century. This time period is especially important because it represents the final years of the millenium wherein the United States witnessed sweeping socioeconomic effects of the Industrial Revolution—including commercial land development, industrial toxic waste proliferation, and nuclear energy growth. By interpreting such consequences and providing rules of "how to select, order, and explain signals from the physical world," the news media have come to act as "amplification stations" (Kasperson, 1992, p. 159). In order to sort through a myriad of potential news items, journalists have come to rely on framing—a convention that involves "selecting and highlighting some features of reality while omitting others" (Entman, 1993, p. 53). Thus, this content analysis linked the arenas of mass communication, risk, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology to identify sourcing practices and to discover patterns among environmental risk frames used to appeal to particular social blocs. 1

The terms environmental risk and environmental risk issue are used synonymously in the current study. The terms were operationalized by combining definitions used in earlier environmental risk issue analyses: (e.g. Bowman & Hanaford, 1977; Downs, 1972; Lacey & Longman, 1993; Riechert, 1996; Riechert & Miller, 1994). A list of 59 key words used to collect news stories for analysis was developed based on these scholars' definitions. Obviously, key words used for the news story searches revealed some nonenvironmental risk issue stories. For example, the key word environment can be used to describe a work environment context. Similarly, the word nuclear might be used to describe a nuclear family or nuclear war. Such news stories are not relevant to the current study and were discarded by the principal researcher. Appropriate Boolean search syntax was used. (continued on next page)

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This study examined the New York Times, USA Today, and the National Enquirerbecause these three newspapers are distributed nationally, boast large circulations, and generally target readers of specific upper, middle, or lower socioeconomic class blocs. When viewed in the context of a news production continuum, these print media differentiate themselves from each other by targeting distinct cross-sections of the U.S. population. The New York Times is known as a mainstream, elite newspaper for the upper class. Since the days of yellow journalism, the New York Times has distinguished itself by stressing "information" over "story" in its writing style in order to appeal to a "relatively select, socially homogeneous readership of the well to do" (Schudson, 1978, p. 5). USA Today positions itself as a newspaper for everyone, particularly the large middle class in the United States. Its founder, Allen H. Neuharth, described the newspaper's niche: "[W]e'd be glad to let The New York Timeshave the top one or two percent of the intellectuals in the country" (Babcock, 1998, p. 2). Furthermore, it has been said that USA Today "is not in a league with, say, The New York Times," because this colorful, easy-to-read newspaper is produced for "real people" and "cater[sj to everyone's hometown" (Kurtz, 1998, p. 126). The National Enquirer, and other weekly tabloids produced for lower socioeconomic groups, are increasingly being recognized by scholars (Bird, 1990; Glynn, 1993; Hinkle & Elliott, 1989) and mainstream press, such as Newsweek (Pedersen, 1996), as worthy sites for study and news. Evi1

(continued)

Air

Fuel

Power

Atmosphere

Fungicide

Preserv!

Biodiversity

Garbage

Protect!

Chemical

Glob!

Quality

Clean-up

Habitat

Rare

Climate

Hazard!

Recycl!

Conserv!

Health

Resource!

Contaminat!

Herbicide

Restor! Risk

Danger!

Insecticide

Dump

Jungle

Safe!

Earth

Land

Save

Earth-Day

Litter

Scarce

Ecology

Natur!

Slaughter

Ecosystem

Nuclear

Solid-waste

Endanger!

Outdoors

Species

Energy

Pesticide

Toxi!

Environment!

Planet

Trash

Extinct!

Poach!

Water

Fertilizer

Poison!

Wildlife

Forest

Pollut!

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dence suggests that tabloids circulate most heavily among people who are marginalized by mainstream news media (Bird, 1992), and National Enquirer reporters write stories with this audience in mind (Barber, 1982). Environmental risk policy issues are far-reaching, complex, and controversial, thereby offering a universal context for mining the framing concept. Despite increased awareness of natural habitat damage, we still lack a global environmental ethic (Gare, 1995) or a coherent international legal or regulatory regime (Kasperson & Kasperson, 1991). Indeed, numerous mass communication researchers examined environmental risk news coverage throughout the 1960s and 1970s following a period of intense environmental movement activity.2 By comparison, environmental risk news analysis overall has received less attention beyond 1980 in spite of ongoing policy debates. The current study sought to fill this gap by posing three research hypotheses and two research questions related to source framing, news media framing, and frame changes over time: H1 Print media that target different social blocs will rely on different sources involved in policy debates. RQt How do these sources, in turn, define environmental risk issues? H2a In reporting environmental risk issues, mainstream newspapers will use frames that support the status quo. H2h In reporting environmental risk issues, tabloid newspapers will use frames that emphasize opposition to dominant ideology. RQ2 Do frames used in coverage of environmental risk issues shift over time? REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Literature relevant to this study was reviewed in four contexts: (a) selecting news and framing; (b) news media apparatus and the social amplification of risk; (c) environmental risk news and sourcing practices; and (d) journalism as storytelling. Selecting News & Framing

Using language to create coherent contexts that audiences can relate to has been analyzed in the disciplines of communication,3 cognitive psychology, physics, and seScholars who have scrutinized environmental risk issue news of the 1970s and 1980s include Bowman & Hanaford, 1977; Catton & Dunlap, 1980; Hannigan, 1995; Honnold, 1981; Milbrath, 1984; Shanahan & McComas, 1997. 3 News texts have been examined in the arenas of semiotics (Hartley, 1982), linguistics (de Saussure, 1974;Fowler, 1991; Halliday, 1978; Sapir, 1929; Whorf, 1956), and sociology (Merton, 1968). Many labels have been attached to this concept; scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977), prototypes (Rosch, 1975), paradigms (Kuhn, 1970), stereotypes (Fowler, 1991), schemata (Schutz, 1945), and frames (Entman, 1993; Gamson, 1989; Gamson & Lasch, 1983; Garrison & Modigliani, 1989; Goffman, 1974; Graber, 1988, 1989; Minsky, 1975; Rachlin, 1988; Rumelhart, 1980; Tuchman, 1978; van Dijk, 1988).

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mantics. In particular, mass communication researchers have developed numerous theories over time to explain how news is defined and determined. Conflict between what is, and what is represented by the news media, raises serious questions about the sociopolitical implications of the newsmaking process on the world about which it reports. Use of a popular convention among journalists—framing—crystallizes a paradigm shift in theoretical underpinning of news analyses because it emphasizes the human agency component of newsmaking. While combining words to offer a representation of the world for meaning making may seem innocuous, use of the framing convention results in news that is far from objective. Gitlin (1980) modified Gans' (1979) list of theories that explain news selection by creating three categories—journalist-centered theories that suggest professional newsworkers are capable judges of what's news, the event-centered theories that argue that news mirrors the actual nature of the world, and news-as-social-construct theories that emphasize news as a product of human agency. Even though contemporary journalists believe that they reflect reality and vow to ethically report news fairly and objectively, deep analyses of news production have discredited the event-centered theories and eschewed their mirror metaphor (Glasgow University Media Group, 1976, 1980; Hall, 1979). Similarly, the journalist-centered theories have been resolutely criticized. Journalists, as humans who must perform their function efficiently and on deadline, rely on routines and conventions such as framing to facilitate quick closure on how news means. How does framing work? News frames are rooted in a shared vocabulary with meanings that a heterogeneous mass audience "steeped in the same culture readily understand [s]" (Graber, 1989, p. 151). Frames "determine what the story is about" (Griffin & Dunwoody, 1997, p. 363) by sorting "mere happenings or mere talk" (Tuchman, 1978, p. 192) into "tacit mental categories" (Fowler, 1991, p. 17). For example, framing a dictator as "another Hitler" lends deeper meaning to a news story because it evokes images of genocide, persecution, and racial discrimination (Graber, 1989, p. 148). Thus, by "transform[ing] mere happenings into publicly discussable events" (Tuchman, 1978, p. 3) and slicing "strips" of the everyday world (Goffman, 1974, pp. 10-11), newsworkers more closely resemble producers than mirrors or unbiased conduits (Fowler, 1991; Galtung & Ruge, 1973). Thus, news is characterized as a value-laden, manufactured, social construction shaped by complex subjective processes (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Carey, 1986; Gans, 1979; Tuchman, 1978). The current study builds upon framing theory and the news-as-socialconstruct theories by also considering influences located in social conditions outside the news organization, such as "the most powerful news sources" (Gitlin, 1980, pp. 250-1) who often make themselves available as sociocultural resources, or "information subsidies" (Gandy, 1982, p. 61). Key to combining these constructs is the common human agency component. Indeed, sources routinely frame their information subsidies to make them palatable to journalists. Several communication scholars have probed journal-

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ists' dependence on authoritative sources, suggesting that their frames shape news accounts in ways favorable to institutions, at the expense of non-elites. In particular, framing has been examined in policy-conflict issue studies where parties compete to influence how issues are represented for audiences. The news frame format promotes an "imprint of power" and hegemony is continually recreated by the dominant social class as a result of challenges posed by oppositional cultural elements (Entman, 1993, p. 55; Williams, 1977). Thus, framing lends insight into our culture and how meaning is produced within, between, and among people and institutions. News Media Apparatus and the Social Amplification of Risk To analyze the source-journalist sponsorship of environmental news frames, it is important to scrutinize the larger context of mass media as an ideologically loaded apparatus and social amplifier. According to Althusser (1971), capitalism reproduces itself in more covert than overt ways—exploitation and repression by the powerful in an established order occur through apparatuses such as an education system, a political system, and through cultural systems such as the church and the mass media. All apparatuses involved in the process of structuring and reshaping consent and consensus through dominant ideology are called ideological state apparatuses (Althusser, 1971). Hall (1979) enumerated the prominent social functions of the mass media apparatus as a: (a) constructor of social knowledge through images, meanings, practices, and values; (b) reflector of social plurality through preferred meanings and interpretations; and (c) producer of consensus through a process of argument, exchange, debate, consultation, and speculation. Gramsci (1971) posited that a central feature of hegemony is its fluidity. Contradictions within dominant ideology and emergent voices of opposition provide for counter-hegemonic realities (Rachlin, 1988). Thus, it may be possible over time to expose how some news media provide "information and values subversive to the capitalistic logic of our society" (Lowe & Morrison, 1984, p. 89). Unless a risk is observed by human beings and communicated to others, it may be socially irrelevant Luhmann, (as cited in Kasperson, 1992). According to the social amplification of risk model, the news media operate as an "amplification station" using symbols, signals, imagery to provide rules of "how to select, order, and explain signals from the physical world" (Kasperson, 1992, p. 159). Consistent with this linear model, a physical event triggers the amplification process. Next, individuals, groups, and institutions serve as "amplification stations," involved in eight steps: passing through attention filters, decoding signals, drawing inferences, comparing the decoded messages with other messages, evaluating messages, forming specific beliefs, rationalizing belief systems, and forming a propensity to take corresponding actions (Renn, Burns, Kasperson, Kasperson, & Slovic, 1992, pp. 140, 142). Amplification stations may

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be advocacy groups, private citizens, or the news media, which encode texts by framing risk issues for decoding message receivers. The social amplification of risk model has proven useful in studies of events such as biological hazards, persistent-delayed hazards, rare catastrophes, threats to life, and natural and radiological hazards. It has been suggested that the print news media's processing of risk contributed substantially to a risk event's socioeconomic impacts (Renn, et al., 1992). The current study suggests that news frames determine the course of the social amplification of risk model's ripple effects as they touch victims, as well as country, region, town, company, industry, and technologies. Thus, this chapter examines the news media as an apparatus that incorporates source-journalist sponsorships in processing and attenuating environmental risk. Environmental Risk News and Sourcing Practices The environment, its protection and management, affects all inhabitants of planet Earth. Scholars have linked environmentalism (Lowe & Morrison, 1984; Schoenfeld, Meier, & Griffin, 1979) and risk avoidance (Golding, 1992) as sociopolitical issues since the late 1960s. Furthermore, environmental risk issues have been categorized as a subset of science news (Salomone, Greenberg, Sandman, & Sachsman, 1990). Overall, analyses of environmental news coverage have focused on growth in environmental awareness, environmental news effects, and the subsequent growth of environmental advocacy groups, news coverage patterns over time, and problems with environmental risk news. Historically, environmental risk aversion and awareness has become a widespread social phenomenon among Western societies (Yearley, 1991). In particular, conservationists worked during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to reserve public lands for national parks following exploitation of the New World's plentiful and cheap lands (McConnell, 1954). The risk assessment and management fields grew (Krimsky & Golding, 1992; Tiemann, 1987) in conjunction with the ecology movement of the 1960s, and environmentalism today represents people's grassroots response to the adverse effects of modernity (Gare, 1995). In fact, Milbrath (1984) suggested that environmentalism has become a permanent fixture in modern industrial societies. The risk-environment intersection is most conspicuous when controversy is involved, such as the hazardous potential of nuclear power and other technologies (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Nelkin, 1987) and man-made, industry-related disasters.4 Furthermore, news media coverage of natural disasters that pose risk to humans, such as plague or blight (Lacey & Longman, 1993; Singer, 1990) and weather-related catastrophes (Walters & Hornig, 1993) link risk with environ4 Studies of news media coverage of non-natural disasters include Brown, 1987; Bowman & Fuchs, 1981; Downs, 1972; Friedman, Gorney, & Egolf, 1987; Gans, 1979; Molotch& Lester, 1974.

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mental issues. In order to facilitate this information transfer, journalists attempt to take the technical language of risk analyses and transform it into comprehensible texts that the public can easily understand and use (Goodfield, 1983). Much literature considers where consumers obtain environmental news and how they use it. While not the focus of the current study, it is important to recognize that people use news media as a primary source for environmental quality-risk information, (Dunwoody & Neuwirth, 1991; Friedman, 1991; Mazur, 1990; Nelkin, 1987) which shapes their environmental risk perceptions (Hannigan, 1995; Sandman, Weinstein, & Kloz, 1987; Slovic, 1987; Wilkins & Patterson, 1987). Environmental risk messages produced for a variety of mass media have been extremely popular, including special network television programs, green products' ecological features emphasized by advertising agencies, increased production of environmental paperback books, and publication of magazines devoting entire issues to nature protection (Hannigan, 1995; Rubin & Sachs, 1973). Several scholars have examined the rise of environmental advocacy groups in conjunction with increased attention to the environment (Novic & Sandman, 1974; Wiebe, 1973) and growing dissonance between the public and political leaders. Not only have government agencies and politicians been unable to agree on the best policies to manage the environment, but the public has been excluded from debates. Thus, non-legitimated power brokers, or "outsiders" such as community activists (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1992, p. 268), have forced their way into the dialogue (Brown, 1987) by taking to the streets to demonstrate their convictions. During the controversy stage, two fairly distinct sides usually emerge with a face off between the establishment and the challengers (Mazur, 1990). Several longitudinal studies have tracked the quantity of environmental risk news coverage over time. A weekly newsmagazine study suggested that journalists' attention to ecology was extremely low in the 1960s, but grew in prominence by the 1970s (Funkhouser, 1973) leading to new protective U.S. policies (Cole, 1993) and the staging of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 (Hannigan, 1995). During the 1980s and early 1990s, news magazine attention to environmental issues fell just short of pre-1970 levels (Bowman & Hanaford, 1977), and many newspapers dropped environment beats (Friedman, 1983) and failed to offer information that the public needed to make environmental risk decisions (Sandman, Sachsman, Greenberg, & Gochfield, 1987). Environmental risk coverage on network television decreased in the 1990s (Shanahan & McComas, 1997) and offered little information that the public could use (Greenberg, Sachsman, Sandman, & Salomone, 1989). To understand the ebb and flow of media attention to environmental risk, scholars have suggested invoking wider cultural resonances (Hansen, 1991; Rayner, 1992) and underscored the morality lesson surrogate role served by environmental risk issues (Beck, 1995). For example, coverage of fluoridation during the 1950s reflected American concerns about strong government and weak individual liberties. The energy crisis in the mid-1970s meshed with public concern about nuclear energy. The news media framed Chernobyl as

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an accident early on, but later framed the issue as a potential danger among domestic nuclear reactors (Earle & Cvetkovich, 1995). Other longitudinal studies have probed the quality of environmental risk news coverage over time. Even though the news media almost always consider environmental risk issues to be newsworthy (Bell, 1994) and science writing has become more specialized over the past 20 years (Friedman, Dunwoody, & Rogers, 1986), environmental risk news quality has come under fire. During the 1980s, news coverage of commercial, promotional aspects of environmental risk supplanted political implications and causes (Lacey & Longman, 1993; Wilkins & Patterson, 1987, 1990). Furthermore, coverage has focused on drama—high-consequence, low-probability risks (Earle & Cvetkovich, 1995), resulting in simple human-interest discourse (Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992) that absolves journalists of addressing the more complex environmental picture (Dunwoody & Griffin, 1993). Environmental coverage's shortcomings have been traced to journalists' lack of training and reliance on scientists, private industry representatives, and bureaucrats as news sources. Improperly trained journalists often enable elite sources to provide their own slant on an issue since environmental reporting involves gathering difficult-to-acquire-and-understand science and political information. 5 When this happens, the goals and aims of environmental beat reporters and risk experts, or informed sources, can become closely tied (Wilkins, 1993). Such collaboration has been called "fact by triangulation" (Fishman, 1980, p. 20), "information transfer" (Sigal, 1973, p. 125), and "information triangle" (Dunwoody & Ryan, 1983, p. 647). Whatever the name, the effect is the same. In producing environmental news, the media rely on authoritative sources for the technical, quantitative, scientific data, and government policy elements (Cole, 1993; Tourney, 1996), and on laypeople for the nontechnical color, emotion, and human elements (Molotch & Lester, 1974; Sandman, Weinstein, et al., 1987). Combined, these elements constitute an environmental risk news story. This passive approach promotes acceptance of sources on blind faith and advances elitism (Nelkin, 1987; Salomone, et al., 1990). Journalism as Storytelling Previous sections of this literature review have explored news selection and framing, the news media apparatus, and environmental risk news sourcing practices. This section examines journalism as ideologically loaded storytelling, while comparing and contrasting mainstream and supermarket tabloid newspaper narratives produced for audiences situated differently within the social order. Many mass media scholars have characterized journalism as contemporary storytelling. Even though few mainstream journalists would classify their work this Researchers who have examined the quality of environmental reporting include Cole, 1993; Nelkin, 1987; Sandman, Sachsman, 1987a; West, Sandman, & Greenburg, 1995; Wilkins & Patterson, 1990; Witt, 1974.

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way, the narratives they produce reveal much about how our culture makes meaning.6 Like all literary acts, journalism provides audiences with models for selecting enemies and allies (Burke, 1989). For example, Fishman (1980) found that news stories about crimes against the elderly framed senior citizens as helpless victims and vilified institutions. Yet, while all narrative forms represent comparable sites for scrutinizing ideology, not all storytelling media are regarded the same way. Both mainstream newspapers and weekly supermarket tabloids use similar news production methods and a style that involves finding the story within an event and shaping it to fit a particular construction of-reality (Bird, 1990). However, critics differentiate the two types of storytelling media. Mainstream newspapers are respectable press produced to inform elites, while weekly supermarket tabloids are produced to entertain social blocs marginalized by class, gender, and educational distribution (Bird, 1992). Consequently, mainstream newspapers are perceived as official, conventional, traditional, and legitimate news purveyors, and conversely, supermarket tabloids often are characterized as second-tier media with sensational, outlandish, and fantastic stories (Glynn, 1993). Even though Editor & Publisher once called the National Enquirer "the most accurate paper in the country" (Barber, 1982, p. 49) and Newsweek applauded the tabloids for increasingly covering "perfectly legitimate news stor[ies]" (Pedersen, 1996, p. 26), tabloids are accused of exaggerating, getting details wrong, and taking events out of context. Journalists produce stories relevant to particular conditions of social existence (Glynn, 1993) and in the process, diverse worldviews are promoted. Mainstream newspapers advance the hegemony of dominant social blocs while supermarket tabloids tend to undermine them by "subvert[ing] the norms of official journalism" and "interrupt[ing] certain circuits of sociocultural power" (Glynn, 1993, p. 19). Overall, supermarket tabloids sustain a sense of popular antagonism toward dominant blocs since readers believe that big business, government, media, and scientists have their own agenda and are "conspiring against the people" (Bird, 1992, p. 130). Therefore, analyzing both mainstream newspapers and supermarket tabloids as cultural capital that merely occupy different points along a storytelling continuum and are circulated among audiences of different socioeconomic status may facilitate a more well-rounded understanding of the public policy issue of environmental risk and how media portray and influence perceptions of it. METHOD

Issues critical to this study are selective definition of environmental risk issues by different sources, news media emphasis of different frames depending on sources cited, and shifts in competing frames over time. The content analysis method was 6

Researchers who have examined journalism as storytelling include Barkin, 1984; Darnton, 1975; Bird & Dardenne, 1988; Campbell, 1991; Nord, 1989; Park, 1940; van Dijk, 1988.

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used for its utility in studying a culture's changing themes, ideas, issues, and dilemmas (Weber, 1984), as well as messages' encoding. The strength of Catpac (CATegory PACkage) software from Terra Research and Computing, Inc. (Woelfel, 1998) lies in its ability to read a nearly unlimited amount of text, reveal complex patterns associated with word clusters based on frequency and content, and graphically depict these patterns (Barnett, 1996; Woelfel, 1993).7 The 1983-1997 sample years for this content analysis represent most of the 1980s and 1990s. These newspapers were selected because all three are distributed nationally, boast large circulations, and target varying social blocs among the American population: 1. The New York Times, a mainstream, elite daily newspaper of record (5,475 issues). 2. USA Today, "The Nation's Newspaper" (no Sunday edition) (4, 680 issues).8 3. The National Enquirer, a weekly tabloid that appeals to lower socioeconomic groups (780 issues). A random sample of 180 weeks was drawn for content analysis using a Perpetual Calendar and Random Numbers chart (1 week per month over the course of 15 years for each of the three newspapers). All articles from these weeks became part of the sample. This random technique enabled comparison of coverage during like time periods across three newspapers (Lacey & Longman, 1993; Riffe, Aust, & Lacy, 1993). Searches using a key word-compatible electronic database, a print index, and manual reading were then conducted of sample weeks to collect a wide range of full text environmental risk news stories. Lexis-Nexis was used as the primary database for the New York Times 1983 through 1997 and for USA Today 1989 through 1997. A print index was used to collect full text news articles of USA Today from 1983 through 1988 because this information is not available electronically. Contents of the National Enquirer were manually searched, also because this information is not available electronically, using key words to identify germane stories. All news stories were downloaded or scanned (or typed manually where text quality was poor) and saved as ASCII text.9 News stories resulting from key word searches were content analyzed using Catpac, a set of unsupervised self-organizing artificial neural network (ANN) 7 Detailed description of a Catpac dendogram is "tedious" and can detract from understanding the usefulness of Catpac (Woelfel, 1993, p. 74). What is significant about the technique is the neural networks' capacity to assimilate huge quantities of text in order to provide frequencies used to identify patterns. 8 The first full year of publication for USA Today was 1983. 9 No free-standing photographs or graphics were included in the analysis, as the visual components associated with the texts would constitute a different kind of study. For round-up news stories, only paragraphs relating to environmental risk issues were content analyzed.

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computer programs designed to perform semantic network analysis. Simply, Catpac identifies the most frequently used words in a text and determines patterns of similarity based on the way the words are used in text (Woelfel, 1998).10 The resulting words-by-words matrix of cooccurrences represents a compilation of the connection weights among the neurons, showing associations between all the words in a given text. The matrix then serves as a basis for further analysis, such as cluster analysis. FINDINGS

A random sample of 6,378 environmental risk news stories representing 15 years' coverage (180 weeks) in three nationally circulated newspapers underwent Catpac analysis. This hypothesis was supported. H1 Print media that target different social blocs will rely on different sources involved in policy debates. Table 6.1 and Fig. 6.1 show environmental risk news sources cited in The New York Times, USA Today, and National Enquirer, calculated as the percentage of total sources cited in each newspaper in which the source label appeared. Among the 5,127 New York Times, environmental risk stories, sources most frequently cited were: government (52.4%), industry (19.4%), public (11.8%), interest groups The neural model works by creating a words-by-words matrix called a WIN, or weightinput-network matrix. Catpac treats each word as a neuron as it moves a scanning window through text. Each window represents a case, wherein neurons representing words are activated and then deactivated, decaying over time when the scanning window disappears (Woelfel, 1993). Neurons, or words, become positively interconnected in the network when they are simultaneously active in the window. Those that seldom or never co-occur become negatively interconnected. As the scanning window moves through the text, Catpac performs calculations not only for neurons-words that are active in the window, but also determines what other neurons are activated as a result of their connections to the active neurons. Several steps were involved in this analysis: 1) News stories were formatted into ASCII text and organized into files to facilitate comparisons according to newspaper name and time period. 2) Source types (govt. [government], ind. [industry], pub. [public, including unaffiliated researchers], inter, [interest group], oth.[other], unat. [unattributed]) were manually inserted into text by three readers. This was done so that the Catpac procedures would report the specific words associated with each source type. The source type list was developed from earlier analyses of the relationship between the environment and the news media (Sandman, Sachsman, et al., 1987; Spears et al., 1995). Sources were cited directly or indirectly in newspaper stories. 3) Next, the dendogram resulting from Catpac cluster analysis was examined as a graphic illustration of relationships between words used by the various sources and newspapers. These word clusters then were interpreted as frames. 4) Finally, the frames were closely examined against original texts in order to discern the context from which each frame emerged. News stories in the sample were read many times by the principal researcher in order to illuminate word clusters, or frames, identified as a result of Catpac analyses. Such qualitative interpretation complemented and strengthened the quantitative computer outputs.

TABLE 6.1 Environmental Risk News Source Frequencies 1983-1997 New York Times %

USA Today %

National Enquirer %

Government Sources

52.4

36.8

31.5

Industry Sources

19.4

25.4

7.4

Public Sources

11.8

16.9

41.0

Interest Group Sources

11.6

15.4

13.9

Other Sources

3.9

3.8

5.2

Unattributed Sources

.9

1.7

1.0

100

100

100

TOTAL

I

FIG. 6.1. Environmental risk news source frequencies 1983-1997.

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(11.6%), other (3.9%)," and unattributed (.9%). 12 Among the 1,150 USA Today stories, the most frequently cited sources were government (36.8%), industry (25.4%), the public (16.9%), interest groups (15.4%), other (3.8%), and unattributed (1.7%). Among the 101 National Enquirer stories, the most frequently cited sources were the public (41.0%), government (31.5%), interest groups (13.9%), industry (7.4%), other (5.2%), and unattributed (1%). RQt How do these sources, in turn, define environmental issues? Semantic network analysis revealed word clusters that formed around source labels—as illustrated in dendograms and were interpreted as frames and named. See footnote 10. As the official assessors of environmental risk, government and industry sources cited in The New York Times promoted an EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research frame. See Tables 6.2 & 6.3. In USA Today, government and industry sources cited in environmental risk stories used a Power-Energy Industry Problems frame. In the National Enquirer, government, public and industry sources advanced a Government Grants & Hazards frame.

TABLE 6.2 Government News Source Environmental Risk Frames 1983-1997 New York Times EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research (Company, Federal, Power, Problem, New, Safety, Nuclear, Research, EPA, Year, Govt, Ind, Part, Service)

11

USA Today

National Enquirer

Power-Energy Industry Problems

Government Grants & Hazards

(Air, State, Govt, Year, (Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, Going, Ind, Government, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Time, Down, Energy, ExLittle, Year, Declared, Ind, pected, Industry, I, Major, Find, Gas, Government, People, Problem, Big, New, Million, Grant, Home) Clean, Million, Others, Sea, Plant, Power)

Sources labeled other were those that did not fit comfortably as government, industry, interest group or public sources. Primarily, they were sources such as college professors, scientists, specialists, analysts, observers, experts, critics, opponents, studies, reports that were not funded or otherwise associated with a government, industry, or interest group source. 12 Sources labeled unattributed in The New York Times, USA Today, and the National Enquirer appeared to be as vague as sources, others, or lacked clear attribution with phrasing written in passive voice such as, "it is believed that..." "many say ..." "some suspect..." "according to estimates ..."

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TABLE 6.3 Industry News Source Environmental Risk Frames 1983-1997 New York Times EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research (Company, Federal, Power, Problem, New, Safety, Nuclear, Research, EPA, Year, Govt, Ind, Part, Service)

USA Today Power-Energy Industry Problems

National Enquirer &

Government Grants Hazards

(Air, State, Govt, Year, (Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, Going, Ind, Government, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Time, Down, Energy, ExLittle, Year, Declared, Ind, pected, Industry, I, Major, Find, Gas, Government, People, Problem, Big, New, Million, Grant, Home) Clean, Million, Others, Sea, Plant, Power)

Frames promoted by members of the public were framed as Cancer Cases in The New York Times. See Table 6.4. The public and employees expressed clear concern about health risks associated with environmental issues. Likewise, the public promoted a Pollution & Toxic Waste-Natural Environment frame in USA Today. In the National Enquirer, public sources talked about environmental risk news within a Government Grants & Hazards frame. Citizens and residents addressed environmental issues such as surviving fire and other industrial accidents, reversing adverse effects of chemicals, and preparing for future energy shortages. Interest groups' comments in The New York Times clustered within an Energy Industry & Workers-Research frame. See Table 6.5. These stories involved interest groups' recommendations for addressing environmental risk. In USA Today, inTABLE 6.4 Public News Source Environmental Risk Frames 1983-1997 New York Times Cancer Cases

(Among, University, Case, Known, High, Pub, Near, Used, Cancer, Town, People, Species, Garbage, Oth, Office, Project)

USA Today Pollution & Toxic Waste-Natural Environment (Area, Pollution, River, Week, Long, Without, Think, Water, Company, Trees, High, Pub, Least, National, Toxic, Waste)

National Enquirer &

Government Grants Hazards

(Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Little, Year, Declared, Ind, Find, Gas, Government, Million, Grant, Home)

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TABLE 6.5 Interest Group News Source Environmental Risk Frames 1983-1997 New York Times Energy Industry & Workers-Research (Commission, Park, New York, Workers, Found, I, Million, Recent, Department, Gas, Energy, Industry, Group, Study, Inter, Site)

USA Today

National Enquirer

Federal Environmental Research

God & Life-Taxpayers & National Enquirer Readers

(Already, Environmental, Group, Home, Day, President, Earth, Near, Can't, Study, Inter, US, Gallons, Know, Several, Today)

(Can't, City, Food, Money, Human, World, Stop, Taxpayers, God, Life, Lion, Old, Inter, National Enquirer, Readers, Water)

terest group sources represented the movement and invoked a Federal Environmental Research frame. In the National Enquirer, interest groups characterized environmental risk news within a God & Life-Taxpayers & National Enquirer Readers frame. These stories encouraged National Enquirer readers to join the newspaper's letter-writing campaigns designed to stop expenditures of taxpayer-supported resources to countries and programs that misused the resources and abused animals around the world. H2a In reporting environmental issues, mainstream newspapers will use frames that support the status quo. This hypothesis was supported. Results overwhelmingly suggest that sources most frequently cited in The New York Times and USA Today during 1983-1997 were government and industry spokespeople who represented the status quo. See Fig. 6.2. Furthermore, elite sources were cited most often in conjunction with energy generation issues in both mainstream newspapers. See Table 6.6. Nearly three quarters (71.8%) of all sources cited in The New York Times environmental risk news stories represented hegemonic institutions-federal, state, county, or local government (52.4%), or company officials, spokespeople, plant managers, industry experts, or groups (19.4%). By comparison, public sources (11.8%) and interest group sources (11.6%) combined constituted less than one-fourth (23.4%) of sources cited in The New York Times' environmental risk news. USA Today also relied most heavily on government sources (36.8%) and industry sources (25.4%), meaning that nearly two-thirds (62.2%) of sources cited in USA Today's environmental risk news coverage represented dominant, hegemonic institutions. By comparison, public sources (16.9%) and interest group sources (15.4%) together accounted for only about one-third (32.3%) of sources cited in USA Today environmental risk news during the 1983-1997 time period. Thus, USA Today

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FIG. 6.2. Elite & nonelite sources.

sources had a slightly more popular orientation than New York Times sources, but the balance still favored hegemonic institutions in both newspapers. Beyond dominating mainstream newspapers' environmental risk coverage, government and industry sources clustered closely together in news frames. In The New York Times, for example, government and industry sources emerged as part of a EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research frame. Similarly, in USA Today, government and industry source labels also both emerged as part of the same Power-Energy Industry Problems frame. Government sources' promoted their institutionalized responsibilities to legislate, investigate and decide on matters of environmental risk. As suggested by the EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research and Power-Energy Industry Problems frames, government sources usually characterized environmental risk in terms of power or energy generation and the research, money, and time necessary to reduce dependence on foreign fossil fuels and to regulate domestic manufacture of nuclear power. For their part, industry spokespeople debated their ability to manufacture cost-effective, quality power services within a regulatory framework designed to preserve natural resources, protect worker safety, and ensure that adequate research had been performed.

TABLE 6.6 Elite Sources and Frames 1983-1997 New York Times % Government 52.4 Sources

Frame

%

Frame

EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research

36.8

Power-Energy Industry Problems

(Company, Federal, Power, Problem, New, Safety, Nuclear, Research, EPA, Year, Govt, Ind, Part, Service) Industry Sources

USA Today

19.4 EPA & Nuclear Power— Safety & Research

National Enquirer % 31.5

(Air, State, Govt, Year, Going, Ind, Government, Time, Down, Energy, Expected, Industry, I, Major, People, Problem, Big, New, Clean, Million, Others, Sea, Plant, Power) 25 .4 Power-Energy Industry Problems

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Ul

62.2

Government Grants & Hazards (Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Little, Year, Declared, Ind, Find, Gas, Government, Million, Grant, Home)

7.4

(Air, State, Govt, Year, Going, Ind, (Company, Federal, Power, ProbGovernment, Time, Down, Enlem, New, Safety, Nuclear, Reergy, Expected, Industry, I, Major, search, EPA, Year, Govt, Ind, Part, People, Problem, Big, New, Clean, Service) Million, Others, Sea, Plant, Power) TOTAL 71.8

Frame

Government Grants & Hazards (Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Little, Year, Declared, Ind, Find, Gas, Government, Million, Grant, Home)

38.9

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H2b In reporting environmental issues, tabloid newspapers will use frames that emphasize opposition to dominant ideology. This hypothesis was supported. Combined, nonelite public (41.0%) and interest group (13.9%) sources promoted slightly more than half (54.9%) of the viewpoints about environmental risk issues, as printed in the National Enquirer. See Tables 6.6 & 6.7. By comparison, elite government (31.5%) and industry sources (7.4%) were cited less frequently in the National Enquirer than nonelite sources, constituting only about two-fifths of all sources cited (38.9%), compared with roughly three quarters in The New York Times and two-thirds in USA Today. Government, industry, and public source labels emerged in the National Enquirer in a Government Grants & Hazards frame and interest group source labels emerged as part of the God & Life-Taxpayers & National Enquirer Readers frame. However, the grouping of public source labels with government and industry does not indicate agreement among these sources. On the contrary, public and interest groups' views expressed in the National Enquirer were generally counter-hegemonic and sometimes hostile toward the status quo. Frames creatively challenged power structures, often referring to "the money-wasting bureaucrat" (Lee, 2000, p. 455). This tabloid frequently cited government officials who criticized the establishment for wasting taxpayers' money and vilified their colleagues as spendocrats, and characterized scientists as eggheads. Furthermore, the public criticized government fund waste and industry sources complained about strict government regulations that interfered with commerce. Nearly all sources cited in National Enquirer environmental risk news promoted counter-hegemonic views. RQ2 Do frames used in coverage of environmental issues shift over time? Results suggested that frames remained thematically fixed over the years, but a handful of unique frames that distinguished contemporaneous issues and events. A total of 90 frames emerged from semantic network analyses: 30 for each of three newspapers based on 10 frames for each of three increments of five years (1983-1987, 1988-1992, 1993-1997.) See Tables 6.8, 6.9 and 6.10. Among the 90 news frames shaped by clusters of words bearing close relationships, three major themes became apparent. The Power & Energy Generation theme joined stories about power production based on fossil fuel burning and nuclear fusion. The Toxic Waste & Pollution theme linked stories about environmental damage and health hazards posed by manufacturing processes and byproducts, as well as garbage. The Conservation & Preservation of Wildlife theme connected stories about species protection and preservation of habitat.

TABLE 6.7 Non-Elite Sources and Frames 1983-1997 New York Times % Public Sources

11.8

Frame Cancer Cases

USA Today % 16.9

(Among, University, Case, Known, High, Pub, Near, Used, Cancer, Town, People, Species, Garbage, Oth, Office, Project) Interest Group Sources

11.6

Energy Industry 6- WorkersResearch

VJ

Pollution & Toxic WasteNatural Environment

% 41.0

15.4

Federal Environmental Research

13.9

(Already, Environmental, Group, Home, Day, President, Earth, Near, Can't, Study, Inter, US, GalIons, Know, Several, Today)

32.3

Frame Government Grants & Hazards (Animals, Govt, I, Pub, Day, US, Going, Think, Fire, Put, Little, Year, Declared, Ind, Find, Gas, Government, Million, Grant, Home)

(Area, Pollution, River, Week, Long, Without, Think, Water, Company, Trees, High, Pub, Least, National, Toxic, Waste)

(Commission, Park, New York, Workers, Found, I, Million, Recent, Department, Gas, Energy, Industry, Group, Study, Inter, Site) TOTAL 23.4

Frame

National Enquirer

God & Life I Taxpayers & National Enquirer Readers (Can't, City, Food, Money, Human, World, Stop, Taxpayers, God, Life, Lion, Old, Inter, National Enquirer, Readers, Water)

54.9

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Major Themes for Environmental Risk News Frames New York Times 1983-1987, 1988-1992, 1993-1997 Major Theme Toxic Waste & Pollution

1983-1987 Toxic Landfill Issues Cancer & Garbage Cleanup Health & Environment EPA Report on Hazardous Waste

1988-1992

1993-1997

Legislating Environmental Waste

Federal Government Health Studies

Studying Recycling Issue

Monitoring CancerLead & Chemical Waste

Chemicals, Gas & EnergyPollution-Health Local Federal GovernmentToxins in the Natural Environment

# of Frame: 13

Local Environmental Issues Federal Pollution Research Global Warming

Conservation & Preservation of Wildlife

Federal Forest Conservation & Managing Pollution Development & Wildlife Protection Legislation

Power & Energy Generation

Nuclear & Chemical Plants-Accidents & Safety

Public Areas & Species Wildlife Risks & Conservation

Local Wildlife Conservation

8

Property Development & Wildlife

Fish & Industry Administering Conservation Federal Nuclear Problem

Federal Government Power Generation

Environmental Problems—Fuel Industry Nucleur Power Issue in New York

Impact of Energy Proposal TOTAL

9

8

10

27

DISCUSSION

Framing theory provided a solid basis for this study's discovery of relationships among environmental risk issues, source groups, and newspaper coverage. Network analysis revealed important word clusters that were interpreted as frames, named, and examined to reveal how source groups in mainstream and tabloid news framed environmental risk policy issues over a 15-year period.

TABLE 6.9 Major Themes for Environmental Risk News Frames USA Today 1983-1987, 1988-1992, 1993-1997 Major Theme

1983-1987

1988-1992

1993-1997

Toxic Waste & Chemical-Gas Indus- Federal Studies of Pollution's Global Warming Pollution try-Pollution & Waste Health Impact Problem Toxic Threats Pollutants & Recycling: to Natural World Congress & Superfund Federal Programs Program Industry Byproducts Federal Govern& Environmental Impact ment-Toxins & Health Cancer Sites Cancer-New Jersey & New York Coast Officials & Workers-Spills & Drought EDB Damage & Cleanup EPA-Measurable Problems Conservation Legislation in Alaska Life on Earth-Business & Preservation in New York of Wildlife Waterways & Wildlife People & Waterways

# of Frames 13

Conservation 8 & PollutionNationally & Globally Parks & Hunting Federal Conservation Funding Federal Conservation Efforts

Power & Energy Generation

Federal EnergyPower Sites

Fuel-Energy Cleanup Gas-Oil Plant Fires

Hazards of Heat & Fossil Fuels

Energy SourcesEnvironmental Impact

9

Nuclear & Auto Industries

Nuclear Byproducts Issues

Gas, Power Plants-Impact on Life Federal Energy Impact

TOTAL

10

10

12

30

119

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TABLE 6.10 Major Themes for Environmental Risk News Frames National Enquirer 1983-1987, 1988-1992,1993-1997 Major Theme Toxic Waste & Pollution

1983-1987 Federal Bureaucracy: Information About Environmental Risks

1988-1992 Garbage & Health Hazards & Community

1993-1997 Chemicals & Gas in the Environment

#of Frames 10

Auto Issues

Scientific Study Monitoring Local Risk University Research California Issues Research on Threats to Humans Conservation & Preservation of Wildlife

Animal Issues & Destruction

Elements of the Natural World

Federal Help for Wildlife

Commemorating Environmental Events

National Enquirer Readers' Value Systems

Conservation Costs Taxpayers & Environmental Waste

Threats to Animals & Humans

Animal Cruelty

14

Problems in America & Around the World Wild & Endangered Species-Bureaucracy Animal Killing Tax Money & Waste

Wasteful Spending Power & Energy Generation TOTAL

Traditional & Alternative Fuel 9

Federal Bureaucracy-Chernobyl Research

Centralia Fire

10

8

3

27

Sourcing Practices: Targeting Specific Social Blocs The three national newspapers analyzed here generally target readers of upper, middle, and lower socioeconomic class blocs. As hypothesized, each newspaper selected news sources according to its target audience: elite sources for upper-class readers and nonelite sources for lower-class readers. USA Today, which targets middle-class readers, also relied on elite sources. Government sources constituted

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the most frequently cited source group in The New York Times and USA Today, whereas public sources were cited most in the National Enquirer. Thus, this study confirmed that print media do rely on different sources involved in policy debates in order to produce news for specific social blocs. The following paragraphs address the implications of these findings. New York Times: As expected, this national newspaper of record, relied most on official sources when producing news for its upscale readership. This study's results confirm that observation, showing that The New York Times routinely, and often exclusively, cited elite sources. Since frequency is a measure of degree of importance (Ogilvie, Stone, & Kelly, 1982; Stone, 1997), it follows that The New York Times considered government authorities the most appropriate framers of environmental risk for elite readers. By comparison, nonelite public and interest group sources—including unaffiliated scientists such as those from universities—were cited far less in The New York Times than elite government and industry sources. This imbalance was crystallized in a 1990 story about nuclear weapon production site cleanup costs that cited EPA and Energy Department officials, Congressmen, the Bush administration, federal agents, and nuclear industry reports—yet no nonelite sources were interviewed (Schneider, 1990, p. Al). Only the last sentence mentioned that residents had sued the Energy Department for causing pollution that lowered real estate values and created health problems. Thus, it appears that The New York Times seldom looked further than elite sources when producing environmental risk news—or perhaps other news sources were unavailable or unwilling to engage in conversation with journalists. USA Today: Since this newspaper is produced primarily for a middle-class population, it was presumed that nonelite sources would be the primary environmental risk framers. Yet this study's results showed that USA Today and The New York Times produced environmental risk stories in exactly the same way by ranking elite government and industry sources as most important, followed by public, and finally interest group sources. Even though both mainstream newspapers preferred government rather than public sources, USA Today texts reflected a fairly equitable distribution of sources used. For example, USA Today's coverage of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine included interviews with government officials, nuclear industry spokespeople, members of the public, and interest group sources (Chernobyl, 1989; Glamser, 1988; Kohn, 1986; Nichols, 1989; Reactor, 1988). This finding among USA Today texts supports claims that journalists incorporate all sides of a debate as a means of achieving objectivity (Dunwoody & Ryan, 1983; Fishman, 1980). National Enquirer: Including this tabloid as a site for news analysis follows the lead of Bird (1990) who concluded that tabloid and mainstream newspapers cover many of the same issues, but in different ways. It was expected that the National En-

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quirer would cite members of the public most often when reporting on environmental risk coverage for disenfranchised readers. Indeed, the public constituted nearly half of all sources cited in the National Enquirer—with many environmental risk stories featuring public sources exclusively. Regular people shared down-to-earth stories ranging from homespun tips for cutting utility bills to avoid further depletion of natural resources, to taking vitamins to combat the effects of pollution, to using signs from the environment to predict the future. Of course, one explanation for comparatively fewer elite sources may be the result of such sources' unwillingness to give interviews to National Enquirer reporters. Professional Ideology: Distinctions Among Sources Results gathered in response to this study's first research question indicate that government, industry, public, and interest group sources distinctly frame environmental risk news. Framing provides a means for promoting one's own set of ideas, or "professional ideology," which has been defined as the collection of political, economic, and social ideas that inform the practices of particular professional groups (Storey, 1993, p. 3). Even though the public is not categorically part of a professional group per se, employees and neighbors consider how environmental risk personally affects them (Wynne, 1989), resulting in a coherent de facto ideology. The following paragraphs chronicle how each of the four source groups— government, industry, the public, and interest groups—framed environmental risk, advancing their own brands of ideology. Government Sources: Journalists' attraction to government sources indicates the strength and legitimacy of government in this culture (Sigal, 1986). Some researchers have explained that business and government institutions are near the top of the power hierarchy in Western society and have far greater media access than any other group (Einsiedel, 1988; Hansen, 1991; Nimmo & Combs, 1985; Patterson, 1989). Certainly, this study's results showed that government sources were cited most often in the New York Times and USA Today, and just behind public sources in the National Enquirer. Overall, their frames focused on power generation research, funding, and hazards—underscoring a professional ideology marked by administrative responsibility for creating and enforcing laws and policies at all government levels. Such findings emphasize the salience of energy production in the United States and journalists' reliance on legitimated sources. Furthermore, government sources' use of technical language and jargon promoted their authority status and fostered a pretense of superiority. For example, journalists seemed to regard government sources highly, often referring to them simply as officials, and citing them in environmental risk news story leads and in early paragraphs. In this way, government sources represented the official word on high-profile power generation risk issues.

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Industry Sources: Industry sources were consulted second to government sources in USA Today and The New York Times, and consulted least of all in the National Enquirer. Furthermore, industry and government sources clustered together in all three newspapers. Few stories included interviews exclusively with industry representatives, however. Government sources explained the legal, economic, and regulatory aspects of the environmental risk, and industry sources either confirmed or refuted their organization's involvement. This finding concurs with earlier research that described framing as a valuable defense mechanism when issues are negative (Galtung & Ruge, 1973; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). Conversely, National Enquirer coverage rarely included industry sources. Lengthy stories about industrial accidents identified companies by name, but offered no quotes from spokespeople. It is very unlikely that industry sources would grant interviews to National Enquirer reporters. Or, perhaps in its counter-hegemonic style, National Enquirer reporters believed that it is understood among readers that industry is to blame for much environmental risk. Earlier public attitude research found that industry representatives are perceived as biased (Cole, 1993). Public Sources: Even though average people have limited media access, their interest in environmental risk issues has remained high over the years (Downs, 1972; Hartley, 1982; Sigal, 1973). Public sources were cited most in the National Enquirer, but ranked third in USA Today and The New York Times. Thus, even though the public may want to participate in environmental debates, the degree to which mainstream media included them in the conversation was far smaller when compared to elite sources. Public sources' frames were embedded with worries about leading a healthful, hazard-free life and being able to trust government to spend wisely on environmental programs. These findings concur with earlier research that found journalists use authoritative sources for technical, quantitative, policy information, and laypeople for drama (Cole, 1993; Molotch & Lester, 1974; Sandman, Weinstein, 1987). For example, even though public sources were unlikely risk framers in New York Times stories, their health concerns were included when details were dramatic. Furthermore, the National Enquirer promoted public sources as heroes who live with risk, energized by their personal strength, faith in God, and belief that Americans can endure anything. Interest Group Sources: This group had the weakest voice in framing environmental risk news in all three newspapers. When included in environmental risk debates, however, interest group spokespeople defended the environment—speaking on behalf of bottlenosed dolphins, peregrine falcons, and redwood groves—as well as crowds of individuals, such as employees. Overall, interest groups took government and industry sources to task, citing their own independently funded reports on environmental conditions. This finding concurs with earlier researchers, who ascertained that interest groups act as intermediaries, interpreting risk for the public and challenging the establishment (Mazur, 1990; Sapolsky, 1990). Indeed, interest groups'

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professional ideology involved advocating new research and campaigning for safer workplaces. To gain the attention of news media gatekeepers, some interest groups have orchestrated dramatic, visual, and controversial protests to garner media attention (Hannigan, 1995). The current study's news frame analyses found that interest groups often were cited in conjunction with high-profile Earth Day celebrations and other events. Mainstream and Tabloid Response to the Status Quo Both hypotheses positing that the two mainstream newspapers would reinforce dominant ideology by advancing status quo frames, and that the supermarket tabloid newspaper would undermine authority by promoting oppositional frames were supported. The mass media generally produce consensus through a process of argument, exchange, debate, consultation and speculation among contentious groups (Hall, 1979). Yet, these findings posit that little debate took place with elite sources outnumbering nonelite sources about 3:1 in New York Times in stories and 2:1 in USA Today stories. In addition, frequency statistics showed that both mainstream newspapers ranked government sources as most important, followed by industry, public, and finally interest group sources. Furthermore, it would appear that the status quo is maintained in the mainstream newspapers since government and industry source labels clustered together in environmental risk frames. In particular, both elite sources framed stories about power generation issues—an EPA & Nuclear Power-Safety & Research frame in The New York Times and a Power-Energy Industry Problems frame in USA Today. Nonelite sources accounted for only about one third of sources cited in USA Today and less than one quarter of sources cited in The New York Times. On the whole, lower socioeconomic groups lament that they most experience risk but are excluded from policy making (Brown, 1987; Dickson, 1984). Even elites cited in the National Enquirer advanced counter-hegemonic viewpoints. This newspaper's opposition to dominant ideology is best illuminated by comparing specific environmental risk issues as covered in all three newspapers, such as global warming-greenhouse effect. Based on interviews with an EPA spokesperson and government-funded scientists, The New York Times warned in 1983 that the Earth would begin heating up by the 1990s (Shabecoff, 1983). USA Todayreporied on this issue in 1989 as part of its Earth Day coverage, by interviewing a paleontologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Apple Computer's CEO, and the Wilderness Society (Manning, 1989). The National Enquirer covered the greenhouse effect story, too, but it interviewed non-government-supported scientists, who called the greenhouse effect "hullabaloo" (Downey, 1991, p. 6). Researchers have concluded that the drama of environmental issues, and the sport of blaming wealthy and powerful villains for them, keep the public interested in environmental policy (Downs, 1972). One way that this tabloid inspired readers to political action was through sponsorship of letter-writing campaigns

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for protecting endangered species and ending animal cruelty around the world. Full-page stories featured interviews with celebrities and pre-addressed tear-out coupons for readers to use when writing their federal legislators in protest. Subsequent follow-up stories told readers how successful their participation had been in affecting new legislation. Thus, the National Enquirer also provided a means for readers to affect change. Patterns in Environmental Risk Coverage Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, all newspapers scrutinized here generally characterized environmental risk as conflict between society and nature. When looking for evidence of shifts in environmental coverage over time, no stories proposed eliminating industrialized social orders that inherently pose risks to natural land, air, and water resources.13 Instead, specific patterns, or recurring themes, emerged from source groups' framing of how to best minimize environmental risk. Three central themes tightly binding frames that emerged from cluster analyses were qualitatively identified by the principal researcher, as consistent with previous applications of the Catpac software. No major shifts in environmental coverage over time were detected. Toxic Waste & Pollution Theme: This theme linked the largest number of news frames to emerge in these analyses, resonating similarly in all newspapers and consistently across all time periods. The news media have widely covered waste and pollution issues since the 1960s (Bowman & Fuchs, 1981; Lacey & Longman, 1993; Parlour & Schatzow, 1978). Some researchers have attributed this wide coverage to the 1962 release of Silent Spring, (Carson, 1982) a best-selling account of toxic risks in America (Bosso, 1987; Rubin, 1994). The expose inspired chemical manufacturers' counterattacks in the news media, and has been credited for giving birth to populist ecological awareness (Stauber & Rampton, 1995). Thus, such debate sparked dramatic news, shaping the environmental risk agenda during the 1960s and 1970s (Fagin & Lavelle, 1997). The current study's results suggest that news media attention to toxic waste and pollution issues was sustained through the two subsequent decades, with 36 frames. Clearly, the Toxic Waste & Pollution theme resonated among journalists, perhaps because such frames engage two important news values, the desirability of social order and the need for national leadership to maintain order (Gans, 1979). Stories routinely detailed environmental disorder caused by chemical spills and decomposing garbage, as primarily told by government and industry spokespeople who assured readers that they had the situation under control. Comparatively, nonelite public and interest group sources' framing of health and safety associated with pollution issues gained less attention. Despite thematic similarity 3

Overall, there has been no broad anti-environmental movement (Milbrath, 1984).

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across newspapers, the National Enquirer did not share the mainstream media's apprehension in upsetting order, however. In advancing the Toxic Waste & Pollution theme, the National Enquirer criticized bureaucrats as ineffective and offered readers self-help tips for fighting pollution. In doing so, this tabloid newspaper affirmed its readers' lack of faith and trust in the establishment and encouraged them to consult their own devices.14 Another noteworthy difference among frames shaped by the Toxic Waste & Pollution theme involved distribution over time. This theme was used regularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s in The New York Times. However, evidence of this frame, as used in USA Today and the National Enquirer, tapered off later in the 1990s. Conservation & Preservation of Wildlife Theme. By the end of the 20th century, the news media fluently reported on relationships between humanity and the natural environment, including recognition of a need for flora and fauna conservation. Evidence of this relationship clearly was reflected in 30 frames bound by this theme. It has been suggested that conflict constitutes news, and that news media attention to conservation issues grew exponentially with controversy among dissenting groups who could not agree on how to balance economic growth with natural resource protection (Hannigan, 1995; Milbrath, 1984; Yearly, 1991). Indeed, all three newspapers analyzed in this study debated industrialized society's impact on parks, forests, and species. Such issues were cast as conflicts between oppositional goals: a comfortable, cost-efficient way of life now versus preservation of wildlife for future generations. Mainstream newspapers tended to incorporate this theme in coverage only when events were dramatic, conflicting, and highly visual, such as group demonstrations over the spotted owl issue and massive bulldozing of rain forest trees. Historically, such symbolic imagery of emotionally charged events has appealed to journalists (Downs, 1972; Krimsky & Plough, 1988; Molotch & Lester, 1974; Nelkin, 1987). The current study showed that even though the public may place a high value on natural resource conservation and protection, mainstream newspapers often ignore public sources unless a dramatic reaction is sought. Overall, the Conservation & Preservation of Wildlife theme was most prevalent in the National Enquirer's 14 frames marked by wildlife violations and debated value systems, as framed in emotion-filled animal cruelty stories and exposes of irresponsible federal animal research spending. Bird (1992) argued that tabloids can comfortably appeal to their audience's schemata because they are relatively independent of large advertisers, unlike traditional media that can feel compelled to appeal to "a demographically valuable audience" (p. 202). Power & Energy Generation Theme. This theme emphasized a balance between society's reliance on electricity and petroleum for heating and powering fac4

Inthe context of the National Enquirer, waste referred to government spending waste.

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tories and automobiles, and risks posed by nuclear energy generation and fossil fuel production. Social researchers have found that power and energy issues resonate in the United States because crisis potential is high (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Mazur, 1990; Nelkin, 1987; Spears, van der Pligt, & Eiser, 1995). Furthermore, power issues weigh heavily on U.S. economic conditions that would stagnate without power and energy (Duncan, 1978). Thus, energy generation has received significant media attention in recent decades. In fact, this theme linked 18 frames in the current study. Power production consistently was represented in The New York Times and USA Today as a necessary evil with manageable consequences. This position comes as no surprise, since, as discussed earlier, the Power & Energy Generation theme and its frames were promoted almost exclusively by elite government and industry sources. The National Enquirer invoked the Power & Energy Generation theme less often than the other two themes and significantly less often than the mainstream papers. However, when covering power generation issues, this tabloid presented bureaucracy as overwhelmingly inefficient in policy decisions, including development of alternative fuels. In conclusion, while it is impossible for any three newspapers' accounts to be representative of all mass media content, analyses of these specific discourses offer new insight into relationships among class hegemony, the press, and culture production. Perhaps the most important, and most troubling discovery in this study is the lack of diversity among risk definers in news media discourse and the limited range of potential ideas that were expressed. Indeed, other mass media researchers have examined ways in which various source groups define risk in an effort to discover how messages are constructed and used by audiences. However, this longitudinal study involved using a computer to analyze massive amounts of text and has underscored the substantial extent to which elite sources themselves dominate framing of environmental risk in newspapers examined. The implications of government and industry source dependency in environmental risk news stories are many. On the one hand, it may be considered a positive outcome that journalists are receptive to elite sources' environmental risk news contributions. Such relationships mean that government administrators, politicians, and industry spokespeople can count on having the opportunity to tell their side of an environmental risk story and promote public safety. Furthermore, elite sources such as government scientists and other government experts may appreciate the accuracy that this privileged status affords if journalists are poorly trained or unable to synthesize scientific issues on their own, and therefore simply use information subsidies verbatim. On the other hand, such a high profile could potentially place a greater burden on these elite sources because there is no hiding from journalists during environmental risk events even if these sources would prefer to say nothing publicly. Such may be the case when details are unavailable or when a government agency or a major corporation is embarrassed or at fault.

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Perhaps the greatest implications of the lack of diversity among environmental risk news definers are a potential compromise in democratic values and inadequate journalism school training. Voices of common people who live with environmental risk every day and voices of groups organized to save the environment from industrialism are drowned out by elites cited most often in environmental risk stories. For nonelites who challenge major corporations and legislators, this study's major finding has grim implications, indeed. The news media essentially ignore them. Furthermore, evidence of one-sided reporting runs counter to journalism schools' foundational principles and minimizes the news media's impact as a social amplifier of risk. Journalism school graduates may lack proper training or critical thinking skills necessary to explain technical subjects and distinguish good scientific evidence from bad. Perhaps journalists succumb to the everyday news production pressures such as tight deadlines and inadequate newsroom staffing. This chapter contributes to the news-as-social-construct theories of news selection by emphasizing human agency in journalists' use of the framing convention and use of elites to subsidize information about environmental risk. The current study seems to confirm that the mainstream news media marginalize lower-order social blocs and a supermarket tabloid promotes counter-hegemonic views. Whether they realize it or not, the mainstream news media rarely report a balance of perspectives on environmental risk. As addressed earlier, perhaps nonelite news sources are unavailable or unwilling to give interviews. Nevertheless, such limitations on the marketplace of ideas may severely handicap the environmental risk policy-making process. REFERENCES Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy. London: New Left Books. Babcock, W. (1998, Fall). Q&A with Allen H. Neuharth. Silha Center Bulletin, 5, 2. Barber, S. (1982, July/August). The boss don't like swindle make it robbery. Washington Journalism Review, 4, 46-50. Barkin, S. M. (1984). The journalist as storyteller: An interdisciplinary perspective. American Journalism, 1(2), 27-33. Barnett, G. (1996). Quantitative analysis of in-person interviews. In C. Barth & J. Sorgensen (Eds.), The practice analysis of management accounting (pp. 109-123). Montvale, NJ: Institute of Management Accountants. Beck, U. (1995). Ecological enlightenment: Essays on the politics of the risk society (M. A. Ritter, Trans.). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Bell, A. (1994). Media (mis)communication on the science of climate change. Public Understanding of Science, 3(3), 259-275. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday. Bird, S. E. (1990). Storytelling on the far side: Journalism and the weekly tabloid. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 7(4), 377-389. Bird, S. E. (1992). For enquiring minds: A cultural study of supermarket tabloids. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Dialogue and Deliberation in Environmental Conflict: Enacting Civic Science Gregg B. Walker Oregon State University Steven E. Daniels Utah State University

INTRODUCTION During the second presidential debate of the 2000 campaign, moderator Jim Lehrer asked then Governor George W. Bush: "Would you believe the federal government still has some new rules and new regulations and new laws to pass in the environmental area ...?" Governor Bush replied: "Sure, absolutely, so long as they're based upon science and they're reasonable. So long as people have input." Lehrer then asked: "What about global warming?," and Bush responded, "I think it's an issue that we need to take very seriously. But I don't think we know the solution to global warming yet. And I don't think we've got all the facts before we make decisions" (Commission on Presidential Debates, 2000). Presidential candidate (and now President) George W. Bush's view that environmental policy decisions should be "based upon science" and "all the facts" mirrors a common assumption that many people hold. Science will provide the answers and the solutions to the nation's and world's environmental problems. No one disputes that scientific knowledge is an important element of environmental decision making and policy development, but can science alone provide the remedies to controversial and complex situations? As Wilkinson noted, "good science, good laws, good economics, and good communities come together in the idea of [environmental] sustainability" (1992, p. 297). Even something as specific as maintaining the viability of a particular species relies on more than simply scientific data. "Endangered species conservation," Clark, Reading, and Clarke wrote, "is a multidimensional task of interacting biological, profes135

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sional, sociological, organizational, economic, political, and policy dimensions." They emphasize that species conservation requires an interdisciplinary approach, because "attempting to restore species by ignoring everything but the species biology invites failure" (1994, p. 419). Scientific inquiry and scientific and technical knowledge are clearly essential, when working through environmental conflicts and developing environmental policy. Yet there needs to be a space, too, for citizen concerns and traditional (local and indigenous) knowledge. Scientific-technical and traditional knowledge and inquiry, in a policy decision making context, are better conceived of as a part of "civic science" (Lee, 1993). This chapter considers the concept of civic science and its communication dimensions. The chapter features civic science as an organizing concept for fostering meaningful communication interaction among scientists, citizens, and managers-decision makers. THE NATURE OF EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

In earlier work, we discussed key features of policy effectiveness and the paradox of public involvement (Daniels & Walker, 2001; Walker & Daniels, 2001). We have noted that an effective policy decision needs to: (a) be generated from an adaptive process; (b) use the most appropriate science and technology; (c) be implementable; and (d) have low transaction costs. These characteristics of effective policy correspond to a broad view of civic science. Participants in an adaptive policy decision-making process acknowledge that all management decisions are inevitably field experiments that apply existing knowledge and assumptions as implicit operating hypotheses. The participants in an adaptive process strive to learn from those field experiments as quickly and reliably as possible, in order to test those fundamental assumptions and the adequacy of current knowledge. If a policy does not achieve its intended objectives, it is not a failure per se, but rather an opportunity to examine which of its motivating assumptions might be faulty. For example, reforestation practices, power line siting actions, and water diversions (e.g., dams) have all generated continual information even as they may have fallen short of management goals. Applying the most appropriate science and technology seems to be an obvious criterion for policy formation, particularly when addressing complex situations. However, most appropriate is open to varied interpretations, reflecting underlying values about science. Some technically trained specialists may associate most appropriate with most advanced or state-of-the-art. In some cases, though, the most advanced technical solutions to policy problems are not the most appropriate or adaptive, particularly when their costs are too great, or they result in policy recommendations that are not culturally or politically viable (Daniels & Walker, 2001). For a policy to be effective it must be capable of being implemented. Certainly citizens will measure effectiveness based on the results of an operational policy.

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Specialists, for example, can conduct sophisticated computer simulations of environmental policy scenarios (such as Superfund site clean-up), but the benefits of policy are derived from tangible accomplishments. As Daniels and Walker (2001) observed: The federal forest planning process that was conducted pursuant to the National Forest Management Act of 1976 exemplifies elegant policy that had limited implementation. The linear programming models that supported each forest's plan were immense, with thousands of rows and columns of data. Even so, the land allocations that many of the plans generated were subsequently appealed, and some have never been fully implemented. In regions such as the Pacific Northwest, the plans bear little resemblance to the ecosystem-based management efforts currently under way. (p. 3)

The fourth policy effectiveness factor, low transaction cost, relates to implementability. Transaction costs are those expenses (e.g., financial, resource, opportunity) that a society or community incurs to implement a policy. Generally a lower transaction cost implies more effective policy formation, particularly when policy options are compared. For example, if one policy generates a particular set of benefits while avoiding costly administrative appeals or litigation, it is by this measure more effective than one that incurs those costs. Collectively, these aspects of policy effectiveness comprise social legitimacy. If segments of society determine that a particular environmental policy process (e.g., clean water standards, roadless area designation) lacks legitimacy, and the issues are important enough, they may organize as interest groups committed to preventing the implementation of that policy. Social legitimacy is a culturally situated concept, that is, its meaning varies across societies and communities. Two criteria define the social legitimacy of environmental policy (Daniels & Walker, 2001): • Decisions should be made rationally and policies must be recognized as technically sound. • People whose lives may be affected by a policy process should have a voice in that process. As we noted elsewhere and refer to later in this chapter (Walker & Daniels, 2001), a tension exists between these two dimensions of social legitimacy that generates the fundamental paradox of basing decisions on sound science while respecting citizens' voice. Replacing science with civic science offers a way through the paradox. Citizens demand technically sound decisions, but as situations become more complex, fewer people have the technical background needed to either meaningfully contribute to, or critique, the decisions. By the same token, these complex situations often touch people's lives in fundamental ways. Our traditions of participatory de-

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mocracy imply that those people should be at least consulted or even directly involved if they desire to be. These dual goals—technical competence and participatory process—create a compelling dynamic between a narrow politics of expertise and a broad politics of inclusion, a dynamic that cuts across public policy disputes such as nuclear waste disposal, health care, and land management. People feel that they should have a voice in public decisions that affect their lives, but how can that voice be meaningful if the terms, concepts, and technical trade-offs are all new to them? Finding ways to increase the quality of technical expertise, while simultaneously increasing the inclusivity of decision processes, is perhaps the fundamental challenge of effective policy formation. (Daniels & Walker, 2001, p. 4) CIVIC SCIENCE

Effective environmental policy relies on more than simply the interpretation of scientific data, yet science should not be tossed aside in deference to the social preferences of interest groups. The elements of effective policy and the dimensions of social legitimacy suggest that scientists, citizens, and decision makers (i.e., managers and legislators) need to interact. These three major players should continually share concerns and expertise as they participate in the development, implementation, and monitoring of environmental policy. Civic science provides a conceptual foundation for doing so. In Compass and Gyroscope, Lee (1993) explained his ideas of civic science. "Managing large ecosystems should rely not merely on science," Lee wrote, "but on civic science; it should be irreducibly public in the way responsibilities are exercised, intrinsically technical, and open to learning from errors and profiting from successes" (1993, p. 161). Civic science integrates the idealism of science with the pragmatism of politics. The challenge of building and maintaining civic science and the institutional relations necessary to do civic science is at bottom individual. Civic science is political activity; its spirit and value depend upon the players, who make up, modify, implement, and perhaps subvert the rules. (Lee, 1993, pp. 161-162).

The players in an environmental conflict situation possess both technical and traditional knowledge. Understanding environmental policy situations is enhanced by integrating ideas from a variety of sources: physical—biological science, political-social science, the local community, and indigenous cultures. Within a civic science orientation, environmental policy decision making honors traditional knowledge (both indigenous and local) just as it seeks scientific and technical knowledge; voices from nonscientific communities are heard alongside those of the scientists. In a just released publication, Adler and Birkhoff (2003) emphasized the importance of accommodating both technical and traditional knowledge, or what they refer to as knowledge from "away" and "here." They noted:

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When people disagree over environmental issues, as they inevitably will, we forget this most fundamental principle: different people and different groups think in different ways. Some people value knowledge that is experientially or intuitively derived. Others treasure expert knowledge or knowledge revealed from spiritual sources. Some people prize stores and aphorisms passed down from [elders]. Others give priority to data and scientific principles (2003, p. 4)

Consequently, Adler and Birkhoff (2003) asserted that the best stakeholder processes: do not privilege one way of knowing above others ensure that both kinds of information-technical and local, scientific and cultural, lay and expert—are accessible to everyone involved.... emphasize that all information is subject to respectful questioning about validity, accuracy, authenticity, and reliability.... improve the capacity of all participants to learn from different kinds of knowledge, (p. 5)

Adler and Birkhoff s ideas about varied ways of knowing could be extended to ways of learning, communicating, and deciding. Our conception of civic science encompasses these ideas. For example, the tenets of effective environmental policy can be addressed through civic science forums that emphasize constructive communication interaction: dialogue, deliberation, and learning. As Lee (1993) noted, civic science combines "a political strategy of bounded conflict with ecological learning based upon experimentation." Civic science, Lee claims, "promises the most rapid and least costly approach to sustainability" (p. 185). Given that both science and politics are adaptive, communication interaction in a civic science venue needs to feature pluralistic debate (Lee, 1994). Such debate could occur in venues that use relevant and accessible technology, such as such as geographic imaging system (CIS) techniques and products. "We need ways to help communities think about their futures and consider the consequences of the choices they are making," Rivlin proposed, "technology can help ... one can now imagine town meetings in which people crowd around the computer screen to experiment with different options and talk about them" (1993, p. 258). ENACTING CIVIC SCIENCE THROUGH DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION

Civic science in practice can foster shared understanding and discovering areas of both agreement and disagreement on all aspects of effective policy. Attainment of these goals hinges on constructive communication. Consistent with a social construction perspective, civic science forums presume that communication is hu-

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man symbolic activity through which meanings are constructed and negotiated and some degree of understanding achieved. Although Lee did not address communication issues specifically, civic science is enacted via forums that promote dialogue and deliberation. Dialogue Dialogue refers to communication interaction between parties that hold discovery, learning, and understanding as their primary goals. Dialogue draws its strength from both the commitment and skills of the participants. One of the foremost writers on dialogue, the late physicist Bohm, explained that via dialogue: A group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues. (Bohm, Factor, & Garrett, 1991, p. 1)

Dialogue is open, nonjudgmental communication (Yankelovich, 1999). It is promoted via a norm of equality in which parties have opportunities to share their ideas; to speak and be listened to (Eisenberg & Goodall, 1993). Participants in a dialogue listen intently, ask questions to learn and understand, and see tremendous worth in the collective wisdom of the participants. In The Fifth Discipline, Senge wrote that dialogue is essential to team learning. Citing Bohm's work, Senge noted the importance of "thought as a collective phenomenon" (1990, p. 240). Dialogue is important to collaborative processes and the practice of civic science; it is the form of communication that creates a shared understanding of the situation. Writers on dialogue make distinctions among dialogue, discussion, debate, and argument. These distinctions seem somewhat artificial and contrived. Our perspective on dialogue as a part of civic science regards dialogue as a form of open, learning-oriented discussion in which parties communicate openly, constructively, and respectfully. For a number of years we have been developing, applying, and refining a framework or approach for environmental policy decision making and conflict resolution, Collaborative Learning (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Collaborative Learning (CL), both in theory and practice, embraces the idea of civic science. Scientific-technical knowledge and traditional knowledge are both valued as parties in a CL process work through their understanding of the specific situation and generate appropriate policy or management improvements: In the early stages of Collaborative Learning, participants engage in dialogue as they seek to develop a shared understanding of the situation. As Collaborative Learning

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participants work through the stages of the CL process, their dialogue about concerns, interests, and possible improvements evolves into deliberation. As their conversation becomes increasingly deliberative, their decision-oriented discussion retains the qualities of their earlier dialogue. (Daniels & Walker, 2001, p. 128).

Deliberation A civic science forum designed to foster meaningful interaction among and between scientists, citizens, and environmental policy decision makers may feature dialogue as the primary communicative form. Still, venues may be more meaningful if that dialogue evolves into deliberation. In CL processes, for example, dialogue is valued along with deliberation. As a CL process progresses through situation understanding and improvement stages, participants' dialogue becomes increasingly decision oriented. As they present improvements, they deliberate about the desirability and feasibility of the actions they propose. Deliberation, Barber explained (1998), is civil discourse that is dialectical, reflective, and reflexive. "The public voice of civility is deliberative," Barber wrote, "critically reflective as well as self-reflexive; it can withstand reiteration, critical cross-examination, and the test of time" (1998, pp. 116-117). Public deliberation "transforms, modifies, and clarifies the beliefs and preferences of the citizens of a political society" (Christiano, 1997, p. 234). It is an open and thoughtful process of public debate that values inclusiveness, egalitarianism, and fairness (Gaus, 1997). Dialogue provides a foundation for deliberation. Whereas dialogue emphasizes learning and understanding, deliberation builds upon that learning and understanding as parties begin to debate possible actions and philosophies. Deliberation emerges as parties discover the need to make a decision. This relationship can be viewed along a discussion continuum (Fig. 7.1). Collaborative Argument Constructive, collaborative argument characterizes the deliberative interaction of civic science. Some public participation analysts might associate argument only

FIG. 7.1. The Discussion Continuum.

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with traditional processes in which advocacy seems the preferred competency. In contrast, processes of civic science and civic discovery (Reich, 1988) consider argument as an essential dimension of communication competence in collaborative public participation. Constructive argument can be critical to a collaborative process's success. Parties must transcend traditional negative views of argument (usually related to arguers rather than argument per se). Participants see the promise of healthy argument, and work to debate issues collaboratively. This commitment includes valuing disagreement, a desire to learn, willingness to risk, openmindedness, mutual respect, and acceptance of an ethical responsibility of fairness. Arguers agree to disagree, as both advocates and inquirers. They rely on fundamental argument skills, such as questioning, reason-giving and explanation, individual and joint case-building and modification, refutation and constructive criticism, explicit values discussion, and appraisal (Walker, 1991). In CL, collaborative argument is enacted through the deliberative stage of "debating desirable and feasible change" (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Inquiry and Advocacy In The Fifth Discipline, Senge distinguished between inquiry and advocacy. He wrote that learning is the most productive when people combine skills in these two areas. "What is needed," Senge asserts, "is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning" (1990, p. 198). When inquiry and advocacy are combined, he explained, "the goal is no longer to win the argument but to find the best argument" (1990, p. 199). According to Ross and Roberts of the Center for Organizational Learning, "When balancing advocacy and inquiry, we lay out our reasoning and thinking, and then encourage others to challenge us." We do so by stating: "Here is my view and here is how I have arrived at it. How does it sound to you? What makes sense to you and what doesn't? Do you see any ways I can improve it?" (Ross & Roberts, 1998, p. 1). Communication interaction in civic science forums, as both dialogue and deliberation, encourages both inquiry and advocacy. Scientists, citizens, and managers need to ask questions as they learn and understand. They deserve opportunities to voice their views as they propose and test technical and traditional ideas pertinent to the environmental conflict situation at hand. Both inquiry and advocacy are important as discussion moves from dialogue to deliberation (Fig. 7.2). CIVIC SCIENCE IN PRACTICE

Civic science approaches address the tenets of effective policy and work through the fundamental paradox of public involvement that is an inevitable part of environmental policy conflicts. As we noted at the outset of this chapter, the paradox appears in most every complex and controversial policy situa-

Balance Inquiry and Advocacy In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge presents guidelines for inquiry and advocacy (1990, pp. 200-201). When advocating your view:

• Make your own reasoning explicit (i.e., say how you arrived at your view and the "data" upon which it is based). • Encourage others to explore your view (e.g., "Do you see gaps in my reasoning?"). • Encourage others to provide different views (i.e., "Do you have different evidence, data, conclusions, or interpretations?"). • Actively inquire into others' views that differ from your own (i.e., "What do you think?," "What are your views?," "How did you reach your conclusions?," "Are you basing your view on data that I have not considered?"). When inquiring into others' views:

•

If you are making assumptions about others' views, state your assumptions clearly and acknowledge them as such. • State the evidence or "data" on which your assumptions are based. • Do not bother asking questions if you are not genuinely interested in the other party's response and in learning from the other party (i.e., if you are only trying to be polite or show the other up). When you arrive at am impasse (others no longer seem open to inquiries about their own views):

• Ask what evidence, data, or logic might modify their views. • Ask if there is any way you might together design a study (or some other inquiry activity) that might provide new information. When you or others are reluctant to express your views or consider alternate ieas:

•

Encourage them (or you) to think out loud what might be making it difficult (i.e., "What is it about this situation, and about me or others, that is making the open exchange of ideas difficult?"). • If there is mutual desire to do so, design with other ways to overcome barriers. FIG. 7.2. Peter Senge's View of Inquiry and Advocacy. 143

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tion—between the emphasis on one hand for the best available scientific and technical knowledge to be applied to any given environmental policy situation, and a simultaneous emphasis on inclusiveness in the policy decision-making process, that is, a desire for meaningful voice. Environmental conflict resolution seems to favor either technical expertise or an involved citizenry, when, in fact, both are important. A partial response to this paradox resides in civic science processes like CL that seek to provide venues and forums for bringing scientists and citizens—technical knowledge and traditional knowledge— together. Doing so begins with scientist and citizen communication competence (Walker & Daniels, 2001). Communication and Learning Focal Points Civic science communication—scientist-citizen-manager interaction as dialogue and deliberation—emphasizes both learning and decision making. The parties in a civic science process communicate and learn about a variety of matters, including: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The technical, legal, and financial issues at hand Information gaps and needs Connections between issues and parties Procedural factors Community impacts Cultural meanings and interpretations Individual and collective (e.g., organizational) meanings and interpretations Perceptions, concerns, and values of other participants The parties' goals-their own and those of others Personalities Communication styles The parties' options-their own and those of others Relative benefits of different strategies External pressures and constraints Areas of agreement and disagreement Shared and divergent assumptions and worldviews

Communication Competence If scientists and members of the public are to interact well about environmental and natural resource management controversies, they must be willing to participate meaningfully in that interaction. Interaction and mutual learning as part of good decision making rely on a basic degree of communication competence

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(Walker & Daniels, 1997). All parties must contribute constructively to the process and strive to communicate well. Scientists, citizens, and managers alike need to communicate appropriately and effectively. They should adapt their communication behavior to the situation in order to foster understanding. Scientists need to respect cultural preferences in learning and knowing and employ clear language. Scientists should be patient with citizens and nonscientists, and should listen openly and actively. They need to monitor their interaction behavior and be aware of how their communication behavior is affecting and being interpreted by citizens and managers (Walker & Daniels, 2001). In a meaningful scientist-citizen-manager dialogue, citizens, too, have a responsibility to communicate competently. Citizens need to listen actively and be open to learning. Citizens can strive to understand the complexity and systemic nature of a situation. They need to accord scientists the appropriate opportunity to share their technical knowledge. Citizens should employ clear language and be willing to provide evidence for the knowledge claims they contribute. Citizens need to recognize science is uncertain, and that there is no scientific or technical silver bullet where complex environmental policy matters are concerned. Furthermore, citizens should respect technical expertise, be willing to learn and study, and should communicate traditional knowledge clearly (Walker & Daniels, 2001). Like scientists and citizens, managers or decision makers should communicate competently, attending to the features of both scientists and citizen communication competence, such as using clear language, listening actively, and monitoring their communication behavior. Uniquely, managers need to clarify their role in the environmental conflict situation, such as stakeholder-advocate, convener, or facilitator (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Managers need to address procedure and decision space, including the contributions that scientific/technical and traditional knowledge can make to the decision process. Civic Science Actions Innovative methods of public participation provide opportunities for implementing the idea of civic science. These methods are typically collaborative. As Gray (1989) explained, collaboration emphasizes "the pooling of appreciations and/or tangible concerns, e.g,. Information, money, labor, etc., by two or more stakeholders to solve a set of problems which neither can solve individually" (p. 12). Selin and Chavez (1995) observed that "collaboration implies a joint decision making approach to problem resolution where power is shared, and stakeholders take collective responsibility for their actions and subsequent outcomes from those actions" (p. 190). Based on earlier work (Walker & Daniels, 2001), the following is a list of activities for doing collaborative civic science. The list is not exhaustive; rather, it provides a starting point for thinking creatively about developing and implementing effective environmental policy.

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Study Groups. Study groups represent a recent innovation in public involvement, one that has proven conducive to the interaction of scientific and traditional knowledge (Richard & Burns, 1998). They can be convened by non- profit organizations or government agencies. Study group membership is voluntary and potentially diverse. Sutdy groups may be tied to a specific project or and management area. Field Trips. Natural resource management agencies have utilized field trips as part of planning processes. A field trip can provide a rich opportunity for scientists to interact with members of different interest groups in a mutual learning environment. Whether tied to a study group process or simply an activity related to a natural resource management planning effort, field trips serve as an effective way for citizens and scientists to interact—on the ground. Science-Scientist Consensus Forums or Science Summits. In some complex natural resource policy areas, such as restoring salmon runs in the Columbia River basin of the Pacific Northwest, there seems to be significant conflict over the science of the situation. Venues need to be available in which scientists can interact collaboratively to work through science conflicts. In a science consensus forum, scientists—from federal and state agencies, sovereign Indian nations, interest groups, and industry—can come together in an extended (e.g., multiday) forum to argue constructively about research needs, data, and scientific interpretations. A science consensus forum could produce a report that could be distributed to interested parties who might then come together in a subsequent forum, such as a science and citizenry dialogue to discuss the findings of the science forum and their implications. Scientist-Citizen-Manager Dialogues. As a follow up to a science consensus forum or in situations where study groups may not be feasible, organizations and agencies can sponsor dialogue venues that bring scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge together. Natural resource agency, interest group, university, and industry scientists generally contribute scientific-technical knowledge in the physical and biological areas. Within any community on most any environmental or resource management situation, there are people with rich local or indigenous knowledge of the issues at hand. Citizen-Scientist-Manager Project Collaboration. Citizens and scientists who have participated in CL workshops we have conducted tell us that, while they find meetings useful, they prefer to be out on the ground, practicing stewardship rather than simply talking about it. Field projects, led by scientists while relying on citizen participation, can foster interaction that embodies civic science. Project collaboration may

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take a variety of forms, including research (e.g., field site development, data collection); implementation (e.g., planting seedlings in riparian area, installing fish screens in a watershed); and monitoring (e.g., fish counts, water temperature readings). Citizen Assessment and Planning. Another way to work through the paradox and foster mutual learning between science, citizen, and manager communities features assessment. Natural resource management agency scientists and specialists have been trained to perform analyses, but that expertise may exist outside agencies as well. For example, in Northern California, with funding from a resource conservation development council, a nonagency team of local specialists has prepared a watershed analysis that compares well with similar analyses developed by agencies. Open Planning Meetings. Related to assessment, citizens can serve as adjunct members of planning teams. For example, a USDA-Forest Service interdisciplinary ID team could include citizens as participant-observers in ID team meetings and other activities. Although care would need to be taken to ensure that citizen involvement was compatible with relevant statutes, such as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, citizens as adjunct planning team members could foster trust in the agency and dialogue between scientists and members of the public. For example, The Chugach National Forest land management plan ID team included citizens as adjunct members in two ways. First, the dates and times of ID team meetings were publicized so that interested citizens could attend and observe. Although citizens could not participate in the actual meetings, they could talk with ID team members before any after meetings. Second, as the ID team worked through public comments (generated via CL workshops and other comment opportunities), citizens were consulted with regularly to provide feedback on the ideas and interpretations the ID team is generating (Daniels & Walker, 2001). Guest Essays and Traditional/Local Expert Presentations. Managers can foster civic science by providing foeums for citizens and scientists alike to share their expertise and insights with others in visible, somewhat formal ways. An agency newsletter, open house, or public forum could include writers and speakers who, in additional to or instead of agency personnel, are citizens or scientists knowledgeable about the issues under review. The Chugach National Forest land management plan ID team published a periodic newsletter throughout the plan revision process, as both print and on-line versions. The newsletters included as a regular feature essays on forest plan revision issues written by citizens who had important ideas and perspectives to share (see for example, the Chugach National Forest plan revision web site (Chugach National Forest).

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Joint Training. Civic science ideas and citizen-scientist-manager interaction can be fostered by brining the parties together in training programs germane to the environmental policy situation. If a environmental or natural resource management project includes a training component, training participants can be drawn from each group. As noted previously, these activities are proposed as methods for working through the seemingly competitive tensions of technical expertise and inclusiveness. The dual goal of applying the best available science to an environmental policy situation while involving citizens meaningfully can be met. Collaborative civic science venues can be developed and applied that bring scientists, citizens, and managers together so that mutual learning can occur and both technical and traditional knowledge can be communicated. These venues may involve the design of new, innovative methods or may draw upon existing approaches to collaboration (e.g., Burgess & Burgess, 1996; Diemer & Alvarez, 1995; Sirmon, Shands, & Liggett, 1995; Walker & Daniels, 2001). An Illustration: Wenatchee National Forest Fire Recovery Planning One of our earliest CL applications illustrates well the importance of a civic science orientation to collaboration, public involvement, and natural resource management planning. Over a 7-month period in 1994 and 1995, we worked closely with members of the Wenatchee National Forest Leadership Team (FLT) as part of its fire recovery planning effort. Throughout the project, we placed a priority on the integration of scientific-technical knowledge and traditional/local knowledge. The Wenatchee National Forest Fire Situation. On Sunday evening, 24 July 1994, a lightning storm moved east across the Cascade Mountain range of Central Washington. Following in the wake of recording-breaking summer temperatures, the storm came upon forests suffering from years of drought-like conditions. It ignited numerous fires; 41 in the Wenatchee National Forest alone. The fires thrived for a variety of reasons. In addition to the unusually dry forest conditions and large volume of natural fuels, the fire burned in steep terrain, stoked by strong winds with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. When the fires broke out, limited local fire fighting resources were available. Fire fighting equipment based in the Pacific Northwest, for example, was being employed to fight fires in the Rocky Mountains. During the first few days of the fires, extreme, unpredictable fire behavior hindered containment efforts. Many veteran firefighters encountered wildfire activity far different than what they expected. Some reported that fires made dramatic, rapid runs down valleys, consuming over 1,000 acres in a two-hour period (Wenatchee National Forest, 1994, p. 1).

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By late July, four significant fires burned simultaneously in the Chelan County portion of the Wenatchee National Forest: the Tyee Creek, Rat Creek (which was human-caused), Hatchery Creek , and Round Mountain fires. Together the fires burned over 181,000 acres, temporarily closed major highways, destroyed 37 homes, drew over 8,000 firefighting personnel from 25 states, and cost almost $70 million to suppress (Wenatchee National Forest, 1994, p. 2). Although the fires were generally contained by mid-August, some high country areas continued to burn through September. In late August, Wenatchee National Forest personnel initiatied a short-term rehabilitation effort to thwart erosion, reduce the risk of floods, and maintain public safety. As short-term rehabilitation efforts proceeded, forest-level and ranger district management began to plan for the long-term health of the forests. They realized that rehabilitating the forests required a comprehensive fire recovery planning effort. The forest supervisor, the forest rehabilitation director, and district rangers, all key members of the Wenatchee National Forest Leadership Team, decided that the fire recovery public involvement situation provided an opportunity for a new, innovative approach. They recognized that forest restoration activities were complex and could be controversial, and that different views about fire recovery and forest health provided the potential for conflict. Consequently, the Wenatchee FLT decided to employ a CL approach, and solicited the our participation. Enacting Civic Science as Part of Collaborative Learning. This CL application has been discussed extensively elsewhere (Blatner, Carroll, Daniels, & Walker, 2001; Daniels & Walker, 2001; Walker, Daniels, & Cheng, in press). We focus here on aspects of the Wenatchee National Forest CL project that featured civic science. 1. The involvement of a science team. The fire recovery effort needed to be grounded in ecosystem-based management (ESBM), combining the best available scientific and technical knowledge with thorough public involvement. To draw upon the best available science, the FLT supported the development of a science team organized by the Wenatchee, Washington Lab of the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. The science team incorporated data from the Wenatchee National Forest fires and previous fires to determine management scenarios that would maintain forest ecosystem health. 2. The participation of science team members in the CL workshops. Fire recovery science team members were actively involved in the CL workshops that occurred in ther communities of Leavenworth and Entiat, Washington in Chelan County and Lynnwood, Washington in the Seattle area. Scientists gave presentations, participated in small group discussions with citizens, and along with other citizens developed management improvement ideas.

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3. Field trip opportunities. Field trips are a standard practice in natural resource management planning. As part of the Wenatchee National Forest CL project, field trips served as part of the public involvement strategy, and often included members of different interest groups. One field trip occurred as a result of a CL workshop discussion. A group of university students challenged the views of a Wenatchee National Forest fisheries biologist. In response, the biologist offered to guide the students on a field trip into a key fire recovery riparian area. 4. Giving voice to traditional-local knowledge. In addition to employing scientists as issue presenters at the CL workshops, we sought out people with local knowledge. For example, a local independent logger had fought the Tyee fire and took numerous photographs as he did. We were very impressed with his knowledge of the forest and his experience fighting fires. We asked him if he would become an issue presenter at the fire recovery CL workshops, and he agreed. His talks were as compelling and as informative as any given by the scientists. CONCLUSION

Given their complex and controversial nature, environmental conflict situations seem ripe for civic science ideas and approaches. In terms of understanding the policy challenges posed by environmental conflicts, the concept of civic science and the ideas of Lee are insightful. The task of designing policy processes that can accommodate civic science—the integration of science and politics, of scientists and citizens—dictates matching the tool to the task. We must think very carefully about the fundamental attributes and challenges of environmental conflict situations and then design collaborative civic science systems that are robust in the face of the challenges. CL, a method we have been developing, applying, and refining over the past few years, provides a case in point (Daniels & Walker, 1996; Daniels & Walker, 2001; Daniels, Walker, Carroll, & Blatner, 1996). CL has three features that make it well suited to integrating science and citizenry as a part of an environmental conflict situation: (a) it explicitly adopts a systems approach to the situation and works to improve the participants' systems understanding; (b) it is more modest in its expectations for progress than the more frequently used rational—comprehensive models that seek solutions; and (c) it expects and attempts to accommodate a wide range of worldviews about environmental issues and the strategic behaviors that those worldviews are likely to generate in controversial situations. CL, though, is simply one framework that can be employed to advance the principles of civic science. Many other methods exist that seem compatible with civic science (see Gray, 1989; and Dukes, 1996; Wondolleck & Yaffee, 2000 for reviews), such as communities of interest and open decision making (Sirmon et al., 1993) or public dia-

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logues (Littlejohn & Domenici, 2000; Public Dialogues Consortium). New methods and venues can be designed that feature civic science ideas and activities. Lee proposed that civic science may be most promising when four conditions exist: a crisis, organizational disorder, information skepticism, and patience. In this chapter, civic science as a concept has been modified to provide a perspective on the interaction of different kinds of knowledge—scientific-technical, traditional, and administrative—in environmental conflict situations. Consequently, civic science emerges in this chapter as a broader, more encompassing idea than Lee may have originally intended. Still, many of Lee's thoughts on civic science remain relevant to this new conceptualization. As Lee explained, "adaptive management and conflict are complimentary, each can catch errors and misunderstandings that the other cannot" (1993, p. 173). Furthermore, "social learning works best when it produces good science." In CL and other collaborative approaches that emphasize meaningful dialogue and deliberation, the tenets and activities of civic science can generate good environmental policy decisions. REFERENCES Adler, P. S., & Birkhoff, J. E. (2003). Building trust: When knowledge from "here" meets knowledge from"away." Portland, OR: National Policy Consensus Center. Barber, B. (1998). A place for us: How to make society civil and democracy strong. New York: Hill & Wang. Blatner, K. A., Carroll, M. S., Daniels, S. E., & Walker, G. B. (2001). Evaluating the application of collaborative learning to the Wenatchee fire recovery planning effort. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 21, 241-270. Bohm, D., Factor, D., & Garrett, P. (1991). Dialogue: A proposal [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.teleport.com/~mears/proposal.html Burgess, H., & Burgess, G. (1996). Constructive confrontation: A transformative approach to intractable conflicts. Mediation Quarterly, 13, 305-322. Christiano, T. (1997). The significance of public deliberation. In J. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 243-278). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chugach National Forest. Plan revision website [on-line]. Retreived from www.fs.fed.us/r10/chugach/revision/index.htm Clark, T. W., Reading, R. P., Clarke, A. L. (1994). Synthesis. In T. W. Clarke, R. P. Reading, & A. L. Clarke (Eds.), Endangered species recovery: Finding the lessons, improving the process (pp. 417-431). Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Commission on Presidential Debates (2000). Debate transcripts [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.debates.org/index.html Daniels, S. E., & Walker, G. B. (1996). Collaborative Learning: Improving public deliberation in ecosystem- based management. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 16, 71-102. Daniels, S. E., & Walker, G. B. (2001). Working through environmental conflict: The Collaborative Learning approach. Westport, CT: Praeger. Daniels, S. E., Walker, G. B., Carroll, M. S., & Blatner, K. A. (1996). Using Collaborative Learning in fire recovery planning. Journal of Forestry, 94(8), 4-9. Diemer, J. A., & Alvarez, R. C. (1995). Sustainable community, sustainable forestry: A participatory model. Journal of Forestry, 93(11), 10-14.

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Dukes, E. F. (1996). Resolving public conflict: Transforming community and governance. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press. Gaus, G. F. (1997). Reason, justification, and consensus: Why demoncracy can't have it all. In J. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 205-242). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gray, B. (1989). Collaborating: Finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Lee, K. (1993). Compass and gyroscope: Integrating science and politics for the environment. Washington, DC: Island Press. Lee, R. G. (1994). Broken trust, broken land: Freeing ourselves from the war over the environment. Wilsonville, OR: Bookpartners Littlejohn, S. W., & Domenici, K. (2000). Engaging communication and conflict: Systemic practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Public Dialogues Consortium, [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.publicdialogue.org Reich, R. B. (1988). Policy making in a democracy. In R. B. Reich (Ed.), The power of public ideas (pp. 123-156). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Richard, T., & Burns, S. (1998). Beyond "scoping": Citizens and San Juan Forest managers, learning together. Journal of Forestry, 96(4), 39-43. Rivlin, A. M. (1993). Values, institutions, and sustainable forestry. In G. H. Aplet, N. Johnson, J. T. Olson, & V. A. Sample. (Eds.), Defining sustainable forestry (pp. 255-259). Washington, DC: Island Press. Ross, R., & Roberts, C. (1998). Balancing inquiry and advocacy. Society for Organizational Learning [on-line]. Retrieved from www.sol-ne.org/pra/tool/inquiry Selin, S., & Chavez, D. (1995). Developing a collaborative model for environmental planning and management. Environmental Management, 19, 189-195. Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday. Sirmon, J., Shands, W. E., & Liggett, C. (1995). Communities of interests and open decisionmaking. Journal of Forestry, 91(7), 17-21. Walker, G. B. (1991, June). Argumentation, collaborative argument skills, and mediation. Paper presented at the biannual National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution, Charlotte, NC. Walker, G. B., & Daniels, S. E. (1997, November). Communication competence and public participation in natural resource policy decisions. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, Chicago, IL. Walker, G. B., & Daniels, S. E. (2001). Natural resource policy and the paradox of public involvement: Bringing scientists and citizens together. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 13(1-2), 253-269. Walker, G. B., Daniels, S. E., & Cheng, A. S. (in press). Facilitating dialogue and deliberation in environmental conflict: the use of groups on collaborative learning. In L. Frey (Ed.), Facilitating Group Communication: Innovations and Applications with Natural Groups. Cresskill, NJ Hampton Press. Wenatchee National Forest (1994, 12 September). Fire information sheet. Wenatchee, WA: Wenatchee National Forest. Wilkinson, C. (1992). Crossing the next meridian: Land, water, and the future of the west. Washington, DC: Island Press. Wondolleck, J. M., & Yaffee, S. L. (2000). Making collaboration work: Lessons from innovation in natural resource management. Washington DC: Island Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Sense of Self-in-Place for Adaptive Management, Capacity Building, and Public Participation James G. Cantrill Northern Michigan University

In recent years, those interested in studying the sundry processes of environmental communication have increasingly focused on place-based analyses of local attempts to preserve the natural world. In tune with what McNeely and Pitt (1985) called conservation from below, these studies often stress the means by which local initiatives and governmental programs pursue enlightened ecosystem management or the prevention of toxic spillover effects attending human commerce or development. Sometimes lost in the hoopla of such localized studies regarding public participation, however, is the fact that many of the places citizens and governments wish to protect are already populated by those whose grounded attitudes more-or-less may be at odds with others' ideas regarding the wise use of natural resources. Indeed, it may be that the social dimension of environmental protection, rather than the natural, is what ultimately secures the durable yet dynamic life of humans interacting within a larger ecosystem context (Christensen et al., 1996). Expanding upon Razee's (1996) description of the geography of rhetoric—that environmental communication can invariably be traced back to a focus upon different place-based exigencies—this chapter attempts to unite the physical (i.e., places) with what is demonstrably social (i.e., communication practices). Specifically, it focuses on the link between situated selves, public participation, and the need to enhance the role of local understandings in building community capacity, preserving natural resources, and reaping the bounty that nature provides. I begin by briefly reviewing the extent to which geography provides a wellspring for arguments about the environment, as well as a symbolic backdrop for approaching the environment itself. Next, I turn to a body of scholarship that has examined senses of place and self in the context of environmental discourse. Finally, I apply the analysis to one approach by which natural resource professionals attempt to manage our use of the land. In doing so, I argue that natural resource management, if 153

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bereft of the vantage provided by citizens' senses of who they are given the places they cling to, is largely shortsighted. By these means, I hope to further illuminate the extent to which particular places serve as a perceptual, as well as physical grounding, for how we symbolically approach, discuss, or eventually act upon environmental conditions, thereby welding geography to the social mileau in which environmental communication occurs. GEOGRAPHY AND THE COMMUNICATIVE IMPULSE

In order to study the effectiveness or appropriateness of environmental communication, most students and scholars of the subject often find it necessary to focus on texts or campaigns dealing with particular places. For example, in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson examined how a history of pesticide use could destroy the quality of life in a future community; Henry David Thoreau went Walking in a particular woods and explored a pond called Walden; Aldo Leopold's reflections in A Sand County Almanac can be compared to the writings of John Muir, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, or Terry Tempest Williams to the extent they all focus on the senses people have for distinct places (cf. Razee, 1996). Yet these authors did not write in a social vacuum, as their observations were as much a product of what their contemporaries thought about the environment as they were the result of the landscapes they themselves perceived. Through such writings, we may begin to sense the tectonic force of a distinctly human geography at play in the field of everyday communication and environmental discourse. A relationship between social interaction and physical location was forecast long ago by Mackinder (1887) when he noted that the discipline of geography is "the science whose main function is to trace the interaction of [humans] in society and so much of [their] environment that varies locally" (p. 143). More than a century later, most academic geographers have come to embrace this unification of land and people as they describe what the Earth appears to be and how we might live upon it (e.g., Johnson, 1997; Kates & Burton, 1986). In this context, specific places represent the most complex of all geographic markers because they represent not only the physical and social elements of the spaces we recognize on the landscapes of various regions but, more importantly, the memories and feelings people have for those locations. Our mental constructions of the sociogeographic places we perceive may be strong or weak, positive or negative, lived-in or seldom visited. In a very real sense, the places we know are found in our hearts and minds as reflections of what we have experienced in life. Relph (1985) elaborated: [Places] are constructed in our memories and affections through repeated encounters and complex associations. Place experiences are necessarily time-deepened and memory-qualified. In geographical experience, a place is an origin; it is

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where one knows others and is known to others; it is where one comes from and it is one's own ... (pp. 26-27)

In essence, place-based ownership and knowledge has become something of a cornerstone in geographers' attempts to share their understanding of human-nature relationships with students, citizens, and decision makers as they practice the art and science of geos graphi—Earth-writing. One of the earliest formal attempts to analyze the relationship between people and places occurred in the 1950s and 1960s at the University of Chicago. In that seminal approach, humans were seen as developing mental images of their environments that could be identified through research and reliably associated with how people behave in reference to environmental risks and opportunities (Kates & Burton, 1986; White, 1985). Particularly influential were the writings of Simon (1957) who, as with others in the Chicago School of Behavioral Geography that followed in his footsteps, suggested that the way we talk about the physical environment results far more from our cognitive image of and social networks based upon the built and natural environment than reality itself. In a sense, our mental picture of the world out there resembles a map-like structure in the mind that allows us to understand and act in everyday life. According to Gould and White (1986), most of our mental maps are based upon psychological reactions to geographic places, the communication networks that permeate those landscapes, and the social distinctions that carve up daily life. Consequently, when we make reference to the environment or attend to environmental discourse, the landscape of our mind channels perception, highlights some features while obscuring others, and roots awareness in social as well as physical relationships between people and things. As a robust concept, the notion of place is also integral to a great many aspects of our communicative lives and provides a foundation upon which a good deal of discourse is constructed. The physical space we move through is full of landmarks and references that, at various times and places, provide both a source for environmental discourse as well as topoi (i.e., common-places) that can be repeatedly turned to explain a concept or make a point. Furthermore, communication about the environment often reflects what Harvey (1969) coined our collective geographical imagination, or a recognition of the role places play in our personal lives and the way that positioning allows us to relate to others in the process of advocating options for land use or environmental protection. Mugerauer (1985) argued that even the act of studying environmental communication depends on a time-space dynamic when he wrote: "environmental disciplines are possible only insofar as they critically work from our historical interpretation of environment, which itself is possible only insofar as mountains, rivers, meadows already show themselves, in language, to us as they are" (p. 66). In other words, not only does communication take place at some point in

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time (and, conversely, history can only be found or located in reference to some description thereof), conceptions of place are intimately connected to and influence the language of environmental discourse as well (cf. Honadle, 1999; Menig, 1979). Indeed, a number of contemporary environmental historians have highlighted the role that place plays in the march of civilization and emerging advocacy regarding natural resource policy (e.g., Cronon, Miles, & Gitlin, 1992; Power, 1996; Wilkinson, 1992). One way to illustrate the relationship between geography and the communicative impulse is to consider the manner in which vicarious experiences of nature or wilderness—drawn from the popular culture of photographic representations regarding landscapes found in coffee-table books, calendars, and any number of advertising appeals that clutter the media—influence the ways we think and talk about the world. Basing his analysis in the works of Burke (e.g., 1969), Muir (1996) argued that such "powerful images influence our awareness of nature, shape our expectations for outdoor experiences, and constrain the way in which we approach political decisions about the future of our environment" (p. 1; cf. Hoch & Franz, 1994; McKibben, 1995; Meister & Japp, 2002). In particular, embellished or digitally enhanced photographs and paintings of wilderness settings constitute examples of what Knighton (1993) has called eco-pornography, or objectified and idealized versions of what is actually a more-or-less flawed landscape encompassing a range of sometimes unappealing characteristics (e.g., mosquitoes, gray skies, trees blocking one's view) rendered invisible by the artist's hand. The fact that artists throughout history have altered their representations of places to seduce and titillate their targets is less important than the effect such visual transformations have on our approach to the environment in general (Oravec, 1994). Consequently, as a society we may have come to the point when our expectations for what is a healthy and attractive place (e.g., a patch of unsullied wilderness) are unrealistic at their base. We have thus become disenchanted with the reality of natural systems and relationships when we attend to environmental communication or have to deal with the world as it is—often urban, overpopulated, or polluted in unseen ways. Although there is certainly much more to the field of geography that what I previously described, the foregoing analysis should at least prompt us to seek deeper understandings of the relationship between environmental communication and the social dimensions of place. However, at the level of policy and practice, such understandings are all-too-often eschewed by typical approaches to public participation and environmental protection. If advocates and insurgents or governments and stakeholders are ever to develop greater capacity to hasten a wiser use of natural resources, they need to appreciate how people see themselves in the places they think they belong. And it is not as if we lack some direction in pursuing this objective! To one degree or the other, scholars have already focused their attention on exploring the person-place dynamic.

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A SENSE OF SELF AND A SENSE OF PLACE Just as environmental communication takes place in a geographic context, so too do people think about the environment in reference to whom they are, given where they exist. This cluster of beliefs brings together one's personal identity, her or his perceptions of the environment in general, and personal assumptions about specific places on Earth. Obviously, our experiences of living in the world—what we have seen throughout our personal histories—mold our present conceptions of and feelings about the particular places we inhabit, visit, or avoid. An important implication of the fact that people have tacit understandings of who they are given where they are is that what we hear and say about the environment is significantly affected by the particular place-based identity we possess. For example, people growing up highly urbanized environments will tend to have one view of themselves and the world that can be contrasted against those who have matured in more rural settings. Similarly, when we re-visit a type of environment time and again (e.g., mountainous regions), or steadfastly shun other locations (e.g., big cities), such experiences color our views of where we fit into nature and human society. The landscapes we habitually experience and our perceptions of who we are in those environments shape our worldly engagements, thereby influencing what we think about when presented with environmental communications. For more than half a century a variety of scholars, especially those in the fields of anthropology and geography, have thought about and examined the extent to which people develop a sense of place. As an idea that changed the face of geography itself (Relph, 1997), the sense of place construct has been approached from a variety of directions. Some (e.g., Agnew, 1989; Altman & Low, 1992; Hummon, 1992; Hunter, 1978; Tuan, 1977) have focused on persons' emotional bonding or attachment to particular places while others have examined the relationship between personal and collective meanings that intersect at a particular physical site (Basso, 1988; Steele, 1981) or the way in which people imbue meaning in different locations (Bragg, 1996). Still other contemporary scholars have examined the concept in terms of cultural forces (Grossberg, 1993), orientations toward time (Lutwack, 1984), interacting social relations (Massey, 1994; cf. Zonn, 1990), one's length of tenure in a region (Cantrill, 1998), the structure and consistency of activity (Stokols & Shumaker, 1981), the relationship between perceptions of place and socio-economic status (Cantrill & Masluk, 1996), or the tangibility of specific environmental features (Fournier, 1991). All of the sense of place analyses completed to date seem to share the same assumption that place-based perception is the product of various social processes grounded in the known past, observed present, and anticipated future; it is "a set of place meanings that are actively and continuously constructed and reconstructed within individual minds, shared cultures, and social practices" (Williams & Stewart, 1998, p. 19). These meanings are generated and sustained in one of two ways: either by way of direct action in the environment across the lifespan or through vi-

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carious experiences gleaned from the mass media, such as watching the Travel Channel, or interpersonal encounters, such as friends recounting their vacation adventures. These social and perceptual processes result in reasonably durable impressions of what either specific (e.g., a particular industrial brownfield or wildlife refuge) or general locations are like (e.g., what is typically associated with industrial brownfields or wildlife refuges) or both, whether those places should be approached or not, and what would be acceptable characterizations of those areas if others were to discuss them. Yet a sense of place, per se, would be somewhat vacuous if it were not for the people whose identities resonated with such mental creations. That is, as people develop a sense for what various places are like—cleaving to some and not to others along the way—they are also nurturing a sense of who they are in relation to those places. It is the symbiotic relationship between place-perception and self-concept that drives, at least in part, our periwinkle-like attachment to special places in the world and galvanizes our self-interest in issues that affect the landscapes with which we identify. Scholars have often pondered over the extent to which the environment is important to the formation of one's identity (e.g., Beeson, Stewart, & Stowkowski, 1996; Carbaugh, 1996; Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996). For instance, we know that early childhood experiences in nature can have a profound effect upon a person's later appreciation for and identification with wildlife, the habitats animals depend on, and particular types of environmental settings (Korpela, 2002; cf. Meyers, 1998). We also know that, as people develop a sense of who they are, their identities grow out of experiences in particular environments. In essence, we all develop what Cantrill (1993) called an environmental self, or that portion of our self-concept that is associated with the physical world beyond our own bodies (cf. Bragg, 1996; Cuba & Hummon, 1993; Roszak, 1992). An extensive body of literature dealing with schema theory (e.g., Cantor & Mischel, 1979;Mandler, 1984; Schmidt & Sherman, 1984; Taylor & Crocker, 1981) suggests that an individual's sense of self is partially represented by beliefs associating the self-as-perceived with the external physical or social environment. What we believe about the self is buttressed by what we encounter in our daily lives (cf. Miller, 1982; Tybout & Yalch, 1980). For example, we know that the self exerts a strong referential effect in focusing attention and stimulating memory (e.g., Kihlstrom et al., 1988) and Tichenor's (1988) analysis demonstrated that when we assess surveys of what others think are grave environmental problems, we use our own experiences in the environment as a basis for determining how we should react to potential problems. Here, the perception of solutions, as well as problems, seems hemmed in by the way we picture ourselves in relation to our environments, or our environmental self. The environmental self is created in much the same way that the rest of our self-concepts form (e.g., Cooley, 1968; Kihlstrom, 1993; Kihlstrom & Klein, 1994). For example, Gergen and Gergen (1988) suggested that our self-concepts evolve via

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the tacit narratives we create to make sense of life events in systematic typically self-serving ways. Because these mental autobiographies are the product of social exchanges in and about the environment, since they are continually in the process of being reinforced, the environmental self is always accessible in perceiving environmental problems (cf. Bargh, 1989; Williams & Stewart, 1998). Even in those situations where environmental conditions are far from benign (e.g., an arid desert, frozen tundra, or polluted slum), the human drive to adapt will necessarily result in an internal association between who someone is and where he or she finds themselves spending most of their time. Also the visceral experience of becoming habituated to one type of an environment over another can result in all manner of biases. Bixler and Floyd (1997, 1999) found, for example, that children raised in the inner city are typically disgusted or even frightened by nature beyond the urban fringe; they simply do not see themselves as fitting into those types of places. Different bases of experience result in different reactions to different environments, preferences for different types of activities, and assumptions regarding one's vested self-interest in different environmental issues (cf. Krause, 1993; Simons, 1993). The combination of a sense of place and the environmental self results in what could be considered a sense of self-in-place. In their review and application of the sense of self-in-place construct, Cantrill and Senecah (2001) reported that how we see ourselves in relationship to place affects our commitments to either dominant or emerging world views (e.g., Cantrill & Masluk, 1996) and how we react to local land-use controversies (e.g., Cantrill, 1996, 1998, 1999; Lagerroos, Shiffered, & Graf, 1995; Quinn & Potter, 1997). Just as others have maintained (e.g., Brandenberg & Carroll, 1994; Hester, 1985; Preister, 1994), they report that, even across extensive geographic regions, citizens' views of the natural and social environment are modified by psychological processes and personal assumptions grounded in personal or indirect experience. That is: Considered as a whole cloth, such studies of the self-in-place construct suggest that the fabric of one's environmental self and a sense of place is richly textured and has a tensile strength largely dependent on separate strands of economic and social life accompanying any given location. Schema for the natural world are, thus, best conceived as a tapestry of intersecting experiences, often times cut-off from the actual physical environment. As such, when citizens and policy makers appeal to one another in an effort to promote different land-use options, they must do so in an awareness of the competing cognitive demands experience places on the processing of advocacy. And using the framework to reconsider various examples of contemporary public policy promotion may provide some hint of how complex the process of natural resource advocacy can be in light of the self-in-place construct. (Cantrill & Senecah, 2001, p. 192)

To compliment Cantrill and Senecah's (2001) exposition on the practical utility of the sense of self-in-place construct, I want to now turn to a general class of natural resource management practices that clearly implicate a viable role for under-

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standing selves and places in the process of public participation, capacity building, and environmental conduct. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF PLACE AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT

The use of adaptive management strategies for natural resource policy implementation in the United States can be viewed as one contemporary approach to the practice of ecosystem analysis and conflict preemption at something of a landscape scale (Boormann, Cunningham, Brookes, Manning, & Collopy, 1994; cf. Lee, Regier, & Rapport, 1982; Lee, 1993). In general, this suite of resource extraction and protection strategies focus on the sustainable yield of a natural resource, best management practices, and monitoring the interface between a range of utilitarian values pertinent to a particular region (e.g., forest plans promulgated by the USDA Forest Service). However, as policy makers and natural resource specialists attempt to mesh economic and social desires for on-the-ground activity with the need to maintain the natural rhythms of ecosystems, they must take into account the fact that human perception ultimately drives both the process and the product of adaptive management. To the extent adaptive natural resource management is goal driven, and those goals evolve in a sociopolitical context supported by the ways in which citizens and decision makers view the world, it becomes necessary to also adapt land-use practices to the psychologies of those affected by remedial actions, forest-stand treatments, regional policy making, and the like. Discussions regarding adaptive management (e.g., Holling, 1978; Stankey & Shindler, 1997; Walters, 1986; Walters & Holling, 1990) equally assume that the process of managing regional resources is neither simple nor linear. Resource management must be treated as a landscape-scale, experimental situation requiring careful attention to continual monitoring of feedback from the system, evaluation, and adjustment. Here, the time frames for assessment and policy implementation are longer than what may occur at the level of, say, a forest stand and the political backdrop for land management is often much more contentious. Consequently, in addition to requisite scientific and technical directives, a wide variety of social factors should be loaded into the calculus for innovative land-use decision making. In particular, Shindler, Cheek, and Stankey (1999) observed: "It is important to pay attention to the specific characteristics of the management setting and the participants involved; these are often the reasons citizens choose to become involved [in the adaptive management process] in the first place" (p. 1). Considered in this light, practices of adaptive management should proceed in concert with democratic consensus building at the local level, where those most affected by land use policies and who are most attached to a place reside. Design principles for the adaptive management process typically are operationalized in Adaptive Management Areas (AMAs), such as those instituted in the

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Pacific Northwest following President Clinton's "forest summit" in 1993. In theory, agency planning for specific AMAs must continually adapt to changing stakeholder values (Shands, 1991), as well as embrace a plurality of equally applicable perspectives for land-use modification, remediation, or both. Such requires an effective scheme for incorporating public participation in the adaptive management process, just as it is required by alternative environmental initiatives (e.g., NEPA). Paehlke and Torgerson (1990) contended that public participation is essential insofar as citizens' vested interests and localized knowledge regarding an AMA mediate their acceptance or rejection of agency directives (cf. Lawrence & Daniels, 1997; Senecah, 1996). The contemporary move toward instituting adaptive management as the modus operandi for natural resource agencies may reflect what Bengston and Xu (1995; cf. Grumbine, 1994) observed as being a fundamental shift in the values of natural resource managers and mainstream environmental organizations since the early 1980s. At least in principle, resource managers accept the fact that policy making and implementation must occur in accordance with public perception. In reference to establishing specific AMAs, Stankey and Shindler (1997) elaborated: The act of drawing a boundary around a piece of land infers [sic.] that the enclosed area possesses some kind of meaning. Boundaries, as Michael (1995) notes, are important to both individuals and organizations. They support prevailing belief systems and, in turn, reinforce them. They determine access, power, and legitimacy. The level of formality with which their meaning is codified can differ widely; it might be statutory, ... or it might be highly informal, albeit widely recognized ... The key point is that the designation carries with it a meaning that many people recognize and value, (p. 3)

In short, place-based knowledge is an essential foundation for instituting an adaptive management regime; as the product of interaction between people and particular sites (Lang, 1990), such knowledge is held by more than merely the management team for an AMA. In particular, a person's sense of self-in-place serves as a platform for understanding and processing claims regarding the environment, thus placing people in reference to policies compatible with an adaptive management regime. Although the concept of adaptive management explicitly references the need to actively assess human perceptions of the process, actual attempts to measure those perceptions often fall short of the mark. Unfortunately, a good deal of the analysis under girding adaptive management short-sheets the role of public participation qua local perceptions by referencing expert knowledge systems (e.g., economic, scientific, technical) over less tangible ways of knowing (Peterson & Peterson, 1996), or by seeming to give only perfunctory emphasis to a range of human values in any given ecosystem (Stankey & Shindler, 1997). Consequently, public partici-

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pation is often minimal, shallow, or considered as a proforma afterthought to championing one course of action over another (cf. Killingsworth & Palmer, 1992). Such departures from the ideal may occur for various reasons, each of which are more-or-less grounded in a faulty approach to appreciating, identifying, and measuring public concerns regarding AMAs. A major barrier to using citizens' beliefs as one basis for adaptive management follows from the way in which natural resource managers have been trained to think about ecosystem management per se. Most of the tools used by present-day environmental decision makers in an adaptive management context (e.g., Dale & English, 1999) still seem rooted in an engineering model that either eschews the role of perception or, at best, turns to the preferences of secondary interest-groups rather than individual stakeholders (cf. Forester, 1989; Wellman, 1987; Westley, 1995). This is in stark contrast to field studies and tests of various models dealing with rational choice that demonstrate citizens evaluating their options for environmental conduct based on immediate and local circumstances (e.g., Honadle, 1999; Ostrom, 1990; Popkin, 1979; Russell & Nicholson, 1981). Although the adaptive management process is often viewed as an experiment in learning how to learn (Boormann et al., 1994), too often human variance is seen as an obstacle to successful policy implementation, rather than an integral part of the educational setting. As a consequence, even in the preliminary planning process conflicts can arise between regional stakeholders and resource agencies requiring preemptive conflict management interventions. Unfortunately, preemptive AMA conflict-interventions themselves may further polarize the parties in a dispute. Conflict assessment related to adaptive systems typically addresses tensions from a structural perspective (e.g., Wondolleck, 1988; cf. Senecah, 2000), focusing on judicial or legislative remedies rather than dealing with the underlying psychology that sparks conflict in the first place. When human perception is taken into account, it often gets relegated to the status of being merely "an adjunct to the formal, scientific knowledge held by experts, such as wildlife biologists or silviculturalists" (Stankey & Shindler, 1997, p. 8). Honadle (1999) indicted this approach in writing: [Resource] preservation generally aims to separate people from natural areas ... this is often seen as "anti-people" by local populations. The ecological reasoning of outside "experts" is not well understood and local populations do not accept it as a legitimate decision. They see it as theft of their livelihood, theft of their birthright, and destruction of their continuity of place, and they respond accordingly, (pp. 17-18)

Thus, even if stakeholders know and accept arguments in favor of one course of action over another, they may nonetheless be reluctant to adopt those proposals precisely because they feel that their local interests have not been addressed and are, therefore, somehow threatened (cf. deHaven Smith, 1988; Stamm &Grunig, 1977). On the other hand, when resource managers do make a concerted attempt to assess the beliefs of AM A stakeholders, they may not be tapping into perceptual di-

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mensions that matter most in promulgating policies. For example, many approaches to adaptive management (e.g., Walters, 1986) suggest measuring the demographics of or values held by those in an area under prescriptive consideration. However, sociodemographic variables provide a rather poor basis for segmenting audiences and predicting responses to policy proposals (see Cantrill, 1993 for an extended review). Furthermore, Albrecht, Bultena, Hoiberg, and Nowak's (1982) research demonstrated that social factors do not seem to exert a uniform effect upon environmental perception; different individuals selectively embrace competing orientations toward the environment simultaneously (cf. Cantrill & Chimovitz, 1993). In addition to the shortcomings of demographic representation, and depending on how one pictures the function of values in daily life, resource managers can easily draw inappropriate inferences if they choose only to survey the attitudes of those living in an AMA. For example, Bengston and Xu (1995) parsed stakeholder values into instrumental (i.e., economic, utilitarian, or life supporting) and noninstrumental (i.e., aesthetic, moral, or spiritual) categories to assess differences between foresters, mainstream environmentalists, and the general public. Yet, who is to decide if an aesthetic response in one location is any less instrumental to an AMA stakeholder than a utilitarian assessment by a resource manager? It seems likely that drawing such distinctions may, in of itself, be quite value laden and obscure to those whose cooperation in an AMA planning process is essential. It might be far better to focus on individual forests and inductively generated beliefs when assessing values since that is where self-interest truly becomes grounded (Vining & Ebreo, 1991). Overall, the perception of solutions (e.g., adaptive management directives), as well as environmental problems, seem mediated by the way we envision ourselves in relation to where we live. Fostering "adaptive capacity," or "creating the ability to continue to assess a changing environment and to construct new responses to the changes" (Honadle, 1999, p. 21), requires enfranchising large sectors of the population that have previously been marginalized in the decision making process (cf. Schmidheiny, 1992). Perceptions of place and self may hold a key to clarifying persons' general responses to adaptive management initiatives on public and private lands, thereby providing a warrant for reconceptualizing what is important to learn about and adapt to when trying to include citizens in the adaptive management process. Insofar as research and theory supports the idea that a sense of self-in-place influences what we value—both in our own localities as well as at a distance—regarding use of the land, natural resource managers should remember that those from within often know more than those from without (cf. deHaven Smith, 1998; Freeh, 1993; Hester, 1985; Krause, 1993; Mitchell, Force, Carroll, & McLaughlin, 1993; Stokols, 1990). Also, the academic exercise of exploring relationships between places and policies is often matched by our lived experience. For example, consider the places people care about in contrast to those they

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hardly ever think about. Typically, the extent to which we think we are a member of a particular community, or would like to live in a specific type of place, determine the strength of what we value about that setting. Also, those special places or general environments that are adjacent to where we live or want to reside are more valuable to us than areas at a distance. Empirically, the tendency for people to draw close to places they prefer and to distance themselves from places they do not like, or geographic discounting (Hannon, 1994; cf. Norton & Hannon, 1997), suggests that what we value in the environment and how we respond to environmental threats are a function of how close something is in time and space to places we care for or disdain. The strongest positive or negative evaluations people have of proposals or physical conditions relate to what they typically experience in the present tense. The further from the present we envision a place, and the further away from our immediate place a problem or opportunity exists, the less likely we are to express strong opinions or do anything about what happened in the past, is happening now, or is going to happen in the future (cf. Harvey, 1996; Massey, 1994; Miles, 1978; Schroeder, 1996). Thus, the practices of adaptive management must be predicated upon a public participatory process that enfranchises local stakeholders who are concerned, foremost, over the immediate future for places they sense are spatially connected to who they are or hope to be. Findings such as those reported earlier indicate that the promotion of natural resource policies under the aegis of adaptive management ought to pay close attention to the sense of self-in-place construct. By way of illustration, Williams and Stewart (1998) argued that in order to avoid the automatic rejection of any p r o p o s e d l a n d - u s e c h a n g e , c o m m o n l y r e f e r r e d to as the not-in-my-backyard or NIMBY syndrome (e.g., Mazmanian & Morell, 1994), natural resource professionals must take into account the social dimensions of an area that get mapped onto citizens' personal understandings of the world at large. As they point out, to know the politics of an issue, one must know the politics of the place (p. 22; cf. Cantrill, 1999; Dean, 1994; Weigert, 1997). Williams and Stewart (1998) further observed: Negotiating a shared sense of place that incorporates both natural and social history allows managers opportunity to find common ground without pigeonholing people into utilitarian, environmentalist, or romantic preservationist positions. That is, it may be possible to build a level of consensus around sense of place because it readily leads to a discussion of desired future conditions of a resource in both ecological and human terms, (p. 23)

Of course, I contend that a sense of place does not trump the environmental self; both must be considered when agencies try their best to do what is appropriate since people, with all their perceptual blemishes, are part of the ecosystem we seek to wisely manage pursuant to a range of human values.

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CAPITALIZING ON PLACE PERCEPTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERSONHOOD Clearly, one approach to making environmental sustainability matter to natural resource policy stakeholders, as well as other citizens in the public sphere, is to deluge them with personally meaningful information regarding land use policies, prescriptions, and practices. If people are inundated with persuasive appeals suggesting that their immediate self-interests are well served by cooperating in ecosystem management regimes, related research indicates they are likely to change their attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Allen, 1990; Bishop, Oldendick, Tuchfarber, & Bennet, 1980; Cordell, Bergstrom, & Watson, 1992; Vogel, 1986; Zimmerman, 1996). This warrant for increasing citizen ownership in the project is especially relevant to issues that are not easily seen in daily life, such as the preservation of biodiversity (van Es, Lorence, Morgan, & Church, 1996). Furthermore, by offering well-reasoned arguments based on stakeholders' senses of selves-in-place, citizens may be motivated to voice their concerns as well as demand accountability, all of which seems consistent with democratic values at a very local level. Effectively advancing principles and practices of adaptive management to the public at large may be something of a daunting task. On the one hand, natural resource managers must correctly identify what constitutes a salient sense of self-in-place for target audiences in an AMA since citizens may distort information that accompanies policy changes if those directives run counter to their senses of place and selves in the environment. On the other hand, merely prompting citizens to focus on the interaction between humans and the biosphere may trigger attitudinal backlash grounded in their preference of social factors over those of nature. In this context, those interested in adaptive management need to advise policy makers and ordinary citizens as to the ways in which the mind, placed as it is among competing social and environmental pressures, functions to make sense out of advocacy related to the self. In some situations, especially those in which a public is willing to spend time and effort in crafting narratives regarding their concerns, it may be possible to have people produce written records of their special places in an area (Lindholdt, 1999). By getting people to focus on and report about the details of those places they hold dear, environmental advocates can begin to discover what Thomashow (1995) called the ecological identity of a group of people. Not only does this process have the advantage of empowering advocates with a general understanding of valued places in a local environment, it also prompts those providing reports a good deal of self-discovery regarding why they have an affinity for particular places. Following further introspection and guidance, most stakeholders may come to understand the extent to which their collective desires for peace of mind or a particular quality of life depend on one type of policy or action as opposed to another.

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Another approach to identifying citizens' senses of self-in-place has been adopted by a number of researchers in a variety of settings (e.g., Cantrill, 1996; Greider & Garkovich, 1994; Lange, 1993; Peterson, Gilbertz, & Varner, 1995; Priester, 1994). In this case, stakeholders are interviewed about whatever region is being considered for modification or protection, the interviews are transcribed, and an open-coding methodology is used to categorize responses to interview questions (Delamont, 1994; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Although this methodology is rather time consuming, it results in a highly empirical assessment of themes characterizing perceptions of the social and natural environment. This process involves the gradual building and verification of a categorization scheme, indexing the most common themes employed by respondents when describing their lives in a community or region. The act of making comparisons between individuals' responses and within respondent's narratives or answers is quite flexible in that it permits line-by-line analysis of phrases or single words, examination of sentences or paragraphs, or inspection of an entire interview to isolate and compare dominant themes and perceptions. These themes can be compared against one another to discover which topics (e.g., landscape changes expected to take place in the near future) are reliably associated with particular demographic variables (e.g., age, length of residence, political affiliation). This type of data can then be used to craft various communication campaigns aimed at specific segments of a population (cf. Grunig, 1989). Taking the time to tap into citizens' senses of self-in-place is a sensible and truly adaptive approach that strengthens our capacity to act on the land without becoming bogged-down in an undue legislative or judicial process. Specifically, managing conflict or promoting policy can thus be transformed into a nonrecursive process wherein resource managers assess and take into account stakeholders' senses of selves-in-place, serve as facilitators in the process of teaching antagonists the perceptions held by one another, and craft consensual policies that satisfy the demands of stakeholder desires while maintaining the integrity of the ecosystemic approach (cf. Daniels & Walker, 1996; Lawrence & Daniels, 1996; Shindler & Neburka, 1997). In closing, I hope to have provided the reader with a different perspective on how scholars and specialists in the field can approach the practice of environmental communication, as well as advance the notion of enlightened ecosystem management that has a place for human desires and needs, from the vantage of citizens' senses of selves-in-place. Such wants and necessities are founded upon the exigence of geography and psychology that should be heeded as we try to adapt ourselves to the land and the land to ourselves. I recognize that the sense of self-in-place construct is but one avenue toward a greater understanding of human behavior in a most complex social and natural resource policy-making context, and I encourage others to draw connections between their perspectives and that which has been surveyed in this chapter. Ultimately,

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our joint abilities to solve the puzzle of how perception mediates environmental conduct will be tested by our tenacity in reexamining old findings, crossing disciplinary lines, and synthesizing new ideas. For the planet is pockmarked by perceptions that, collectively, define the only home we will ever know and I think it best to get on with the job of sustaining a society that appreciates our collective place in the world. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Portions of this chapter were presented at the 2000 International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology, the 2000 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, and the 2000 meeting of the National Communication Association. Grateful appreciation is extended to Dr. Susan L. Senecah for her insightful contributions to those earlier manuscripts. REFERENCES Agnew, J. A. (1989). The devaluation of place in social science. In J. A. Agnew & J. S. Duncan (Eds.), The power of place: Bringing together geographical and sociological imaginations (pp. 9-29). Boston: Unwin Hyman. Albrecht, D., Bultena, G., Hoiberg, E. & Nowak, P. (1982). The New Environmental Paradigm scale. Journal of Environmental Education, 13, 39-43. Allen, L. R. (1990). Benefits of leisure attributes to community satisfaction. Journal of Leisure Research, 22, 183-196. Altman, I., & Low, S. M. (Eds.). (1992). Place attachment. New York: Plenum. Bargh, }. A. (1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 3-51). New York: Guilford. Basso, K. (1988). "Speaking with names": Language and landscape among the Western Apache. Cultural Anthropology, 3, 99-103. Beeson, J. E., Stewart, W. P., & Stowkowski, P. A. (1996). Environmental settings and social interaction: The construction of place identity. Paper presented at the Sixth International Symposium on Society and Resource Management, University Park, PA. Bishop, G. F., Oldendick, R. W., Tuchfarber, A. J., & Bennet, S. E. (1980). Pseudo opinions in public affairs. Public Opinion Quarterly, 44, 198-209. Bixler, R. D., & Floyd, M. F. (1997). Nature is scary, disgusting, and uncomfortable. Environment and Behavior, 29, 443-467. Bixler, R. D., & Floyd, M. F. (1999). Hands on or hands off? Disgust sensitivity and preference for environmental education activities. Journal of Environmental Education, 30 (3), 4-11. Bengston, D. H., & Xu, Z. (1995). Changing national forest Values: A content analysis (Research Paper NC-323). St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service. Boormann, B. T., Cunningham, P. G., Brookes, M. H., Manning, V. W., & Collopy, M. W. (1994). Adaptive ecosystem management in the Pacific Northwest (General Technical Report PNW-GTR-341). Portland, OR: USDA Forest Service. Bragg, E. A. (1996). Towards ecological self: Deep ecology meets constructionist self-theory. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 93-108.

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Mugerauer, R. (1989). Language and the emergence of environment. In D. Seamon & R. Mugerauer (Eds.), Dwelling, place, and environment (pp. 51-70). New York: Columbia University Press. Muir, S. A. (1996, November). Toward the perfection of nature: Environmental images and cultural hegemonies. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Speech Communication Association, San Diego, CA. Norton, B., & Hannon, B. (1997). Environmental values: A place-based approach. Environmental Ethics, 19, 227-245. Oravec, C. L. (1996). To stand outside oneself: The sublime in the discourse of natural scenery. In J. G. Cantrill & C. L. Oravec, (Eds.), The symbolic Earth: Discourse and our creation of the environment (pp. 58-75). Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Paehlke, R., &Torgerson, D. (1990). Managingthe leviathan: Environmental politics and the administrative state. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Peterson, T. R., Gilbertz, S. J., & Varner, G. E. (1995). Facilitating identification across divergent perspectives through environmental ethics education. In D. B. Sachsman, K. Salomone, & S. Senecah (Eds.), Proceedings of the Conference on Communication and Our Environment (pp. 170-180). Chattanooga, TN: University of Tennessee Printing Services. Peterson, T. R., & Peterson, M. J. (1996). Valuation analysis in environmental policy making: How economic models limit possibilities for environmental advocacy. In J. G. Cantrill & C. L. Oravec, (Eds.), The symbolic Earth: Discourse and our creation of the environment (pp. 198-218). Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. Popkin, S. L. (1979). The rational peasant: The political economy of rural society in Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Power, T. M. (1996). Lost landscapes and failed economies: The search for a value of place. Covelo, CA: Island Press. Preister, K. (1994). Words into action: A community assessment of the Applegate valley. Ashland, OR: Rouge Institute for Ecology and Economy. Quinn, M. S,. & Potter, T. G. (1997). Validating a protocol for defining the human concept of place in the Lake Superior Basin—Marathon, Ontario: Final report. Unpublished technical report, Parks Canada, Toronto, ON. Razee, A. (1996, November). The geography of rhetoric and the influence of place in environmental discourse. Paper presented at the National Communication annual meeting, San Diego, CA. Relph, E. (1985). Geographical experiences and being-in-the-world: The phenomenological origins of geography. In D. Seamon & R. Mugerauer (Eds.), Dwelling, place and environment (pp. 15-32). New York: Columbia University Press. Relph, E. (1997). Sense of place. In S. Hanson (Ed.), Ten geographic ideas that changed the world (pp. 205-226). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Roszak, T. (1992). The voice of the Earth. New York: Simon & Schuester. Russell, C., & Nicholson, N. (1981). Public choice and rural development. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. Schmidheiny, S. (1992). Changing course: A global perspective on development and the environment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schmidt, D. A., & Sherman, R. C. (1984). Memory for persuasive messages: A test of a schema-copy-plus-tag model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 17-25. Schroeder, H. W. (1996). Voices from Michigan's Black River: Obtaining information of "special places" for natural resource planning (General Technical Report NC-184). St. Paul, MN: USDA Forest Service.

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CHAPTER NINE

And the Beat Goes On: The Third Decade of Environmental Journalism Sharon M. Friedman Lehigh University

In 1990, I wrote an essay about the first two decades of environmental journalism in the United States and was not too optimistic about how this specialty would progress as the years went on. Comparing the environmental reporting of the 1970s to the 1980s, I saw many similarities and not much progress in the quality of the reporting. I criticized it for its focus on event reporting of environmental disasters such as the Bhopal chemical accident and Exxon Valdez oil spill and pollution-oriented problems of Love Canal and Times Beach without looking at root causes. In particular, I singled out a lack of depth and context that confused audiences about the environmental health risks they heard trumpeted in the media (Friedman, 1991). My criticism echoed that of communication researchers and some reporters over the decade (see Carmody, 1995; Dunwoody & Griffin, 1993; Nelkin, 1995; Rogers, 1999; Wilkins, 1987). However, in the 1990s, things changed. This chapter evaluates the third decade of environmental reporting—with a bonus of the first two years of the new century—from views expressed in some academic journals, two professional publications, Environment Writer and SEJournal,1 and by a dozen senior environmental journalists who represent all forms of media.2 Surprisingly, given the often-differing opinions of academics and working journalists, there was agreement that what happened in environmental journalism during the decade was generally positive. Environment Writer was published by the Environmental Health Center of the National Safety Council until 2002, when it changed publishers and is now published by the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting of the University of Rhode Island. SEJournalis the quarterly publication of the Society of Environmental Journalists. A short list of questions was sent to 16 senior environmental journalists who are former or present members of the Board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists, as well as two former journalists who are long-time observers of the field. Twelve responded with cogent (continued on next page)

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The 1990s became the decade that environmental journalism as practiced by full-time specialty reporters3 grew into its shoes, becoming more sophisticated with the help of the Internet and a professional organization, the Society of Environmental Journalists. The field also matured as stories changed from relatively simple event-driven pollution stories to those of far greater scope and complexity such as land use management, global warming, resource conservation, and biotechnology. Growing into shoes can be painful if they pinch, however, and environmental coverage, like most other journalism beats during this decade, faced a shrinking news hole brought about by centralization of media ownership, revenue losses and challenges from new media. Environmental journalism's dilemma was dealing with a shrinking news hole while facing a growing need to tell longer, complicated and more in-depth stories. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEWS HOLE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL BEAT DURING THE 1990s?

There is nothing new about journalists complaining about lack of space and air time. This lack has been a consistent constraint in most areas of journalism. A 2000 survey of 55 full- and part-time environmental reporters in New England reported that they considered the size of the news hole as second only to time constraints as the most frequent barrier to reporting on the environment (Sachsman, Simon & Valenti, 2002). As the 1990s progressed, a rapidly declining environmental news hole appeared even more severe because reporters faced a famine after a feast. The feast at the start of the decade saw environmental journalism enjoying a resurgence after being in the doldrums as a beat through a good part of the 1980s. The resurgence actually began in 1988 when a severe drought and summer heat wave led many Americans to ponder what they were doing to the environment. Media attention once more focused on the environment, including Time magazine, which named the Endangered Earth as its "Planet of the Year" in January 1989. Increased public and media coverage also catalyzed a massive Earth Day celebration in 1990, the 20th anniversary of the first Earth Day. Adding to the excitement were the two Pulitzer Prizes for environmental stories awarded in 1990. One, for national reporting, went to The Seattle Times for coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the other was given to the Washington (NC) Daily (continued) answers. While their answers are not representative of all full- or part-time environmental journalists in the United States, their long years of experience give them a perspective that is highly knowledgeable and insightful about what has happened over the past 12 years. In this chapter, because of promised confidentiality, individual journalists are not identified with their comments except as a member of the group that responded to the questions. Citations for members of this group are as senior environmental journalists or senior reporters. My thanks to all of the journalists for their assistance. Most remarks in this chapter apply to reporters who spend the majority of their time on the environmental beat and not general assignment reporters who cover environmental issues occasionally.

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News for public service for its coverage of a local water contamination scandal. No Pulitzers had been award to environmental stories since 1980 and before then they were few and far between (A review of environmental Pulitzers, 1999-2000). This spate of greatly increased media attention to the environment went on for about 3 years and included the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which generated reams of copy, including another Time cover story. More media attention meant more environmental reporters and more space and air time for environmental issues. Caught up in the wave of interest, some editors and news directors even proclaimed the environment to be the issue of the decade. Major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, not only covered environment on their front pages, but also featured it in other sections, even the business section. At least, three new environmental magazines began publication. Business Week started a special environmental section, as did many newspapers, and television stations added E-teams after market research showed the environment greatly interested viewers (Friedman, 1991). A survey by the Scientists Institute for Public Information showed that 138 small newspapers were giving more coverage in 1990 to environmental issues than they had 1 or 2 years earlier (Friedman, 1991). In 1993, a study sponsored by the Foundation for American Communications showed that half the newspapers and one-fourth of the local television stations surveyed had specifically assigned a reporter to cover environmental issues, although few covered the environment exclusively (Ward, 1993). Unfortunately, the feast gave way to the famine as environmental interest once again faded in the American public and its media. The environmental beat has never really been stable, riding a cycle of ups and downs like an elevator. These cycles, and consequent increases or decreases in numbers of environmental reporters and their space or air time, appear to be driven by public interest and events, as well as economic conditions. After a high point in the early 1990s, the environmental journalism elevator went down and both the number of environmental reporters and the news hole began to decline. In 1994, Bud Ward, editor of Environment Writer said: "Virtually every objective indicator suggests that public interest in environmental issues has declined rather than increased in recent years. Anecdotal indications are that air time and column inches on environmental issues also have declined" (p.2). Indeed, a survey done at Michigan State University in 1996 found that 23% of newspaper and 44% of television environmental journalists were spending less time reporting about environmental issues than they had the year before. More than one-third of the 496 environmental journalists responding to the survey said they spent no more than one-quarter of their time on the environmental beat and a majority spent no more than half their time covering environmental stories. Lack of space or air time was one of their major complaints (Detjen, Fico, & Li, 1996). Television news, in particular, dropped from an environmental coverage peak on the three national networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) of 774 minutes in 1989, the

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year of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, to a low for the decade of 122 minutes in 1994. For the next few years, the range of minutes devoted on the three major networks to environmental issues ranged from 174 minutes in 1996 to 280 in 2000 (A. Tyndall, personal communication, Sept. 18, 2002). On the local television scene, stations that had established environmental beats in 1990 to ride the wave of public interest reduced the air time available for environmental stories and soon dropped the beat thereafter. Said one local television news director in 1996: "The environment doesn't show up as high as it used to in our research. It's not there. It's gone. People stopped buying the product" (Ropeik, 1996, p. 22). Without the attention-getting benefits of the environmental disasters of the 1980s and pseudo-events such as Earth Day anniversaries, the environmental news hole kept shrinking during the mid- and late 1990s. At the national level, the Clinton-Gore years were a time of less controversy over the environment than the Reagan-Bush years, and less controversy—a major constituent of hard news— means less coverage. One major exception was an attempt by House Republicans to roll back environmental regulations in 1995. This attempted retrenchment generated coverage, even on national television newscasts. Faced with economic downturns, some editors saw the opportunity to pare their staffs by assigning environmental stories to general assignment reporters or asking environmental reporters to cover other topics. Despite these negative pressures, environmental issues did not disappear from the media by any stretch of the imagination, except perhaps on television where spurts of coverage erupted only when a major environmental event occurred such as the Kyoto Conference in 1997 (A. Tyndall, personal communication, Sept. 18, 2002). The up elevator for the environmental beat and news hole restarted when George W. Bush took office. His anti-environmental moves in energy, reversing his campaign promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and his drive to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, generated controversy and brought environmental issues back to the front pages of major newspapers (Hall, 2001). In this up cycle, network television coverage also increased, with 617 minutes of environmental coverage for 2001 on the three major networks (A. Tyndall, personal communication, Sept. 18, 2002). On local television, according to Scott Miller, environmental reporter for KING-TV in Seattle, more environmental reporting was going on, but not often by beat reporters (S. Miller, personal communication, Oct. 12, 2002). The increasing news hole trend continued until the events of September 11, 2001, knocked environmental and other speciality stories off the news pages and nightly newscasts. One year after 9-11, even with increased coverage devoted to terrorism and a possible war in Iraq, environmental journalism stories were again appearing in the nation's media and the beat appeared to have regained some of its resilience. Reflecting on the coverage cycle over the decade, senior environmental journalists who provided information for this chapter were unanimous that the news

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hole at some publications and most broadcast stations has decreased overall. "There are fewer resources for enterprise stories and few are the media at which environment is a 'cherished beat,' one likely to generate lots of page-one/above-the-fold possibilities," said one. Another pointed out that page one is difficult to achieve and there is more competition for it, although good stories still regularly make it. He added that inside space in many A sections has been reduced. Almost all reporters noted that the events of September 11 have shrunk the news hole even further. Yet some senior reporters did not see the impact of the shrinking news hole on environmental journalism in newspapers as very dire. One explained that early in the decade, environmental journalists had a "bubble" with dedicated environmental sections in the newspaper that were not sustainable. "There really wasn't any way to fill all of the space we got, in many cases," he said, adding that today, environmental journalism articles are competing on an almost equal footing with other stories rather than having dedicated space to fill regardless of merit. Another senior reporter said his news hole has actually increased during the decade, but that "the perception of the environmental story being a trendy or a unique feature is pretty much gone." A third senior journalist explained that while all news holes have shrunk in newspapers, good compelling stories are given the room they need. CHANGES IN COMPLEXITY AND THE RANGE OF STORIES

What did and does a good compelling story mean for environmental journalism? In the early days, it meant writing about the tragedies of environmental disasters and victims' suffering from contamination. Yet as time went by, scientists and others found that environmental issues were quite complex, and journalists were faced with trying to explain this complexity in all its scientific, sociological, political, and economic ramifications. According to one senior environmental journalist: "The belching smokestacks and burning rivers of the 70s, that gave rise to environmentalism of the 70s and 80s, had been cleaned up. The obvious stories gave way to more complex issues like particulate air pollution, climate change, endocrine disruption, and non-point source water pollution. The challenge grew to find the big stories, the big issues and to explain them thoroughly within space and time constraints." Another senior reporter said that coping with complexity was a major challenge for the decade, and it continues to be so today. As these complexities became more apparent, the job got more difficult. Confronting the complexity required more substantial research and more points of view in stories, according to a third senior reporter. In the last half of the decade, some journalists turned more frequently to long-term investigative projects, which required them to dig deeply into issues, not only sorting through historical records and other data, but also talking to

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epidemiologists, toxicologists, and other scientists. Said a senior reporter, "journalists needed to know enough science to ask the right questions." As the issues became wider, the background knowledge required—already especially large for environmental reporters—expanded even more, another pointed out. All 12 senior environmental journalists who provided information for this chapter maintained that the range of topics today is not only more complex but also broader than in the early 1990s. They offered a variety of reasons why this expansion had occurred. Said one: "There's a growing realization that the environment is more than just pollution and critters." Instead, environmental journalists are now covering wide-ranging issues such as land management, sustainability, climate change, endocrine disrupters, new technologies such as hybrid cars, overfishing, invasive species, energy efficiency, farm practices, and suburban sprawl. According to another senior reporter: "... suburban sprawl is a topic that editors once looked at only as a county planning issue. Now there is recognition that road building has an impact on the environment, and that the environment is a 'lifestyle' issue." Other senior reporters saw the expansion as part of a focus on new topics such as biotechnology issues and genetically modified organisms. At the start of the 1990s, one pointed out, "I did not envision covering biotechnology, and then ultimately bioterrorism and biowarfare. Everything from transgenic crops to anthrax to even West Nile virus all are now part of the environmental beat." Several noted a closeness to or even merging of the environmental beat with the public health beat in recent years. Another senior reporter offered a different reason for expansion of the range of topics over the decade. He explained that the typical 1980s pollution story that said "there's pollution flowing from the local landfill probably—and rightly so—is no longer a Page One story." This is because the public has become numbed by pollution scares, he said, and readers and editors are more sophisticated about environmental issues. He added that they are "demanding clearer presentations of risk and strong feature articles that can convey complex issues in a more compelling way than the standard news approach." While most of the senior environmental reporters agreed that as the decade progressed there was a move away from covering strictly pollution-oriented stories, one explained that the balance between pollution, growth and nature stories, for example, depends very much on a reporter's location. "In high-growth areas in the South and especially the West, growth and nature-oriented stories dominate." Nevertheless in the East and the Northeast, pollution is still paramount, although somewhat less than a decade ago, he said. Also commenting on changes in pollution reporting, several senior reporters pointed out that there will always be an emphasis on "what kinds of toxic chemicals are out there," but today there's more depth to these stories than in the past. Another said reporters are now covering pollution issues rather than pollution events.

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However, a few were more critical and said that, even today, environmental reporting is still too pollution oriented and does not focus on the root causes such as consumption patterns, demographic trends, population and land use patterns. This small number of critics was echoed by the survey of 55 New England environmental journalists, where about 56% said that environmental reporters generally concentrate too much on problems and pollution, rather than writing stories to help the public understand research or complex issues (Sachsmanetal., 2002). Another criticism lodged by a senior environmental journalist was about the scant coverage of social issues embedded in environmental stories. He noted that "environmental justice is now on the map, but few reporters travel there." He also pointed out little coverage is given to the special roles and privileges of corporations and how these affect the environment, as well as the changing role of the judicial system regarding protecting the environment. A third criticism of current practices related to reporting on health risks from environmental pollutants and other hazards. Risk has always been a difficult subject for reporters to cover because of the possibilities for sensationalizing risks to make good copy, dueling experts with different views about degrees of risk, and problems the public—and some reporters and editors—have in understanding risk assessment procedures, probability and other statistical issues. According to a senior reporter, one specific problem is that when environmental journalists describe studies that show a numerical association between a risk and a consequence, they often fail to point out the difference between a statistical association and causation. This is an absolutely vital point that is not that difficult to explain, he said. Studies that I and other communication researchers have done also show a weakness in reporting about the complexities of environmental risks and, in particular, in putting risks into perspective. Problems noted include avoiding explanations of important technical details and of relative risk so readers and viewers can better understand and judge their own risk levels (Cohn, 1990; Friedman, 1999; Friedman, Villamil, Suriano, & Egolf, 1996; Sandman, Sachsman, Greenberg, & Gochfield, 1987). Despite these concerns from academia, close to 67% of the New England environmental journalists surveyed in 2000 rejected a suggestion that environment writers generally have overblown environmental risks, unduly alarming the public (Sachsman et al., 2002). There is no question that environmental risk reporting has improved over the decade, but it still needs refinements to increase public understanding of risk. OTHER CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING

Many other important changes occurred in environmental journalism during the 12 years from 1990 to 2002. Here is a brief review of some that both I and the senior environmental journalists thought were important:

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• Environmental journalists are using a larger number and a wider range of sources today than in the early 1990s. According to one senior reporter, there is much more skepticism about the assertions of environmental groups and a greater willingness to include opposing views. Reporters are also doing a better job in critically examining what sources say, he noted. In addition, the New England environmental reporters surveyed said "they used a wide variety of sources in covering their beats, from federal, state, and local government officials to academic experts and from business groups to national and local environmental groups" (Sachsman et al., 2002, p. 423). However, other academic studies still show a heavy reliance on government sources in environmental stories (Lacy &Coulson, 1998). • More major enterprise and investigative stories are appearing in the largest 25 newspapers, but there are fewer big series in mid-size and smaller newspapers, one senior reporter noted. Two others worried that such stories are an "endangered species at too many news outlets," and that editors may be looking for trendier topics. One senior reporter said this would challenge journalists who want to do environmental investigative or enterprise stories to tell these stories in "fresh, compelling ways that don't sound like they've been done a million times before." However, he also pointed out that the enterprise beat "is alive and well, as evidenced by the number of major awards environmental stories have won in the last decade." Indeed, environmental enterprise and investigative series won many prizes including a number of Pulitzers during the 1990s, after the double win in 1990 for national reporting and public service. During the decade, articles or series about environmental issues grabbed Pulitzers every year except 1991, 1995, and 1999. In 1999, three environmental stories were finalists for Pulitzers (Taylor, 2000). • Local issues were the main focus for stories throughout the decade and even more so toward its end and into the new millennium. Randy Lee Loftis, environmental writer at the Dallas Morning News, confirmed this local orientation in an interview (personal communication, Oct. 11, 2002), and said: "he isn't supposed to cover national news anymore." He gave an example about writing a story on a new generation of people being exposed to dioxin contamination in Vietnam. Although his story involved a dioxin expert in Dallas, his editor questioned why he had written the story, saying no one would be interested in it. One senior reporter pointed out that he still covered international issues if he could develop a local angle. Scott Miller, environmental reporter for KING-TV News in Seattle, (personal communication, Oct. 12, 2002) supported this point. He said: "The challenge for environmental journalists is to learn how to make the global environmental stories local." There's almost always a way to tell these stories, but often reporters don't find the right way, he added.

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• Use of graphics increased during the 1990s, which helped sell stories to editors and readers. However, there were differing opinions among the senior reporters about what other changes in story format had occurred during the decade. • Editorial support for environmental journalism remains strong at many newspapers but increased pressure to trim newsroom budgets is eroding that support, according to some of the senior reporters. Those editors who are still committed to environmental journalism are doing it better, said one. In the study of New England environmental journalists, about 66% thought their editors considered the environment as an important subject, although they ranked editors eighth out of seventeen in barriers to reporting (Sachsman et al., 2002). A CATALYST FOR CHANGE: THE INTERNET, WEB AND OTHER COMPUTER TECHNOLOGIES

Many of the changes previously discussed, particularly those related to source use and more information resources, have been catalyzed in part by development of the Internet and the World Wide Web. One senior reporter called the Internet "the single most significant change of the last decade," adding that it drastically changed the way journalists do their jobs, mostly for the better. It is now much easier to find a broad range of voices for stories and to get background material quickly and efficiently, he said. Another said it is the best way to set up interviews. He added that scientists who often are difficult to get by phone are always available by e-mail, and documents and other materials also are regularly distributed by e-mail. Several senior reporters said they did not know how they once functioned without the Internet. Despite this high praise for the Internet, the senior reporters were aware of some of its problems. Almost all said they preferred not to interview sources by e-mail. There also were the risks of overlooking sources that are not yet on the Internet and of the faulty information that resides there. One senior journalist pointed out that finding people involved in a particular issue is easy on the Internet, but making sure these new sources are accurate and trustworthy requires "old-time reporting skills." Despite their extensive use of the Internet in recent years, it appears that some environmental journalists and their news organizations have not taken full advantage of all of the opportunities that it has to offer when publishing online or gathering information. Three major issues arise. The first is not including more context and background information in online stories than originated in print or broadcast versions. Generally, when information is added online, it consists mostly of links to other information sources, databases, and archives of past stories. According to a recent study on context in print and online environmental articles in five leading U.S. dailies, none of the newspapers used the potential of the Internet consistently to add more context to environmental articles online (Randazzo & Greer, 2002).

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A second lost opportunity concerns attracting more Web readers through the use of multimedia dimensions for stories including audio, video, and interactive graphics. This approach can be an incentive to some reporters (see Belleville, 1996), but only a few traditional environmental journalists have enlarged their role by adding a Web dimension. A more adventuresome set of freelance writers and Web journalists may eventually fill this role, if they are not already doing so. The third underutilized opportunity the Internet and other computer technologies offer is that of using computer-assisted reporting (CAR) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to develop information for stories. Use of GIS, spreadsheets, and other CAR techniques has expanded in the past few years, particularly for some major environmental series, and how to use these techniques has been discussed fairly often on the pages of SEJournal. However, CAR and GIS are not much of a presence in daily journalism. One reason, according to several senior reporters, is the time needed to collect or build and then analyze datasets. ANOTHER CHANGE CATALYST: THE SOCIETY OF ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISTS

An important catalyst for changes in environmental journalism during the 1990s was the formation of a new professional society, the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). It helped the still young environmental journalism field grow more sophisticated by broadening members' communication network through its quarterly SEJournal, listserves, conferences and Web site. All of these provided, among other things, advice on a multitude of professional matters as well as information gathering and writing techniques, and opportunities for advanced training. Founded by a small number of journalists in 1990, SEJ is a "grass roots organization led by journalists for journalists," according to its mission statement. It has grown over the decade into a very active professional society of more than 1,200 members by 2002. Only journalists, educators, and students can become active or academic members. The services SEJ has developed during its relatively short existence have been a prime factor in helping environmental reporters become better informed, said one senior environmental reporter. In addition, she pointed out: "its collegiality has helped keep a lot of us reporting in more or less the same area for more than a decade." A survey of SEJ members in 2001 showed that its members considered its annual national conference its single most important and effective activity. Second in importance was the biweekly TipSheet,4 which alerts reporters to upcoming issues that they might want to write about and suggests information sources (2001).

The TipSheet is co-sponsored by the SEJ, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, and the Metcalf Center for Marine and Environmental Reporting, taking over for the Environmental Health Center.

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Besides publishing its informative and influential SEJournal, the society provides a wealth of information for members and nonmembers on its Web site, www.sej.org, which was launched in 1994 and improved in 2000 and 2002. According to SEJ then-vice president Dan Fagin of Newsday, the Web site is supposed to be "the Grand Central Station of environmental journalism." He added: "It's already so rich in content that it's the equivalent of a virtual annual conference running 24/7/365. Members and non-members can go to see the news of the day, research a story in the 1,500-link 'links library' or in the searchable archives of TipSheet, SEJournal or EJToday" (Bruggers, 2002, p. 2). EJToday features a selective, daily Web-based listing of annotated links to an array of print and broadcast stories and is updated each weekday morning. It provides story ideas for journalists and lets them see how others are covering various issues. Other aids for journalists on the Web site include a collection of some of the best environmental journalism stories of recent years in "The Gallery," an environmental events calendar and searchable archives, among other features. To keep the environmental journalism field progressing, SEJ also offers a mentoring program for new environmental journalists, a speaker's bureau, regional meetings, and an award for environmental reporting. (Links to the 2003 winners also are on the SEJ Web site). As a major agent for change, SEJ's main impact has been on developing professionalism, shared goals, camaraderie, and a sense of community among environmental reporters (SEJ members come across largely satisfied with organization, 2001). CHALLENGES AHEAD Numerous challenges lie ahead for environmental journalism in the next few years. Among these are loss of information and databases from government sources, a trend that began even before September 11, 2001, but has escalated since. Also of concern is a move in Congress to limit the types of government information subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. One senior environmental reporter pointed out that there are growing signs of the politicization of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "in a way that reporters have never quite seen before." He feared that reporters will no longer be able to turn to EPA for "semi-objective background, positions and reactions." Selling stories to editors and news directors to get space in a shrinking news hole is also a formidable challenge. It is a constant balancing act to provide numerous points of view, explanations, background, and context when the news hole is getting smaller, explained a senior reporter. Yet, he said, the best environmental reporters "can hold the TV generation's attention with clear narrative writing and contextual reporting that emphasizes impacts on readers while still depicting the inevitable subtleties and uncertainties of the issues involved." Led by a core of experienced, mature environmental journalists, the third decade of environmental journalism has been an exciting one. During this time, a

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relatively new field left its teen-age years behind and grew into young adulthood. Catalyzed by the Internet and the Society of Environmental Journalists, environmental reporting has become more impressive than it was in 1970s and 1980s, even in the face of significant economic constraints on media organizations. Without a doubt, the environmental beat will continue in its cycles as this new century progresses. Nevertheless, for the future, given the increasing understanding about the complexity of environmental issues, and all of the challenges that face environmental journalists to produce more exciting, in-depth and thoughtful stories, could anything be more exciting for a reporter than covering the environment? ACKNOWLEDGMENT Credit and special thanks are due to my colleague and spouse, Kenneth A. Friedman, who helped me conceptualize the approach to this essay and edited numerous drafts of it. REFERENCES (1999-2000 December-January). A review of environmental Pulitzers (1940-1998). Environment Writer, 11, 3. Belleville, B. (1996, Summer). Wet field reporting for the web. SEJournal, 6(2), 1, 10-11. Bruggers, J. (2002, Spring). New web site and conference display SEJ's strength. SEJournal, 11(4), 2,9. Carmody, K. (1995, May/June). It's a jungle out there: Environmental journalism in an age of backlash. Columbia Journalism Review, 40-45. Cohn. V. (1990). Reportingon risk: Getting it right in an age of risk. Washington, DC: Media Institute. Duwoody, S., & Griffin, R. J. (1993). Journalistic strategies for reporting long-term environmental issues: A case study of three Superfund sites. In A. Hansen (Ed.), The mass media and environmental issues (pp. 22-50). Leicester, England: Leicester University Press. Detjen, J., Fico, F. & Li, X. (1996). Covering environmental news is becoming more difficult, new survey by Michigan State University researchers finds. News release. 6 pp. Friedman, S. M. (1999). The never-ending story of dioxin. In S. M. Friedman, S. Dunwoody, & C. L. Rogers (Eds.), Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science (pp. 113-136). Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Friedman, S. M., Villamil, K., Suriano, R., & Egolf, B. (1996). Alar and apples: Newspapers, risk and media responsibility. Public Understanding of Science, 5, 1-20. Friedman, S. M. (1991). Two decades of the environmental beat. In C. L. LaMay & E. E. Dennis (Eds.), Media and the environment (pp. 17-28). Washington, DC: Island Press. Hall, J. (2001, May/June). How the environmental beat got its groove back. Columbia Journalism Review [on-line]. Retrieved from http://www.cjr.org/year/ol/4/hall.asp. Lacy, S., & Coulson, D. C. (1998, August). Newspaper source use on the environment beat: A comparative case study. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Baltimore, MD. Nelkin, D. (1995). Selling science: How the press covers science and technology. (Rev. ed). New York: Freeman.

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Randazzo, R., & Greer, J. (2002, August). Context in print and online environmental articles. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Miami, FL. Rogers, C. L. (1999). The importance of understanding audiences. In S. M. Friedman, S. Dunwoody, & C. L. Rogers (Eds.), Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science (179-200). Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ropeik, D. (1996, Winter). The challenge of TV. Nieman Reports, L(4), 21-23. Sachsman, D. B., Simon, J., & Valenti, J. (2002, June). The environment reporters of New England. Science Communication, 23(4), 410-441. Sandman, P. M., Sachsman, D. B., Greenberg, M. R., & Gochfeld, M. (1987). Environmental risk and the press, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. (2001, June). SEJ members come across largely satisfied with organization. Environment Writer, 13(3), 3. Taylor, R. (2000, Spring). Government exposures win reporting prizes. SEJournal, 10(1), 15-16. Ward, B. (1993, August). Environmental reporters their own worst critics. Safety & Health, 33-34. Ward, B. (1994, December). Just thinking ... Environment Writer, 6, 1-2. Wilkins, L. (1987). Shared vulnerability: The media and American perceptions of the Bhopal Disaster. New York: Greenwood Press.

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CHAPTER TEN

Reasoned Action in Environmental Communication Research: Demonstration of an Augmented Model Craig W. Trumbo University of Vermont Garrett J. O'Keefe Colorado State University

What leads a person to allow their lawn to turn brown, dial down the thermostat, or purchase a fuel efficient vehicle? Of the various approaches for understanding behavior one theoretical approach stands out: Ajzen and Fishbein's (1980) Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) (or its more recent counterpart, Planned Behavior). This theory almost seems tailored for use with behaviors linked to politically and socially charged environmental issues. Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the TRA is its wide use by communication researchers despite the fact that the theory itself is not about communication per se. Rather, communication researchers have joined others in extending the model through the inclusion of adjunct variables. The purpose of this chapter is to present and demonstrate such an expanded TRA-based model. We first briefly examine the range of studies that have expanded the TRA, and then present an augmented model that we feel has good utility for environmental communication researchers. ADJUNCT VARIABLES IN THE TRA

The work of Ajzen and Fishbein that came to be formulated as the TRA first appeared over 30 years ago (Fishbein, 1967). Numerous published accounts describe the development of this tradition of attitude-behavior research (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). The conceptual hallmarks of the work are the inclusion of an intervening variable (behavioral intention) between attitude and behavior, and the 189

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parsimonious prediction of behavioral intention based on attitudes and norms specific to the behavior in question. Originally designed for application to circumstances in which relatively simple behaviors are under voluntary control, the theory underwent a significant revision to function under circumstances in which action is not entirely voluntary, but rather is subject to the actor successfully executing one or more behaviors of varying difficulty (e.g., weight loss). The inclusion of the third antecedent variable—perceived behavioral control—transformed the TRA into the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991). Both models have enjoyed considerable application, and have been well supported empirically. Meta-analyses have reported respectable and consistent effect sizes, with 41% of intention and 34% of behavior typically accounted for (Conner and Armitage, 1998; Godin & Kok, 1996; Sutton, 1998). Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of the TRA lies in its sufficiency claim. The idea that two or three variables can account for the lion's share of variance in behavioral intention effectively challenges researchers to search for other variables that might also be included. The theory has in this manner been widely applied to studies of environmental communication, focusing, for example, on the burn policies of the National Park System (Bright, Manfredo, & Fishbein, 1993), water conservation (Kantola, Syme, & Campbell, 1982; Seligman, Hall, & Finegan, 1983; Trumbo & O'Keefe, 2001), orientation toward nuclear power (Showers & Shrigley, 1995), and agricultural conservation (Luzar & Diagne, 1999; Heong & Escalada, 1999). Of course, the TRA's use in environmental communication research represents only a fraction of the theory's broader use in communication, which spans diverse areas such as risk-information processing (e.g., Griffin, Neuwirth, & Dunwoody, 1995; Griffin, Dunwoody, & Neuwirth, 1999), argument (Stewart & Roach, 1998), community commitment (Jeffres, Dobos, & Sweeney, 1987), and health communication. Use of the TRA in health communication has been especially strong in the context of campaign evaluation, with a range of topics examined. Such work has examined, for example, condom use (Greene, Hale, & Rubin, 1997; Sutton, McVey, & Glanz, 1999), smoking cessation (Babrow, Black, & Tiffany, 1990), and teen alcohol use (Rise & Wilhelmsen, 1998). Authors in the field of social psychology have also used the TRA to look at persuasive message effects in a variety of contexts, including career choice (Strader & Katz, 1990), speeding (Parker, Stradling, & Manstead, 1996), and adolescent body shape and self-esteem (Conner, Martin, Silverdale, & Grogan, 1997). Additionally, communication effects have been included in TRA studies looking at voting behavior (Singh, Leong, Tan, & Wong, 1995), computer use (Pancer, George, & Gebotys, 1992), and organizational innovation (Monge, Cozzens, & Contracter, 1992). As just sketched, many studies have made use of the TRA as a vehicle for examining communication effects on some target behavior or to consider the place of communication in some related area of concern. Like much of this work, the study

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that we present here can also be classified as applied rather than purely theoretical. The overarching purpose of this study is to provide feedback for policymakers. Our approach has therefore been utilitarian. AUGMENTED MODEL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION

The model we developed for this project adds three elements to the TRA: communication, values, and past behavior. Many other models could have been assembled, and certainly others might be superior. Yet this model served other goals in our project. Because it also performed well in its own right we feel it is worth presentation as it may have good utility for others as well. First we briefly identify background literature for the adjunct components of the model. We then describe our rationale for the model's structural characteristics. Because we are especially interested in the inclusion of communication effects in the model, we broke communication down into three important components: information seeking, exposure, and attention. Information seeking has been an extensively investigated variable in communication. Work over the past decade has invoked information seeking in a number of applied and theoretical arenas, including: organizational communication (Casey, Miller, & Johnson, 1997; Mignerey, Rubin, & Gorden, 1995; Miller, 1996; Myers, 1998; Rahim, 1990; Teboul, 1994, 1995), health communication (Cegala, Coleman, & Turner, 1998; Freimuth, Hammond, Edger, & Monahan, 1990; Johnson & Meischke, 1993), uncertainty theory (Douglas, 1994; Kellerman & Reynolds, 1990; Wheeless & Williamson, 1992), cultivation theory (Gandy & Baron, 1998), voting behavior (Lowden, Anderson, Dozier, & Lauzen, 1994), and fear appeals (Roser & Thompson, 1995). Exposure and attention also appear in volumes of published research (almost reflexively in many cases). Work specifically on the relation between the two concepts has demonstrated that exposure and attention are unique entities (Chaffee & Choe, 1979; Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986; Drew & Weaver, 1990; McLeod & Kosicki, 1986; McLeod & McDonald, 1985). Subsequent research using exposure and attention has demonstrated the effectiveness of including both variables in analyses (e.g., Weaver & Drew, 1993, 1995). The larger context of our project also argues for the inclusion of two other variables that have been previously evoked in expansions of the TRA. The TRA traditionally takes no account of values. However, Conner and Armitage (1998) explored this in terms of morals. They stated that: "Moral norms can.. .be defined as one's own socially determined and socially validated values attached to a particular behavior" (Conner & Armitage, 1998, p. 1442). They describe a number of studies that examine this concept as an addition to the TRA, including work of Cialdini, Kallgren, and Reno, (1991), who conceptualized personal norms.

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Other researchers have included environmental values in studies of environmental behavior. Grob (1995) included personal philosophical values with perceived control, environmental awareness, and emotions as predictors of membership in a green drivers association in Germany. Values were found to be the strongest predictor, accounting for 39% of variance in behavior. Other such studies examine recycling (Thogersen, 1996), values and gender (Stern, Kietz, & Kalof, 1993), a range of proenvironmental behaviors from recycling to voting (Karp, 1996), membership in environmental organizations (Thompson & Barton, 1994), and a set of 10 proenvironmental behaviors reported in the General Social Survey (Dietz, Stern, & Guagnano, 1998). The challenge with values is that they tend not to be object specific, but more general. While a number of the studies just mentioned do find a place for values in analyses of environmental behavior, many other authors have shown that object-general concepts such as values do not perform as well as object-specific concepts such as attitudes when formally using the TRA. For the case of environmental or conservation behaviors, such values may be especially germane because of their high social salience and the strength to which individuals hold (or do not hold) them. For purposes of this study, the most fruitful line of research that can be applied to the capture of general environmental values involves the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP). In their original work on the NEP, Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) argued that there has been a long-standing Human Exemptionalist Paradigm emphasizing "our belief in abundance and progress, our devotion to growth and prosperity, our faith in science and technology, and our commitment to a laissez-faire economy, limited governmental planning and private property rights" (p. 10). An alternate world view is described by the NEP. This world-view recognizes an essential environmental-economic parity, the balance of nature, the dangers of unlimited growth, and the importance of humans finding sustainable relationships within natural systems. The NEP, and its associated measurement device, have been utilized in a range of studies assessing scale reliability (Noe & Snow, 1990), behavioral prediction (Scott &Willits, 1994), attitudes toward wildlife (Edgell& Nowell, 1980), business attitudes (Shetzer, Stackman, & Moore, 1991), authoritarianism (Schultz & Stone, 1994), and a range of other applications (Albrecht, Bultena, Hoiberg, & Nowak, 1982; Arcury, 1990; Caron, 1989; Geller & Lasley, 1985; Kuhn & Jackson, 1989). These studies "provide insight into the basic values and beliefs on which more specific environmental attitudes and actions are based and serve as aids in interpreting paradigmatic shifts across time" (Scott & Willits, 1994, p. 240). A component (described int the following) from the NEP scale is used in this project to capture an indication of environmental values (we note that our study was initiated prior to more recent reformulation of this concept: Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000; LaTrobe & Acott, 2000). In addition to values, the context of the study strongly argues for the inclusion of past behavior. The inclusion of past behavior in the TRA has been an issue of

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some concern. Eagly and Chaiken (1993) examined a range of work incorporating past behavior and concluded that: "The addition of past behavior to the model is eminently sensible from behaviorist perspectives which postulate that behavior is influenced by habit, or more generally, by various kinds of conditioned releasers or learned predispositions to respond that are not readily encompassed by the concepts of attitude and intention" (1993, p. 179). In such a model, which Eagly and Chaiken presented, past behavior co-varies with attitudes and norms, and then predicts both intention and behavior. Yet how to array past behavior, values, and communication effects with attitudes and norms? Many alternative arrangements could be presented. We configured the variables in a manner to have coherence with the temporal aspects of survey data. We ask about current attitudes and normative pressures in relation to communication effects specified to have occurred in the recent past and behaviors specified to occur in the future. We assume that past behaviors and environmental values are more enduring and have temporal precedence over the other components of the model. The starting model is depicted in Fig. 10.1, and is presented in lieu of a set of research questions (which would relate to the paths with dashed lines) and hypotheses (which would be related to the solid lines). This approach is in essence exploratory rather than confirmatory. METHODS

The data to be analyzed in this chapter are drawn from a larger project examining attitudes and behaviors toward water conservation throughout the Truckee River Watershed in California and Nevada.

FIG. 10.1. Model to be evaluated. Relationships predicted by theory and previous work are solid lines, purely exploratory relationships are dashed.

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Along its 140-mile course, the Truckee River flows out of Lake Tahoe, past the California tourist and lumber town of Truckee, and through the center of the rapidly growing metropolitan area of Reno-Sparks, Nevada. From there, a portion of the river is diverted by a canal system into a "make the desert bloom" agricultural project established in 1908, called the Newlands Project. This agricultural area supports several towns, the largest of which is Fallon, Nevada. Finally, the river follows its natural course to terminate in alkaline Pyramid Lake, which has been home since 1859 to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation. Pyramid Lake provided a sufficient fishery for the Paiute until lake levels began a precipitous drop in the early 1900s, shortly after the establishment of the Newlands diversion canal system. Today, the lake level is some 50 feet lower than it was at the turn of the century, with two fish on the endangered species list. Legal conflicts have been numerous among all parties dependent upon the river's water. Recently, agreements have been reached in which water rights have been transferred from the Newlands Project back to the Paiutes, and Reno-Sparks has made a commitment to improve water conservation by 10% (Bremner, 1999; Jones, 1991; Voyles, 1997). The larger purpose of this project is to examine the factors associated with water conservation behavior throughout the Truckee River Watershed, and to specifically examine factors predicting the voluntary adoption of water meters in the Reno-Sparks metro area. The final goal of the project, in keeping with the goals of the funding program, is to present recommendations to water planners and policy makers—in this case, on how communication may be best used to promote water conservation and voluntary meter adoption. Because a number of other important concepts needed to be included in the study (i.e., several relating to adoption of innovations), and because phone survey methods were employed, it was necessary to operationalize the TRA in a more efficient manner than is done in some of the social psychological literature (this abbreviated approach is not uncommon, see for example: Roberto, Meyer, Boster, & Roberto, 2003). For this analysis, attitude-toward-act, social norms, and behavioral intention are each single measures using a 1-7 agree-disagree response scale: I believe it is important to conserve water (M= 6.2, SD = 1.5); People I know think water conservation is important (M= 5.6, SD = 1.6); I intend to save more water in 1998 than I did in 1997 (M = 4.7, SD = 2.0). Information seeking and attention are likewise captured in single questions: How much effort have you made this year to look for information on water conservation? (l=none to 7=a great deal, M = 2.7, SD = 1.9); When you come across information on saving water how much attention do you give it? (1=little to 7 = a lot, M = 4.7, SD= 1.8). The other variables used in the analysis are indexed measurements. Information exposure includes nine potential sources: newspaper, television, radio, family, friends, neighbors, Sierra Pacific Power Company, other utility companies,

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and information from other groups (such as University of Nevada Extension). Respondents were asked to rate their exposure to water conservation information from each source on a 0 to 10 scale (never to a lot, M= 2.4, SD = 1.9, alpha = .75). A composite of all three communication variables was also constructed for use in one stage of the analysis following (hierarchical regression). For this variable, seeking, exposure and attention were averaged (M = 3.3, SD = 1.4, alpha = .64). Past behavior is measured by asking if the respondent (yes-no) has executed any of a range of 10 water-saving behaviors (e.g., fixing leaks, washing fuller loads, watering less). Summing "yes" responses serves to create a 1-10 index (M = 5.9, SD = 2.2, alpha = .63). Environmental values are measured by averaging the response to a set of three questions (1-7 disagree-agree) drawn from the NEP instrument described previously (The balance of nature is delicate. Humans must live in harmony with nature in order to survive. Mankind is severely abusing the environment. M = 6.0, SD = 1.3, alpha = .71). These approaches to measurement, especially the use of abbreviated forms of the TRA and the NEP index, were evaluated positively in a pretest conducted by mail survey in March and April of 1997 (N = 212, 50% response) (for some analyses of these data see Trumbo, Markee, O'Keefe, & Park, 1999). Interview schedule development, pretesting, data collection, cleaning, and entry were conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center during the summer of 1998, with survey efforts terminating September 1, 1998. A modified random digit dialing sample was used to contact households in four calling areas across the watershed: Truckee, California; Reno-Sparks; Nevada; FernleyWadsworth; Nevada; and Fallon, Nevada. A total of 733 interviews were competed. Response rates varied by calling area (from 39% in Truckee to 57% in Fernley-Wadsworth), with an overall average response rate of 46%. Interviews lasted 15 minutes on average, and most were completed fully, with missing data in only 3% of all cells in the data set. The large sample size was dictated by other analyses targeting contrasts across communities (Trumbo & O'Keefe, 2001). RESULTS First, we note that we decided to employ the TRA rather then the TPB. Inclusion of a measure of self-efficacy, response-efficacy or perceived behavioral control ("The things I can do around the house to save water won't really make any difference for the community") did not significantly improve the prediction of intention in any of the analyses presented in the following. The average correlation among the main variables (intention, norms, attitude) is about .42, while the average correlation is only .08 between those variables and self-efficacy. This result was not entirely unexpected. Water conservation in the survey area is a completely voluntary matter, and one needing only relatively simple skills to execute to some effect. This is demonstrated by the distribution of the variable, past behavior, which is statistically

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normal about a mean of 5.9 (SD=2.2) on an index with a range 0-10. Most respondents are clearly capable of doing something to save water. Since the behavior is voluntary and relatively simple, the less complex TRA is employed (other efforts directly testing the TRA vs. the TPB in similar circumstances also report support for the simpler approach, see Sutton, et al., 1999). Correlations among the variables in this analysis are presented in Table 10.1. The primary variables of the TRA have correlations of about .42, and other variables to be included have moderate to strong correlations with both each other and with the TRA variables (note that the largest correlations are artifacts among indexed items). The final evaluation of these data will make use of path analysis executed through structural equation modeling (with AMOS 3.6; Arbuckle, 1996). This approach allows the examination of a range of relationships controlled for one another (partial coefficients), and also provides a number of useful fir statistics (see Maruyama, 1998; Schumacker & Lomax, 1996). Summary goodness of fit indicators used in this analyses include: the Chi-square-df ratio, which should approach 1 and present a p- value greater than .05 (this is the most demanding of the fit indicators because it assesses statistical departure from a "perfect" fit); the Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI) takes model complexity into account, and ranges from 0 (no fit) to 1 (perfect fit) with .90 considered acceptable; and the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) is an assessment of error-.20 is considered the upper bound. Structural modeling and path analyses have been employed

TABLE 10.1 Zero-order Correlations Among Variables (N = 733) 1

Behavioral Intention

2

Attitude Toward Act

.41

3

Social Norms

.43

.43

4

Environmental Values

.17

.28

.13

5

Past Behavior

.15

.18

.16

.16

6

Communication

.38

.34

.25

.18

.31

7

Seeking

.27

.23

.15

.09

.25

.80

8

Exposure

.20

.17

.17

.08

.20

.71

.34

9

Attention

.39

.36

.27

.24

.26

.78

.50

.28

Note. All correlations significant at p < .05, correlations greater than . 13 significant at p < .01

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to good effect in other research making use of the TRA (e.g., Boldero, 1995; Taylor & Todd, 1997; van den Putte & Hoogstraten, 1997). To begin, hierarchical regression is used to explore the form of the model presented in Fig. 10.1 and to lay the foundation for a structural equation model. Table 10.2 presents these regressions. First, it is shown that intention is well predicted by attitude and norms, with both variables presenting similar (and significant) partial coefficients. With 24% of variance explained, these data have similar characteristics to previous work with the TRA. What additional effect might communication have? The second step of the first regression shows that communication increments R2 significantly by 5%, a modest amount but in keeping with most of the other variables added to the TRA in previous work (Conner & Armitage, 1998). It is also shown in the fourth and fifth regressions that communication effects are a strong predictor of both attitudes and norms. The model also seeks to explore the function of past behavior and environmental values. First, it is shown in the second regression that environmental values and past behavior increment R2 by an insignificant 1% (and by even less when entered after communication, as shown in the third step of the first regression). So values and past behavior do not do much to predict intention (as might have been predicted by the relatively weak correlations shown in Table 10.1). What about their relationships with attitudes, norms, and communication? In the third regression it is shown that values and past behavior together predict 11% of the variance in information. Clearly, the values one holds and one's past actions (themselves correlated r = .16) have some influence over the information one seeks and pays attention to. In the second step of the fourth regression, it is shown that values and past behavior increment the prediction of attitudes above norms and communication by 4%. Yet here it is clear that past behavior is not a strong part of the equation. In the fifth regression, we see that environmental values and past behaviors do not significantly improve prediction of norms over the effects of attitudes and communication. Taken together, this series of regressions argues for a model in which intention is directly predicted by attitudes, norms, and communication—which all co-vary. Environmental values are antecedent to attitude and communication, and past behavior is antecedent to communication only. This is the model proposed in Fig. 10.1 trimmed of some paths. The analysis of the model is presented in Fig. 10.2. This model has a good fit with the data, with a desirable nonsignificant chi-square statistic (a fairly difficult test to pass, especially with a large data set). All of the specified paths have significant partial coefficients, and the R2 values for the endogenous variables are moderate to good, with 34% of the variance in the dependent variable accounted for. CONCLUSION

Here we conclude with a discussion of the path model just described in the results. First, the initial analysis using both hierarchical regression and path modeling, as

198

TRUMBO AND O'KEEFE

TABLE 10.2 Hierarchical Regressions Leading to Configuration of Path Model. Reg 1

2

3

Step 1

Dependent Variable

.20

1

others

.28

2

communication

.24

3

environmental values

.04

3

past behavior

.00

attitude

.25

1

others

.29

2

environmental values

.06

2

past behavior

.06

1

intention

communication environmental values

1 4

5

R

attitude

1

intention

Independent Variable

.29

norms

.36

1

communication

.21

2

environmental values

.22

2

past behavior

.04

attitude

.36

1

communication

.11

2

environmental values

.01

2

past behavior

.06

1

attitude

norms

P

R2

P

.24