A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal
Author: Allan Mazur
Love Canal. We hear these words and quickly recoil, remembering a community poisoned by toxic waste. Twenty years after the incident, Allan Mazur reexamines the circumstances that made this upstate New York neighborhood synonymous with ecological catastrophe and triggered federal "Superfund" legislation to clean up the nation's thousands of hazardous waste sites.
But is there only one true story of Love Canal? Borrowing the multi-viewpoint technique of the classic Japanese film Rashomon, Mazur's book reveals that there are many—often conflicting versions of what occurred at Love Canal. Hooker Chemical Company, which deposited the toxic wastes, explains why it subsequently donated the dump as the site for a new school. Lois Gibbs, whose son attended the school, tells of organizing the community to fight both the chemical threat and the uncaring state bureaucracy. Then there is the story of David Axelrod, New York's embattled commissioner of health, at odds with the homeowners over their assessment of the hazards and the proper extent of the state's response. We also hear from Michael Brown, the young reporter who developed the story in the Niagara Gazette and eventually brought the problem of toxic waste to national attention.
If A Hazardous Inquiry succeeded only in making us understand why one version of the events at Love Canal gained precedence over all others, it would be invaluable to policy makers, journalists, scientists, environmentalists, lawyers, and to citizens caught up in technical controversies that get played out (for better or worse) in the public arena. But the book moves beyond that to evaluate and reconcile the conflictingaccounts of Love Canal, giving us a fuller, if more complex, picture than ever before. Through gripping personal tales, A Hazardous Inquiry tells how politics and journalism and epidemiology sometimes mesh, but often clash, when confronting a potential community disaster.
What People Are Saying
Dorothy Nelkin
An excellent book...Allan Mazur has contributed significantly to the understanding of policy controversies.
John D. Graham
A revealing and disturbing account of how the Love Canal episode was bungled, with ordinary homeowners getting the short end of the stick! Beautifully written and meticulously documented.
Read also Principles of Long Term Health Care Administration or Public Personnel Systems
Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies
Author: Carol Graham
Why are some societies able to weather significant economic hardship and still maintain political and social stability, while others break apart in the face of even minor economic declines? Why do some societies with high levels of income inequality broadly support market policies, while those with fewer disparities are harsh critics of such policies and their implications for income distribution? In Happiness and Hardship, Carol Graham and Stefano Pettinato argue that the political sustainability of market-oriented growth is determined as much by relative income levels and trends as by absolute ones, as much by opportunity and mobility over time as by current distribution patterns. They believe that subjective assessments of, and expectations for, economic progress importantly affect individual responses to economic incentives and attitudes to market policies.
Subjective well-being has long been the province of the behavioral sciences, but Graham and Pettinato illustrate how this literature also has great relevance to economists and political scientists, calling into question standard assumptions about the role of rational, material self-interest in determining economic behavior. Using data from seventeen Latin American countries -- including their own detailed survey data on mobility and subjective well-being in Peru -- and from Russia, they analyze the relationship between objective economic conditions and perceived well-being and explore possible links between these findings and attitudes about market policies and democracy. This path-breaking book provides a new conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship between subjective well-being, or happiness, and the political sustainability of market-oriented growth in countries where markets are newly emerging.
Booknews
Attempting to bring subjective well-being (or happiness) into examinations of political and economic stability in societies, Graham and Pettinato (both of the Brookings Institution) identify variables that influence happiness and suggest policies for influencing people's subjective well-being. Focusing on Latin America and Russia, they explore how people perceive their own economic mobility and their relationship to income distribution differences. They suggest that the level of macroeconomic volatility is a primary factor in individuals' happiness and relate these findings to individuals' support or rejection of economic policies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Table of Contents:
| 1 | New Approaches to Old Inequities: Mobility, Opportunity, and Subjective Well-Being | 1 |
| 2 | Mobility, Subjective Well-Being, and Public Perceptions: Stuck in the Tunnel or Moving Up the Ladder? | 13 |
| 3 | Concepts and Trends in Income Mobility | 36 |
| 4 | Happiness, Markets, and Democracy: Latin America, Russia, and the United States | 71 |
| 5 | Frustrated Achievers: Mobility Trends and Subjective Well-Being in Peru and Russia | 101 |
| 6 | Frustrated Achievers in a Global Economy: Challenges for Policy and Future Research | 137 |
| References | 155 | |
| Index | 167 |
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