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Resisting the discourse of modernity: Rationality versus emotion in hazardous waste siting Stephanie Welcomer, Dennis Gioia and Martin Kilduff Human Relations 2000; 53; 1175 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/53/9/1175

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Human Relations [0018-7267(200009)53:9] Volume 53(9): 1175–1205: 013428 Copyright © 2000 The Tavistock Institute ® SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi

Resisting the discourse of modernity: Rationality versus emotion in hazardous waste siting Stephanie A. Welcomer, Dennis A. Gioia and Martin Kilduff

A B S T R AC T

One community’s resistance to the projected siting of a hazardous waste facility provides a case study of clashing discourse between modernity’s champions and its sceptics. The events and outcomes of this case raise questions about the widespread assumption that science, reason and rationality are necessarily the bases for good decisions in society. This study highlights the contemporary citizen, deeply sceptical of the rational state and modern business practice, and fearful that personal and communal identity will be threatened by forces over which local residents have no control. In this case, site developers and community members engaged in numerous rhetorical exchanges. The developers conducted their side of the discourse according to the tenets of reason and rationality. The community, however, imposed emotional interpretations on the situation, thus radically undermining the possibilities of communicative rationality and challenging the tacit ‘rules’ of modern discourse. The public debate between the protagonists revealed emergent themes of identity disruption, mistrust and polarization.

KEYWORDS

discourse emotion modern postmodern rationality

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If the people who live around here get their way, these roads will remain quiet, dusty, narrow tracks; these fields will remain warm, sleepy and rich with life. If certain businessmen and public officials working in office towers in distant cities have their way, this place will change; this rural peace will end. They will call it progress – they will call it necessary. They will build a toxic waste dump here. (Clarion News, 1991i) In the modern world, we take for granted that arguments should be settled by the use of reason, that science is valuable, and that progress toward a better society is possible. This faith in reason, science and progress is the heritage of empiricists such as Bacon, Locke, Descartes and Spinoza who fostered a scientific approach to understanding that led eventually to the formation of the modern state as the instrument of rationality and human progress. The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, as the period of 18th-century rationalist and scientific thought is known, found its full flowering in such documents as the US Constitution, and in the formation of rational, scientifically designed bureaucratic organizations. A belief in modernity, then, includes a trust in the processes of representative democracy and a faith that science and rationality will yield progress toward the solution of societal problems. Further, a belief in modernity implies an acceptance of state and private organizations as vehicles for the efficient transformation of society, whether through Adam Smith’s invisible hand of market allocation, or through oversight regulation by the government (see Cooper & Burrell, 1988; Hassard, 1994; and Parker, 1992 for perspectives on modernity and postmodernity). This hopeful picture of rationality, science, and progress embodied in a society of organizations overseen by elected representatives has many supporters. For example, Habermas (1981) finds in the Enlightenment project unfulfilled emancipatory potential for rational citizens in modern democracies. Progress in society, according to Habermas, can be achieved by undistorted communication between actors committed to rational discourse on controversial topics. Such free and open debate can result in a consensus if rational actors yield to the force of better arguments as part of a sincere effort to understand all sides of an issue. This ideal portrait of progressive, emancipatory democracy is, however, rejected by those who embrace a markedly different vision of modernity. For these people, modernity has come to represent the repression of citizens by large corporations and government bureaucracies. Power, according to this view, has been centralized by the state, which has become inaccessible to ordinary citizens. Science has become a threat to the survival of individuals and communities in the hands of organizations determined to exploit opportunities for profit


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Resisting the discourse of modernity

and negligent of the consequences of such exploitation. From this perspective, rationality, science and the modern state produce not progress, but systematized destruction of people and resources through wars, narrowly focused economic initiatives, and short-sighted ecological policies (Burrell, 1996; Harvey, 1989). The growing distrust of the intentions of government and business expresses itself in conspiracy theories surrounding public events such as the death of a president or the spread of AIDS. Such distrust also manifests itself in the formation of survivalist groups that form and break away from the modern state. If state agents attack such groups (as happened at Waco, Texas, Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and elsewhere), these attacks serve to fuel further anger against the state and disillusionment among ordinary citizens with the institutions of society such as the police, the courts and the political process. For many people, the once beneficent state and the once friendly corporation appear to threaten rather than protect their interests. This growing unease in the body politic finds its theoretical expression in theories of postmodernity: ‘Postmodernism does more than wage war on totality, it also calls into question the use of reason in the service of power, the role of intellectuals who speak through authority invested in a science of truth and history, and forms of leadership that demand unification and consensus within centrally administered chains of command’ (Giroux, 1992: 53). Postmodern thinkers break with the Enlightenment project and proclaim the importance not of the modern state, but of the grass-roots, communal organization among hitherto marginalized and underrepresented groups. For postmodernists, emotion and intuition combine with rationality as guides to action. The objectivity of rational discourse is called into question to the extent that those in power claim to represent not just one side of the argument but truth itself (see Kilduff, 1993, for one critique of the claims inherent in scientific discourse). Decentralized, local power is preferred to the distant actions of government officials and organizational decision makers. Postmodernists look to the past, as well as to the present and the future, because they suspend the implicit belief in the inevitability of progress. Tradition is rediscovered or reinvented as a way to lend some of the enchantment to the world that modernity has stripped away (Berman, 1981). Further, science becomes just one of many approaches to understanding the world rather than the unquestioned methodological apparatus that facilitates progress toward some utopia. (See Kilduff & Mehra, 1997, for a review of postmodern emphases on marginalized voices, the reinvention of tradition, pluralism and the myth of progress.) Archetypically modern projects that sustain civilization include hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants, as well as facilities to dispose of the


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hazardous waste of industrialized societies. The clash between the promoters of such projects and citizens resistant to them is the focus of this article. Whereas others have documented the escalation of commitment to such projects on the part of both private industry and government agencies (e.g. Ross & Staw, 1993), we focus on the clash between project proponents, on the one hand, and local opponents on the other. With this approach we hope to develop emergent theoretical dimensions that might provide insight into the increasingly frequent confrontations between modernity’s proponents and its critics. In the United States, as in many countries shaped by modernity, the doubts about rationality, science and the myth of progress expressed by postmodern theorists are echoed by citizens faced with projects that threaten family, customs and community. Citizens sceptical of modernity’s legacy point to such consequences as the disruption of traditional lifestyles, the erosion of a sense of community, unanticipated health dangers and the degradation of natural resources. They see a society that imposes threats and risks at every turn, which has led Beck (1994) to label modern society as the ‘risk society.’ (See also Tsoukas, in press.) An example of the extreme distrust of the state among ordinary citizens is summarized in a bumper sticker displayed by many participants in the fight to prevent the location of a hazardous waste dump in rural Pennsylvania. The sticker, referring to the Department of Environmental Resources (DER), a state agency responsible for monitoring compliance with environmental laws, read: ‘DER – Gestapo of Pennsylvania’. As this example implies, resistance to the discourse of modernity involves more than a calm discussion within rational limits of the pros and cons of a project. The bumper-sticker phrase, however, also gives insight into a way that relatively powerless community representatives might organize a rhetorical battle against the seemingly overwhelming resources of the modern state and its corporate partners. If parties adhere to Habermas’s apparently reasonable tenets of open discussion, the advantage in any rhetorical contest goes to the proponents of rationality. A more promising strategy for local opponents is to redefine the rhetorical battleground to encompass more than the use of reason as the basis for decision making. Whereas modernity’s champions are constrained to invoke rationality, science and the authority of the modern state, those resisting such discourse can invoke passion, family, history and community. One community’s resistance to the projected siting of a hazardous waste facility provides a case study of clashing discourse between modernity’s champions and its sceptics.


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The Clarion case Located in northwestern Pennsylvania, Clarion county is a rural region, settled in the 19th century by farmers and loggers. It is a rolling, forested area, with many spring-fed streams that flow into the Clarion River. At the time of this research the Clarion River and its environs was under evaluation to become designated as a ‘wild and scenic’ river. The county is sparsely populated, with 85 percent of the 42,000 people living in rural locations. Of the county’s 388,473 acres, 222,300 are in forest, with 102,577 acres in farmland. The main town, Clarion, is the county seat, and also houses a small university (5800 students). Because of its low level of development and its relative proximity to major metropolitan areas (one-and-a-half hours to Pittsburgh, two-and-a-half hours to Cleveland), the county draws people from different locales who use its water and forest resources mainly for recreation, hunting, fishing and camping. The political history of the area suggests little resistance to the industrial development of resources. Extractive industries (lumber, coal and gas) have been long-time economic mainstays in the region. Although the commercial use of the natural resources also has led to acknowledged pollution of surface streams and aquifers, there has been little protest about these consequences of industrial development, and no recorded instances of civil disobedience concerning state initiatives or regulations pertaining to industrial operations in the region. In July, 1990, however, Concord Resources Group Inc. (CRG)1 announced its intentions to use 560 acres in the county to dispose of 230,000 tons of hazardous waste annually over a projected life span of 20 years. The proposed $100 million facility included plans for an incinerator, a physical/chemical treatment facility, a solidification/stabilization facility and a waste repository. The permit application projected incinerating 20 tons of waste per hour, tank treatment of 700,000 gallons per day, storage of 6 million gallons and performing other treatments of 50,000 gallons per day – a capacity level that meant that Concord’s proposed facility would become one of the largest commercial hazardous waste sites in the northeastern United States.2 As soon as Concord announced Clarion as its target, a community grass-roots group, Protect Environment And Children Everywhere (PEACE), formed to oppose the proposed siting. The first meeting was hurriedly announced and organizers, expecting about 25 people, were surprised by a turnout of more than 400. Thereafter, PEACE strenuously resisted CRG’s attempts to receive state approval for the siting and membership eventually grew to include about 8000 members (Peace, Fall 1991c: 1). The key protagonists in the conflict over the proposed siting were CRG (or ‘Concord’), the developer that proposed to own and run the facility, and PEACE, the


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community citizens group formed to oppose the project. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (DER), the state agency responsible for evaluating hazardous waste facility applications, played an ancillary role in the dispute. This study concentrates on the fight between the community and the state/industry alliance over the siting of the plant. We train our research lens on some of the main processes involved in this contentious clash that might have implications beyond this focal case. As will become apparent, this battle developed into a grudging, unpleasant showdown between differing perspectives, as manifested in the parties’ outlooks, rhetorics and actions. Therefore, we also attempt to reveal some themes that capture the character of differing views in conflict.3

Methodology The first author acted as a participant-observer (P-O) for 16 months from the announcement of Clarion County as a possible site until Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Resources (DER) ruled on Concord Resources Group’s application. The P-O attended the public meetings of the citizens’ group and participated in many organized and impromptu events concerning the hazardous waste siting issue. The P-O in this case lived in Clarion county. Given her residency and her immersion in the unfolding case (not in the usual sense of ‘going native’ but in the more interesting sense of ‘being native’), there existed the possibility of biased interpretation on her part, despite her studied attempt to adopt a dispassionate researcher’s stance. To counter the possibility of insider bias, and to try to mitigate some other issues in P-O work (see Van Maanen, 1995), the second and third authors served as outside researchers who treated the P-O’s experiences as only one input into a more detached analysis. Thus, we employed both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ researchers to try to achieve balance in the reported accounts (see Gioia et al., 1994 for an elaboration of this research approach). To be both exhaustive and precise, we accessed all the public textual material authored by the Clarion community activist group and the hazardous waste developer. Both sets of materials included mass mailings (letters and newsletters) to community citizens, newspaper advertisements and posters advertising meetings and demonstrations. In addition to these direct textual records authored by the opposing parties, we analyzed all the newspaper articles, letters to the editor and editorials addressing the project in the Clarion News, the local paper that served the targeted area. All of these texts


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provided a public trail of sensemaking and sensegiving processes (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991) and provided a forum in which the language used by both sides attempted to channel interpretations and actions toward each protagonists’ preferences.

Analysis We based our ongoing data coding primarily on the categorization and theme analysis described by Miles and Huberman (1984). For the first round of analysis, we coded documents largely on the basis of labels and phrases used by the sources themselves. With further readings we aggregated these codes via a process of constant comparison (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) into patterns of data categories that could reveal emergent themes at a higher conceptual level. We cross-referenced each category according to its source, its location in time, its topic and interpretational focus, and its target. To surface the structure of the interpretation, we followed the principles of Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) grounded theory approach. Approaching the data in a tabula rasa fashion was not entirely possible, as we had some general concepts regarding the local resistance group’s foundations and its dynamics. We therefore approached the data with no pre-set coding or categorization scheme, but rather a set of concepts to explore. For instance, we wanted to know how both community and developer depicted the threat of the hazardous substances, and how both depicted the community’s likely role in housing the facility. Using constant comparison, we began the coding as the texts became public. The first set of codes captured the authors’ phrases as they were used in text. These codes are ‘descriptive’ (Miles & Huberman, 1984), in that they make no attempt to interpret the data, only to describe and represent them. To ascertain the appropriate unit of analysis, we did a preliminary sample of the first month’s data and coded words, sentences and paragraphs. We analyzed each coding scheme according to which ‘chunk’ seemed to capture the text’s message and assigned it an analytical code label. As a result of this procedure, the unit of analysis became the paragraph, as most paragraphs focused on a particular message. For instance, we coded the following segment of a paragraph, from the hazardous waste developer, as NEED (we need to have hazardous waste dumps). . . . facilities such as the one proposed by Concord are a necessary part of the production process that yields the goods and services that we use every day. In Pennsylvania, at some point, a facility will have to go somewhere . . . (CRG, 1991b)


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Each of these codes included the originator (the community or the developer), whether the message itself was descriptive (e.g. ‘this is a battle’) or prescriptive (e.g. ‘you should show your opposition’) and to whom the message was directed (the community or the developer). As the codes began to aggregate into patterns, we accordingly collapsed or expanded them into appropriate categories. We stored and analyzed these codes and their aggregated categories in a spreadsheet computer program.4 As we classified the data, we began to discern emergent relationships. We distilled the categories into tight clusters distinct from one another and well explicated. At this stage, to hone the structure of the categories and subcategories, we dropped some superfluous categories and further collapsed others. From clusters of categories, themes emerged. We pragmatically defined themes as the major concerns addressed by the participants. Overall, the categories grouped into three main emergent themes: disruption of identity, mistrust and polarization.

Overview of emergent categories and themes Much of the public discourse of the community and the developer concerned the prospect of living with a hazardous waste dump and its impact on the local way of life. The public discourse quickly turned into a spirited public debate, much of which focused on the disruption of local values and identity. The identity disruption theme subsumes three categories: safety and risk, anxiety and economic impact. The safety and risk category deals with disagreements about the risks inherent in siting a waste disposal plant; the anxiety category deals with local fears and apprehensions and the developers’ attempts to allay those concerns; the economic impact category deals with differing interpretations about the economic value of the plant. The mistrust theme captures the perception of each party that the other was trying to disseminate misleading information. In practice, this theme manifested itself in frequent debates about the trustworthiness of evidence used to frame competing arguments. The emergent categories thus address the ostensibly objective nature of both the community and the developer’s information. These categories also address claims by both parties that the other party was intentionally supplying misinformation to outside audiences to bias the final decision on the siting proposal. The polarization theme captures those features of the discourse that most divided the debate between the developer and the community and cast it into opposing extremes. Specific categories addressed the perceived sensitivity of the developer to the concerns of the community, as well as community participation in a dialogue. Concord claimed that it was sensitive to community concerns, a claim vehemently disputed by the community. Downloaded from http://hum.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 15, 2008 © 2000 The Tavistock Institute. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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Participation categories refer not to community demands for inclusion in the decision process, but rather to the question of whether the community should participate in a dialogue at all, or should instead fight via aggressive nonparticipation. The polarization theme also encompassed the disquieting threat of violence on the part of community members, in the event that the rhetorical tactics failed.

The findings in detail We firmly believe [hazardous wastes] are controllable and if managed properly will not present a risk to the community. (Oil City Derrick [CRG director of programs], 1990) They’re trying to take away our country, our means of support, break up our way of living, our habits of life. It is against this that we make war. (Civil War Gen. Phillip Sheridan, displayed on Clarion’s True Value Hardware front window, Main St., Clarion, PA) Despite the emotion, heated rhetoric and distrust that often engulfs any attempt to site and develop a hazardous waste management facility, there is a common ground shared by opponents and proponents alike: a strong belief that hazardous waste by-products must be managed safely. (CRG, 1991a) You are threatening our lives, our children . . . Concord is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. You will not destroy our lives! (Clarion News, 1990j) These epigrammatic quotations demonstrate the schism between the parties in the case. The possibility that a toxic waste facility might be located in Clarion engendered not the acquiescence of citizens in favor of progress and supportive of the rational arguments made by state and corporate representatives, but an immediate and impassioned rejection of the proposal. Citizens likened the experience to being the target of a nuclear bomb and compared the facility’s developers to those who pulled the release. Quickly, signs went up, including: ‘BURN IN HELL CONCORD, NOT HERE!’; ‘MILLCREEK IS GOD’S COUNTRY NOT CONCORD’S’; and ‘GET YOUR ASH OUT OF HERE!’. On 2 August 1990 (20 days after the site was proposed and 19 days before it was officially declared a finalist in selection) those organizing the opposition to the facility formed their grass-roots resistance organization (PEACE). PEACE rapidly mobilized the local community to fight the state Downloaded from http://hum.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on April 15, 2008 © 2000 The Tavistock Institute. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

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and corporate opposition. A wide variety of people, including teachers, plant workers, professors, attorneys, retirees and business owners constituted the PEACE group and they started to hold public meetings and distribute hazardous waste ‘fact sheets’ to the community. Members began to instruct school children in the language of toxins, dioxins, incinerators and landfills. Citizens patrolled the township road that divided the proposed site to alert the community to any unannounced state or developer visits. Neighbors kept watch for unusual cars. (A Mercedes spotted on the Fisher Road, for example, was considered to be almost certainly a Concord vehicle.) Such actions set the stage for a more overt conflict, one that both parties came to frame around the defining themes noted above and detailed below. Several general features characterized the case. First, both parties saw this contest in terms of a fight. Community members indeed saw themselves as engaged in a war and characterized the developer unequivocally as ‘the enemy’. Over time the developer reciprocated in a similar fashion in its view of the community. Second, the community viewed the state as the developer’s shadow partner, because state legislation (Act 108) encouraged the state to assist industry in siting such facilities, for example: The state has made us a ‘hostage’ community. . . . Let us stop the hoax that our battle is with CRGPI. CRGPI would not exist, indeed, CRGPI would perish, if it were not for the loving care and preferential treatment of the DER. (Clarion News, 1991h) Third, the two contesting groups focused on the same issues and themes to define the battlefield and conducted their textual fight there, each using different interpretations as their weapons. We have structured our presentation of the findings around contrasting interpretations from both the community and the developer to show how each referenced the same theme but rendered different meanings. We present many representative quotations from the data in a tabular format within the text; juxtaposing the data in this fashion not only illustrates the specific themes, but also shows the interpretive rifts around these themes.

Identity disruption Community members immediately perceived the proposed facility as a threat to their values and traditions, a threat that provoked consideration of their communal identity and its possible deterioration. The siting proposal and its projected consequences brought identity concerns into relief; these concerns


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were manifested around a question of allegiances. To whom should a community member pay allegiance? The self? The family? The community? The state? The society? All have claims. The participant-observer’s field notes are characterized by references to members’ identity expressed strongly in terms of families, neighbors and community (and pointedly not in terms of membership in the modern, progressive society touted by the developers and the state). The identity disruption theme subsumed three categories: safety and risk, anxiety and economic impact. Safety and risk Concord Resources Group discussed safety in terms of the expert and rational assessment of risks and argued that technology, strict management and stringent regulations reduced those risks to negligible levels. The rational process of risk assessment yielded comparisons to such familiar activities as driving a car, smoking cigarettes, receiving chest X-rays and eating peanut butter. Concord attempted to allay apprehensions by discussing acceptable levels of risk, urging the contemplation of reasonable, fail-safe scenarios and, in general, relying on reason and scientific evidence to persuade. The Clarion community, however, responded with emotional, personal rhetoric that unequivocally rejected Concord’s rationales. They portrayed hazardous waste in the provocative terms of contaminated environment, homes, and people. As one resident put it: ‘Look into the face of my child and then tell me I’m overreacting!’ (Clarion News, 1991d). The community emphasized danger; they keyed on the risks of faulty technology and human error to describe in more evocative terms losing their land, their homes and their loved ones. Although emotions have previously been the focus of study (see, for example, Fineman, 1993; Hopfl & Maddrell, 1996), here they were deployed to discount the discourse of rational assessment and supplant and overwhelm it with the language of emotion; they moved the issue of hazardous waste siting from an impersonal, technological plane to a personal, emotional plane. Developer Concord has said that, if properly managed, hazardous waste will not offer hazard to surrounding communities or the environment. To accept this statement, you have to accept the concept that the mere presence of a toxic chemical does

Community How do I protect my children? Twelve hundred children attend school (1.5 miles from proposed site). Not one of them was included in the siting criteria. Our children will be the canaries (Clarion News, 1990h).


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not necessarily mean that a risk exists. For risk to exist there must be exposure to the chemical at unacceptable concentrations (CRG, 1990c, emphasis in original). Assuming that an individual is exposed to the maximum emissions of the facility for 70 years, the added health risk must be no more than that posed by one chest x-ray, or living for two months with a cigarette smoker, drinking 30 diet sodas or spending one hour in a coal mine. Admittedly, the concept of risk assessment is confusing . . . (CRG, 1990c, emphasis in original). The reality of the project, as we have stated all along, is that given the level of regulation that’s imposed on the industry, the very strict design standards that are imposed on the technology, the extensive amount of monitoring that is imposed on the facility once it is in operation . . . given all those considerations, these facilities offer, certainly, less risk than many other types of industries that a community might welcome (Shaw, 1991a). Davis said incineration today is safer that most other industries. ‘It is probably cleaner than any other manufacturing process that takes place’ (Clarion News, 1991f).

Even if their odds are one in a million, what if my son is the one in a million? (Clarion News, 1990h). Wake up western Pennsylvania! We are not talking about cigarette smoke. We are not talking about a garbage dump. We are talking about toxic, hazardous waste that will ruin your life, and environment (Clarion News, 1990a). Why are health and economics used in the same sentence in this letter? Sorry CRG, we’re not willing to expose our children to even 0.01 percent of hundreds of thousands of toxics for an ‘infrastrucutre improvement’ (Clarion News, 1990i).

These excerpts reveal many community members’ presumptions that the developer’s intentions were far from benign. They considered the developer to be not just an agent responsible for the disposal of the toxic byproducts of modern life, but also an impending threat to children and to the fabric and future of the community itself. Some expressed their opposition


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in terms of moral outrage and framed the fight as a moral crusade against an evil invader. Members of the community attempted to recast Concord’s self-characterization as an ‘agent of progress’ into an alternative portrayal as an ‘agent of progressive destruction’. The developer’s apparent commitment to scientific discourse on the topic of risk had little impact on community members’ wariness. Concord tried to reassure the community by pointing to the safeguards enforced by state oversight, including regulations, design standards, and monitoring, but belief in these safeguards presupposed a communal faith in government, a faith that was notably absent in the face of perceived threats to community identity and way of life. Anxiety Both the developer and the community addressed local anxieties about the implications of the project. Concord argued that the presence of a hazardous waste facility would not adversely affect local life, that such a facility was no different from other manufacturing industries, and that Concord intended to be a ‘good neighbor’. Concord presented itself as a benevolent corporate citizen working toward progress and beneficial transformation. The P-O’s experience, however, indicated that most local people saw the implications only in negative terms, expressing apprehension, anger, fear and even horror at the prospects of the facility. Community members described the developer as a frightening and repressive force intent on harming, not enhancing the community. Thus, messages of harmony, beneficence and progress competed with messages of anxiety, anger and apprehension. On one side, then, is the developer’s expression of intended goodwill and benefit, and on the other the community’s expression of its sense of violation by a powerful and threatening enemy. The developer’s portrayal of itself as a benign agent of necessary modern advancement contrasts with the community’s visceral depiction of an alarming alien invasion that must be repelled. The contrast again is between the language of cool rationality and the language of heated, even vehement emotion. Economic impact Perhaps the stark differences between the developer’s affirmative discourse and the community’s worried scepticism about the modernist vision of progress and renewal was nowhere clearer than in the verbal crossfire over the economic consequences of the proposed facility. The developer tried to induce community members to think rationally about the expected economic benefits of the hazardous waste facility. Concord depicted a future of lower


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Developer Dear Concerned Citizen, Just how important is the salutation with which we begin a letter? In this case, for us, it means a lot. We are Concord Resources Group. As you know, Concord is proposing to build a $100 million integrated waste treatment facility here in Clarion County. Over the coming months and years, we want to prove ourselves to be good neighbors (CRG, 1990c). Another key to Concord’s approach emphasizes citizenship. We will do this by providing a number of social and economic benefit to the eventual host community. Such benefit – developed in partnership with the community – will endorse our commitment to the community’s ideals and way of life (CRG, 1990a).

Community Every time I listen to this company they scare me more than everything I could ever tell you (Clarion News, 1990c). We’re frightened, I’ve been working with this for about four weeks. I’ve gone to bed crying for maybe, 31/2 weeks (Clarion News, 1990e). I awoke between 3 and 4 am July 13, to the news on television regarding Concord Resources Group selecting 526 acres of Land . . . for the introduction of a hazardous waste landfill and incineration plant. . . . Now I know what my Mother and Father felt when they announced on the radio Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japan. I was too young to realize their sorrow, but I remember the fear I felt in not understanding the shock, fear and anger in our household (Clarion News, 1990d).

unemployment, higher wages and more tax revenues. In conversations with the P-O, however, a number of local citizens characterized any acceptance of the plant as a kind of ‘Faustian bargain’, in which questionable short-term economic gains would be traded for long-term degradation of their environment and way of life. The stubborn community resistance to the language of economic rationality appeared to spring not only from an emotional allegiance to protecting land, people and customs, but also from the widespread belief that Concord’s promises and projections were suspect. Clarion residents frustrated Concord in its attempts to initiate the kind of balanced, rational communication that Concord believed could lead to the resolution of the stymied debate. Community members instead vilified Concord as malicious and duplicitous, which gave rise to another theme in the case.


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Developer There are also big economic benefits that can be associated with these facilities. If you look at some of the economic information that we’ve put out relative to our proposed facility, you’re talking about employment that could potentially drop the present day unemployment rate in Clarion County by as much as two points (Shaw, 1991a). We’re talking about economic development, pure and simple. . . . Over $100 million in development during the construction phase . . . $2 million a year in tax revenues . . . a payroll of 13.8 million a year (Pittsburgh Press, 1991). In the debate about the development of Concord’s facility, the direct economic impacts have not been discussed. The positive economic potential of our proposed facility cannot be overemphasized (CRG, 1991c).

Community Land values, property values . . . are going to be a thing of the past. . . . After all the money they’ve spent on tourism, they might as well call it the Toxic Forest (Clarion News, 1990a). The argument it’s going to bring jobs here is a lie (Clarion News, 1990b). CRG’s plans have already had an economic impact on the citizens of Clarion County: The Clarion Onized Federal Credit Union has stated that it will not grant any further mortgage loans until the effect of the proposed facility on property values is determined . . . (Peace, 1991b). Fredrick Globe, president of the Clarion hospital’s Board of Directors, stated that ‘Since CRG announced it is pursuing a Clarion County site for development of a hazardous waste incinerator and disposal facility, the hospital has experienced some difficulty recruiting medical staff’ (Peace, 1991b).

Mistrust The community quickly came to see the facility developer as sinister and untrustworthy. Confronted with this characterization, the developer soon reciprocated in kind, questioning the community’s intentions and approach to the debate. Eventually, each side in the on-going stand-off accused the other of deception. The distrust focused mainly on suspicions about the validity and accuracy of the information and statistics used in the debate. Clarion residents rejected Concord’s claims as seductive lies (citing, without humor, Mark Twain’s venerable taxonomy of ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics’). Nonetheless, each side concentrated on marshalling ‘objective’ sources of


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information to buttress contested claims, and each side also tried to counter perceived ‘misinformation’ disseminated by the opposing party. Objective information Both the community and the developer declared their own information to be more relevant and objective. Each also used experts to try to add legitimacy and authority to their interpretations. Each side thus showed itself capable of using rational discourse and the language of objectivity when explicitly presenting information to public forums or hearings. Of particular note here is that the community members themselves invoked science and rationality when they thought it would help their cause, thus tempering their emotionally driven campaign with an element of rationally driven argument.

Developer Concord’s spokesman Green, meanwhile, trusts DER will review Concord’s permit application based on facts. ‘The government does not make decisions based on emotion’ (Pittsburgh Press, 1991). . . . we feel very, very, confident here we have the facts on our side (Clarion News, 1990g).

Community Our community is organized; we are, in a sense a visible group of people who the community can rely on for information. . . . We have biologists, geologist, hydrogeologists (Shaw, 1991b). Everything published in the name of PEACE will be factual. Nobody will be able to attack our credentials (Clarion News, 1990e).

Misinformation Concord repeatedly tried to downplay the community’s concerns by presenting comparative statistics that ostensibly demonstrated the viability of modern hazardous waste disposal practices. Company spokespersons implied that those who could not see the validity of Concord’s facts and figures were irrational and unreasonable. The community rejected these numerical comparisons, labeling them as ‘propaganda’ and ‘misinformation.’ Furthermore, community members bristled at what they perceived to be Concord’s dismissive and condescending attitude toward community concerns and interpretations. Community members pointed to discussions in state and federal environmental protection agencies’ reports of hazardous waste seepage, and similar discussions in reports authored by other


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hazardous waste ‘host’ communities. Concord treated these citations as misleading forms of countering misinformation, carefully chosen for their scare-tactic value. They complained that to use such vivid, but rare anecdotes represented unscientific generalization from selected, small samples. Concord officials continued to try to portray the community’s objections as irrational – objections that could be dispelled if only both parties would agree to norms of science and reason. Developer I think the unfortunate thing is people don’t want to hear the facts (Clarion News, 1990k). That emotionalism that gets into the issue is partly contributed by the fact that aspects of the industry, particularly incineration, tend to be fairly technical in nature. . . . And so it becomes a very difficult topic to communicate on effectively; and, therefore, it’s very easy for people to develop false impressions and misunderstanding about the risk of these facilities (Shaw, 1991a). Irvis (CRG Public Participation Committee member) said he couldn’t be paid enough to be subjected again to what he called toddler temper tantrums by out-of-control Clarion County citizens (Clarion News, 1991b).

Community Risk assessment is not confusing, it’s misinformation. CRG’s tactic of comparing 70 years of exposure to hazardous waste with the consumption of diet soda is highly suspect. Get real, industry! (Clarion News, 1990i). Don’t be fooled by some glib spokesman from Concord or the federal government. They get paid good money to con the ‘hicks’ into believing these plants are safe (Clarion News, 1990f). Where does Mr Irvis get off judging the people of Clarion and Jefferson counties who genuinely feel they are fighting for their lives? (Clarion News, 1991d).

By publicly contesting interpretations of ‘facts’ regarding the siting situation, the developer and community debated whose interpretation could or should be trusted. Concord argued that the confusion of facts with inflammatory opinions clouded rather than clarified the issues. Clarion spokespersons argued that given the history of hazardous waste disposal, it would be irrational not to be emotional. Thus, the developer depicted emotion as a disturbance to rational decision making, whereas for the community emotion


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guided and contributed to the decision-making process. These talkingpast-each-other arguments led to a degenerating cycle of mistrust that contributed to a further polarization of positions.

Polarization The polarization theme captured how each side in the dispute viewed the possibility of finding common ground. Concord argued that it was sensitive to the community’s concerns and values, and called for participation, discussion and dialogue. Community members responded that because the siting process offered no veto possibility, the ideas of sensitivity and participation were ‘window dressing’ to channel community activities away from opposition and toward conciliation and ultimately concession. Community members resisted the attempt to establish common ground, and some eventually invoked the covert threat of violence should they lose the war of words in the public forum. Sensitivity Sensitivity refers to Concord’s expressed willingness to listen and act upon Clarion’s concerns. Concord spoke often of its sensitivity to the community. Clarion residents countered claims of sensitivity by describing Concord as ‘ramming the dump down our throat’ and labeled the decision-making process itself as tyrannical and undemocratic.

Developer As we prepare to design this facility, we will be sensitive to host community interests (CRG, 1990b). . . . we are also very sympathetic to the fears and concerns of individual citizens (CRG, 1991b). We, at Concord, want to be educated and responsive to the needs of your community (CRG, 1990c).

Community Among the valid reasons listed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence of America’s rebellion against England were the facts that the government was ‘deaf to the voice of justice’, that ‘repeated Petitions (to protect homes, citizens and business) have been answered by repeated injury’, and that the government has taken an ‘unwarrantable jurisdiction over us’. . . . The state seems intent to offer no justice, honest recourse, quarter or mercy to the people of Clarion and Jefferson counties. . . . Tyrants, even


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petty tyrants like Casey and Sheaffer, understand only one reality: power (Clarion News, 1991h). As much as big business like CRG or government agencies like the state Department of Environmental Resources hate it, whenever the citizens of any country or community are wrongfully coerced or blatantly bullied in an attempt to have them accept intolerable actions of arbitrary decisions, most citizens will speak out and demand to be heard. As CRG and DER continue to belittle and oppress the citizens of our communities, the number of citizens who actively oppose the toxic dump continues to grow. It has taken the citizens of the Soviet Union decades to realize that ‘common’ men, women and children can rid their lives of tyrants and tyranny (Clarion News, 1991g).

Whereas the developer continued to declare its good intentions, community representatives perceived oppressive political and commercial attempts to control the decision. Although Concord spoke the language of sensitivity in the pursuit of progress, Clarion community members alluded to the historical roots of principled resistance to governmental oppression in seeking redress against perceived tyranny. Participation Concord repeatedly suggested that Clarion residents could best understand the siting process by participating in dialogue; the residents consistently countered that the only way to deal with Concord was to fight. Community activists, who were suspicious of what they saw as a strategy of co-optation, rejected Concord’s appeal to the principle of free and open debate among rational people. They saw dialogue as a trap – as a way of shifting the battle


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to Concord’s ground. ‘Common ground’ came to be seen as a potential ‘killing ground’, so residents steadfastly refused to engage there.

Developer What is so frightening about dialogue; about the exchange of information; about a candid conversation of the facts? Many activist groups such as Greenpeace often advocate that local communities avoid, at all costs, direct dialogue with facility developers. This tactic begs the question: Why? Controversial issues, especially technical ones like incineration, breed dissenting views and a wealth of conflicting information. In such situations, the only way an individual can make an informed independent judgment is when there is access to all relevant information. Encouraging communities and individuals to isolate themselves from the most basic information to avoid debate only heightens anxieties and creates confusion (CRG, 1991b). One-sided communication can result in misunderstanding. This example is precisely the sort of confusion that public participation would address. Would it not be more appropriate to jointly review the facts, weeding out misperceptions and distortions, instead of hurling disconnected information back and forth through the media? Assuming that distortions and exaggerations are not an opponent’s goal, boycotting dialogue serves no one’s end, least of all the community’s (CRG, 1991b).

Community You don’t sit down at the kitchen table with the enemy. There will be no compromises (Clarion News, 1991e). That PPC (Public Participation Committee) meeting, in a sense is nothing more than window dressing. There is no opportunity for the public to express their opinions. . . . The PPC meeting is contradictory. Concord has not accepted public opinion in the past and this is continuing with that policy (Clarion News, 1991a). We suspect that if the PPC actually played a role in CRG’s plans – meaning binding input – we suspect residents of Clarion County would be lining up for the opportunity to serve. . . . The opportunity for binding input from citizens of Clarion County, of course, will never happen, because if it did, the conflict between CRG and Clarion County residents would be over because there would be no incinerator in Millcreek Township or anywhere in PA. Instead, reduction, re-use, recycling and other alternative disposal methods would be mandated by law (Clarion News, 1991c).


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The community thus took a path of resolute opposition and nonparticipation as a key tactic in its crusade. Although Concord characterized dialogue and participation as a process in which both parties could listen, exchange input and learn, community members instead likened dialogue to a tacit acceptance of the inevitability of a hazardous waste site in some form. They therefore boycotted the process by advocating no direct participation or dialogue with Concord. No resolution was then possible, because the commonly accepted forum for arriving at a resolution was sabotaged. Community members’ also expressed distrust and alienation from the state government that ostensibly represented them. They depicted the government as enacting laws and procedures that threatened their well being and placed them at a disadvantage in dealing with Concord. Concord argued that they were adhering to the ideals of representative democracy in seeking participation, but the local citizens sceptically rejected their putative representatives (e.g. the Public Participation Committee). Thus, the community’s refusal to participate in procedurally rational communication manifested an overtone of scepticism toward both the agents and the processes of democracy. The polarization intensified; some local residents were so suspicious of the processes that they retained one final resource in their arsenal should the rhetorical battle be lost. Violence A sporadic, but intense undercurrent in the community’s fervent opposition to the siting proposal was the latent threat of violence – if deemed necessary to prevent the imposition of the waste dump. The participant-observer heard several, covert stories of people independently planning to use violent tactics to fight the developer. One community member related the following ominous story after a town meeting: People around here aren’t like other people – they’re not smooth, negotiable city-types. They want to be left alone, and if they’re not, they’ll fight. You’d be surprised at how many vets are holed up here just so they can be left on their own. At 15, when most people around here were starting to find out about drinking, I was shown into the world of stashed automatic weapons. I mean, it’s crazy, there’s bunkers dug and cemented, caches buried ‘just in case.’ If this site goes through, it’s going to get violent around here. Such indirect threats were accompanied by a number of more direct, if still covert threats of personal harm, as in the following:


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A well-dressed stranger came into the store one morning last week. I looked at his tie and suit and decided he was probably a Concord rep or lawyer. Well, he started saying he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, that everybody has hazardous waste in their homes and so why were people around here so crazy about a hazardous waste treatment facility? I didn’t say anything, just kept reading my paper. He stood there a minute and then left. In a few minutes, he was back again and started saying the same thing about us being crazy and hazardous waste being no big deal. Then, since I still wasn’t paying him the respect of looking at him, he addressed the paper I was reading and said, ‘I guess if I lived around here I’d be shot.’ Well, I didn’t look up, just kept reading my paper and said, ‘No doubt.’ He left and I haven’t seen him since. Concord and the state nonetheless made it clear that the siting process would continue, despite the protests and threats. One afternoon, as Concord officials came to inspect the site, community members blocked the road with a human chain. After several hours of tense confrontation, riot police forcibly cleared the road of protesters, allowing Concord vehicles to pass. This confrontational incident was related to another incident in which community members mobbed visiting Concord officers and their attorneys in front of the county courthouse. The following informant account illustrates the extent of the rift between the two sides and highlights how far from a rational discussion the two sides were: Each lawyer and G______ [a CRG officer] were surrounded by people within 10 inches of their faces, screaming directly, as if trying to make the words go to their soul (if they have a soul). I was really surprised to see how angry everyone was, and how open they were in expressing this rage. I was in a lawyer’s face, and just kept hammering him with my question, how could he do this to other people! How could he hold himself aloof from the consequences of his actions! I wanted him to lose sleep that night and every night after that until he faced this question.

Epilogue Almost three years after its initial announcement targeting Clarion as a site, the developer announced that it was abandoning its efforts to build a hazardous waste facility in Clarion County. It noted that the decision was ‘strictly a business decision’ (Clarion News, 1993: 1). In an interview with a


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local radio station, a company officer stated that public opposition had nothing to do with the final decision.

Discussion Our evidence in this case indicates that themes of identity disruption, mistrust and polarization characterized the rhetoric of the parties involved in the siting of a hazardous waste facility. We therefore believe that these themes suggest emergent theoretical dimensions for understanding such conflicts. We believe that these themes are important elements of a narrative common not just to this community’s struggle, but to grass-roots struggles more generally in a world increasingly disenchanted with the tenets and promises of modernity. We have characterized as postmodern the condition of scepticism toward the meta-narratives of progress, science, industrial development and representative democracy. Beck (1994) argued that some of this scepticism is traceable to the transformation of industrial society into a risk society – a world in which individual and community experience is fraught with escalating hazards, and in which the institutions of society become both the generators and legitimators of projects that have unintended and often detrimental consequences. Modernity, from this perspective, has become ‘a grand experiment, fraught with global hazards’ unimagined by the progenitors of the enlightenment (Giddens, 1994: 59). In the risk society, agents of industrial and economic progress come into conflict with grass-roots groups suddenly alert to personal, family, community and global dangers. Thus, individual and community identities are disrupted by threats from such familiar institutions as the state and the corporation. The mistrust of science and of centralized political power, as well as the polarization of viewpoints between individuals in local communities on the one hand and agents of large corporations and central government on the other can engender a deepening commitment to local political action on the part of citizens determined to protect their ecology and their futures. The ideal modern citizen who ‘has confidence in reason, rationality, and science and puts all these ahead of emotion’ (Rosenau, 1992: 43) was conspicuously absent from the Clarion dispute. In part, the clash between modernity and postmodernity in this case played out in terms of rhetorics of rationality versus rhetorics of emotionality. The developer used predominantly rational, impersonal language to discuss the effects of hazardous waste and to cast it as an issue of economic and environmental responsibility. The many voices of community members tended to employ heated, evocative language rife with immediate, personal references to express views counter to


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those of the developer. Modern perspectives tend to privilege rationality and to exclude emotionality as a means of problem solving. In this case, however, the members on one side of the dispute injected emotion strongly into the debate and insisted on maintaining it there. We should note, however, that the community members themselves were pursuing an eminently rational end – the elimination of the threat of the waste dump – and also that although their expressions of fear and anger were apparently heartfelt, they soon discovered the benefits of emotion as a weapon in the rhetorical war (see Brunsson, 1982). Ultimately, they used the supposed irrationality of emotion as a rational means to provoke disagreement and achieve their end of foiling the developer’s attempts to achieve consensus. The possibility of the Clarion community losing control over its future contributed a disquieting undertone to the case – the specter of violence as a final resort. In the modern state, violent acts by individuals and groups are deemed to be unacceptable negotiating tactics. If violence is condoned at all, it is presumed to be the prerogative of the state through institutions such as the legal system, the national guard and the armed forces. Here, however, some community members turned to the threat of violence to counter the perceived abandonment of the community by their state representatives. The appeal to violence, therefore, involved a telling rejection of the validity of the modern state and its claims to represent citizens’ concerns. There is a moral paradox here, however, because some citizens of the community pointedly cited moral outrage as a basis for their fight against the waste dump; simultaneously, other members were advocating violence to achieve their desired ends. Is it acceptable to commit violent acts in the service of a principled fight? Defending the moral high ground according to one’s own definition of morality harbors a dangerous subtext that licenses behavior that many would deem to be immoral. Threats to the safety and ecology of a community tend, in general, to provoke the kind of moral indignation we observed in this case. In such a highly charged atmosphere, the possibility of violence is always present. This heightened emotionality, however, actually can lead to positive rather than negative long-term outcomes. To the extent that advancing industrialization leads to a more visceral awareness of the fragility of ecological and communal balance, developers such as the Concord group might, unwittingly, contribute to a passionate devotion to protecting not just the local community but also the shared world environment. We should, however, be careful in our interpretations of this case and its implications. It has some of the captivating features of a ‘David versus Goliath’ contest, wherein the underdog was ultimately victorious against the overwhelming resources of a sinister enemy. Yet, we should be rather cautious


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in celebrating that victory. Community members themselves employed some disturbing threats and some dubious stonewalling tactics designed to stymie any possibility of negotiation or balanced resolution. Any celebration for the underdog should be tempered with some conceptual and practical questions. Where, after all, are disposal sites for hazardous wastes to be located if every community rises up and organizes itself outside the political system of representative democracy? How is society to deal with the rising backlash now evident in many similar cases? More specifically, how is Habermas’s rational dialogue to proceed if community activists refuse their involvement and developers seek to co-opt the process for their own ends? The dismaying tactic of steadfast non-participation is a problematic finding, one that suggests some implications for theory and application. Habermas has forcefully argued that people can (and should) attempt to build a communicative climate where free and open debate can take place to resolve controversial issues; the alternative is polarization and fragmentation of society, just as we observed here. This community was able to radically undermine the possibility of communicative rationality; they treated the ideal envisaged by Habermas as merely a variation on a rationalist theme for resolving disputes. Habermas’s principles, however, were formulated within a long tradition of modernist optimism that applies to parties with a basic trust in the process of discussion and in the promise of representative democracy – premises that were compromised in the conditions attending this case. Habermas implies that the process of language use itself should be sufficient to guarantee consensus between conflicting parties to a dispute. Zimmerman (1985, quoted in Rasmussen, 1990: 42) paraphrases Habermas as asking: ‘Would it not be a fascinating prospect, if we could show that the basic rules of language leave us no other choice, as it were, but to orientate ourselves in consensual terms . . .’ If one assumes that people speak rationally and that they wish to make themselves understood to others, then, Habermas (1984) suggests, people will orient themselves toward a norm of consensus rather than conflict.5 The citizens of Clarion clearly wanted to make themselves understood, but not in Concord’s terms. Furthermore, they appeared to be intuitively aware of the consequences of dialogue as outlined by Habermas, and simply refused to engage, declaring and defending a position of ‘no common ground!’ Despite democracy’s implicit promise to allow citizens to voice their resistance to the plans of the state, in practice the discourse of reason within which debates are framed tends to validate a faith in science rather than the doubts of citizens. Given the overriding power of bureaucratically rational organizations in modern states to frame debates and implement technological solutions, the question of how citizens might succeed in countering such solutions without sabotaging the process becomes


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important. The larger consequences of the community’s boycott raises a pragmatically important question: How might disputing parties deal with this kind of increasingly likely standoff? Beck (1994) suggested some conditions under which it is possible to imagine communities like Clarion engaging in a dialogue concerning the siting of modernity’s infrastructure. First, he asks us to dispense with the over-reliance on administrative and scientific expertise so characteristic of modernity (1994: 29). In other words, we should no longer entrust technocrats to make our decisions for us. Second, the debate must be opened to all of those affected by the hazard in question – the debate cannot be open only to specialists hired by the respective parties. Third, and this seems particularly crucial in the context of the Clarion case, ‘all participants must be aware that the decisions have not already been made and now need only be “sold” or implemented’ (1994: 29). In other words, the process itself must be seen to be open to the participants’ objections. Fourth, any negotiations between experts and decision makers must consist of public rather than private dialogue (thus adding additional ‘uncontrollability’). Finally, the norms governing the entire process must be agreed upon by the parties concerned, so that the relevant parties to the dispute govern the process themselves. Under the circumstances sketched by Beck, it is difficult to see how incinerator plants or biochemical treatment facilities could ever be built unless the initiative actually came from the local community itself or there were some extraordinary incentives. In the absence of such locally generated initiatives or extrinsic incentives, communities targeted by outside interests would, as Clarion did, tend to reject such overtures, and in the process forge a set of personal and community identities in hostile reaction to the invasion of privacy and trust. The mistrust and polarization we have witnessed in the Clarion case are, therefore, likely to be symptomatic of modernity’s wider problems. Sub-groups of citizens offered the prospect of living close to largescale technological projects with their attendant risks would cohere to resist their implementation. Overall, the events and outcomes of this case raise questions about the widespread assumption that science, reason and rationality are necessarily the bases for good decisions in a risk society. In studying the micropolitics of community resistance to a hazardous waste siting proposal, we have tried to provide insight not just into this specific case, but also into the larger question of how communities deal with the products and processes of modernity. We have tried to go beyond discussions of postmodern epistemology to locate parallels and echoes of postmodern debates in the crises facing citizens. Although the postmodern condition is the subject of increasing discussion by


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organizational researchers (see Alvesson & Deetz, 1996 and Kilduff & Mehra, 1997, for reviews), it is seldom studied in the field (but see Cassell, 1996). The hazardous waste siting process is a representative (and perhaps even definitive) exemplar of the kind of bureaucratic rationality that has triggered the postmodern critique. In studying one instance in some detail, we hope to provoke others to assess the ways in which postmodern debates inform the everyday lives of contemporary citizens.

Notes 1

2

3

Later called Concord Resources Group of Pennsylvania, Inc. (CRGPI). This article will use the firm’s original name, Concord Resources Group, to refer to the firm. The catalyst for the siting of hazardous waste facilities was the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976, a federal regulatory program for solid and hazardous waste. Because of the extent and danger of improperly handled hazardous waste disposal, the RCRA called for strict regulation for the generation, transportation, storage and final treatment and disposal of hazardous waste. The RCRA is the key piece of legislation in the hazardous waste arena. In it, the federal government officially acknowledged the existence of hazardous waste and its threat to citizens, and took steps to monitor its existence. Nowhere in the RCRA are there specific requirements concerning the production of hazardous wastes, nor are there specifications of acceptable risk levels for hazardous waste. Both of these issues are left open to state interpretation, thus introducing ambiguity into the situation – ambiguity that encourages multiple, competing interpretations. The main obstacle to the siting of a hazardous waste disposal facility is direct public opposition (Morell & Magorian, 1982; New York Legislative Commission on Toxic Substances and Hazardous Wastes, 1987; Schmeidler & Sandman, 1988). This opposition emanates largely from the target ‘host’ community and its immediate environs. Using political, legal and extra-legal channels, the opposition to hazardous waste sites has been effective in preventing the licensing of new sites over the last decade. In the introduction to this article, we have used the theoretical concepts that actually emerged mainly from our subsequent analyses of the case data, as a way of previewing the major issues and findings of the study. In the essentially interpretive research approach used in this study, the conceptual framework is grounded in, and emerges from, the data and analyses (rather than being derived mainly from prior theory that drives data collection and analysis). Therefore, a traditional qualitative, interpretive paper would usually first present the data and then the grounded framework suggested by those data (Daft, 1985), in conjunction with the relevant literature. For the sake of clarity, however, and to avoid asking the reader to work through a lengthy data presentation before learning the conceptual framework and the contributions of the study, we have elected to


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4 5

articulate these key concepts and themes up front as a way of foreshadowing our overarching framework and most important findings. Further information is available from the authors. It is interesting to note that phenomenological studies of organizing activities usually make an implicit assumption that a goal of the sensemaking process is the seeking of interpretive convergence, cooperation and, ideally, consensus. In our case, the community’s intransigent intention not to cooperate prevailed as they marshalled their rhetorical resources to provoke sensemaking toward dissensus. In addition, the literature has consistently, if often implicitly, portrayed sensemaking mainly as a rational, inferential process. The events in this case, however, imply that the sense made of events might derive directly from emotional processes and emotion-based interpretations.

References Alvesson, M. & Deetz, S. Critical theory and postmodern approaches to organizational studies. In Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy and Walter R. Nord (Eds), Handbook of organization studies. London: Sage, 1996, pp. 191–217. Beck, U. The reinvention of politics: Towards a theory of reflexive modernization. In Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash (Eds), Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Berman, M. The reenchantment of the world. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981. Brunsson, N. The irrationality of action and action rationality: Decisions, ideologies and organizational actions. Journal of Management Studies, 1982, 19, 29–44. Burrell, G. Normal science, paradigms, metaphors, discourses and genealogies of analysis. In Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy and Walter R. Nord (Eds), Handbook of organization studies. London: Sage, 1996, pp. 642–58. Cassell, J. The woman in the surgeon’s body: Understanding difference. American Anthropologist, 1996, 98, 41–53. Clarion News Limestone residents group organizing, 1990a, 31 July, 1–12. Clarion News Tour of township: Residents offer views on proposal, 1990b, 31 July, 1–12. Clarion News Citizens group holds planning session, 1990c, 7 August, 1–12. Clarion News Letters to the editor, 1990d, 9 August, 6. Clarion News Opponents pledge aggressive fight, 1990e, 23 August, 1–3. Clarion News Hazardous waste draws comments, 1990f, 23 August, 6. Clarion News County sites ‘most suitable’ for hazardous waste facility, 1990g, 23 August, 1–14. Clarion News Hafer hosts public comment session, 1990h, 4 October, 1–8. Clarion News Back at you, Concord, 1990i, 4 October, 6. Clarion News Frustration evident as citizens disrupt meeting, 1990j, 15 November., 9.


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Stephanie A. Welcomer is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maine. She earned her doctorate at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include the natural environment, power and the social construction of meaning. [E-mail: [email protected]] Dennis A. Gioia is Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Smeal College of Business Administration at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his doctorate from Florida State University. Prior to his academic career he worked as an engineer for Boeing Aerospace at Cape Kennedy during the Apollo lunar program and for Ford Motor Company as corporate recall coordinator. Current research and writing interests focus primarily on the cognitive processes of organization members, especially the ways in which identity and image are involved in sensemaking, sensegiving and organizational change. [E-mail: [email protected]] Martin Kilduff (PhD Cornell) is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Pennsylvania State University. His current research focuses on social networks in organizations, including an examination of the personality determinants of centrality, a critical review of the structural equivalence approach to the diffusion of innovation and a book on organizational social networks. [E-mail: [email protected]]


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