Community at Risk: Biodefense and the Collective Search for Security 9780804794657

Citation preview

C om m u n i t y

at

R i s k

h i g h r e l i a b i l i t y a n d c r i s i s m a n ag e m e n t

Series Editors: Karlene H. Roberts and Ian I. Mitroff series titles

Leadership Dispatches: Chile’s Extraordinary Comeback from Disaster By Michael Useem, Howard Kunreuther, and Erwann Michel-Kerjan 2015 The Social Roots of Risk: Producing Disasters, Promoting Resilience By Kathleen Tierney 2014 Learning From the Global Financial Crisis: Creatively, Reliably, and Sustainably Edited by Paul Shrivastava and Matt Statler 2012 Swans, Swine, and Swindlers: Coping with the Growing Threat of Mega-Crises and Mega-Messes By Can M. Alpaslan and Ian I. Mitroff 2011 Dirty Rotten Strategies: How We Trick Ourselves and Others into Solving the Wrong Problems Precisely By Ian I. Mitroff and Abraham Silvers 2010 High Reliability Management: Operating on the Edge By Emery Roe and Paul R. Schulman 2008

C om m u n i t y at  R i sk B i o de f e n s e

a n d

Se a rch

t he

f or

C o l l ec t i v e

Sec u r i t y

Thomas D. Beamish

sta nfor d business books An Imprint of Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Special discounts for bulk quantities of Stanford Business Books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department of Stanford University Press. Tel: (650) 7361782, Fax: (650) 736-1784 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beamish, Thomas D., author. Community at risk : biodefense and the collective search for security / Thomas D. Beamish. pages cm.—(High reliability and crisis management) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-8442-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  Risk management—Political aspects—United States—Case studies.  2.  Biosecurity—United States—Public opinion—Case studies.  3.  Biological laboratories—United States—Public opinion—Case studies.  4.  Bioterrorism—Prevention—Research—Public opinion— Case studies.  5.  Public opinion—United States—Case studies.  6. Local government—United States—Case studies. I. Title.  II. Series: High reliability and crisis management. hd61.b43 2015 363.325∙360973—dc23 2014045953 isbn 978-0-8047-9465-7 (electronic) Typeset by Newgen in 10/15 Sabon

Contents

List of Illustrations  ix Acknowledgments xi

Introduction  1 1  Conceptual Footings of Risk and Governance  31 2  Risk Communication, Local Civics, and Discourse  64 3 Davis, California: Home Rule Civics and Biodefense  76 4  Roxbury, Massachusetts: Direct Action Civics and Biodefense  116 5  Galveston, Texas: Managed Civics and Biodefense  155 Conclusion: The Civic Politics of Risk  193

Appendix: Research Strategy  219 Notes  237 Index  249

Illustrations

maps Map 3.1 Davis, California

78

Map 4.1  Roxbury and Boston city neighborhoods

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Map 5.1  Galveston city and island

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ta bl e s Table I.1  Community cases for comparison, 2010 Table 2.1  Comparative civics and discourse: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston

6 74

Table 3.1 Davis, California, regional city socioeconomic and educational differences

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Table 3.2 Themes, letters to the editor, Davis Enterprise, December 2002–November 2003 Table 4.1  Roxbury, Massachusetts, Boston metro area socioeconomic and educational neighborhood comparison

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Table 5.1 Themes, letters to the editor, Galveston County Daily News, and submitted FEIS comments, January 2003– December 2004

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figur es Figure I.1  Biosafety level-4 hazmat suit

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Figure 3.1 Frequency, letters to the editor, Davis Enterprise, December 2002–November 2003

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Figure 5.1 Frequency, letters to the editor, Galveston County Daily News, and submitted FEIS comments, January 2003– December 2004

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Acknowledgments

I would like to begin by thanking the National Science Foundation. Generous funding from the NSF’s “Infrastructure Systems Management and Hazards Response” subsection of the “Civic, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation” division made Community at Risk and its ambitious case comparative methodology possible (grant number #0509812). What is more, the initial ideas behind and the support for the project were the outcome of a two-year fellowship, part of the NSF “Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards Researchers Program,” then housed at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. In the context of that fellowship, a handful of research mentors and NSF directors, including Denis Wenger, Kathleen Tierney, Peter J. May, Howard Kunreuther, Raymond Burby, William A. Wallace, Michael K. Lindell, Susan L. Cutter, and Linda B. Bourque, offered their valuable time and experience in developing a defensible, and therefore competitive and fundable, research proposal. Of these, Kathleen Tierney, Peter J. May, Denis Wenger, Raymond Burby, and Howard Kunreuther deserve special thanks for their help in the early stages of Community at Risk. They shared general ideas about how to frame and analyze risk and risk-related research, posed difficult questions, and provided pointed comments on early drafts of a research proposal. Also important to my efforts were conversations with the other NSF fellows in those initial two years, especially Tom Cova, JoAnn Carmin, Colin Polsky, and Jenny Rudolph. Once funded to pursue the research for Community at Risk, my efforts were supported by a handful of students at the University of ­California–Davis, where I had joined the faculty in 2003. Without the help of early research assistants like Kirk Prestegard and Amy Luebbers, who helped gather the data on which the analysis in Community at Risk rests, this book would have been nearly impossible. Students Dina Biscotti and Kelsey Meagher were also vital in creating analytic tables of xi

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the ­information gleaned from telephone interviews that greatly informed and enhanced my conclusions. Once the data collection and analysis had been completed, I put the results on paper. The first report focused on the alliance that had formed between Roxbury’s civic activists and those from “outside” Boston who had joined them in their protests against Boston University’s plans to build and host a federally funded National Biocontainment Laboratory. Vicki Smith, Ryken Grattet, Paul Lichterman, Julie Sze, David Smilde, and Michael McQuarry supplied thoughtful comment and critique on that paper, which was later published in the journal Social Problems. More important to this book effort, that paper’s focus on the civic dynamics of protest and alliance in Roxbury helped me to better understand the role that local social and political dynamics played in framing what was at stake and ultimately the civic politics of risk. This focal point would frame my analysis in subsequent community cases and provide the substantive argument behind the larger book effort. I then began to intensively analyze and pursue what would become Community at Risk and submitted chapters to a UCD writing group for critique. Group members included Eddy U, Stephanie Mudge, and MingCheng Lo. All supplied criticisms that helped me to organize my thoughts and theories about what appears on the pages that follow. Later, another writing group in UCD’s Humanities Center examined some chapters. Participants included Patrick Carroll, Ryken Grattet, Julie Sze, Jonathan London, Charlotte Biltekoff, and Natalie Deep-Sosa, all of whom also provided useful criticisms from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including American studies; geography; environmental justice; agriculture, food, and technology; science and technology studies; and law and legal studies. They lent perspective to my sociological rendering of what risk acceptability meant in the three civic and community cases I investigated. Important also was Chip Clarke’s review of an early draft of one chapter. Chip provided insightful criticism that strengthened my overall effort. David Pellow also improved the manuscript with incisive critique and suggestions as it moved toward publication. Anonymous reviewers of the text also provided lucid comment that pushed my thoughts and therefore the text contained herein. What is more, I am grateful to Margo xii

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Beth Fleming and James Holt at Stanford University Press for supporting this project, answering my many questions, and guiding the manuscript through the editorial process. Margo did a wonderful job creating a structure of expectations and dates that pushed the manuscript (and author!) that, although ambitious, were achievable. Both Margo and James helped to make this a better book than it would have otherwise been. I also owe an incalculable debt to the more than 200 persons and organizations who answered the many questions my research associates and I posed to them. Some of those I spoke with even hazarded rebuke or worse from the universities where they worked or the communities where they lived. Therefore, because my conversations sometimes involved sensitive topics and revealing comments about both the individuals I interviewed and their allies and adversaries, I promised all my informants confidentiality. Therefore, the names and identities of my interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. While I do not share their names, their voices collectively provide for much of the analysis that follows. Finally, from the beginning of the project, Thom E. Beamish, my father, shared his perspectives and ideas regarding the influence that civic politics might have on risk, risk perception, and risk management efforts. While we may not always agree—indeed, in our wide-ranging discussions, we often do not—in the end his hard questions and observations had to be answered and therefore never ceased to push and inspire me. He may not know it, but his son appreciates his curiosity and questions and the faith he has always had in me. This book owes a good deal to that faith.

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Introduction

t he a n t hr a x at tacks a nd biodefense pl a ns Beginning on September 18, 2001, five letters containing anthrax arrived at the headquarters of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Post, and the National Enquirer. Postmarked exactly one week after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, those five letters were soon followed by others. In the end, 28 persons tested positive for exposure, 17 developed infections, and 5 died from inhaling anthrax in what would become the most fearsome act of bioterrorism in U.S. history (Daschle 2006; Kaiser 2011). Yet, loss of life and physical injury may not have been the most indelible legacies of the anthrax attacks. Nearly a decade after the attacks, the FBI and other federal agencies still had not positively identified those responsible. Who did it, and why? Did the attacks represent an “outside” act of bioterrorism, or were they an “inside” job?1 And what can the federal government do to prevent future attacks? Even after the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded in 2010 that they had been the work of a domestic scientist working at Fort Detrick, Maryland, many scientists and experts were unconvinced and insisted that America was still vulnerable (Broad and Shane 2011; Shane 2008, 2010a, 2010b). Because the attacks remained unsolved for so long, controversy haunted efforts to improve the nation’s biodefense systems. Nonetheless, despite the lack of a culprit or connection to the events of September 11, in 2003, President George W. Bush would publicly conflate the two events based on temporal association. Invoking a “moral panic” (Cohen 1972; Goode and Ben-Yahuda 1994)2 regarding the threat posed by foreign terrorists, Bush declared that “men who would seize planes filled with innocent people and crash them into buildings would not hesitate to use biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons” to achieve their aims (Bush 2003; Knobler, Mahmoud, and Pray 2002; National Research Council 1

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2003; White House 2003). The implication was that the “risks” exposed by the September 11 and anthrax attacks represented “outside” interests determined to destroy America, as opposed to an “inside” risk posed by domestic security efforts and those associated with them. Paralleling Bush’s claims, key federal agencies whose agendas included protecting against biological threats were now prioritized for funding and began to plan in earnest for the nation’s “biosecurity.”3 “Biodefense for the 21st Century” was a three-pronged risk management project that called for enhancing advanced biomedical applications’ development and testing, distributing countermeasures and vaccines, and creating a network of research institutions and ultrasecure National Biocontainment Laboratories (NBLs) (Mair, Maldin, and Smith 2006; NIAID 2002a, 2002b, 2002c). The overarching idea of the push was to shore up domestic protections and national preparedness through the development of a research/response network that could react quickly and efficiently to acts of bioterrorism. The federal government would spend some $14.5 billion between 2001 and 2004 alone to address the nation’s perceived vulnerability to biothreats (Schuller 2004) and some $78.3 billion by 2012 (Franco and Sell 2012). One of the primary agencies involved in the new risk management plan was the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), whose annual budget increased by some $1.5 billion from 2002 to 2003 (Altman et al. 2005; Fauci and Zerhouni 2005; NIAID 2005). According to the NIAID, the priority placed on biodefense reflected a new model for the development of medical countermeasures to address the threat of bioterrorist attack. The old model was one in which vaccines were developed and given prophylactically to the armed forces to protect against pathogenic agents, stockpiles of which would also serve to preemptively vaccinate the general population in the event of an attack. In light of the attacks in 2001, national security elites deemed it insufficient to protect against the release of pathogens with catastrophic potential, known as Category A agents, all of which are easily disseminated, associated with high mortality rates, and able to inspire public panic and social disruption. Of course, if diseases such as these were to be “weaponized” and dispersed through an act of bioterrorism or war, the outcome would be 2

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disastrous. They therefore required special public health preparedness (NIAID 2011). The precedence given to biodefense research focused on “bioweapons agents” increased so dramatically that it stirred controversy among experts in related fields of study. For instance, 700 microbiologists protested the newfound prioritization with an open letter to the NIH, claiming that the focus on bioweapons agents represented “a misdirection of NIH priorities and a crisis for NIH-supported microbiological research” (Altman et al. 2005). In response, NIAID director Anthony Fauci justified this increase by underscoring the threat presented by biological agents such as bacteria, viruses, and toxins. He noted how the “recent deliberate exposure of the civilian population of the United States to Bacillus anthracis spores [had] revealed a gap in the nation’s preparedness against bioterrorism,” and stressed the need for an “accelerated research and development agenda . . . aimed at protection of the world population against future attacks” (Fauci and Zerhouni 2005; NIAID 2002a, p. 1). And while the conflict over biodefense plans initially played out among security officials and public health experts in professional venues and journals, by 2003 it had spread to the public as well. In some communities where the federal government wanted to build NBLs for research on bioweapons agents and extreme pathogens, the residents actively engaged in civic debates regarding those plans and what they meant locally. Community at Risk focuses on three such locales where biodefense plans sparked local dialogue and debate. I investigated and compared civic responses to local university proposals to host NBLs in Roxbury, Massachusetts; Davis, California; and Galveston, Texas. I chose these three communities as cases for comparison for a number of reasons. In brief, on October 15, 2002, the NIAID requested formal proposals from interested research universities and public health institutions to construct, house, and manage an NBL on the federal government’s behalf. The research institutions that applied included Boston University Medical Center, Oregon Health and Science University, New York State Department of Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Maryland School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and University of California–Davis. 3

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After hearing a national radio broadcast (circa June 2003) about organized resistance to the University of California–Davis’s biodefense plans, I focused my initial efforts there. Soon thereafter, I collected and analyzed media coverage from all seven locales to gain a comparative impression of public response. Analyzing a community’s reaction through the prism of news media coverage does not, of course, provide a definitive account of local sentiment. Nonetheless, my findings were revealing. In the seven locales, the number of articles in the local newspaper about the construction of NBLs during the year preceding NIAID’s awarding a federal grant included Boston Globe, 21; Portland Oregonian, 20; Albany Times Union, 5; Chicago Tribune, 2; Baltimore Sun, 3; Galveston Daily Democrat, 25; and Davis Enterprise, 237. Obviously, Davis stood out for the sheer volume of articles, editorial columns, and op-eds published locally, the vast majority of which conveyed opposition to the university’s biodefense ambitions for violating local priorities, beliefs, and values. Based on these findings, I initially focused my research on Davis. On September 30, 2003, Tommy Thompson, then secretary of health and human services, announced that the future NBL sites would be at Boston University Medical Campus in Roxbury, Massachusetts (BUMC), and at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). For the University of California–Davis (UCD), the announcement represented defeat. In the year leading up to the secretary’s announcement, several groups and individuals had mobilized against UCD’s biodefense ambitions in a manner that far exceeded the other locales in its organization and intensity. This made it an important case insofar as it was initially alone in its vocal and public dispute. Given that they were awarded funds to both build and manage an NBL as well as federal designations as Regional Centers of Excellence, which meant they would receive millions in federal money to promote research in the new biolab on extreme diseases, I chose Roxbury and Galveston for comparison with the Davis case. Within a year of BUMC’s award, it would confront a growing coalition of groups and individuals who opposed an NBL in Boston, which were initially organized by neighborhood residents of Roxbury and centered on claims of environmental racism and injustice. In Galveston, no movement against UTMB’s biodefense plans 4

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would materialize. Those who engaged the issue there would embrace UTMB’s efforts and the local NBL as a sign of progress. As I suggest in the Appendix, where I share the details of my research strategy, the three regions made excellent comparative cases for other reasons as well, including their demographic profiles, their diverse geographic locations, and their distinctive cultural orientations, all of which were reflected in how local citizens responded to biodefense plans. I subsequently undertook five years of intensive field research in each community, during which I conducted 100 in-depth interviews and 135 semistructured telephone surveys,4 had numerous informal conversations and email correspondences, attended public forums and community events, analyzed local news media coverage, and collected and analyzed archival materials, including environmental impact reports, city documents, civic group documents, and white papers.5 My specific focus was reconstruction and analysis of the public dialogue and debate that ensued over the biodefense issue in each locale as it unfolded. My interest in a comparative study of this kind was in exploring why and how each community responded in the way that it did to the kind of technological initiative and risk management plan represented by federal biodefense efforts. I investigated the different public claims and arguments made for and against the establishment of an NBL in each community. My overriding purpose was to highlight the role that the civic politics native to any given community play in shaping one of the most pernicious bases for public dispute in contemporary America: risk and efforts to manage it. The three cases provided an unusual opportunity for such a comparison because each one responded differently to identical risk management plans. They also provided an excellent cross section of community life in America, based on demographic profiles and locations (see Table I.1). My use of a comparative framework to study the response of these communities to biodefense plans was also motivated by both practical and theoretical considerations. The comparative approach provided a basis for theoretical development in a way that single case exploration could not. I conducted the research in three communities engaged in intense dialogue over the same national issue, at a historical moment when uncertainty over the nation’s security peaked (circa 2001–2009). Field studies that provide 5

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t a b l e I . 1   Community cases for comparison, 2010 Population

Region of United States

Roxbury

59,462

Northeast

Median household income, $30,654 Per capita income, $18,056

Asian, 2.3% Black, 59.0% Hispanic-Latino, 24.8% White, 8.1% Other, 5.7%

Davis

61,866

West

Median household income, $58,280 Per capita income, $30,010

Asian, 19% Black, 2.6% Latino, 12% White, 68.4% Other, 9.9%

Galveston

58,860

South

Median household income, $35,637 Per capita income, $23,581

Asian, 2.7% Black, 19.5% Latino, 28.6% White, 68.6% Other, 9.1%

Cases

Socioeconomic status

Race/ethnic composition

Note: The U.S. Census lists as “Hispanic or Latino (of any race)” and therefore totals can be more than 100%. “Other” includes Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, American Indian, Alaskan Native, some other race, and two or more races.

this kind of comparative leverage are rare; the circumstances were akin to a naturally occurring experiment wherein the stimulus—the national context and biodefense as a risk management plan—was held constant, while local response varied widely. In essence, my search was for what explained this range of responses. My findings also hold practical implications. Comparative studies such as this can furnish useful information to policy makers and a public seeking security. These and related questions go to the heart of tensions between democratic institutions and civic expectations, as well as the technocratic and even authoritarian tendencies associated with everincreasing risk and its management. In short, my study sheds light on a phenomenon that defines our age: the politics of risk. a biodefe nse con t rov e rsy a n d r isk dispu t e As we have seen, despite governmental plans to manage the risk posed by extreme biological pathogens, there was little consensus regarding the appropriate response to it and which agents posed the greatest danger. Indeed, some critics believed there was as much to fear from the govern6

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ment’s new biodefense plan and its research, facilities, and personnel as there was from potential acts of bioterrorism or naturally occurring pandemics (Kaiser 2005, 2011). In their minds, the proposed solution could easily become part of the problem. Experts and pundits opposed to federal biodefense plans argued that America would be better served by addressing more common public health threats (such as influenza and antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis), rather than channeling billions into thinly veiled military programs and Department of Defense–sponsored NBLs (Cohen, Gould, and Sidel 1999; Goodenough and Ozonoff 2006).6 Others claimed that a proliferation of ultrasecure research facilities would simply increase the number of attractive targets for terrorism and elevate the possibility of nonterror-related accidents that would make society less safe (Enserink and Kaiser 2005; Kahn and Ashford 2001; Sidel, Gould, and Cohen 2002; Srinivasan et al. 2001). Some even made the case that the government’s biodefense plan and its associated infrastructure were merely mechanisms for channeling billions of dollars into the hands of elites, often at the expense of those who lived near such facilities (Haynes, Allen, and Lawrence 2007). In Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, local concerns and histories heavily shaped the way civic conversations about these plans played out. The various institutions, civic groups, and individuals involved—including activists, university administrators, and various business elites—put forth competing impressions of the NBLs that reflected differing definitions of what represented the common good in their community, as well as what threatened it the most. The variety of responses expressed by the different groups within and between each community exposed opposing and sometimes even antagonistic expectations and assumptions about how society should evaluate and manage collective risk. Expectations regarding what is and is not acceptable risk can vary by context, such as by formal/informal and public/private situations; by social position, such as by professional identity and affiliation, or race, class, and gender differences; and by level of analysis, such as by micro-level personal psychology or, as I emphasize and argue, at the meso-level as reflected in community-based civic politics. Indeed, I found local ­expectations and 7

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responses to the risks posed by biodefense plans to largely reflect civicscale issues; they were founded in local governance expectations, political relations and rivalries, and shared value-commitments. More broadly, I also argue that the tensions I found represented in the local civic dynamics and response to biodefense plans are characteristic of the sometimes fraught relations among modernity’s institutional triumvirate of state, market, and civil society. Indeed, the variant civic logics I analyze in this book highlight tensions inherent to both community contexts like those I studied as well as society in general when they confront potentially transformative interventions and economic developments that engage modernity’s trustee institutions as represented by state agencies, industry interests, and civil societal advocates because different governance logics and associated values prevail in each of them. Amplifying the probability of dispute is a growing recognition among the general public that something is always at stake. This now-pervasive sentiment reflects contemporary political relations characteristic of risk society (Bauman 2007; Beck 1992; Freudenburg 1993, 2000; Giddens 1990; Short 1984). The “risk society” label captures the contemporary preoccupation with the future, the potential for safety or harm, and predicting the relationship between them. It also captures a growing cynicism in the west regarding “progress,” as efforts to control the future have inexorably led to a proliferation of manufactured hazards and, with them, a diminished sense of security (Giddens 1990, 1999). Competing expectations and principles used to evaluate both what is at risk as well as how to manage it lie at the heart of the contemporary “politics of risk.” The qualities that define risk society were embodied in the arguments over biodefense plans. The localized risk disputes that ensued after the events of 9/11 and the temporally associated anthrax attacks therefore provided a unique opportunity to explore the processes by which risk is locally assessed, accepted, or resisted—and therefore politicized—as well as to how it is managed by the state and its surrogates in the twenty-first century. By risk, I mean a situation in which something of great collective worth—for example, human life, property, or cherished values—is perceived to be “at stake” and its future status is uncertain (cf. Jaeger 8

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et al. 2001). By risk dispute, I refer to public conflicts that ensue when the state or its surrogates, which I term “trustee institutions” or simply “trustees,” introduce what are perceived to be new risks or initiate plans to manage risks on behalf of society. Trustee institutions, then, are authoritative bodies that purport to benefit the public(s) they serve. This book approaches these practices through a series of guiding questions: Why has reaction to federal biodefense plans been so varied, particularly in a time of perceived high national vulnerability? How do the government and its surrogates pursue issues of risk and its management, and how is this related to public response? How does the public respond and why? What roles do ongoing social and political struggles and issues play in specific risk disputes? What, if any, are the connections among a priori beliefs, support or opposition, and risk dispute? And finally, what role do citizens and communities play in shaping risk management strategies themselves? Scholars across a variety of disciplines have sought answers to these and other related questions. Empirical studies have tended to approach risk disputes as either problems of risk management or as matters of public perception. As “risk management problems,” risk disputes have mainly been studied at the national and cross-national levels based on the analysis of scientific standards, policy construction, the actions of policy elites who have sought to manage risks on behalf of the publics they claim to serve, and the national political movements that have sought to modify or stop their plans (see also Aldrich 2008; Bauer 1995; Jasanoff 1986, 1997; Jasper 1990; Rucht 1990, 1995). As matters of “public perception,” the study of risk disputes has typically taken the form of cognitive behavioral studies and less frequently as social and cultural accounts of risk. What is more, in a clear majority of these studies the question has focused on “why the public misperceives risk,” such that they oppose what the experts claim are reasonable efforts at managing societal risks. The study of risk disputes has therefore tended to cluster at either the macro-societal level or at the micro-cognitive level. In so doing, it overlooks the meso-level where community and regional contexts and life takes shape and where such disputes often originate and are carried out. Too few studies have sought to explain risk perception and dispute 9

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at the civic level, wherein differing social and political experiences, social positions, and cultural resources translate into distinctive civic relations, governance conventions, and resonant social values, all of which shape what is deemed at stake. These differences can, and often do, lead to tensions, debate, and even risk dispute. In analyzing each community’s response to biodefense plans, I found that I could not trace back the local style of civic engagement to an individual or group, nor were they reducible to an established political ideology or American polity generally. Rather, they existed as a mesolevel structuring influence reflective of local civic dynamics. I therefore explain local community variation as rooted in variant civic conventions regarding authority and its exercise; ongoing civic relations and local political rivalries; and the distinctive civic virtues and associated valuecommitments that resonated in each community. In each locale, these three factors produced a local civics and discourse that provided a strong set of cultural resources on which public engagement and dialogue were largely based. Put differently, local response to biodefense was grounded in “who was pursuing it and furthermore who supported and opposed them in town” (civic relations); “impressions of how biodefense plans were being pursued and authority applied” (civic conventions); and finally “what the implications of those plans were for community life given shared valuecommitments and expectations” (civic virtues). Only a handful of comparative studies of this kind have been published that focus on the similarities and differences in community-level response to “risky” sitting proposals. For example, Walsh, Warland, and Smith (1997) investigated eight communities chosen for local waste incinerators and sought to explain what predicted successful facility installations versus those that were locally defeated. They found that defeated proposals were associated with communities that had mobilized political rather than legal challenges, had linked to nonlocal groups and support, and had exploited political opportunities among local and nonlocal elites. Daniel Sherman (2011), in a study of 21 communities designated as sites for the storage of low-level radioactive waste, found that communities that invoked an “injustice frame” were more likely to politically mobilize and succeed at defeating siting proposals than those that deployed other frames 10

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of contestation. McAdam and Boudet (2012) compared 20 communities’ responses to energy siting proposals, finding political opportunities, local civic capacities, familiarity, previous mobilizations, and socioeconomic conditions all helped predict political mobilization/nonmobilization as well as project rejection, approval, and success/failure of the proposed installation. Finally, Aldrich (2008) studied “site fights” in 500 Japanese municipalities chosen for high-risk industrial projects and found that levels of social capital strongly influenced risk management decisions. While certainly coinciding with the findings I detail in Community at Risk, these studies have pursued breadth largely at the expense of depth. They have also focused on specifying quantifiable “variables” in an effort to generate predictions about when, where, and why social movements arise and how much such movements influence policy and proposal outcomes. By contrast, Community at Risk emphasizes depth while seeking to maintain some breadth through comparative analysis, as well as keeping an eye on how local mobilizations might influence risk management proposals. The type of comparative analysis that is founded in thorough field research is powerful because by isolating the unique social, cultural, and relational factors at play in each of the civic domains investigated, it becomes clear why policy initiatives succeed or fail in gaining local support. This information cannot be gleaned from social surveys or secondary datasets. For example, by observing how current policy agendas were linked or associated by the civically engaged with past policy initiatives, community mobilizations, successes, and failures, I was able to gain a better view of how these linkages affected local perceptions of what was at stake and the basis for local risk disputes. Comparative analysis also illuminated the distinctive role that variant types of community engagement played in shaping both the local risk disputes’ form as well as the influence they had on the local manifestation of risk management plans themselves. Important to their comparability, too, the community-centered risk disputes I followed in Galveston, Roxbury, and Davis were not part of a “national movement,” even if those who engaged the issue were aware of the mobilizations (or lack thereof) going on elsewhere. Engagement in each community emerged indigenously and gave rise to different ­responses: 11

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opposition, ambivalence, and embrace (respectively). While all more or less agreed on the dangers associated with acts of bioterrorism, divisions arose in all three places about how dangerous the NBLs were, who could be trusted, how money for security and public health should be spent, how risks and benefits would be distributed, how risk management plans like these should be implemented, and what was morally right and wrong with biodefense plans. The bases for dispute therefore went much deeper than one group’s facts and another’s fictions, but instead turned on locally acknowledged “matters of concern” (Latour 2004). In other words, while local disputes included many issues represented in the broader national biodefense debate, public talk and action in each community reflected its own distinctive bases for evaluation founded on a local and prevailing civics and discourse. Comparing how these communities publicly expressed their concerns also sheds light on several underexamined aspects of risk and its management: differing governance expectations, the role of ongoing and prior civic relations and conflicts, and the distinctive value-sets and commitments that frequently ground public exchange and dispute at the local level. Governance involves both the formal and technical policy aspects of government, as well as the informal social and political expectations that accompany their application. Governance specifically includes the structures, processes, and associated beliefs that surround acts of collective decision making around the nexus of government, civil society, and economic actors. As such, governance is a broader term than government, encompassing the laws, rules, policies, decision making, and bureaucracies of government but also the nongovernmental social and economic processes (e.g., social habits and markets) that govern behavior, including governing through individual choice and responsibility (self-governance). Together, these and related elements provided a solid basis for evaluation and therefore a reaction to biodefense plans in the communities investigated. In comparatively breaking down these aspects of local civics for each locale, I found that the discursive elements framing each city’s dialogue included repeated reference to local conventions of thought and practice, politicized relations reflective of ongoing partisan disputes, and 12

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resonant virtues and moral causes that were used to justify local positions and actions. t h e f ede r a l m a n dat e : pl a n n i ng for biologic a l a r m ageddon Though biosecurity has a long history in the U.S. agricultural sector, where strategies to prevent transmission of infectious agents in crops and livestock have been in place for decades (Beers, Findlay, and Perera 2005), in the twenty-first century it became an object of heated discussion (Fauci 2003; National Research Council 2003; Powers and Ban 2002). The attacks of September 11 and subsequent anthrax attacks provided an epochal break with the past. It was a moment when political and national security elites could question the assumptions and institutions that had held sway in the past and propose new courses of action and institutions to replace them. New conceptions of risk emerged to challenge existing security systems, of which biological agents perhaps loomed largest. The prospect of bioterrorism was of particular concern to both national and domestic security establishments because effectively predicting and/or stopping the spread of highly contagious killer germs, especially “weaponized pathogens,” is virtually impossible, and the dread associated with contagion has few parallels in the human experience (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2010b; concerning dread, see Edelstein 2004; Edelstein, Tysiachniouk, and Smirnova 2007; Erikson 1994; Sontag 1978; Wald 2008). Such threats were part of a bundle of biodefense concerns that U.S. security experts had been focusing on for some time. They believed that the United States was woefully unprepared to defend against a range of biological threats (Gronvall et al. 2009; Knobler, Mahmoud, and Pray 2002; Lakoff and Collier 2008; Miller, Engelberg, and Broad 2001; Shane 2004). In this newly defined context, addressing this perceived lack of preparedness became a top priority (Fauci 2003; Lederberg, Shope, and Oaks 1992; Lederberg, Smolinski, and Hamburg 2003; Mintz and Warrick 2004; NIH/NIAID 2001; White House 2003, 2004a, 2004b). With the rapid deployment of biodefense plans—including new scientific commissions, a proliferation of think tanks, and the development of policy interventions—the term biosecurity soon took on a meaning far 13

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different from its original connotations (Mair, Maldin, and Smith 2006; Meyerson and Reason 2002). The new plans outlined in the “Biodefense for the 21st Century” initiative complicated the relationship between ­formerly distinctive and sometimes even antagonistic social, political, technical, and planning domains, such as national security, commercial enterprise, biomedical applications, agricultural production, food distribution, and public health. Many of these now competed for federal funds and were subject to new rules and oversight. “Biodefense for the 21st Century”7 also sought to reconceptualize domestic biodefenses, moving away from an emphasis on protecting populations and toward public health strategies that could secure “vital national interests” (Lakoff 2008). According to security experts, population-based measures were untenable in the context of potentially catastrophic biological threats. Instead, biodefense plans should fortify the systems identified by experts as critical to social and economic life, from military and industrial assets to food systems and agricultural networks (Collier and Lakoff 2008; Collier, Lakoff, and Rabinow 2004; Lakoff 2007, 2008). The new plan moved away from reliance on probabilitybased risk models toward scenario-based policy constructions, because it is not possible to probabilistically predict pandemics or acts of bioterrorism. It was a shift in emphasis from “probabilistic” to “possibilistic” thinking (Clarke 2006), one that argued that developing the technical capacity to accurately calculate and predict risks associated with acts of bioterrorism or the emergence of naturally occurring pandemics—either probability of occurrence or severity of outcome—is simply not possible. “Possibilistic thinking” and “imaginative scenario-building,” in conjunction with joint planning exercises, became the preferred means by which national security elites and risk managers gauge vulnerabilities, plan, and prepare for biological threats (Altman 2001, 2002). Indeed, it was through imaginative scenario building that much of the present biodefense organization took form, including research priorities, new infrastructures, and even military applications. Founded in what has been called an “expert imaginary” (Calhoun 2004)—a worldview founded on specialized knowledge and imaginative scenario building that shapes understanding and, from it, planning and action—current domestic bio14

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defense plans reflect not so much a set of risk calculations and fixed probability parameters as a mix of possible worst cases, developed within a community of like-minded national security planners (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2008; Gronvall et al. 2009; Watson 2010). Particular “facts” that fit within a professional view of what was at stake given these worst-case scenarios were emphasized, and the possibility of biological Armageddon gave their plans a most potent justification: societal survival. Biodefense Goes to Town The NIAID justified its decision to fund the new NBLs by pointing out the dearth of cutting-edge research and response facilities in the United States and citing security experts’ desire to establish an expansive national biodefense network.8 This proposed network would build new “Centers of Excellence” (NIAID 2003), as well as link up existing ones to fund biodefense-related research by dispersing billions of dollars in federal money. It would bring online at least two new high-security, high-containment Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) NBLs to promote up-to-the-minute microbiological research to aid in potential crisis response (Thacker 2003). Building two new NBLs would increase by 400,000 square feet the nation’s domestic laboratory space dedicated to the most advanced science on manufactured pathogens and emerging infectious diseases (Gronvall et al. 2007; NIAID 2002a). According to federal regulations, only laboratories certified as BSL-4 are secure enough to handle Category A agents such as Bolivian, Argentine, Ebola, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fevers; the Marburg virus; Lassa fever; smallpox; and a few others. Each of these pathogens spreads quickly, has a high mortality rate, and has no known treatment or cure (CDC 2010a). BSL-4 biolabs use vacuum-sealed interiors and require researchers to wear hazmat suits with self-contained oxygen supplies and to decontaminate themselves upon entrance and exit (Malakoff 2003a, 2003b). (See Figure I.1 for an example of such a suit.) Prior to 2004, there were five operational BSL-4 facilities in the United States; currently, there are fewer than a dozen, with at least six operating in civilian locations (including one in Canada) and the remaining operating on U.S. military bases (Kaiser 2011; Kingsbury 2013; Race 2008; Race and Hammond 2008).9 15

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f i g u r e I . 1   Biosafety level-4 hazmat suit Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This Study The notion of a local “civic domain” and its more general parallel, the public sphere (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1990; Habermas 1991), is an important aspect of this study as I focus my investigation on how civic processes shaped community dialogue and debate surrounding biodefense plans and 16

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the NBLs local universities proposed for them. By civic domain, I mean the public and “discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment” (Hauser 1998, p. 86). In each community, the local civic domain was manifest through op-eds, community forums, protest events, coalition meetings, and neighborhood discussions. It also appeared in the in-depth interviews I conducted, as subjects supported and justified their views in terms of locally resonant governance conventions, political relations, and citizen virtues. Like the more general notion of the public sphere, the local civic domain can therefore be seen as a “theater” of sorts in modern democratic societies, where private citizens gather to address issues through dialogue, argument, and even denunciation (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1990; Habermas 1991). Political scholars generally believe that such open, discursive spaces are necessary for democracy, as civic discourse mediates among the private lives of citizens, the competitive exchange-relations characteristic of the economy, and the exercise of state government (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1990; Habermas 1975, 1991; Hauser 1998). As such, the civic domain of a given community is a critical space for the local exercise of governance and therefore also provides a view of the local forces, opinions, and views at play. At its root, “civic” refers to life lived in a common context, as is the case with residents of any community or society. While it is often used in reference to formal aspects of state citizenship, civic life also involves a shared sense of values and beliefs. For instance, unarticulated expectations concerning proper or “virtuous” conduct often underlie deliberations in civic domains. The civic domain is therefore that common context where community interests and directions are publicly hashed out. In any civic domain, a number of concerns are commonly deliberated when collective decisions must be made: what is a collective good, what justifies collective action, what constitutes due process, how important decisions should be made, how authority should be distributed in the context of community life, what rights and obligations are expected of individual citizens and of the collective, and what level of self-identification and loyalty to the community is expressed and expected. Civic domains therefore operate at the nexus of state authority and civil society. It is where 17

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public talk and civic deliberations primarily occur, and attention to them can reveal the expectations citizens hold regarding governance as well as the normative responsibilities they believe go along with citizenship. I therefore refer to the established manner by which Roxbury, Davis, and Galveston residents engaged in public debate as representing that community’s civics and discourse. By joining the term civics—the obligations associated with belonging to a collective—with discourse—the language used in a particular context—I seek to underscore the rhetorical, interpretive, and cultural resources that participants used to evaluate the “facts” and, with them, “the truth” about what biodefense plans represented locally. Specifically, each community’s civics and discourse was composed of distinctive clusters of institutions, motivating concerns, and commitments. These were reflected in references to local governance convention, political relations, and social virtues that provided the elemental civic pragmatics for local community-level political engagement. For instance, residents referred to local standards regarding the exercise of authority, rights and obligations of citizenship, and citizen involvement in community affairs— what I term “civic convention.” Civic convention characteristically took shape in the communities I examined through repeated references to the legacy of a particular social and political history, in which past disputes were recounted and the lessons and outcomes associated with them were used in an effort to understand contemporary ones. Long-standing politicized “civic relations” also influenced how residents interpreted the intentions of actors involved in the biodefense risk debates, including trustee institutions. Trustee institutions, such as universities and/or federal, state, and city governments, were known entities in each community and had reputations that had been established long before biodefense came to town. This is also true for the activists, civic groups, and personalities that formed the core of each community’s active civic domain. Ongoing civic relations and rivalries among the engaged were the rule rather than the exception. By civic relations, I therefore mean to highlight the role that locally acknowledged sets of “civic players” and their history, place in local politics, and relationship to one another (and the issue at hand) had in influencing what was deemed to be at stake with 18

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biodefense plans. For instance, public talk frequently referenced race and class positions, enduring associations, alliances, social and political competition, and the disputes linked to them in the present and past. Additionally, resonant “civic virtues” were also routinely invoked to express what was considered at stake locally. By civic virtue, I mean the moral standards used by citizens to publicly defend their stance on biodefense as a local community issue. Civic virtues deployed in the context of local dialogue were often used as moral critique or praise when judging the plans and their sponsors. The civic virtues referenced in each of my cases encompassed a range of different claims. For example, some people proclaimed that biodefense reflected their commitment to progress, and thus support was their moral imperative. Others stressed that supporting biodefense plans would betray the community and violate shared social justice commitments. Still others viewed it as a sign of militarism they could not stomach or accept locally. Together, civic conventions, relations, and virtues tended to legitimize certain concerns in each community, while delegitimizing others. Localized civics and discourse therefore clustered around shared ideas regarding the proper exercise of authority, citizen conduct, local hierarchy, moral values, and aspirations for the community’s well-being. These helped define the stakes in each civic context, and what counted locally as the legitimate bases for (risk) dispute. Indeed, one could view local civics and discourse as supplying participants with a ready-made repertoire for civic engagement and dispute (Clemens 1997; Lamont and Thévenot 2000; Moody and Thévenot 2000; Steinberg 1999; Tilly 1978, 1995; Williams 2004). In public discussions of biodefense plans, as well as during my interviews, frequent reference was made to how political conversations, political issues, and political engagement worked “around here.” Some residents even denounced the prevailing civics and discourse as “going too far” and “being too extreme,” while others claimed it was not extreme enough, that it reflected “the establishment,” even “the Man.” However, though local civics and discourse therefore provided an established set of political expectations and civic pragmatics, I should underscore that they did not reflect a “hidden psychology” or “groupthink.” In each case, civics was not reducible to a set of cognitive predispositions 19

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or structurally induced biases that left participants in each locked into tacit understanding and cultural assumptions they did not recognize. My informants were not “cultural dopes” (Garfinkel 1984). Rather, local civics and discourse helped to shape opinion regarding biodefense in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways by providing points of reference and a ready-made set of criteria around which understanding, political discussion, and dispute was often centered. In Community at Risk, my intention, then, is to document the content, structure, and influence exerted by three distinctive community contexts and the meso-level civics and discourse associated with them. ci v ics a nd r isk dispu t e The distinctive civics and discourses that emerged in my research reflected the range of individuals and groups that took up the issues around biodefense. In each community, similar conventions were invoked in interviews, newspapers columns, op-eds, and public forums. In this regard, each community’s civics are irreducible to cognitive predispositions or limitations, functionalist “in-group” structures, or general American polity. While civic groups mobilized specific claims, those claims often did not originate with them. What is more, they were not the only ones to acknowledge those claims. Indeed, the local legitimacy of their claims and justifications for opposing biodefense plans required that others—even their adversaries— recognize their merit. Lacking such recognition, the power to persuade others would have been greatly diminished. Indeed, claims must resonate beyond the boundaries of a specific “in-group” and its membership if they are to be socially and/or politically efficacious. In this sense, the political resources a group or individual deploys must also reflect a shared politicalculture,10 one that transcends any given individual or small group’s specific social boundaries. In Community at Risk, I expose dynamics common to contemporary efforts at managing risk in democratic societies such as the contemporary United States. Civic dynamics similar to those I have witnessed are at play whenever an American community faces a plan to manage, mitigate, or improve upon circumstances deemed “risky” or when a plan introduces new risks to local life. Community at Risk therefore shows how local pub20

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lic talk regarding the federal government’s post-2001 biodefense plans, while involving enduring American values and themes, was heavily shaped by locally derived “justificatory frameworks” (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye 2000). The civically engaged relied on these frameworks to evaluate the stakes and to petition authority and the local public to view risk as they did. Some of the evaluative claims used in these biodefense debates were common across all three locales, while some claims were unique to a given community and its civic domain. Indeed, my initial findings seemed to reveal two contradictory patterns of collective response: one founded in broad American political-cultural identifications and claims and one in discrete local institutions, discursive practices, and a civically founded political-culture. On the one hand, each civic discourse involved elements reflective of wider currents in American political-culture. Dialogue in each community, for example, viewed what was locally at stake through the prism of such enduring American concerns as collective versus individual rights, and race and class distinctions. Important also were lessons learned from the past, as noted in rhetoric referencing national antiwar, civil rights, and environmental movements, as well as contemporary collective events such as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the anthrax attacks, and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the local debates regarding biodefense plans, these national-scale social, political, and cultural resources were repeatedly used to petition authority and the public at large, as well as to denounce those who held contrary points of view. On the other hand, cultural resources characteristic of each locale also distinctively marked each community’s dialogue. Civic discourse consistently included nods to the legacy, beliefs, and symbologies of local social and political history, ongoing civic relations, and associated values. References to such considerations were often strategically deployed to politically maneuver and situationally control what was perceived to be locally at stake. The civics and discourses I tracked at this meso-scale therefore reflected the “supply side of culture,” wherein adversaries and allies alike tended to acknowledge civic conventions, relations, and virtues as local commonalities—while simultaneously deploying them as 21

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s­ trategic resources in a political contest to control how affairs were locally understood and managed (Lamont 1992; Swidler 1986, 1995; Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye 2000; Williams 1995). A central finding of this study, then, was the role that established civics and discourse played in shaping local dialogue and risk assessment. They indelibly shaped what was deemed at stake with biodefense plans in all three community cases. My findings therefore highlight two important aspects of risk disputes that are often underplayed in contemporary risk assessment and risk studies. First, the experience and perception of risk are founded in “heterogeneous” concerns. That is to say, in the civic contexts I investigated, each risk dispute was motivated by a heterogeneous set of collectively held concerns and aspirations that clustered as a locally compelling civics and discourse—native to each community I studied. Second, and related, the influence exerted by such civic discourses highlighted the role that “soft power” has in risk disputes of this kind where understanding is inflected by historical events, political relations and rivalries, social status, jointly held moral commitments, and local identities. Better understanding the influence that often intangible aspects of collective life like these have in shaping risk disputes is important to understanding “public” response because the public is highly varied and, as I have conveyed in Community at Risk, often differs by place. Having provided the analytical framework for this study, I now offer a brief overview of this book. ov e rv iew of t h e book Chapter 1 explains the theoretical backdrop and analytical framework that organizes this book. I begin by outlining what risk society is and how it reflects transformed societal relations in twenty-first-century United States. I describe how previous scholarship has theorized risk perception and civic engagement in risk disputes, and I articulate how Community at Risk contributes to this and related areas of research. In Chapter 2, I set up the empirical analysis and comparisons I pursue in Chapters 3 through 5 by focusing on the “risk communication strategies” pursued by the three universities in each community as they sought to secure both funding and public support to build and host a federally 22

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funded ultrasecure National Biocontainment Laboratory. I feature the efforts of the universities and their claims in Chapter 2 because it was in those efforts and initial assertions that the local civic dialogue began and was framed in each community. In fact, it is in part the great similarity in their “risk communication strategies” that variable local response is so interesting and informative. As I argue throughout Community at Risk, local variation was at the very least partly, if not mostly, a function of local civic-level dynamics rather than traceable to differences in federal policy, the universities’ implementation efforts, or the NBL technology. In the context of such established civics and discourse, an issue like biodefense, although objectively “new,” was locally understood and framed by events, experiences, and beliefs that were a priori to its public début and therefore requires an analysis of those a priori dimensions to understand and explain. With this as my intention, in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I turn to the three specific communities I studied: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston. I focus on how residents in each city mobilized local conventions, relations, and virtues to interpret and engage with university-led biodefense plans. In Chapter 4, I analyze local civic response in Davis, California, where a “home rule civics and discourse” prevailed. In Chapter 4, I take up the case of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where civic partisans and the civically engaged invoked what I term a “direct action” civics and discourse. The focal points for dialogue and dispute in Roxbury were positional issues of race, class, and equity that were further reflected in the local social history such as the de facto segregation, white flight, municipal neglect, and continuing disenfranchisement and disrespect of the neighborhood’s minority residents. In Chapter 5, I outline response in Galveston, where a managed civics and discourse predominated wherein the civically engaged mostly downplayed the risks posed by an NBL and instead emphasized its possible contributions to their island’s—and even the nation’s and the world’s— “progress.” Residents expressed little of the cynicism shared in the other cases and mostly faith in the power of humans, with the aid of enlightened leadership, scientific knowledge, technology, and economy to progressively improve and reshape their community for the better. 23

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In the conclusion, I provide a synoptic comparative account, looking at how similarities and differences across each local discourse “add up,” and what this reveals about the evaluative and claims-making processes characteristic of communities engaged in risk dispute. I assert, for example, that political rhetoric regarding “democracy,” “progress,” and “justice” can mean very different things in different locales that can heavily shape the ways that risk disputes differently emerge and play out in those places. While the cases I explore are in many ways representative of communities and political processes across the United States, unique social and cultural resources were utilized in each, framing protest, petition, and even agreement. In other words, the same terms can mean very different things in different community contexts. Ignoring this comes at the cost of lucid analysis and understanding. In the conclusion, I also reassess what my comparative account of local civics and discourse in the context of risk dispute contributes, given previous and overlapping research attentions. While the introduction framed my efforts, in the final chapter, I concentrate on what my analysis builds upon and where it adds to an impressive stock of already existent knowledge concerning risk management, perception, and dispute. My intentions, however, are equal parts new findings and synthesis. I also seek to integrate conceptually overlapping areas of study that have yet to systematically engage one another. In this final section, I specifically seek to blend aspects of risk literature with those that that have focused on civic context, community mobilization, and public conflict. references Aldrich, Daniel P. 2008. Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Altman, Lawrence K. 2001. “A Nation Challenged by Bioterrorism: Plan for Smallpox Rules Out Mass Vaccination.” New York Times, November 27. ———. 2002. “Threats and Responses: Limited Vaccination Plan Is Applauded.” New York Times, December 14. Altman, Sidney, et al. 2005. “An Open Letter to Elias Zerhouni.” Science 307 (5714): 1409–1410. Associated Press. 2001. “Experts Disagree Over Anthrax Attacks’ Origin.” Associated Press Wire. Washington, DC: Associated Press. Bauer, Martin. 1995. Resistance to New Technology: Nuclear Power, Information Technology, Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Beers, Peter, Vanessa Findlay, and Ramesh Perera. 2005. “Biosecurity: A New Word for an Old Concept.” In Diseases in Asian Aquaculture V, edited by Peter J. Walker, Robert G. Lester, and Melba G. Bondad-Reantaso, 3–13. Manila: Asian Fisheries Society, Fish Health Section. Berkman, Lisa F., and Ichiro Kawachi. 2000. “A Historical Framework for Social Epidemiology.” In Social Epidemiology, edited by Lisa F. Berkman and Ichiro Kawachi, 3–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Broad, William J., and Scott Shane. 2011. “Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case.” New York Times, October 11. Bush, George W. 2003. “President Discusses Measures to Protect the Homeland from Bioterrorism: Remarks by the President on the Bioshield Initiative.” National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1992. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, Habermas, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2004. “A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Order.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 41:373–395. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2008. CDC A–Z Index. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ———. 2010a. “Bioterrorism Agents/Diseases—A to Z.” In Emergency Preparedness and Response: Bioterrorism Overview. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ———. 2010b. Emergency Preparedness and Response: Bioterrorism Overview. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Clarke, Lee Ben. 2006. Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Clemens, Elisabeth Stephanie. 1997. The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cohen, Hillel W., Robert M. Gould, and Victor Sidel. 1999. “Bioterrorism Initiative: Public Health in Reverse?” American Journal of Medicine 89:1629–1631. Cohen, Stanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon & Kee. Collier, Stephen J., and Andrew Lakoff. 2008. “Distributed Preparedness: The Spatial Logic of Domestic Security in the United States.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (1): 7–28. Collier, Stephen J., Andrew Lakoff, and Paul Rabinow. 2004. “Biosecurity: Towards an Anthropology of the Contemporary.” Anthropology Today 20 (5): 3–7. Daschle, Tom. 2006. “The Unsolved Case of Anthrax.” Washington Post, October 15. Edelstein, Michael R. 2004. Contaminated Communities: Coping with Residential Toxic Exposure. Boulder, CO: Westview. Edelstein, Michael R., Maria Tysiachniouk, and Lyudmila V. Smirnova. 2007. Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S. Amsterdam: Elsevier/JAI. Enserink, Martin, and Jocelyn Kaiser. 2005. “Biodefense: Has Biodefense Gone Overboard?” Science 307 (5714): 1396–1398.

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Erikson, Kai T. 1994. A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community. New York: Norton. Fauci, Anthony S. 2003. “Biodefense on the Research Agenda.” Nature 421:787. Fauci, Anthony S., and Elias A. Zerhouni. 2005. “NIH Response to Open Letter.” Science 308 (5718): 49. Franco, Crystal, and Tara Kirk Sell. 2012. “Federal Agency Biodefense Funding, FY2012– FY2013.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 10 (2): 162–181. Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25 (26): 56–80. Freudenburg, William R. 1993. “Risk and Recreancy: Weber, the Division of Labor, and Rationality of Risk Perceptions.” Social Forces 69:1143–1163. ———. 2000. “The Risk Society Reconsidered: Recreancy, the Division of Labor, and Risks to the Social Fabric.” In Risk in the Modern Age: Social Theory, Science, and Environmental Decision Making, edited by Maurie J. Cohen, 107–122. New York: St. Martin’s. Garfinkel, Harold. 1984. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1999. “Risk and Responsibility.” Modern Law Review 62 (1): 1–10. Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yahuda. 1994. “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction.” Annual Review of Sociology 20:149–171. Goodenough, Daniel, and David Ozonoff. 2006. “BU’s Biolab and the Law.” Boston Globe, February 10. Gronvall, Gigi Kwik, Nidhi Bouri, Kunal J. Rambhia, Crystal Franco, and Matthew Watson. 2009. “Prevention of Biothreats: A Look Ahead.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 7 (4): 433–442. Gronvall, Gigi Kwik, Joe Fitzgerald, Allison Chamberlain, Thomas V. Inglesby, and Tara O’Toole. 2007. “High-Containment Biodefense Research Laboratories: Meeting Report and Center Recommendations.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 5 (1): 76–85. Habermas, Jürgen. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hauser, Gerard. 1998. “Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public Opinion.” Communication Monographs 65 (2): 83–107. Hynes, H. Patricia, Klare Allen, and Eloise Lawrence. 2007. “The Boston University Biolab: A Case of Environmental Injustice.” Paper presented at the State of Environmental Justice in America 2007 Conference, Howard University Law School, Washington, DC. Jaeger, Carlo C., Ortwin Renn, Eugene A. Rosa, and Thomas Webler. 2001. Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action. London: Earthscan. Jasanoff, Sheila. 1986. Risk Management and Political Culture: A Comparative Study of Science in the Policy Context. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ———. 1997. Comparative Science and Technology Policy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Jasper, James M. 1990. Nuclear Politics: Energy and the State in the United States, Sweden, and France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kahan, Dan M. 2008. “Cultural Cognition as a Conception of the Cultural Theory of Risk.” Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper 73, Harvard Law School Program on Risk Regulation Research, Cambridge, MA.

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Kahn, Ali S., and David A. Ashford. 2001. “Ready or Not—Preparedness for Bioterrorism.” New England Journal of Medicine 345 (4): 287–289. Kaiser, Jocelyn. 2005. “Détente Declared on NIH Biodefense Funding.” Science 308 (5724): 938. ———. 2011. “Taking Stock of the Biodefense Boom.” Science 333:1214–1215. Kingsbury, Nancy. 2013. “High Containment Laboratories: Assessment of the Nation’s Need Is Missing.” Applied Research and Methods. Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office. Knobler, Stacey L., Adel A. F. Mahmoud, and Leslie A. Pray, eds. 2002. “Biological Threats and Terrorism: Assessing the Science and Response Capabilities.” National Academy of Science Forum on Emerging Infections, Board on Global Health, Washington, DC. Lakoff, Andrew. 2007. “Preparing for the Next Emergency.” Public Culture 19 (2): 247–271. ———. 2008. “The Generic Biothreat, Or, How We Became Unprepared.” Cultural Anthropology 23 (3): 399–428. Lakoff, Andrew, and Stephen J. Collier. 2008. Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question. New York: Columbia University Press. Lamont, Michèle. 1992. Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lamont, Michèle, and Laurent Thévenot, eds. 2000. Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2): 225–248. Lederberg, Joshua, Robert E. Shope, and Stanley C. Oaks. 1992. “Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States.” Institute of Medicine. Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Lederberg, Joshua, Mark S. Smolinski, and Margaret A. Hamburg. 2003. Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Mair, Michael, Beth Maldin, and Brad Smith. 2006. “Passage of S. 3678: The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act.” Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Baltimore. Malakoff, David. 2003a. “The Architect Behind the New Fortresses of Science.” Science 299:812–815. ———. 2003b. “U.S. Biodefense Boom: Eight New Study Centers.” Science 301:1450. McAdam, Doug, and Hilary Boudet. 2012. Putting Social Movements in Their Place: Explaining Opposition to Energy Projects in the United States, 2000–2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meyerson, Laura A., and Jamie K. Reason. 2002. “Biosecurity: Moving Toward a Comprehensive Approach.” BioScience 52 (7): 593–600. Miller, Judith, Stephen Engelberg, and William J. Broad. 2001. Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War. New York: Simon & Schuster. Mintz, John, and Jody Warrick. 2004. “U.S. Unprepared Despite Progress, Experts Say.” Washington Post, November 8. Moody, Michael, and Laurent Thévenot. 2000. “Comparing Models of Strategy, Interests, and the Public Good in French and American Environmental Disputes.” In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United

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States, edited by Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, 273–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. National Research Council. 2003. “Countering Bioterrorism: The Role of Science and Technology.” Panel on Biological Issues, Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism, Institute of Medicine, National Academy, Washington, DC. NIAID. 2002a. NIAID Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ———. 2002b. NIAID Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research—2007 Update. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ———. 2002c. “NIAID Unveils Biodefense Research Agenda.” Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ———. 2003. “HHS Announces New Regional Centers of Biodefense Research.” Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ———. 2005. “Open Letter in Science Regarding Biodefense Funding.” Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Office of Communications and Public Liaison. ———. 2011. “Questions and Answers: Research on Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2001 to 2011.” Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. NIH/NIAID. 2001. “Request for Proposals and Applications.” Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Health and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Research Resources. Ozonoff, David. 2004. “Bioterrorism: A Public Health Deception at Boston University.” Testimony to the Boston City Council, April 20, 2004. Reprinted in GeneWatch 17 (1). Powers, Michael J., and Jonathan Ban. 2002. “Bioterrorism: Threat and Preparedness.” The Bridge: National Academies and National Academies of Engineering 32 (1): 29–33. Race, Margaret S. 2008. “Evaluation of the Public Review Process and Risk Communication at High-Level Biocontainment Laboratories.” Applied Biosafety 13 (1): 45–56. Race, Margaret S., and Edward Hammond. 2008. “An Evaluation of the Role and Effectiveness of Institutional Biosafety Committees in Providing Oversight and Transparency at Biocontainment Laboratories.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 6 (1): 19–35. Rucht, Dieter. 1990. “Campaigns, Skirmishes and Battles: Anti-Nuclear Movements in USA, France, and West Germany.” Industrial Crisis 4:193–222. ———. 1995. “The Impact of Anti-Nuclear Power Movements in International Comparison.” In Resistance to NewTechnology: Nuclear Power, Information Technology, Biotechnology, edited by Martin Bauer, 277–292. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schuller, Ari. 2004. “Billions for Biodefense: Federal Agency Biodefense Funding, FY2001– FY2005.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science 2 (2): 86–96. Shane, Scott. 2004. “Bioshield Effort Is Inadequate, a Study Says.” New York Times, October 15. ———. 2008. “Scientist’s Suicide Linked to Anthrax Inquirey.” New York Times, August 2. ———. 2010a. “Colleague Disputes Case Against Anthrax Suspect.” New York Times, April 22.

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———. 2010b. “F.B.I., Laying Out Evidence, Closes Anthrax Letters Case.” New York Times, February 20. Sherman, Daniel J. 2011. Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere: Politics, Social Movements, and the Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste. Washington, DC: RFF Press. Short, James F. 1984. “The Social Fabric of Risk: Toward the Social Transformation of Risk Analysis.” American Sociological Review 49 (6): 711–725. Sidel, Victor, Robert M. Gould, and Hillel W. Cohen. 2002. “Bioterrorism Preparedness: Cooptation of Public Health?” Medicine and Global Survival 7 (2): 82–89. Sontag, Susan. 1978. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Srinivasan, Arjun, Carl N. Kraus, David DeShazer, Patrice M. Becker, James D. Dick, W. Russell Byrne, and David L. Thomas. 2001. “Glanders in a Military Research Microbiologist.” New England Journal of Medicine 345 (4): 256–258. Steinberg, Marc W. 1995. “The Roar of the Crowd: Repertoires of Discourse and Collective Action among Spitalfields Silke Weavers in Nineteenth-Century London.” In Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, edited by Mark Traugott, 57–87. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51:273–286. ———. 1995. “Cultural Power and Social Movements.” In Social Movements and Culture: Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, edited by Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, 25–40. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Thacker, Paul D. 2003. “Hot Labs Take on Dangerous Pathogens.” Journal of the American Medical Association 290:875–877. Thévenot, Laurent, Michael Moody, and Claudette Lafaye. 2000. “Forms of Valuing Nature: Arguments and Modes of Justification in French and American Environmental Disputes.” In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States, edited by Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, 222–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill. ———. 1995. “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834.” In Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, edited by Mark Traugott, 15–42. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 2008. National Response Framework. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Wald, Priscilla. 2008. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Walsh, Edward J., Rex Warland, and Clayton D. Smith. 1997. Don’t Burn It Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators. University Park: Penn State University Press. Watson, Matthew. 2010. “Conference Brief.” The 2009 H1N1 Experience: Policy Implications for Future Infectious Disease Emergencies. Washington, DC: Center for Biosecurity of UPMC. White House. 2003. “Presidential Details Project Bioshield.” Washington, DC: Office of the Press Secretary. ———. 2004a. “Biodefense Fact Sheet.” Washington, DC: Office of the Press Secretary. ———. 2004b. “Biodefense for the 21st Century.” Washington, DC: Office of the Press Secretary.

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Williams, Rhys H. 1995. “Constructing the Public Good: Social Movements and Cultural Resources.” Social Problems 42 (1): 124–144. ———. 2004. “The Cultural Context of Collective Action: Constraints, Opportunities, and Symbolic Life of Social Movements.” In The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah Anne Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, 91–115. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Woodward, Bob, and Dan Eggen. 2001. “FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists: Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden.” Washington Post, October 27.

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chapter 1

Conceptual Footings of Risk and Governance

r i s k a n d i t s m a n a g e m e n t present the modern state with one of its

most pernicious challenges. Its legitimacy largely rests on its dual capacity to authoritatively intervene and stem “external risks” to public security (foreign attack, disease, and natural disaster), while simultaneously guaranteeing the sanctity of democratic institutions and individual rights. Over time and through a range of interventions, modern industrial states like those in Europe and the United States have indeed conferred substantial benefit on society through the reduction of these types of risks. However, this has also resulted in unanticipated “manufactured risks” that have emerged with the development of a range of technological systems, from fossil fuels to biological, chemical, and nuclear technologies (Giddens 1999). What is more, the technocratic systems set up to secure contemporary society from risk have also frequently threatened the principles of democratic governance through their adherence to technocracy, secrecy and denialism, and nonlocal control. The increasing association of manufactured risks with efforts to manage external threats has sown great uncertainty among the public regarding how the common good is best served. Indeed, in risk society the line dividing external from manufactured risk is, perhaps, no longer applicable. In the United States many have therefore come to doubt the anodyne statements about the failsafe plans that the government and its trustee institutions pursue in the name of protecting public safety and prosperity. State-sanctioned risk management plans have consistently evoked polarizing disputes over which risks are and are not acceptable when it comes to personal well-being and rights (Evans 2002; Gamson 1961; Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Offit 2008; Pellow 2002).1 Many scholars now argue that twenty-first-century United States, and postindustrial states like it, is a risk society characterized by a running debate over the promise and pitfalls of progress. According to this thesis, 31

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the central polemic for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century political battles was the distribution of societal “goods,” while a prime basis for citizen mobilization since the late twentieth century has been escaping modernization’s “risks.” In this new era, the main social and political problem is therefore not simply wealth distribution but a contest over risk distribution, which is itself a by-product of the pursuit of societal development (Beck 1992; Freudenburg 1993, 2000; Giddens 1990; Lash, Szerszynski, and Wynne 1996; Short 1984). In this chapter, I provide the conceptual footings for Community at Risk. I begin with a brief history of risk as a management tool for “rationally” ascertaining the benefits and liabilities of newly proposed programs, institutions, or technologies. Given its scientific and technical legitimacy in formal proceedings and settings, risk has also increasingly become a “forensic resource” for those engaged in technical controversies (Douglas 1990; Nelkin 1992). As a forensic resource, risk is routinely deployed as technical rhetoric in risk disputes to both justify and denounce the plans of adversaries. Next, I explore how the political aspects of risk and its management took shape in the post-2001 debates that ensued over biodefense plans in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston. In each community context, in addition to concerns with bioterrorism and the biolab technology proposed for each locale, a range of beliefs, value commitments, and governance expectations were at play that shaped both local understanding of what was at stake as well as public talk regarding the local university’s plans. In exploring how public discourse and civic action(s) regarding biodefense were similar and different across the three community cases, I learned that, while timeless American political and cultural values were at play along with cognitive biases and limitations, they did not wholly explain important local differences. To fully understand these, it is necessary to take into account the immanent, distinctive local civics and political discourses expressed in each locale. I have therefore developed a theoretical perspective to account for the distinctive cluster of conventions, relations, and virtues native to each community I investigated. A diverse collection of scholars and disciplines has sought to better understand the basis of risk disputes like those I have studied. Empirical 32

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studies have largely approached them as either problems of risk management or as matters of public perception. Those studying risk disputes usually ask questions like “What explains personal variations in risk perception?” (Kahan 2008; Kahan et al. 2006; Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Slovic 2000a, 2000b); “What ‘conditions’ and ‘contexts’—material, political, cultural—explain variant community responses to risk?” (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Nelkin 1992; Wynne 1982); and “Why has the public increasingly come to view a range of projects, technologies, and developments as too risky?” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Freudenburg 2000; Shrader-Frechette 1991; Sjoberg 1998; Sunstein 2005). Risk studies have not, however, engaged in a sustained dialogue with a range of scholarship in sociology and anthropology that addresses community politics, community movements, civic political-culture, and issues of or relating to the local sequestration of well-being and the “common good.” This even though many of the concerns risk studies scholars seek to address involve overlapping issues and aspects. For instance, those focused on comparative politics and political culture ask, “What does it mean to be a worthy person, community member, and citizen?” “How do different types of social ties and community relations shape civic life, political engagement, and protest?” “What roles do social and cultural environments play in shaping individual perceptions and therefore civic behaviors?” “When and why do people participate in civic politics and protest at all (if they do)?” and “How do people understand and justify their participation in civic life and community politics?” (see Eliasoph 1998; Etzioni 2004; Lamont 1992; Lamont and Thévenot 2000; Lichterman 1996, 2005; Perrin 2006; Putnam 2001). In short, although the cited scholars (and many others) have explored and sought answers to these and related questions, very few risk scholars have consulted the literature on comparative politics and political-cultures and likewise, very few of those focused on community based comparative politics and political-cultures have attended to the literatures and scholarship on risks, risk perceptions, and risk disputes. Therefore I conclude by engaging both literatures since they informed my effort to better understand the civically founded risk disputes I investigated. I also take them up to push both to engage in a conversation that has yet to manifest. 33

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r i sk m a n ag e m e n t, t e c h n o c r ac y, a nd democr ac y Beginning in the 1970s, in an effort to reduce the level of social and political conflict surrounding what were increasingly viewed as hazardous technologies (such as nuclear energy, chemicals, and biotechnology), the U.S. federal and state governments required that any technical and potentially risky developments they funded would be “rationally managed.” By this, they meant technically assessed for their probable costs and benefits (Freudenburg 1986; Jasanoff 1986; NAS-NRC 1983). The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) states that all federal government agencies must prepare “environmental impact statements” (FEIS). Under this fiat, the intended benefits and probable future risks of any new publicly funded project and associated technology must be assessed, and the Environmental Protection Agency must grant approval before the project can begin. While intended to avoid social conflict, such requirements have created as much controversy as they have resolved. Uncertainties inherent to formally analyzing the risks associated with any given policy, technology, or technical systems frequently lead to public risk disputes. When definitive knowledge is not possible and many criteria are at play, multiple positions are the rule and disputes are very likely. Conflicts like these are further amplified in democratic societies, where options for formal action are subject to legitimate political contest (Renn 2008). Democratic expectations clash with risk management orthodoxy for at least two reasons. First, risk management presumes that options and decisions reflect technical calculations and expert knowledge. As such, it is by design hierarchical and thus quite limited in its democratic potential (Beck 1995; Jasanoff 2005; Nelkin 1977; Slovic 2000a). Technical solutions to identified risks reflect “correct” search, assessment, and selection processes that are technocratically, not democratically, defined. 2 Second, risk management plans invariably require some level of localized sacrifice. This opens such plans to public scrutiny and therefore the “politics of risk.” In risk disputes such as those that locally arose over biodefense plans (circa 2000s), local concerns are often contrasted with common

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good arguments, with state actors and trustees arguing that the risks are negligible or that the greater good should outweigh local sacrifice. Of course, local populations frequently disagree. Thus, state-sponsored and/or -vetted risk interventions, justified for their capacity to stem societal threats, are regularly questioned by those who claim the proposed solutions are the real problem (Bauman 1992). Indeed, the association of solutions with problems has severely eroded the “legitimacy of the state” (Habermas 1975), as well as other associated trustee institutions insofar as their plans and promises to manage risk on behalf of society have resulted in unanticipated and manufactured risks that have frequently erupted as public risk disputes. Public Risk Disputes and Governance Expectations Similar to other kinds of social and political conflict, what I term “risk disputes” are also predictable struggles over who gets to control the anticipated benefits of a given project and avoid the liabilities. In the contemporary United States, risk disputes often center on the physical threat represented by a new technology or policy. Just as often, however, they include a focus on the performance of the trustee institutions involved, their associations and track records, and, consequently, any social trust or distrust of them. In such disputes, the public often questions them because they are understood to be both the sponsors and the benefactors of the policies, programs, and/or technologies being proposed. In the context of community dialogue, civic groups and individuals as members of the public often ask similar questions: What relationship does the trustee have to their community? How has the community fared in previous encounters with the same or associated trustees? What kind of social and political interests are associated with the effort? What are the moral and ethical implications of the project and those proposing it? Local history, ongoing local social and political relations, and local value commitments frequently provide answers to these and related questions or at the very least strongly shape those answers. Such questions, and the interpretations and debates that found them, are therefore highly relational, reflecting collective issues of authority, control, equity, and trust. Yet, in

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a clear majority of the risk-related literatures, such civic mobilizations are explained away with reference to “individual misperceptions,” “misplaced public fears,” and therefore the propensity to reflect “risk panic” (cf. Kahan 2008; Mazur 2004; Sunstein 2002, 2007; Wildavsky 1988; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). While conflicts over risk and its management might involve heightened levels of anxiety—and even fear—this terminology does a disservice to the political and cultural practices involved, reducing them to emotional, irrational reflexes. Risk disputes are a complex and vexing form of societal disquiet; reducing them to personal psychology, emotional reaction, or decontextualized forms of “cultural cognition” leaves a great deal unexplained. Risk disputes are also, to some degree, distinct from other kinds of political contests. They are relatively new in historical terms, emerging in the 1960s and expanding in the 1970s with the introduction of a range of technologies, chemicals, and worrisome environmental trends. Risk disputes gained prominence with the emergence of the environmental, antinuclear, and antitoxins movements, each of which called into question basic premises central to ideas, beliefs, and worldviews like progress, modernity, and nationalism (Bullard 1994; Freudenberg and Steinsapir 2000; Gamson 1961; Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Mazur 1981, 1998, 2004; Nelkin 1971, 1992; Perrow 2013; Szasz 1994). Though initially associated with a “left-of-center critique”3 of the state and societal development, risk disputes have spread across the political spectrum as scientific advances and technological innovations have opened up formerly sacrosanct aspects of individual and collective life. For example, the language and framework of risk have structured debates over procreation and birth practices as well as life-extending medical technologies (Harthorn and Oaks 2003; Luker 1984; Nelkin 1985, 1992; Tribe 1990). What is more, in the highly politicized context of risk society, risk as both a technology and political rhetoric has become a powerful forensic resource for those who wish to challenge established authority and its plans (Douglas 1990). Yet, risk has also served trustee institutions equally well as they have sought to justify their plans and risk interventions in society’s name (Hamilton and Viscusi 1999; Levy 2012; Shrader-Frechette 1985, 1991). 36

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Risk disputes are also distinctive insofar as they typically focus on the distribution of harm rather than benefit and often involve complex technical considerations. Regarding harm versus benefit, a key justification for trustee-sponsored risk management plans has historically been their capacity to mitigate threats to society. This contrasts with plans that aim to distribute a known benefit, such as promoting progress through economic growth, jobs, and wages, and therefore societal prosperity. While it may seem a simple semantic distinction, it is much more than that insofar as risk has inflected the very idea of progress with the notion of deterioration and harm. The open question in many risk disputes is therefore not just who will benefit but who will benefit and who will suffer? Risk disputes also characteristically involve “technical” considerations insofar as they most commonly reflect conflicts over new policies, technologies, and scientific applications (Bauer 1995; Mazur 1981; Nelkin 1992).4 In the past, technical expertise was frequently attributed to the state and industry (the “establishment”), while those who were assumed to lack such expertise were laypersons—that is, the public (the “challengers”) (Mazur 1981). This portrayal, however, is no longer entirely valid. Though the state and its surrogates typically represent the status quo and command authority, the characterization detracts from better understanding how technical expertise, as itself a form of authority, shapes public impressions in risk disputes (Foucault et al. 1991; Hardt and Negri 2000). Also, because formal risk assessment is itself a technology—a way of solving a problem or accomplishing a goal that relies on technical processes, methods, and/or knowledge bases—risk disputes in the United States today usually involve technical expertise on all sides of any given issue under scrutiny. Today, so-called challengers routinely mobilize technical experts (if they are not themselves technical experts already) to stake and validate their claims or, conversely, to petition trustee institutions. What is more, contemporary risk disputes frequently involve conflicts among technical experts from both inside and outside the state and industry, and even between different branches of the state and industrial sectors. For instance, in two of the three cases I investigated and document in coming pages, campus scientists who specialized in microbiology, molecular genetics, epidemiology, public health, and toxicology, 37

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among other specialties, mobilized in support and opposition to the local universities’ biodefense plans. Reflecting these and related trends, risk has therefore achieved the status of a politically powerful forensic resource with great rhetorical influence. As both a technical tool and a political resource—and thus a basis for lobbying and suasion as well—the discourse of risk has created an opening for collective mobilization and petition. Through the discourse of risk, formal assessment of probable harm has been linked with less technical, value-based claims to human rights, social justice, and due process, which now routinely influence trustee risk management decisions in their form, content, and even placement(s). Public Versus Private Risks, Individual Versus Common Goods In this section, I explain the analytic concepts deployed throughout the subsequent empirical chapters to unravel and explain local civic response in the communities I studied. First among these is the “common good.”5 Reference to the common good serves as a core moral and rhetorical justification that grounds disputant positions in public and private debates of many kinds. It was at the center of both agreement and risk dispute in the community cases I observed and recount in this book as well. To understand how the common good was rhetorically deployed, it is important to note what distinguishes public from private risks, as well as what differentiates a common from an individual good. Not all risks to individuals and communities are deemed “public.” Rather, most risks are considered to be private affairs, even when they are experienced by many and are quite common. This varies greatly by society, of course, but this is the case for a wide range of issues in the United States, from unemployment to the common cold. They are indeed public problems insofar as the public at large experiences them, but they are typically conceptualized as personal issues that must be remedied individually. Only when such private troubles reach acute proportions, such as during a recession/depression or when, for example, the common cold is deemed a serious public health threat, do they transcend the “private” realm and expand into the “public” one, where trustee institutions take them up as risk interventions in an attempt to manage the threat they pose to society. 38

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What is it, then, that makes one problem a common threat and therefore a matter for legitimate trustee intervention and risk management as well as public dispute and another problem an individual, private concern unworthy of collective recognition? All recognized public risks, and disputes over them, involve a sizable proportion of the general public coming to acknowledge them as a threat to the common good (Gusfield 1981). But this leads to a further question: What is the common good and how does it become threatened? I would agree with Etzioni (2004) that the common good is largely common sense; anyone who has participated in some form of shared living knows that the “commons” requires individual sacrifice and mutual effort to be sustained. If each member of a family, a community, or even a society takes without giving back to the commons, this deteriorates everyone’s experience. Yet, serving the common good is also more than each member giving back simply because they “own a share.” The common good is not merely an issue of material incentives and constraints (cf. Hardin 1968)6 or a product of force; rather, it reflects high levels of commitment and voluntary action. It is ultimately moral and ethical in nature; that is, it involves principles regarding what is “right” and “wrong” and group rules regarding what constitutes “proper” conduct. And it is not reducible to simple self-interest because claims to it can feel “right” even if the person making the claims will not benefit personally. It is here that expectations concerning moral and ethical behavior play a pivotal role in setting up the terms upon which groups do and do not mobilize in the name of collectively recognized principles and causes. Attention to such moral and ethical expectations therefore exposes the sources of commitment in collectives of all kinds, from families and local communities to nation-states. Collectives are frequently torn and even dissolve as a consequence of disputes over divergent expectations concerning contribution to the whole. Colloquially labeled the “free rider problem,” self-interest is a perennial problem for social collectives because individuals who are not committed and choose to avoid contributing can continue to benefit, or “free ride,” as long as others continue to contribute (Luce and Raiffa 1989; Olson 1965). This is in part why denunciations of self-interest or NIMBYism (Not in My Back 39

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Yard) are such prevalent charges and denunciations in contemporary risk disputes.7 Given the free rider problem, what is it that keeps the centrifugal force of individual self-interest in check so that collectives and their “commons” can be maintained? The answer, according to sociologists and anthropologists, is “culture” and, in particular, value commitments to particular ethical and moral orders (Bellah et al. 1991, 1996; Douglas 1966, 1973; Wuthnow 1987). Shared (or, at the very least, acknowledged) social values are therefore crucial to bringing individual commitment, conceptions, and actions into the greater whole. This is because value commitments inform individual decisions, channeling them toward collectively vetted “goods” and away from “bads.” They provide broad cultural parameters for the evaluation of one’s own conduct as well as that of others. Of course, power relations most often structure who decides who and what is good and bad, although not entirely and not always (Bourdieu 1984a, 2002; Bourdieu and Clough 1996; Foucault 1977; Foucault et al. 1991; Foucault, Rabinow, and Hurley 1997). Social relations are more flexible than that. And while we may be culturally exhorted by moral commitments toward supererogation,8 always applying and abiding by such principles is beyond any of our individual abilities (Etzioni 2004; Jonsen and Toulmin 1988). This is because moral aspirations that demand proper comportment (such as admonitions to collective benefit) are frequently at odds with the demands of immediate social relations and interests (such as individually desired outcomes and advantages). Outside of the obvious clash between self-interest and the common good, conflicting conceptions of what constitutes that good and how to best achieve it are also a great source of disquiet, and these too figured prominently in the community cases I studied for this book. Indeed, in the wider U.S. context, political tensions routinely arise from the very principles that constitute democratic governance as a means of achieving the common good: values like liberty, autonomy, and individual benefit inevitably clash with calls for democratic participation, mutualism, and collective provision (Flacks 1988). This dynamic is one that has been noted as characteristic of risk disputes in the United States, where macro-scales 40

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of collective benefit have been routinely pitted against smaller scales who are put at risk. The common good also operates differently at different social scales, which is a critical distinction lost in much of the research that seeks to explain public response to risk through micro- or macro-level analyses. Societal level concerns and conceptions of common good are mostly selected and addressed via national political institutions, social movement organizations, and media outlets that are often far removed from local concerns, contexts, and commitments. Indeed, the distance between national priorities and local concerns can present a strong basis for dispute in its own right. What is more, perceptions and commitments that are proximate and more micro in nature, such as those that characterize “intimate groups” like family, tribe, and even commune also vary greatly from those that dominate local civic and societal level discussions of the common good and the commitments called on to support them. By contrast to both the macro and micro scales, I employ a meso-level analysis throughout this book to show how social relations and commitments at this scale differ by their level of interaction and intimacy from both those characteristic of intimate groups on the one hand and society and nation-state on the other. The common good is therefore also relationally constructed in civiccommunity contexts. Unlike in families, tribes, and clans, the common good in civic-community contexts often involves commitments to ideas, values, and conventions as much as to individual persons and primary or “blood” ties. This is because at the community and societal scales, members need not be intimate or subject to frequent face-to-face interaction. Members of these larger populations can also belong to multiple groups and groupings that are themselves organized at different scales, making reliance and reduction to a single group or psychological profile unrepresentative, even distorting to an understanding of risk dispute. Furthermore, in the civic-community context, relations can extend to all figurative members, even including those with whom one has no direct personal relationship, and potential future members as well. However, civic-community relations, while less immediate and intimate for some than other kinds of ties, should not be understood as less important to psychic health and welfare. Indeed, a lack of civic community 41

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and the associated sense of belonging that such relations can provide has been extensively documented in both classical and contemporary sociology as a social problem that plagues many modern societies. Many have argued that a lack of social ties to a community and therefore heightened states anonymity are conditions of modernity itself (Bell 2000; Bellah et al. 1991, 1996; Durkheim 2001; Putnam 2001; Tönnies 1963). Where relational connection is sufficient, people tend to prosper as individuals; where they are absent or lacking, people and the societies to which they belong suffer (Etzioni 2004). Civically centered political constructions of the common good also involve and reflect what Selznick (1966, 1996) and, after him, neoinstitutionalists call “institutionalization processes” (Fligstein 1999; Fligstein and McAdam 2011; Freidland and Alford 1991; Meyer and Rowan 1977; Scott 1995). According to Selznick, institutionalization is the process through which participants in formal and informal social collectives develop common views, a unity of purpose, a sense of affiliation, and shared outlooks. Through institutionalization, conventionalized social organization itself becomes valued, and shared governance expectations are formed: civic rights and obligations, preferred relations among members, ideas about the proper exercise of authority, and shared values and beliefs—in a phrase, civic culture. Shared cultural expectations like these played a critical role in shaping local response to biodefense plans. Civic Clusters: Conventions, Relations, and Virtues Reflecting processes and aspects of the common good such as these, Galveston’s, Roxbury’s, and Davis’s responses to biodefense plans involved shared expectations and beliefs regarding civic-community life that took shape through clusters of locally acknowledged civic conventions and governance expectations; civic relations and political identities; and civic virtues and local value commitments. These as aspects of each community’s civics and discourse allowed claim makers to move their arguments beyond private concerns and individual self-interest and toward public, commonly acknowledged concerns and/or “goods”—a hallmark for claims made in the public sphere (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006; Moody and Thévenot 2000; Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye 2000). 42

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Studies of community life have shown that place identification reflects the boundaried properties characteristic of a place’s material and immaterial aspects, including both formal designations such as city and district lines and informal categories such as neighborhood, community, and region. Important also are geophysical aspects of place such as local climate and topography, as well as indelible events that have occurred in the past from so called natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, and droughts to more human centered ones like disease epidemics and wars. Also important is how community life is locally “made,” such as the industries that are in place, the history of development, and the political conflicts and social issues that have characterized local social relations over time (Beamish 2002; Feagin 1990; Hayden 1997; Jasper and Sanders 1995; Molotch, Freudenburg, and Paulsen 2000). By examining how the risks posed by biological pathogens and their management played out in three distinctive civic and community contexts, this book exposes and illustrates the very different concerns that can arise in the context of local civic dialogue, reflective of issues and aspects of place as noted, and how these can dovetail and diverge from those characteristic of the larger national discussion simultaneously taking place. Civic Conventions The community civics and discourses expressed in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston were all strongly associated with the histories native to each. Biodefense plans were evaluated in terms of local beliefs, experiences, and expectations. In this regard, civic conventions provided a local standard of sorts. In each community, civic conventions reflected commonly held expectations concerning what constituted good governance and the legitimate exercise of authority and that were expressed in the norms, rules, and practices that constituted a proper decision-making process. Civic convention as articulated and enacted by my informants also reflected the material history and context of each community. In other words, local civic politics were not carried out in a physical vacuum but were shaped by material conceptions and concerns—what Jane Bennett calls “vital materiality” (Bennett 2010, pp. vii–ix) and Bruno Latour calls “nature-culture” (Latour 1993, pp. 5–8, 103–106). Residents routinely 43

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cited local material history as reflected in repeated references to natural disasters, archetypal landscapes, and degraded environments, while the immediate “risks” being discussed—biodefense plans and the threat of biological terrorism—were often material in nature, too. For instance, in Davis, materiality was politically actuated through common references to its pastoral landscape and the civic movements and city measures that had been pursued throughout the city’s history to secure, protect, and reproduce such an “ideal place.” This has resulted in greenways, parks, and community gardens; undeveloped and protected agricultural lands; and the locally hallowed farmers market in Central Park held twice a week. In my interviews and in public comments, then, local actors frequently founded their stance on the university’s biodefense plans by referencing the distinctive histories of their communities. They also used these histories to raise questions and mobilize concerns regarding violated political and governance processes. Community members from Roxbury and Davis were particularly concerned over what they saw as a violation of their rightful participation in a civically centered, deliberative decision-making process. They cited past political issues to emphasize the basis for their complaints and mobilization. Those who mobilized both for and against biodefense plans from these communities frequently discussed whether they were rational, open, fair, objective, transparent, representative, or self-interested. At first glance, the differences among Davis’s, Roxbury’s, and Galveston’s civic conventions may appear trivial because informants in all three communities paid homage to classic American political ideas regarding democratic rule, individual rights, citizenship and collective obligations, and due process. Yet, upon closer examination, each case revealed how different these seemingly uniform political ideas can be when expressed in distinctive civic contexts. Distinctive impressions of democracy, enfranchisement, civic participation, citizen entitlement, and due process led Roxbury and Davis to view biodefense plans as an unwarranted threat, whereas in Galveston much the same terms were referenced to express how those plans aligned with local expectations and were deemed an asset to the community’s future. As I will show, in each civic context, the historical legacy of previous issues, political contests, and community “wins” 44

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and “losses” fostered local civic expectations and aspirations that have become conventionalized governance expectations that indelibly shaped local impressions of the trustees and their biodefense plans. Civic Relations While political talk concerning proper governance was a frequent topic in my conversations regarding biodefense, it was rarely expressed through references to local social and political history alone. Public dialogue also consistently referenced civic relations such as local political hierarchies, racial and class positions, important personages, power brokers, civic groups, and local institutions. It frequently reflected an acknowledged set of “civic players”—trustees, civic groups, issue elites, and engaged citizens—all of whom engaged one another in an active contest for control over local affairs and issues like biodefense. In the context of public discussion, this meant that certain kinds of claims were usually made by people, groups, and institutions about other people, groups, and institutions. As common points of reference, civic relations were therefore consistently used to help interpret the actions and intentions of local trustees, civic groups, and individuals. In all three locations, the influence over local affairs exerted by social and political associations and groups was also repeatedly spoken of in terms of the different kinds of social capital that individuals, groups, and institutions deployed through cultural, economic, and symbolic forms of power and suasion. The power of social capital reflects the honor, prestige, morality, or recognition associated with an individual, group, or institution that afforded them the civic power and legitimacy to opine on local issues and persuade co-participants engaged in the local civic dialogue regarding biodefense plans. By invoking these terms, I, of course, borrow from Bourdieu (1984a). Cultural capital consists of knowledge, skills, education, and the status associated with them. In the context of biodefense plans and risk dispute, it was reflected in technical expertise, credentials, and official position(s), and with them formal recognition and claims-making legitimacy. Economic capital suggests power through the control of economic resources. Finally, symbolic capital is power as reflected in cultural resources such as fame, honor, prestige, or ­recognition. 45

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Of course, none of these forms of capital are mutually exclusive, but all of them are overlapping and were at play in the claims, counterclaims, and denunciations that ensued regarding local biodefense plans. The civic relations that residents from each of the three locales described and discussed when addressing biodefense plans, however, revealed distinctive local experiences and from them bases for and forms of local power. As related to me, civic relations were primarily “positional” insofar as local actors frequently articulated their own and others’ interests as understandable given who they were, where they stood on the issues in both the past and the present, and what kind of power they wielded locally. In Distinction, Bourdieu similarly exposes the importance of the “space of social positions” and the “space of position-taking” in fields and political arenas like the civic domains I studied (Bourdieu 1984a, 1991). References to civic relations in my interviews invariably reflected an understanding of who, in each civic context, occupied what position and what interests and stakes were generally associated with them. This was something my informants from each civic-community context were keenly aware of. They knew, in looking at the local civic landscape, who their friends, foes, and adversaries were and would most likely be. From this they therefore felt they “knew” the stakes, whether their interests were well represented or not by what was being proposed, and further whether those proposing it were honest in what they promised. It was something they “read” based on the prior relationship(s) they had with the individuals, groups, or institutions in question, as well as their track record. Local civic relations as expressed by my informants and reflected in each community’s civics and discourse might therefore be usefully analyzed through the Bourdieusian concept of a “political field” (Bourdieu 1984b, 1990, 1996; Martin 2003). Yet, Bourdieu’s use of this idea focused on social and political contexts that were highly elaborated and often relatively stable and institutionalized, such as the arts, formal education, politics, law, and the economy. An important innovation to the concept has been its application to less static, bounded, and well-defined social domains, like social movements. Labeled “strategic action fields” by Fligstein and McAdam (2011), they emphasize contentious and transitional fields and highly politicized field relations. They do so by importing ideas from 46

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social movement theory and new institutionalism into Bourdieu’s social theory (Gamson 1990; Jepperson 1991; McAdam 1982; McCarthy and Zald 1977). By emphasizing strategic action fields as meso-level social orders anchored by shared but contestable co-constructions, Fligstein and McAdam foreground conflict, dynamism, and change much more than did Bourdieu, who emphasized stability and distinction (through preconscious habitus and disposition). Membership in a given strategic action field therefore reflects both the social distinctions native to Bourdieu’s analysis, as well as the shared impressions that transcend the oppositions and that define the local terms for political competition among local field “contestants.” The civic domains of Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, then, can be productively understood as strategic action fields, embedded in civic domains where the relations among the civic players were shaped by a shared local history—social, political, and material—and therefore a shared sense of what was locally at stake. Civic relations in these communities were also fieldlike insofar as deliberation and dispute over biodefense and other local issues represented a “quasi-game” among civically engaged residents. They sought advantage over one another, as well as immediate and longterm civic-political control. In each site, biodefense was just one incident in an ongoing contest among civic partisans for control over local social, political, and material endowments. “Winning” therefore decided more than the immediate issues of a National Biocontainment Laboratory (NBL) but also promised to influence future civic interactions, disputes, and outcomes.9 Civic Virtues

The third consistently invoked aspect of local civics and discourse across the community-cases was civic virtue: locally acknowledged moral standards that actors deployed to defend and justify their stance. Civic virtue was strongly associated with beliefs about collective rights and wrongs, used to define what a good citizen was, and formed a basis for community aspirations. In the dialogue concerning biodefense, civic virtues were often used to suggest how the university’s ambitions did or did not “fit” their communities’ moral-ethical commitments, such as the importance of 47

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scientific, medical, and economic “progress”; peace and antimilitarism; or social justice, enfranchisement, and locally beneficial economic development. Civic virtues also, at times, were used to draw hard lines through the use of “moral absolutes.” Both biodefense supporters and opponents justified their opinions through claims regarding equality, duty, progress, public health, militarism, social injustice, and incivility. In this regard, resonant civic virtues provided another basis for the evaluation of plans regarding NBLs. The civic virtues I observed and that were invoked by each community also overlapped and roughly approximated the moral domains that social psychologists have identified as “universal moral foundations.” Moral foundations scholars have developed a “moral domains” schema through the synthesis of cross-cultural theory and attitudinal research. They have identified five moral domains: harm-care, fairness-reciprocity, group-loyalty, authority-respect, and purity-sanctity (Graham, Jonathan, and Nosek 2009; Haidt and Graham 2007).10 The civic virtues expressed in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston clustered around the first four of these moral domains; the fifth—puritysanctity—was only nominally present. Nonetheless, while the virtues associated with each community’s civics and discourse broadly cohere with the foundationalists’ universal moral domains insofar as they expressed basic understandings of right and wrong, as well as justifications for support and opposition, reference to such broad “universal moral virtues” also overlooks the distinctive ways that each community understood and used such moral claims. That is, noting the presence of generic moral dimension types does not say much about the specific tone, character, and evidence used to make such moral claims. For example, claims were frequently made that evoked grouployalty, yet loyalty manifested differently in each community. In all three areas, the definition and strength of “group-loyalty” was shaped by local race, ethnic, and class politics, as well as distinctive place identities. As we shall see, the community-case studies demonstrate that, in contrast to moral foundations theory, group membership and loyalty to the group—as well as harm-care, fairness-reciprocity, authority-respect—are best conceived of as multidimensional, nested, and situational, at least in the risk disputes I tracked. Treating them as one-dimensional, flat, and 48

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in purely abstract theoretical terms leads to a limited understanding of them and what they tell us of group life and commitment. After all, none of the civic virtues I observed were self-evident; I had to account for them by examining local history and situational aspects of the biodefense issue itself, which imbued them with less universal and more local and civiclevel characteristics. Across Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, then, the civic virtues that emerged from my conversations regarding biodefense plans reflected universalist claims about moral values that were strongly “tempered” by local civics and discourse. The invocation of civic virtues expressed largely nonnegotiable moral principles that held special resonance in the context of the local civic dialogue and debates (Jasper 1992; Jasper and Nelkin 1992; Sanders and Jasper 1994). They were a locally effective means by which claim makers justified the “rightness” of their cause. Residents also expressed civic virtue by denouncing their adversaries’ actions and intentions and highlighting how they violated locally acknowledged moral commitments. The Study of Risk Dispute Readers familiar with the literatures regarding risk perception, risk management, and risk dispute may have noticed that, in elaborating these concepts, I have used few conventional studies of risk. While I have extensively drawn on risk scholarship that has focused on the “situatedness of risk,” very little of this and related work explicitly develops the civic and political dynamics of risk, or comparatively approaches it to better understand local community responses to it. Therefore, I have sought to marry my empirical observations with ideas from social theories focused on the institutional and cultural aspects of civic and community contexts and life on the one hand and those that have developed an understanding of contemporary risk societies on the other. I take up these and related issues in what follows. Studies of risk have largely approached risk disputes as either a problem of risk management or matters of public perception. As “risk management” problems, they have mainly been studied at the national and international levels, based on the analyses of scientific standards, policy 49

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construction, and the actions of policy elites who have sought to manage risks on behalf of the publics they claim to serve (Aldrich 2008; Bauer 1995; Del Sesto 1979; Jasanoff 1986, 2005; Jasper 1990).11 Risk management has also been developed as a globalizing phenomenon in an emergent literature focused on the rise and spread of forms of neoliberal governance through a range of “risk technologies.” Developed from Michel ­Foucault’s “governmentality” thesis (Foucault et al. 1991), “neoliberal” forms of governance view risk as a form of political rationality and a technical means of asserting power and control over populations of subjects. This is reflected in the actuarial strategies and risk-to-benefit assessment practices that have increasingly become characteristic of trustee institutions such as states and commercial entities. Also notable is the spread of such risk technologies in professions from engineering, insurance, and finance to health care, psychiatry, and criminology (Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996; O’Mally 1996; Rose 1998; Rose and Miller 1992). By contrast, the study of risk dispute that treats it as a matter of “public perception” has typically taken the form of psychological studies that stress economic and cognitive influences. Cognitive behaviorists, who currently dominate the field, propose that perceptions of risk reflect a clear object of some kind and the subjective-psychometric means by which individuals calculate its “riskiness” (Kahneman and Tversky 1979; Kahneman 2011; Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Larrick, Nisbett, and Morgan 2000; Slovic 2000b, 2010; Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtenstein 2000a; Slovic and Peters 2006). To assess the validity of individual perceptions, cognitive behavioralists have mostly focused on the individual decisions made by survey respondents tasked with discriminating and ranking lists of abstract “risks” (e.g., x-rays, automobile travel, vaccines, surgery, smoking). Research subjects are asked to indicate those risks they would and would not be willing to accept and why.12 The focus, then, is on the presumed “real” characteristics of a given object, its perceived riskiness, and how individual perceptions differ from “accurate” scientific and technical calculations (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982; Slovic 2000b, 2010). As a correction, research on risk disputes that focuses on social context and culture reveals that discrepancy over what constitutes risk is less the 50

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result of a conflict between individual computations and the actual material characteristics of the “risky object” than it is a reflection of differences in how groups, cultures, and societies perceive and experience these objects (Boholm 2003a; City Council of Davis 2000; Douglas 1985; Lazar 2011; Sjoberg 1998). Social and cultural factors take center stage. In their search for explanations of divergent risk perceptions, social and cultural treatments of risk have followed two general and overlapping intellectual trajectories: cultural theory of risk and sociocultural approaches to risk. Cultural theory emerged from Mary Douglas’s early ethnographic work and treats risk perceptions as a reflection of cultural taboos associated with differently structured “ways of life” (Douglas 1973). It posits that people understand and collectively respond to risk by way of culturally derived dispositions that “bias” perceptions of it. At the heart of cultural theory’s claims is a deductively generated two-dimensional typology of group life composed of “grid-group” dimensions. The “grid” dimension reflects the degree of social regulation, and the “group” dimension reflects the strength of social boundaries. In this framework, distinctive cultural values are functionally linked to specific modes of social organization from which predictable patterns of risk acceptability are said to emerge. In the words of Mary Douglas, “Put the two dimensions together, group and regulation, you get four opposed and incompatible types of social control” (Douglas 2006a, p. 3). The four cultural dispositions that result are enclave/communalist, isolate/fatalist, individualist/market, and hierarchist/organizational (Douglas 1992, 2003, 2006a, 2006b; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Schwarz and Thompson 1990; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990).13 Each of the four quadrants therefore are presumed to reflect a different set of cultural ideals by which the individual is said to relate to the group and on which group action is premised. Risk dispute is said to emerge between quadrants where discrepant social regulation and social boundaries collide; consensus therefore emerges within quadrants where convergent grid and group dimensions prevail. While the cultural theory of risk represents an important insight for approaching societal response to risk, as a testable theory it presents a number of vexing deficiencies. Three in particular are worth mention given my cultural analysis in Community at Risk: the circular or tautological 51

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nature of cultural theory’s claims, the “etic” (rather than “emic”) derivation and application of its analytic categories, and the binary (rather than graduated) aspect of the cultural dispositions it identifies (Boholm 1996, 2003a).14 In each instance, cultural theory has sought to trade in the nuance and the distinctions typical of different groups and collective life for parsimonious typologies and fixed diagrams. This has enabled it to create bold divisions and predictive statements, but at the cost of important distinctions that exist among the groups and individuals it examines, preferring instead to lump them into one or the other of four high/ low grid–high/low group quadrants to explain “biased” risk perceptions. As it relates to the first—the tautological nature of cultural theory’s functionalist claims—although it would be convenient to be able to categorize the different types of group culture–structured risk perceptions into four logically derived quadrants, in reality it is neither that simple nor that direct. The tautology is borne out in cultural theory’s conclusions, which make explicit what is implicit in it premises. That is, cultural theory defines “risk bias” in terms of the four grid-group quadrants it has logically derived and furthermore distinguishes the four grid-group quadrants in terms of their presumed risk biases. Of course, one could “force” a case to fit just about any schema one produces, especially if that schema holds some predictive and therefore heuristic value, as cultural theory certainly does. And this is to some extent what practitioners of cultural theory appear to have done by assuming the grid-group typology is “true” and therefore all groups and individuals must fit within it. The tautological aspect of cultural theory in some measure also is reflected in its “etic” rather than “emic” character and development, too. Outside of Mary Douglas’s early work on primitive tribalism and the nature of the sacred and profane (Douglas 1966, 1973), most of the rest of the theory and its development derives from a synthesis of previous theory and the logical derivation of its four mutually exclusive cultural types. Yet, the original impetus for Douglas’s insights focus on insular, tribal, and therefore totalizing in-groups that are rarely paralleled in the contemporary, where groups and memberships are multiple, porous, and fluid. People typically belong to more than one group as citizens, activists, residents, volunteers, and workers, to name but five. 52

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Moreover, research on social and community movements has found that cultural variation among groups on the same side of a risk issue can be just as great as the variation between opposing sides (cf. Johnson 1987). Therefore, a graduated set of scales and characterizations rather than an either/or set of boxes better reflects the empirical reality within which risk disputes unfold. In deploying the grid-group typology “literally” as opposed to “heuristically,” cultural theory prematurely forecloses an analysis of how and why contemporary events and contexts are understood as “risky,” how groups, movements, communities, organizations, and even nations not only diverge but also converge in their understandings of risk. My analysis of the civics and discourse at work in the places I studied reflects my data gathering and the dynamic political context of each, not an idealized conception that I tried to “fit” to local response. Through an emphasis on functionally derived cultural dispositions and biases, cultural theory of risk also fails to acknowledge the dual role cultural claims can play as both durable structures and manipulable symbols. That is, culture as a political resource can represent deeply held assumptions and beliefs, while also being consciously deployed as a strategic or tactical resource to win a debate or dispute. One belief does not preclude the other (Smilde 2003). As Boholm (1996) puts it in addressing the culture theory of risk’s heavy-handed functionalism, some cultural beliefs have their own “validity irrespective of their social or economic structure” (p. 68). This is because some beliefs, ideas, and behaviors are “right” and others are “wrong” simply because they are either “good” or “bad” thoughts (Lévi-Strauss and Eribon 1991). Finally, studies of cultural theory of risk have also revealed its predicted relationship among social organizational variables (grid), social values (group), and risk preferences to be overstated, unclear, and even untestable. The problem with cultural theory of risk, I contend, does not lie with the heuristic value of the grid-group typology nor with some of the associations it makes regarding different types of social orders and predicted “cultural worldviews.” Rather, the problem lies with the totalizing and therefore reductionist explanation that its advocates present (cf. Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990).15 For instance, how does one explain that in both Davis and Roxbury, university scientists, faculty who 53

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belonged to the universities seeking to build and host an NBL—ostensibly members of an “organizational hierarchy”—broke rank and supported those civically active in Roxbury—ostensibly an enclave—as they sought to keep the NBL out of their community. Such crossover “memberships” and “cultural” sympathies are not easily explained by the “cultural theory of risk” without violating its strictures. And if the strictures are not as strong as cultural theorists have claimed them to be, cultural theory is not what they claim it to be—a totalizing explanation of risk perception. In contrast to cultural theory and cognitive behavioral approaches to risk, sociocultural theorists of different persuasions have emphasized risk disputes as culturally situated, locally dynamic, and relational in nature.16 According to them, risk perceptions do indeed reflect a priori, culturally grounded values and beliefs, but to understand their application, one must ground them in legacies of collective experience, ongoing political struggles, and social relations that exist both within and between social groups and interests. Indeed, socioculturalists have found that risk disputes reflect knowledge and evaluation situated in multiple identity communities, as well as the politicized relations characteristic of late modernity (Beck 1992; Freudenburg 2001; Giddens 1990, 1999; Lash, Szerszynski, and Wynne 1996; Short 1984; Tulloch and Lupton 2003). This attention to the time, place, and dynamic social context of a given risk dispute—that is, its situatedness—contrasts with the timeless, universal, innate, and mechanical solidarities emphasized by cultural theory of risk, as well as with theories focused on individual psychology and the cognitive-behavioral aspects of risk. My approach in Community at Risk and my findings resonate with those that have emphasized interpretation situated in political and cultural dynamics (Beamish 2001; Boholm 2003b; Mitchell et al. 2001; Wynne 1982, 1983, 1996). Community at Risk specifically focuses on risk’s public aspects, not the beliefs and assumptions of individual actors or specific small groups. That is, I do examine individual subjectivities, but in the context of rhetorical and theatrical aspects of public conflicts regarding risk and its management. Through this focus, I seek to provide deeper understanding of the “cultural supply side,” wherein partisans engaged in risk dispute deploy civic and political repertoires to make sense of, support, 54

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and contest trustee risk management plans (cf. Lamont 1992).17 Again, I found that, while frequently involving reference to broader American political-culture ideals, understanding local response required attention to how they intersected with local histories of social and political conflict that provided local disputants with actionable lessons, tools, tactics, and rhetoric—in a word, “repertoires of contention” (Clemens 1997; Lamont and Thévenot 2000; Moody and Thévenot 2000; Steinberg 1999; Tilly 1978, 1995; Williams 2004). In short, localized civics and discourse in the three sites situated general American political-cultural claims, giving them concrete local meaning and pragmatics. Comparing the Civic Politics of Risk The chapters that follow offer empirically grounded analyses of the civic politics of risk and how they shaped the local dialogue and debate regarding an emergent risk management plan as reflected in the federal government’s new (circa 2002/2003) biodefense agenda. I argue that the civiccommunity level variation I observed, document, and explain in this book helps explain why, in a time of national anxiety, local reactions in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston to biodefense plans varied as they did. In the pages that follow, I expose what lies behind the politics of risk generally and why risk disputes are an endemic aspect of present-day community life in America. Efforts to manage risk require greater attention to these local contexts, and attention to the civic politics of risk is crucial to understanding contemporary risk disputes in what many now call “risk society.” references Aldrich, Daniel P. 2008. Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Barry, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas S. Rose. 1996. Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bauer, Martin. 1995. Resistance to New Technology: Nuclear Power, Information Technology, Biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. “The Solution as Problem.” Times Higher Education Supplement, November 13. Beamish, Thomas D. 2001. “Environmental Threat and Institutional Betrayal: Lay Public Perceptions of Risk in the San Luis Obispo County Oil Spill.” Organization and Environment 14 (1):5–33.

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———. 2002. Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Beamish, Thomas D., and Nicole Woolsey Biggart. 2006. “Economic Worlds of Work: Uniting Economic Sociology with the Sociology of Work.” In Social Theory and Work, edited by Randy Hodson, Marek Korczynski, and Paul Edwards, 233–271. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. ———. 1995. Ecological Enlightenment: Essays on the Politics of Risk Society. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Bell, Daniel. 2000. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bellah, Robert Neelly, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1991. The Good Society. New York: Knopf. ———. 1996. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: The Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Biggart, Nicole Woolsey, and Rick Delbridge. 2004. “Systems of Exchange.” Academy of Management Review 29 (1): 28–49. Boholm, Asa A. 1996. “Risk Perception and Social Anthropology: Critique of Cultural Theory.” Ethnos 61 (2): 64–84. ———. 2003a. “The Cultural Nature of Risk: Can There Be an Anthropology of Uncertainty?” Ethnos 68 (2): 159–178. ———. 2003b. “Situated Risk: An Introduction.” Ethnos 68 (2): 157–158. Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984a. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1984b. Homo Academicus. Paris: Minuit. ———. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1991. “Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of Political Field.” In Language and Symbolic Power, edited by John B. Thompson, 171–202. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1996. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2002. Social Structures of the Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Lauretta C. Clough. 1996. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Cambridge: Polity. Brown, Phil. 1992. “Popular Epidemiology and Toxic Waste Contamination: Lay and Professional Ways of Knowing.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 33 (September): 267–281. ———. 2007. Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement. New York: Columbia University Press. Brown, Phil, and Edwin J. Mikkelsen. 1990. No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bullard, Robert. 1994. Dumping on Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview.

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Calhoun, Craig. 1998. “The Public Good as a Social and Cultural Product.” In Private Action and the Public Good, edited by Elisabeth Stephanie Clemens and Walter W. Powell. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. City Council of Davis. 2000. “Resolution to Ban the Use of Depleted Uranium.” Davis, CA. Clemens, Elisabeth Stephanie. 1997. The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Del Sesto, Steven L. 1979. Science, Politics, and Controversy: Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1946–1974. Boulder, CO: Westview. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge / Kegan Paul. ———. 1973. Natural Symbols: Exploration in Cosmology. London: Barrie & Jenkins. ———. 1985. Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ———. 1990. “Risk as Forensic Resource.” Daedalus 119 (4): 1–16. ———. 1992. Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. “Being Fair to Hierarchists.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 151 (4): 1349–1370. ———. 2006a. “The History of Grid Group Analysis.” University of Toronto, Toronto. ———. 2006b. “Seeing Everything in Black and White.” University of Toronto, Toronto. Douglas, Mary, and Aaron B. Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Durkheim, Émile. 2001. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eliasoph, Nina. 1998. Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Etzioni, Amitai. 2004. The Common Good. Cambridge: Polity. Evans, John Hyde. 2002. Playing God? Human Genetic Engineering and the Rationalization of the Public Bioethical Debate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feagin, Joe R. 1990. “Extractive Regions in Developed Countries: A Comparative Analysis of the Oil Capitals, Houston and Aberdeen.” Urban Affairs Quarterly 25:591–619. Flacks, Richard. 1988. Making History: The Radical Tradition in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press. Fligstein, Neil. 1999. Fields, Power, and Social Skill: A Critical Analysis of the New Institutionalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fligstein, Neil, and Doug McAdam. 2011. “Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields.” Theory and Society 29 (1): 1–26. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. Foucault, Michel, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel, Paul Rabinow, and Robert Hurley. 1997. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. New York: New Press. Freidland, Roger, and Robert R. Alford. 1991. “Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio, 232–263. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freudenberg, Nicholas, and Carol Steinsapir. 2000. “Not in Our Back Yards: The Grassroots Environmental Movement.” In American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental

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chapter 2

Risk Communication, Local Civics, and Discourse h a v i n g n o w s k e t c h e d o u t the practical and theoretical elements

of this study, we shift our attention to the empirical analysis of each community “at risk” for a National Biocontainment Laboratory (NBL). Focused on local public talk and the civic political dynamic(s) that surrounded the biodefense initiative, in the chapters that follow I examine the claims, counterclaims, and justificatory bases for arguments supporting and opposing biodefense plans in each community’s civic domain. Again, in each community, distinctive clusters of civic conventions, relations, and virtues emerged from my analysis that describe and help explain the basis for risk dispute in two cases and the acceptance and embrace of the local university-led biodefense initiative in the third. My core argument is that these civic-level terms and conditions cannot be reduced to either individuals or small group dynamics, nor can they be explained with exclusive attention to macroscopic American political culture. Thus, I recount and detail these civic terms and conditions as sources of interpretation and political engagement and the role they played in shaping local understanding and, with it, reception of federal biodefense plans. However, in this opening section, and before delving into the specific empirics of each community case, I begin with the strategies, claims, and justifications put forth by the three universities as they pursued their interest in housing and managing a federal NBL. I do so for two reasons. First, I begin with the universities and their claims because as de facto trustees institutions in this instance, it was in their efforts and initial assertions that the local civic dialogue began and was framed in each locale. Second, the similarity in how all three pursued support for their biodefense ambitions, as reflected in their “risk communication strategies,” was marked enough that it requires focused attention and comment before commencing with an analysis of community response. Indeed, it is in part because both the federal policy and the university-led risk communica64

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tion campaigns were so similar that variable local response is so interesting and informative at the level of community civics. Local variation was at the very least partly, if not mostly, a function of community-level dynamics rather than differences in policy, implementation efforts, or proposed technologies. Variation in response reflected each community’s unique social, political, and material histories, which further manifested in the distinctive conventions, relations, and values that individuals and institutions had forged over time through repeated interaction and civic engagement. In the context of such established civics and discourse, an issue like biodefense, while objectively “new,” was locally understood and largely framed by the events, experiences, and beliefs already in place well before its public debut. Finally, the civic histories that stand behind the civics and discourse I relate for each community must also be analyzed in light of the politics from which they sprang. Put another way, a distinction might be made between a “real history” of each city and community—that is, a factually verifiable chronicle of events—and “the civic history” that lies behind local sentiments and claims.1 It is the latter that the civically engaged deploy when arguing what is justifiable and therefore “right” and “wrong” in the context of their local public discussions and, in two cases, risk dispute. Therefore, it is this civic history and its influence that are the focus of my efforts in the chapters that follow. t he u ni v ersit ies a nd t heir biodefense pl a ns It is important to emphasize up front that Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC), University of California–Davis (UCD), and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) all relied on virtually the same public relations strategies and public claims to justify their desire to build, host, and manage an NBL on behalf of the federal government. This is not an incidental observation; it was they who initially proposed to bring biodefense to town and also who defined the initial terms on which local public dialogue was first oriented and in two cases on which risk dispute would be founded.2 Understanding how these universities’ initial actions and claims structured subsequent claims and counterclaims is a crucial aspect of understanding community response in each locale.3 65

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Therefore, here I briefly outline in general terms how the universities, as trustee institutions and surrogates for the federal government’s biodefense plans, pursued their interest in hosting and managing an NBL. First, all three universities relied on essentially the same rhetorical justifications, which aligned them with the federal government’s larger biodefense agenda and focused on preparedness for biological attacks. As time passed and the urgency associated with the anthrax attacks faded, however, more current public health threats like West Nile virus, SARS, and avian influenza would increasingly be used by university administrators to justify their pursuit of an NBL. Indeed, this was an increasingly common justification used by all three campuses: that an NBL would provide increased levels of biosecurity for local and regional populations in its role as a medical research facility that specialized in disease response and interdiction. As a group, then, the universities collectively emphasized that biodefense was a means of preparing the nation both for bioterrorist attacks and global disease pandemics, as well as providing a risk management and response infrastructure for still deadly but mundane public health threats like influenza and food-borne illnesses. The universities were also insistent that an NBL posed little risk to the surrounding communities. Their campuses, all three would assert, had biolabs that were nearly as secure (BSL-3 rather than BSL-4) and that already conducted biodefenserelated research. What is more, they would add, the greater levels of security associated with a BSL-4 NBL would further guarantee no accidents. The prospective NBL, they claimed, was “failsafe.” Technical arguments and worst-case rationales for risk management plans like biodefense are fairly common when trustee institutions seek to secure public support. The universities and their representatives, however, also offered reasons that had little to do with the government’s role in averting potential catastrophes. These included that a local NBL would benefit the world, nation, and local community through the scientific progress it would promote; it would be widely renowned, imparting stature to the community in which it was sited; and it would encourage biotechnical development and therefore increased economic development and prosperity. 66

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In pursuing these tactics and related public justifications, all three universities also deployed what might be best termed risk communication “orthodoxy” (Covello et al. 1989; Cvetkovich and Löfstedt 1999; Easterling 2001; Fischoff 1998; Flynn, Slovic, and Kunreuther 2001; Krimsky and Plough 1988; Löfstedt 2002; Peters, Covello, and McCallum 1997; Race 2008). Risk communication strategy derives from the technological controversies and disputes of the 1970s and 1980s and a desire on the part of industry and government policy makers to stem widening public opposition to their plans. Risk communication strategy characteristically reflects two assumptions. The first is that reliance on technically ­generated “facts” will promote consensus, and the second is that adherence to an open and inclusive public siting process will obviate conflict (Fischoff 1998; Peters, Covello, and McCallum 1997). That is, by openly discussing “the facts” regarding the risks and benefits of an NBL at forums open to the public, university administrators hoped to engender support or, at least, mitigate local hostility toward their biodefense ambitions. In Roxbury, Davis, and Galveston, however, these assumptions were not strongly supported. This was not because two of the three communities under study sought to stop an NBL, but rather because each community responded differently to virtually the same risk communication strategies. That is, while there were modest differences in how each university approached the local public, the tactics and leadership styles they used, and specific uncontrollable and unique events that played out in each case, their risk communication strategies were very similar, following current orthodoxy. As for such modest differences, in Davis—where antiwar sentiments run deep—the university initially used the federal program’s name “biodefense” to justify the need for an NBL. As events unfolded and resistance emerged to the biolab, its connection to the Department of Defense was highlighted and made a local liability. As a consequence, UCD’s administrators increasingly began to refer to their proposed biolab as a “biosafety” laboratory to obviate resistance and disassociate their effort from secret research, militarism, and even national security, emphasizing instead the public health aspects. 67

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What is more, in Roxbury, where issues of race and claims of racism and civic disenfranchisement were prominent, BUMC’s adherence to technical talk was frequently interpreted as standoffishness; it worked to inflame matters and seemed to support claims made by those who opposed a local NBL that its siting in Roxbury reflected racism and classism. BUMC’s administration was perhaps the most insular, uncooperative, and combative of the three cases and universities I investigated. This I take from the comments of my informants but also from my own experience with them. When I asked if they would be interested in a conversation about a local NBL, the administrators refused to speak to me or my research compatriots and were, one could say, moderately hostile. Indeed, in the handful of initial telephone interviews I conducted with research scientists at BUMC, all of them told me they wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from BUMC’s administration. And while the people I spoke to at UC Davis also mentioned fear of reprisals, their reluctance was much less pronounced, and individuals who supported the biolab were more willing to discuss their views, even though administrators were largely unwilling to be interviewed there as well. As for UTMB, one might surmise that because no local resistance movements had gained traction, they were relatively more open, at all levels of the university, to discussing plans to build an NBL. There were other small differences as well, but on the whole, the relationship each university had with local civic partisans, what the civically engaged expected of local and nonlocal trustees, and the values and virtues they held as inviolable supplied strong bases for local reactions to the proposed biolabs. At its heart, then, opposition and support were not the result of either remarkable or failed university-led risk communication strategies per se. Rather, they were the result of those efforts in light of civic dynamics characteristic of each community context from which emerged distinctive arguments for and against biodefense plans. Following risk communication orthodoxy, the universities focused on improving both the local understanding of “the facts” they associated with the NBL technology and the biodefense agenda, while simultaneously seeking to engender public trust in those plans. They did so by first

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engaging local elites, inviting residents to public information forums, and organizing community outreach and liaison committees to promote an atmosphere of openness and inclusivity. To support their efforts, they also wrote newspaper columns, gave interviews, and worked with public relations firms and professionals to produce media spots on TV, home mailers, and even billboards with university claims that NBLs would serve the common good. Each university further held public forums in which local government officials, scientific experts, and supportive local elites extolled the virtues of NBLs, while also vouching for them as failsafe. What is more, in an effort to blunt local opposition and produce winning proposals, public relations specialists at both the University of California–Davis and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston shared that they were relying on “lessons learned” from previous cases where biological research laboratories of this kind were considered by public health departments (Drexler 2006; Fell and Baily 2005; Gronvall et al. 2007; Hynes, Allen, and Lawrence 2007; Löfstedt 2002; Race 2008; Race and Hammond 2008).4 I assume BUMC administrators did as well, given the availability of such accounts. If local response was not simply a function of each university’s risk communication strategy, it was also true that local civic response and engagement were not entirely about biodefense, even if the NBL and biodefense were the immediate issue at hand. The motives that animated civic political engagement and the local impression of what was at stake largely reflected the legacy of both past and ongoing political relations and expectations concerning local governance that were often framed in moralistic terms that varied by community. My findings suggest that local complaints and concerns about how each university had pursued an NBL, the NBL technology itself, and their connection to the federal government’s biodefense agenda cannot be fully understood without reference to the local civic context within which residents discussed, debated, and in some instanced disputed claims for and against them. Local university risk communication efforts were heavily politicized in both Davis and Roxbury, where university use of PR firms and professionals to coordinate outreach efforts were considered specious and

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contrived. Indeed, risk communication strategy has become largely pro forma and identified as such by those that oppose many risk management plans, so much so that actions taken to secure local support can themselves become politicized if they are deemed “inauthentic,” are reflective of “canned democracy,” or involve “slick public relations gimmicks” meant to smooth the way for plans that would go through regardless of community sentiments, support, or opposition. For example, a faculty member who opposed UCD’s efforts to secure an NBL for its campus put it this way: Well, the university sent very expensive mailings to every single address in Davis. There’s no way that those of us who had objections to the university’s proposal could have gotten our message out in the same way; we later learned they hired a very expensive public relations firm from Washington, DC, to advise them on this . . . , which in my view was not only a wholly inappropriate use of university funds, but it also suggests a certain kind of . . . I mean, it was suspicious . . . in my view that they would have to do this kind of, what seemed to me propaganda, to get the lab, to get support for the lab in the community. 5

In the context of Davis’s prevailing civics and discourse, UCD’s hire of a PR firm and pursuit of a “risk communication strategy” lent the impression locally that they had something to hide at a time and with regard to an issue that called for open civic dialogue and equal, authentic exchange among citizens. Using a public relations strategy to influence a civic outcome was simply unacceptable to those that engaged the issue in Davis. In Galveston, however, no one mentioned public relations, inauthenticity, or callous self-regard as a reason to oppose UTMB biodefense plans. Therefore, while the differences in community response did reflect the immediate university–community interface regarding biodefense, it also was informed by less immediate issues, concerns, and expectations that were the outcomes of prior civic interactions and, in some cases, disputes. It appears that because the universities clearly relied on similar strategies and justifications to promote their local biodefense ambitions, variations in university behavior were not the most significant factor to engender local support and opposition. It was rather a process of civic-centered evaluation and claims-making characteristics of each locale that was.

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obse rv i ng ci v ic dy na m ics a n d r isk dispu t e Reflecting civic dynamics native to each community, then, the groups and individuals with whom I spoke relied heavily on the legacy of local political history and the civic relations associated with them to interpret what was planned and therefore at stake. Especially important to local evaluations was the role political associations played in attributions of motive, which were often articulated in moral terms. For instance, few of my informants in Roxbury, Davis, or Galveston claimed to have strong initial feelings about a local NBL or the larger biodefense plans of which it was part. Most related being initially ambivalent about biodefense and a local NBL; they simply wanted to know more before staking out a position. It was only after biodefense plans were associated with local and ongoing civic concerns and institutions that the sides began to take definitive shape and local polarization on the issue ensued. Therefore, while claims making included reference to the importance of protecting public health and advancing science to protect against acts of bioterrorism and naturally occurring diseases, in Roxbury and Davis, concern quickly intensified once biodefense was linked to local, collective issues and social institutions and the civic political divisions that were already in place. By contrast, in Galveston, where ambivalence was also an initial reaction, neither UTMB’s inability to completely assuage local concerns nor its risk communication strategy would lead to accusations of dishonesty, contravention of local rights, or ulterior motives as they did in the other two locales. What is more, because in Galveston no strong set of political or cultural divisions seemed to bisect the civic domain, biodefense plans also didn’t become a proxy issue for one or more groups as it did elsewhere. Indeed, quite the opposite occurred. In Galveston some of my informants told me about their experiences when they asked university administrators some rather difficult questions in an initial public forum. At the forum, UTMB administrators and scientists approached them individually after the meeting and sought to allay their concerns with a more personal one-on-one Q&A session. This effort was commended by my informants and worked not least because it was possible given the prevailing civic relations in Galveston. Simply put, UTMB

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had enough credibility in Galveston to engage the public in a manner that was unlikely to have succeeded in Roxbury or Davis. In contrast to the other two cases, the same kinds of public meetings and face-to-face engagements gained UTMB administrators praise in Galveston for, as one of my informants said, their “show of leadership” and efforts at “reaching out to the community.” Similar actions by BUMC or UCD would likely have received mixed reviews if not outright denunciation. For example, when BUMC set up a limited public forum where residents were not addressed en masse but were singularly ushered into closed-door meetings with BUMC administrators and scientists, neighborhood activists shared with me that they believed this was meant to isolate, control, and even intimidate them. They believed this was a reflection on their race, economic class, and status in the city, interpreting their interactions with BUMC officials through a racial and class-tempered “positional lens.” BUMC’s efforts reflected a lack of respect, even a willingness to marginalize those from the local neighborhood and community because “they didn’t matter.” This further resulted in linking BUMC’s efforts to issues of race and class and, with them, common civic concerns in Roxbury concerning social justice, such as claims that Boston’s white communities would never have been be asked to live near such a facility. Comments like these are clear examples of the role distinctive civic processes play in public engagement, interpretation, dialogue, and political contests concerning risk and its management, biodefense plans or otherwise. As a consequence of civic dynamics, and in spite of the universities’ and federal government’s efforts to promote the benefits they associated with the NBLs, civic groups in Davis and Roxbury mobilized around counterclaims and competing concerns to stop them. As related in the Introduction, a public risk dispute first erupted in Davis soon after the university announced in December 2002 that it would pursue a federal grant to build and host a local NBL (Brainard 2003). After two public forums about the proposal, the civic group Stop the UCD Biolab Now! formed. Several faculty members willingly signed a petition against the construction, which was published in the Davis Enterprise.6

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Roxbury’s public dispute would take another year to get underway. Before it was announced that BUMC had been awarded funding, only a small group of neighborhood residents had paid attention to the issue and had met with BUMC’s administration.7 As it emerged, theirs would be a fight for recognition, enfranchisement, and increased economic opportunities as reflected in the civic discourse and social justice narrative that dominated public talk in Roxbury regarding the proposed NBL. They felt that BUMC’s biodefense ambitions represented few local benefits but the usual unequal distribution of risk. With the announcement of federal funding for a BUMC-managed NBL, individuals and civic groups from across the Boston area joined Roxbury in their fight and formed their own civic group, Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition.8 In Galveston, no protest movements formed and no risk disputes ensued. While Galveston has never had the same level of civic engagement as Roxbury or Davis,9 during UTMB’s wooing of local civic leaders and the community, civic groups were mobilizing to stop a liquid natural gas transfer facility from being built just offshore. As a result of the protest, British Petroleum abandoned the project (Elder 2004; Richardson 2004; Taylor 2004; Tillotson 2004). Many of those who opposed the natural gas facility supported, unequivocally, UTMB’s bid to host an NBL. Indeed, none of those I interviewed felt that UTMB’s biodefense plans were contrary to their own or the community’s well-being, although some did express ambivalence about such a building on an island notorious for hurricanes. Paradoxically, the risk of an accident was downplayed by many of my informants given the everyday risks they confronted on the island like hurricanes and the refineries that lined Galveston Bay and the Houston shipping canal. Rather, emphasis was placed on the merits an NBL represented given the “real progress” it would make scientifically, medically, and even economically. From a comparative analysis of their pursuit of biodefense plans, then, I found the risk communication strategies pursued by the three universities to be virtually the same. However, local civically founded justifications of support for and against biodefense varied by community. This variation can be explained by the civics and discourse specific to each of the three

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t a b l e 2 . 1   Comparative civics and discourse: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston Civics and discourse

Davis, home rule

Roxbury, direct action

Galveston, managed

Conventions

Personalistic politics Shared governance Entitled

Communal politics Disrespected Disenfranchised

Represented politics Delegative Deferential

Relations

Partisan Defensive Reformist

Positional In-group Radicalized

Paternalist Localist Conciliatory

Virtues

Egalitarian Domestic/pastoral Peace/antimilitarist

Loyalty Collective provision Social justice

Duty Modernist Stature/reputation

communities I studied. Table 2.1 provides a preview of the different styles of civic politics that prevailed in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, each of which will be explored in greater detail in the chapters that follow. The remaining chapters focus on the community dialogue and disputes that ensued in each community regarding the proposed NBLs. references Brainard, Jefferey. 2003. “World’s Most Dangerous Germs, Coming to a Campus Near You? U. of California at Davis Battles Its Community Over Proposed Biosafety Laboratory.” Chronicle of Higher Education. Washington, DC: Chronicle of Higher Education. Cartwright, Gary. 1991. Galveston: A History of the Island. New York: Atheneum. Covello, Vincent T., David B. McCallum, Maria T. Pavlova, and Task Force on Environmental Cancer and Heart and Lung Disease. 1989. Effective Risk Communication: The Role and Responsibility of Government and Nongovernment Organizations. New York: Plenum. Cvetkovich, George, and Ragnar Löfstedt. 1999. Social Trust and the Management of Risk. London: Earthscan. Del Sesto, Steven L. 1979. Science, Politics, and Controversy: Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States, 1946–1974. Boulder, CO: Westview. ———. 1983. “Uses of Knowledge and Values in Technical Controversies: The Case of Nuclear Reactor Technology.” Social Studies of Science 13:395–416. Drexler, Maxine. 2006. “Interview with Mark Klempner, MD.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science 4 (2): 107–112. Easterling, Doug. 2001. “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Will Nuclear Waste Repository Contaminate the Imagery of Nearby Places?” In Risk, Media, and Stigma: Understanding Public Challenges to Modern Science and Technology, edited by James Flynn, Paul Slovic, and Howard Kunreuther, 133–156. London: Earthscan. Elder, Laura. 2004. “Public Hearing on LNG Terminal Draws a Crowd.” Galveston County Daily News, November 11. Fell, Andrew H., and Patricia J. Baily. 2005. “Public Response to Infectious Disease Research: The UC Davis Experience.” Institute for Laboratory Animal Research Journal 46 (1): 65–71. 74

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Fischoff, Baruch. 1998. “Risk Perception and Communication Unplugged: Twenty Years of Process.” In The Earthscan Reader in Risk and Modern Society, edited by Ragnar Löfstedt, Lynn Frewer, and Earthscan, 133–148. London: Earthscan. Fitch, Mike. 1998. Growing Pains: Thirty Years in the History of Davis. Davis, CA: City of Davis. Flynn, James, Paul Slovic, and Howard Kunreuther. 2001. Risk, Media, and Stigma: Understanding Public Challenges to Modern Science and Technology. London: Earthscan. Formisano, Ronald P. 1991. Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gronvall, Gigi Kwik, Joe Fitzgerald, Allison Chamberlain, Thomas V. Inglesby, and Tara O’Toole. 2007. “High-Containment Biodefense Research Laboratories: Meeting Report and Center Recommendations.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 5 (1): 75–85. Hynes, H. Patricia, Klare Allen, and Eloise Lawrence. 2007. “The Boston University Biolab: A Case of Environmental Injustice.” Paper presented at the State of Environmental Justice in America 2007 Conference, Howard University Law School, Washington, DC. Krimsky, Sheldon, and Alonzo L. Plough. 1988. Environmental Hazards: Communicating Risks as a Social Process. Dover, MA: Auburn House. Li, John. 2002. “What Is Wrong with the City of Davis?” The Test of Time. Davis, CA: Institute for Public Science and Art. ———. 2010. “History of Current Davis Politics.” http://daviswiki.org/Town_History. Lofland, John. 2004. Davis: Radical Changes, Deep Constants. San Francisco: Arcadia. Lofland, John, and Lyn H. Lofland. 1987. “Lime Politics: The Selectively Progressive Ethos of Davis, California.” Research in Political Sociology 3:245–268. Löfstedt, Ragnar. 2002. “Good and Bad Examples of Siting and Building Biosafety Level 4 Laboratories: A Study of Winnipeg, Galveston, and Etobicoke.” Journal of Hazardous Materials 93:47–66. McComb, David G. 1986. Galveston: A History. Austin: University of Texas Press. ———. 2000. Galveston: A History and Guide. Austin: Texas State Historical Association. O’Connor, Thomas H. 1993. Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal 1950– 1970. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Peters, Richard G., Vincent T. Covello, and David B. McCallum. 1997. “The Determinants of Trust and Credibility in Environmental Risk Communication: An Empirical Study.” Risk Analysis 17 (1): 43–54. Race, Margaret S. 2008. “Evaluation of the Public Review Process and Risk Communication at High-Level Biocontainment Laboratories.” Applied Biosafety 13 (1): 45–56. Race, Margaret S., and Edward Hammond. 2008. “An Evaluation of the Role and Effectiveness of Institutional Biosafety Committees in Providing Oversight and Transparency at Biocontainment Laboratories.” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 6 (1): 45–56. Richardson, Joan C. 2004. “Galveston Needs Safety Study of LNG Plan.” Galveston County Daily News. Surbrug, Robert. 2009. Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974– 1990. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Taylor, Heber. 2004. “Got Questions About BP’s Plans?” Galveston County Daily News, November 9. Tillotson, Dolph. 2004. “A Good Deal That Can Still Go Bad.” Galveston County Daily News, December 19. UTMB. 1967. The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; A Seventy-Five-Year History. Austin: University of Texas Press. 75

chapter 3

Davis, California Home Rule Civics and Biodefense

i n t h e i n t r o d u c t o r y c h a p t e r , I proposed that local civic poli-

tics and discourse strongly shaped how biodefense plans were engaged in each of the three communities I studied. In this chapter, we empirically examine in detail the risk dispute that erupted in Davis and how its style of home rule civics and discourse affected local deliberations regarding the University of California–Davis’s (UCD) biodefense plans. I begin with a discussion of Davis’s civic and political history and the legacy that political relations and cultural resources have played in structuring its civic domain (Fitch 1998; Lofland 2004). I then provide a chronological account of the risk dispute that ensued over the UCD’s biodefense plans. I focus on the civic resources mobilized in the dispute surrounding UCD’s biodefense ambitions, while also addressing the counterclaims of those who supported the university and its plans. I demonstrate that the claims levied in the dispute emerged from a specific civic legacy; they were not new, although they targeted a new technology and risk management plan. The arguments regarding UCD’s biodefense plans stand in marked contrast to those expressed in Roxbury and Galveston. My analysis sheds light on why local response to the federal government’s biodefense agenda and the university’s ambition to host an NBL varied across the three communities. No federal funds for an NBL were awarded to UCD, and no public explanation was given as to why. Local opponents of the NBL believed they had played a role in the denial of funds. While that may be true (I have no evidence that supports or disproves this), answering why any one of the communities I investigated received or did not receive funds and therefore an NBL was not my intention. Rather, my aim was to document the form civic response took and from it to gain a better understanding of its civic, political, and cultural bases. 76

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Initial uneasiness with UCD’s biodefense plans partly reflected the highly partisan civic relations there, as many regard the university as a political force whose agenda is not assumed by many to dovetail with the community’s. Many expressed wariness over how UCD was pursuing its biodefense ambitions. Indeed, in my telephone survey of residents in all three of the communities I investigated, those from Davis expressed the greatest degree of “civic partisanship.”1 Given the contentious nature of Davis civics, what was initially ambivalence quickly turned to alarm when news of unpublicized meetings that included UCD, the city mayor, and other government elites circulated among Davis’s “political class”—those residents who frequently engage in and mobilize concerning community politics. As engaged residents investigated the federal biodefense agenda and compared it to UCD’s public statements, inconsistencies arose that led to further concerns over what was locally at stake. During their investigation, these residents discovered policy documents that connected biodefense plans not only with public health concerns but also with national security and therefore “militaristic” institutions that clashed with collective and individual value commitments in town. In short, the claims leveled against UCD’s biodefense plans were not in many cases specific to biodefense, nor were they at all new. Rather, they reflected ongoing civic concerns that have galvanized Davis’s political classes in the past. t h e p o l i t i c s o f k e e p i n g d av i s d av i s Davis, an island of trees and prosperity surrounded by farmlands, hardscrabble rural towns, and Sacramento to the east, occupies ten square miles of California’s Central Valley. A ragged rectangle, Davis is bisected by U.S. Interstate 80, which connects it to the Sacramento metropolitan area 12 miles to the east and the San Francisco Bay Area 70 miles to the west. As one enters Davis, moving away from the downtown business district, the city appears as a well-organized swath of suburban housing tracts, with a proliferation of parks, greenways, schools, and bicycle lanes. UCD is located in the southwestern portion of the rectangle (see Map 3.1), occupying land that stretches well outside Davis city limits into Yolo and Solano Counties. 77

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In contrast to Davis’s suburban profile, the land surrounding it is mostly rural acreage. While the land is rapidly being developed in neighboring towns and cities, it continues to be open and largely undeveloped around Davis. This contrast has become part of Davis’s “character.” The community has regularly mobilized to defend the bordering agrarian land from development, institutionalizing a “slow growth” master plan in city policy (Davis 2007). Davis’s mobilizations against urban/suburban development reflect what I have termed a home rule civics and discourse. By this, I mean a civic 78

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mentalité in which local residents, as citizens, express an entitlement to share in the task of governing local affairs, even if their preferences and aspirations conflict with the plans approved by higher echelons of government or nearby communities. In fact, the differences between Davis and neighboring communities such as West Sacramento, Woodland, Dixon, and Winters are frequently cited in local civic politics to draw distinctions and define “what matters most.” For instance, in Davis’s civics and discourse (and in my interviews), this frequently took form in residents pointing out “what went wrong” in these other communities that should be avoided in Davis. Political engagement in Davis routinely centers on a handful of civic issues that loosely align with “green politics”: decentralized governance with citizen control, the slowing of urban growth, and peace and antimilitarist causes (see Lofland and Lofland 1987, p. 248; also see Fitch 1998; Li 2002, 2010; Lofland 2004). Support of these and related causes is frequently justified in terms of securing local well-being, enhancing domestic life for families, and protecting the safety and security of children. While frequently collapsed in political analysis, the civic issues that lie at the center of Davis politics stand in marked contrast to what might be called “red politics”: concern with civil rights, enfranchisement, freedom, and economic justice that, for instance, motivated the biodefense-related risk dispute in Roxbury. Successful civic mobilization has enabled many green political concerns to become institutionalized in Davis’s civic conventions, relations, and virtues. (See Table 2.1.) Some, such as citizens’ collective right to participate directly in local governance, have achieved the status of “civic entitlement.” Green politics has consistently shaped how individuals in Davis interpret local issues and the intentions of those who politically engage them. Indeed, as Davis historians have suggested, these issues have become “deep constants” (Lofland 2004). At first blush, one might view Davis’s agenda as simply “progressive,” and indeed many members of its political class claim that it is. Yet, the community-building agenda that has emerged over time also reflects tensions between progressivism and conservatism. The home rule civics and discourse I observed emerged from the aspirations of new émigrés 79

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and their concerted efforts at civic reform. Over time, the home rule civics and discourse have developed into a Davis-centric political view that frames many local issues and reveals what is locally at stake and held in high (and low) regard. The community-building aspirations of both early and contemporary Davis émigrés have strong affinities with the pastoral ethos noted in classic works by Leo Marx (1964), David Riesman (1957, 1965), and Bennett Berger (1979b, 1981), all of whom studied post–World War II suburban migrations and the idealism that propelled them. (See also Gans et al. 1979.) Modern pastoralism reflects a cluster of aesthetics, hopes, and ambitions that took material form in the mass migration of middle-class Americans to the countryside, or at least what many urbanites deemed to be the countryside. 2 Pastoralism does not map neatly onto contemporary party politics or conventional characterizations of American political culture generally, even if it involves oppositions central to both of them, such as individualism versus collectivism or liberalism versus traditionalism-conservatism. At least since the late nineteenth century, American agrarian life has been highly idealized through its association with health and vitality, open space and independence, and the ability to make a fresh start. It has also retained many of the “virtues” (and pretenses) of privilege and exclusivity associated with previous generations of aristocrats and the wealthy who owned country homes to escape the excesses of the city. Emigration toward the countryside, and more specifically the suburbs, historically has therefore signified a great deal more than simple relocation (Rome 2001). The first waves out of American cities were made predominantly by white middle-class families seeking to secure domestic life from the risks they now associated with the metropolis. With the turn of the twentieth century, new immigrants and people of color had swelled American cityscapes looking for opportunities they had been denied elsewhere. The influx of “outsiders” left many white middle-class parents concerned about the health of their homes as well as the associations their children might make, and therefore with the prospects of their upward mobility (Berger 1979a, 1981; Gans 1995).

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The countryside movement was therefore decidedly class-based and racialized, insofar as émigrés sought neighbors who were white and relatively wealthy like themselves that they felt they could trust and around whom they could build a secure community to raise their children. Beyond white middle-class moral aspirations and fears of downward mobility (Riesman 1965), emigrants also projected onto the new suburbs romanticized social visions and civic virtues, including a desire to recreate the kinship ties associated with small-town, agrarian life deemed lost to modern society. The mythic appeal of pastoralism and its contemporary stand-in in suburban life therefore also included a critique of domesticity in modern urban America, characterizing it as rootless and hollow. In this view, the highly mobile, urban nuclear family that had emerged to serve corporatestyle capitalism and produce the mobile managers and professionals it required was dysfunctional. It was out of touch with human nature and the “natural” organic bases for community. To flourish, families required secure and familiar surroundings with a stable network of like-minded people who shared convictions and aspirations around which extended family-like relations could be (re)formed. Modern pastoralism, then, was a “governance solution” to a host of urban, social, and environmental ills, one that hinged on face-to-face relations, shared governance, and the intimacy provided by new, relatively homogeneous middle-class developments. The Roots of Davis’s Home Rule Civics and Discourse Pastoralist sentiments arrived in Davis in much the same way they did in other suburban locales: via the influx of émigrés who moved with visions of how life would be better there, especially for their children. Unlike other newly minted suburbs, however, in Davis the new settlers joined a community that had been settled in 1868, incorporated in 1917, and home to the University of California at Berkeley’s agricultural research station since 1905. That changed in 1959 when the Davis extension became an independent University of California campus. As a result of the surge of new faculty to the campus, Davis saw a heightened level of partisanship in what had been a fairly stable civic domain characterized by tradition and consensus politics. The newcomers saw themselves as more cosmopolitan

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than the original townies and agricultural-extension campus faculty. These tensions soon translated into contested city council elections in which the new émigrés organized around a shared desire to “reform” Davis by shifting power away from the old business and political elite (Lofland 2004). The newcomers’ push for civic reforms also manifested itself in their efforts at community building. In Davis, the civically engaged set about “reclaiming” civic virtues such as public engagement, neighborliness, volunteerism, commitment, mutual obligation, and reciprocity in an effort to refortify the family and local civic life. These and related principles have come to indelibly shape local political priorities and expectations and therefore the stakes in local civic dialogue and disputes. Reflecting these are related principles and priorities—for example, these newcomers immediately set about building schools financed through educational levies and new taxes, churches, service organizations, and even the town’s first hospital (see Lofland 2004). The newcomers also campaigned to refashion Davis’s civic identity, shifting away from its rural, agricultural past toward a future centered on bikes and bike lanes; environmental causes; and antinuclear activism, peace, and disarmament, while attempting to provide historical preservation of Davis’s agrarian “character” (see Fitch 1998; Li 2010; Lofland 2004, pp. 122–144). Indeed, it seems that the citizens who flocked to Davis arrived with aspirations to build an entirely new community, even though one already existed. Today, several decades later, the penchant for civic reform and the desire to build community are not considered “imports” by middle-class Davis citizens but something enshrined in Davis’s civic frame of reference and discourse. One might conclude from this high level of civic activism that Davis is a politically radical town. This, however, would be a mischaracterization of local political culture. Again, Davis is equal parts progressive and reactionary. As Fitch (1998) put it, Davis “is reformist, not radical. It was interested in change but not too much. It was willing to try something new, so long as it didn’t undermine the community’s underlying values.” The conservative qualities of Davis’s community-building aspirations can be seen in the same efforts that have promoted seemingly progressive causes such as open space, environmental reform, and enhanced public education. These causes emerged from a desire to “fortify Davis” against 82

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certain kinds of growth that threatened to undermine what, for many I spoke with, “makes Davis Davis.” Indeed, I heard this sentiment many times from those I interviewed. As one individual said: I guess the biolab was resisted [in part] because there is just this fear here of what this (town) could become, you know, what this could do to our town and, and seeing places that have lost their downtowns due to the shopping centers and things like that, you know? I think there is, you know, maybe not politically as this is a liberal town, but I think behaviorally it’s an extremely conservative community. [The community is saying], “I just want us to maintain the status quo as everyone is watching everything change around here.”

In pursuing reform, for all the partisan brinkmanship, residents have also in many ways promoted political like-mindedness and resisted further integration into a region notable for both its poverty and relatively unimpeded commercial development. A consistent civic rallying point in Davis is the rapid sprawl, loss of open space, and crass commercialism many locals associate with the interstate “mall towns” characteristic of California. Residents have also mobilized to protect local domestic life from the social ills they believe plague surrounding cities and urban locales in general: high crime, overpopulation, high stress, and, of course, environmental ruin. Lurking behind many comments about what biodefense meant and what was locally at stake were issues of class and race, too. Frequently, in their explanations about why they had come to Davis and why they had stayed, the individuals I interviewed brought up the issue of class differences when comparing Davis to surrounding cities and towns: Davis is a relatively safe town. I don’t think I’m going to have my house robbed. My doors are open; my neighbors watch things. You know, a lot of store owners and things, they know my daughter. She’s growing up, and I’ll know if she’s playing down the way, if she’s smoking and doing things she’s not supposed to do, we’re just going to know about it, you know? It’s that kind of community. I’m trusted. . . . I think there’s a lot of trust in the community. I think a lot of that’s changing. So in that sense it’s very disturbing. Well, safety, [there are also] two different kinds, you know? One is being socially safe—safe in your body or 83

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[safe from] being attacked. We have that in Davis. [For example], I did not feel safe walking around the streets of [a big southern U.S. city] when I lived there. So that’s physical safety. But then there’s environmental safety, you know, good water, good air, things like that, and that Davis doesn’t have that. Is [Davis] a healthy place to raise a kid? Yes, it is a socially good place to raise a kid.

For this individual, Davis was a sanctuary, albeit one constantly under threat from neighboring cities’ growth. But these kinds of antigrowth claims function euphemistically, too. Defending attempts to hold, halt, and slow “growth” with the excuse that growth is “risky” only obscures issues of race, class, and the environment. Citing the high crime rates in towns like Sacramento and Woodland makes it appear that poverty and race are not the central concerns. I also found this to be true when interviewees spoke of Davis’s safety. Although race was never mentioned directly, comments about class, such as “Davis’s homogeneity,” “one can trust their neighbors here,” and “our kids are safe in Davis,” were common. These and related issues were also articulated as pastoral concerns about open space and the environmental trends that threaten what makes Davis Davis: Davis is a good place to live. Crime is low, stress is manageable, and environmentally we are in a better place than a lot of communities. . . . There are some areas of weakness, but most communities have those also. There are some race issues, [definitely] class issues here, but it’s a relatively good place to live. My biggest concerns? Because California unfortunately continues to attract huge population growth, this has led to a real rapid urbanization. . . . That’s now creeping [as] Woodland comes south toward Davis. So we are being surrounded by these cities that are being thrown up on a weekly or monthly basis. We see it happening down by Vacaville, Fairfield; you see it now in Woodland, too. It means congestion in our streets; increasing anonymity of people; other kinds of depreciation in our quality of life, [too]: air pollution, pollution of our water. So that really concerns me. The loss of our open space and agriculture concerns me. It’s part of the quality of our life here, it’s having access—easy access—to fields and farms and wetlands, aquatic systems, rivers, and so forth.

Note that this individual never spoke specifically about race. Class intolerance, however, was openly discussed. Woodland is a mostly Latino 84

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community eight miles north of Davis, whose residents tend to be poorer and less educated than Davis’s. The town is frequently used as an example of “what can go wrong” when development is left unchecked. As Woodland has grown, its southernmost boundary has pushed up against Davis’s northern open space boundary, threatening locals with “urban densification” and therefore the deterioration of the local way of life. Local demographics bear out some of the class distinctions that underpinned my interviews and in other conversations about biodefense, as can be seen in Table 3.1. In 2010, Davis’s median family income was $114,094; mean income was $133,640; and the median home price was $436,000. By comparison, in 2010, Dixon (8 miles west) had a median family income of $75,248; a mean income of $86,823; and a median home price of $299,647. Woodland (8 miles north) had a median family income of $69,322; a mean income of $92,942; and a median home price of $222,000. West Sacramento (11 miles east) had a median family income of $59,375; a mean income of $68,723; and a median home price of $230,000. What is more, Davis boasts the highest educational attainment in the region, with 68 percent of its population holding a bachelor degree or above (U.S. Census Bureau 2010a). By comparison, no other regional city has more than 24 percent of its population holding a bachelor degree or higher. In the winter of 2003, as opposition to UCD’s plans commenced, activists uncovered plans for potential military involvement in the biolab they sought to build and manage that might also involve a level of ­local

t a b l e 3 . 1   Davis, California, regional city socioeconomic and educational differences

City

Davis

Median family income

Average household income

Median home price

$114,094

$133,640

$436,000

Education Education attainment—high attainment— school or higher bachelor degree degree or higher

96.4%

68.6%

Dixon

$75,248

$86,823

$299,647

77.5%

18.7%

Woodland

$69,322

$92,942

$222,000

73.0%

18.0%

West Sacramento

$59,375

$68,723

$230,000

69.9%

9.8%

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2010a, 2010b, 2010c).

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national security surveillance in town. Biodefense’s association with the national security establishment strongly conflicted with Davis’s civic identity as a “peacenik town.” The Department of Defense (DoD) connection greatly concerned many in Davis who stood staunchly against anything that smacked of “militarism.” Many movements in town have taken an antimilitarism position, as has Davis’s city government, as seen, for example, in the city’s formal protest resolution against the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act.3 The association with the DoD changed the focus of the dispute from the merits and liabilities of a high-security, public health laboratory to opposition to what was referred to pejoratively as a “military” or “bioterrorist” biolab. While biodefense was ostensibly a new community issue, then, the political contest over it involved references to a fairly consistent set of civically founded moral values, preferences, and expectations that have shaped local disputes for decades. To people unfamiliar with this local history, it may have appeared that those engaged in the debate regularly invoked unrelated matters. Understanding civic response therefore requires attention to the political and cultural context and elements that shaped that local understanding. w h e n b i o d e f e n s e c o m e s t o d av i s If the risk dispute over UCD’s biodefense ambitions were simply about fear—fear of a new technology, the germs it would study, and/or its failure—protests could have erupted as early as 1996 when it was announced that the university would build a BSL-3 biocontainment laboratory and research center on campus. The Center for Vectorborne Diseases (CVEC), which is currently in operation, specializes in research on animal “vectors”: creatures such as mosquitoes, biting midges, fleas, and ticks with the potential to transmit infectious diseases like plague, dengue fever, viral encephalitis, malaria, and Lyme disease (O’Hara 1996). CVEC supporters also feared it might be perceived as a poor local fit, but no organized opposition ever materialized. After September 2001, terrorism, and bioterrorism in particular, became a leading national political issue. This was also reflected in the local news in Davis. Between June 2001 and November 2002, several articles 86

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in the Davis Enterprise and two public forums had addressed aspects of UCD’s biodefense ambitions, but local civic engagement remained nascent (Hall 2001; O’Hara 2001). In June 2001, Bob Dunning, an editorial columnist for the Davis Enterprise, even mocked bringing a “‘Biosafety Level 4’ [laboratory], which is really a ‘Biodanger Level 4’” to Davis. In the same column, he jokingly predicted that Davis citizens would protest the possibility of it locating in town (Dunning 2001). Indeed, they would, but not until January 2003.4 At that time, Davis mayor Susie Boyd, California Assembly members Lois Wolk and Mike Machado, and U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer wrote to the National Institutes of Health, supporting the opening. Mayor Boyd and Senator Boxer would soon change course and oppose the NBL once it became a very contentious local issue. Concerted opposition to UCD’s plan began to stir in October 2002 as local news broadcasts reported that UCD was seeking millions of dollars from the federal government’s new biodefense initiative to construct an NBL. That same month, the Davis City Council deliberated on UCD’s long-range development plan, which included brief consideration of its biodefense ambitions. Biodefense was taken up again at the November 2002 City Council meeting, at which a handful of Davis residents asked questions and voiced concerns about an NBL operating in Davis (Davis City Council 2002a). Even before UCD publicly disclosed its intentions to pursue funding for an NBL, it waged an aggressive community relations and risk communication campaign designed to assemble key supporters, allay local fears, and neutralize opposition in a town known for civic mobilizations. 5 The effort included forming an exploratory committee comprised of university administrators and hand-picked officials from the city and surrounding region, hiring a public relations firm to refine messaging, and eventually staging scripted public forums in an effort to effectively communicate the failsafe nature and benefits of a nationally funded, locally run NBL. In December 2002, UCD publicly disclosed its intention to apply for federal National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funds to build, host, and manage an NBL on its campus (Davis City Council 2002b). At the December meeting, public debate began. Local apprehensions spread rapidly, as did a desire among residents for answers to troubling ­questions 87

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regarding issues of local control, fit, and even the morality of such a facility, given its research agenda and potential military collaborations. The January 29, 2003, meeting ignited the local tempest that followed. Interested and engaged citizens attended, there was standing room only in council chambers, and more than a hundred people gathered outside to watch the discussion on closed-circuit TV. During the meeting, a video of a university-sponsored tour of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory was presented. The video conveyed a four-day “fact-finding mission” that had been organized and subsidized by UCD and included a handful of local elites, including the mayor of Davis, who toured the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health (CSHAH) in Winnipeg, Ontario. In the video, the mayor lauded UCD’s efforts to host and manage a local NBL. The CSHAH is run by the Public Health Agency of Canada and is a National Microbiology Laboratory. It was similar in design, size, level of security, and research to the National Biocontainment Laboratories planned for the United States and the kind UCD wanted for its campus. The Winnipeg biolab was also located in a suburban environment similar to Davis. Local response to the video was immediate and negative. Civic partisans considered both UCD’s and the city government’s actions (particularly those of the mayor) contradictory to local conventions regarding shared governance. In this way, the video reinforced local impressions of elite collusion in which university, city, and even state administrators were conspiring without the benefit of public input. At the meeting, public opinion was overwhelmingly negative or ambivalent. Only a few residents expressed support. As the video transcripts and public statements from this meeting demonstrate, 104 individuals, including council members, university administrators, and residents, made their opinions known.6 Of those, 79 individuals expressed opposition, 18 expressed support, and 6 expressed ambivalence or no opinion. Only 2 of those who supported the NBL were “laypersons” and residents of Davis, whereas the remaining 16 were university, state, county, or city officials or administrators. In comparison, 67 of the 79 who expressed reservations, concerns, and opposition were laypersons and residents of Davis. At the meeting and afterward, many of those who opposed UCD’s plans asked hard questions: Why hadn’t local 88

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citizens been apprised and consulted sooner? Could UCD be counted on to collaboratively manage such a facility? Was the NBL already a done deal? Could UCD safely manage such an ultrasecure NBL given its track record and failures in the past? Others simply denounced UCD for even considering Davis a suitable locale for its biodefense ambitions.7 Across this and subsequent public forums, in letters to the local newspaper, and in my own conversations, residents asked many more questions: Who would control the NBL? How would that control locally manifest? What kind of research would be conducted in the NBL? What trustee agencies and institutions would be associated with the NBL? Where would the NBL be located on campus? How would research samples—germs and diseases—be stored, manipulated, and transported to and from the NBL? What kind of emergency plan was in place to safeguard the community? Increasingly, too, some began to question the NBL’s morality given the local value commitments that many claimed were key aspects of the city’s character and their own ideals. Concern here focused primarily on Davis’s commitment to antimilitarism. Justifying a Local NBL and Support for It As the issue played out and UCD answered some questions, while downplaying and ignoring others, ambivalent and oppositional residents felt UCD’s actions were not diminishing the local risk dispute but rather intensifying it. UCD’s risk communication strategy and campaign largely replicated the federal justification for the overarching biodefense agenda, though university administrators often went “off message” and emphasized other, more community-centered motivations as well. Officially, administrators stressed that they were fulfilling federal biodefense aims and therefore serving national security, domestic public health, and scientific progress. At the same time, they emphasized that an NBL would pose no threat to the public as either a source of lethal germs or a target for terrorists. As the local risk dispute advanced, UCD also found it increasingly necessary to deny that the NBL would be affiliated with or conduct research for the military.8 Behind many of the federal government’s and the university’s biodefense justifications lurked the claim to reason, facts, scientific impartiality, 89

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and the public good. Biodefense was preemptive and scientifically inspired and would result in the nation’s, and therefore the local community’s, betterment. An NBL would heighten—not diminish—national, regional, and local security. Indeed, supporters were rather incredulous that critics would ignore these and related claims of collective societal benefit and instead emphasize university missteps, the risk of accidents, and local community sacrifice. Of course, those that opposed the NBL felt their justifications were equally ignored and marginalized. Given the intensity of Davis’s risk dispute, UCD’s risk communication strategy did little to quiet the local political storm. In fact, their public claims regarding the NBL amplified tensions both in town and on campus. A growing number of residents and faculty suspected that UCD and local elites were not being forthcoming. Anger also rose over the lack of time to consider and suitable information to effectively weigh in on the matter. Speculation that the NBL might involve military research also inspired local outrage; even many supporters considered military involvement unacceptable. As a consequence of these and related concerns, a handful of Davis residents formed the civic protest group Stop the UCD Biolab Now! (SUBN). At about the same time, a few UCD faculty members also mobilized in opposition to a campus NBL. In a letter to the editor in the Davis Enterprise on February 16, 2003, the group claimed that not only was the prospective NBL an unacceptable risk, but it clashed with both UCD’s open, liberal arts campus culture and the university’s central mission to pursue public, peer-reviewed science. None of the eight faculty members I interviewed who had actively opposed the NBL and signed the petition published in the Enterprise expressed a personal fear of the NBL. Indeed, to a person they stated this was not their opposition. Rather, they opposed it being sited on campus because it conflicted with their sense of what the university stood for. They also believed it had exposed a UCD administration that was willing to violate basic governance convention on campus, such as a commitment to shared governance. What is more, several of my faculty informants expressed their belief that the NBL and its ultrasecure profile would stifle freedoms on campus because it would require a security detail as well as restricted access to the 90

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area in which the NBL was situated. Also, because the biolab was linked to the Department of Defense, research conducted there would likely involve secret, nonpublishable, applied research that would violate the professional ethics that were the foundation of “basic science”: unbiased, peer reviewed, and publicly available and published research. Researchers and students should not have to be concerned with issues of secrecy or security. Finally, surveillance of the student body and faculty was absolutely unacceptable. Reacting to such civic claims and denunciations, UCD sought to demonstrate that it was sensitive to local concerns, stating publicly that it planned to ensure community participation if it was awarded federal money. It also publicly affirmed that no military or military-oriented research would be conducted in the NBL. Indeed, the provost claimed that UCD was, by its own institutional rules, not allowed to conduct such research on campus. While UCD might have hoped these and related statements would diffuse the emergent risk dispute, they instead proved inflammatory. First, participation in a community liaison committee after an NBL had been funded, built, and set in operation bolstered local claims that public inclusion was at best an afterthought and at worst unwanted altogether. What is more, while researching biodefense policy documents, such as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases “Request for Proposals,” it was discovered that the DoD was connected to the larger biodefense initiative and therefore might be involved in the research, or at least might benefit from the research conducted there (U.S. Congress 2002). On February 5, 2003, the most contentious of the relevant Davis City Council meetings convened. A crowd of more than 165 people packed into and outside the auditorium. Civic activists from the newly formed Stop the UCD Biolab Now! made a presentation in which they proclaimed their opposition, as did scores of other like-minded residents. These residents presented to the council a petition against the NBL that more than 500 residents had signed. Within a matter of months, the petition swelled to well over 2,000 local residents who were willing to publicly express their opposition to a university-run federal biodefense NBL in Davis. Despite this show of civic opposition, however, the council was divided at the meeting and, in a split vote, did not take a formal position on the plan. 91

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On February 10, 2003, UCD submitted a 900-page grant application to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to construct and manage the Davis NBL. They also sought designation as a Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (RCE).9 The same week, a rhesus monkey escaped from the California National Primate Research Center, a high-security BSL-3 research facility on campus. UCD waited until February 20 to publicly acknowledge the escape but only after an anonymous tip was phoned in to the Davis Enterprise (O’Hara 2003b). The monkey was never recovered, and the escape prompted another maelstrom of public denunciation of UCD. Wearing face masks, carrying illustrative signs, and referencing “the escape,” those who opposed the NBL connected the monkey’s loss to UCD’s past mismanagement of laboratories, accusations of misconduct in its pursuit of an NBL, and therefore the risks of a future liability.10 On February 21, 2003, just as local public rancor was reaching a zenith, Susie Boyd, then mayor of Davis, reversed her initial endorsement and announced that she now opposed a university-run NBL in Davis. She claimed the issue had become too divisive and produced such strong opposition that “we have to put this behind us. . . . The only way to put it behind us is to say [that UCD should] put it somewhere else.” She continued, telling the local newspaper, “The opposition has reached such a crescendo I had to sit down and think, what can we do to start the healing?” (Curda 2003). With the public forums and the emergence of a civic protest group, debates about biodefense continued to dominate the local news over the following year. The public’s concerns were reflected in letters to the editor and the many articles devoted to the topic. (See Figure 3.1.) Between December 2002 and November 2003, 183 letters to the editor focused on UCD’s bid to host a local NBL. Of these, 110 were highly critical and opposed UCD’s local biodefense plans, while 45 expressed support for UCD or strong opposition to those who were protesting. Finally, 28 of the letters took no explicit position on biodefense but offered commentary on it and the local political climate. Many more letters were submitted but were never published in the newspaper.11 This outpouring of emotions showed how important the issue had become. 92

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40 35

Number of letters

30 25 20 15 10 Supportive 5 Oppositional Ambivalent 0 12/02 1/03 2/03 3/03

4/03

5/03

6/03

7/03

8/03

9/03 10/03 11/03 UCD not funded

f i g u r e 3 . 1   Frequency, letters to the editor, Davis Enterprise, December 2002–November 2003

Dovetailing with my interviews and other data sources, the themes invoked in these letters reflected the dominant political discourse in town and the home rule civics that predominates in Davis. For example, the most prevalent theme reflected in the letters was community civics and local partisanship as a basis for claims making. Both supporters and detractors of UCD’s biodefense plans used reference to this partisanship and political relations in town to bolster their claims and denounce those of their adversaries. The next most frequent claim highlighted the threat of accident or intentional sabotage, often counterpoised to Davis’s commitment to a safe and secure community. A breach at such a facility—indeed, the idea that such a facility could have a breach—was considered too dangerous, however small the chance, for a place like Davis. The NBL’s installation in a suburban community was also described as ill conceived, not only because of the possible risks and accidents but also because of the potential for increased surveillance and security in 93

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a college town frequented by kids and families. UCD’s track record, especially its failures, as well as those of the city and federal governments, were also frequently mentioned in arguments against the NBL. Finally, as the bitter fight continued, the NBL’s association with militarism and the immorality of such an association, again in a “peacenik town,” were unconscionable for many. Arguments in favor of UCD and biodefense plans extolled the role UCD and the NBL would play in improving national biosecurity. (See Table 3.2.) Supporters also frequently attacked the rationality of the opposition, associating it with hysteria, panic, and fear, while connecting their own position to rationality, the facts, and progress; reason demanded support for a local NBL. Finally, advocates also frequently referred to the biolab’s “good fit” for UCD given its renown and expertise in related research areas. Paradoxically, while UCD and its supporters often denounced those who opposed them as “unreasonable” and “hysterical” in their “unfounded fears,” they also frequently grounded their own justifications in “fears” of catastrophic bioterrorist attacks or cataclysmic global pandemics that demanded improved biosecurity. For example, in the following letter to

t a b l e 3 . 2   Themes, letters to the editor, Davis Enterprise, December 2002–November 2003 Theme

Position

Totals

Civic partisanship

Support/oppose

90

Risk/safety/accident

Oppose

48

Urban/community location

Oppose

35

Trustee/track records

Oppose

31

Improved biosecurity

Support

31

Militarism/secrecy

Oppose

25

Reason/science/facts

Support

22

UCD expertise

Support

20

Duty

Support

6

Economics

Support

5

Totals

313

Note: For each letter, I counted the themes represented, noting the primary, secondary, and tertiary themes developed by the author. Therefore, there were more themes (313) than articles (183).

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the editor, a resident and supporter of UCD’s biodefense plans uses the not uncommon reference to opponents’ “hysteria” and juxtaposes this with the need for scientific progress to deal with “toxic materials”: I am particularly disturbed by the somewhat hysterical protestations relating to the establishment of the biohazard research facility at UCD. The individuals who are against the research that would be conducted are the same people who are the first to point the accusing finger at the government when the answers to questions are not known. It is only through research that the procedures required for dealing with toxic materials—whether biological, chemical, or radioactive—can be established. (Wolf 2003)

In a detailed denunciation of the opposition, another letter writer lays out the debate’s civic context. In doing so, the writer seeks to tie resistance to the NBL with past mobilizations in the city, painting the biolab’s critics as representative of an extreme and irrational fringe group. He ends with claims regarding the benefit an NBL would bring humanity, the university, and the city. This resident accurately captures a sentiment echoed in my conversations with supporters of local biodefense plans in Davis: Once again, a very vocal minority in Davis has seized control of an issue and forced its agenda on the larger populace. First, it is helpful to present a brief overview of proposals that the liberals, NIMBYs, and assorted extremists have attempted (often successfully) to block over the past few years: the Target shopping center on Second Street, the Nugget grocery store on Covell Boulevard, Borders Books, various research and business park proposals, the proposed UCD neighborhood, the UCD conference center and hotel, and the Wild Horse development. . . . In this case, the controversial issue is the proposed UCD biocontainment lab. . . . A relatively small group of citizens have let their irrational fears dictate the debate on a necessary component of the war on terrorism. . . . They simply want to kill the project by any means necessary, based solely on their unfounded fears. . . . Have they considered how this facility will benefit humanity? Have they considered that we are currently at war and need to do our part in the national response to the terrorist threat? Further, this facility would be a boost to UCD’s research community, and it will increase UCD’s stature among its peers in the world of national and international academics 95

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and research. The city of Davis also will benefit from the new jobs and the increased use of our hotels and amenities, due to the number of scientists, researchers, and public officials who will visit the site. Let us not, once again, have our city’s future dictated by a small-minded minority. I wonder when this city’s silent majority will finally wake up? (Hoffman 2003)

For this author, lack of scientific understanding and preparedness was reason enough to support the rapid expansion of the nation’s biodefense infrastructure, which included a Davis-based NBL. Advocates sought to make the case that the facility was a crucial aspect of local, regional, and national biosecurity. Virginia Hinshaw, UCD’s provost and executive vice chancellor at the time, made this argument in her comments to the Davis City Council on January 29: I hear a lot about fear. . . . Many of us grew up during the time we hid under our school desks during nuclear bomb exercises and practiced life in bomb shelters. . . . Sadly, there is even more fear in society right now because of world events. I fear for the safety of people against naturally occurring infectious diseases because we are not as well prepared as we should be. This proposed laboratory is an effort to correct that lack of preparedness. (Curda 2003)

While the discourse of fear was present in both sets of rhetoric, it was more prominent among those that supported biodefense plans. In the context of public dispute, however, the true issue was whose fears were more authentic—fear of bioterrorism and disease pandemic, or fear of what UCD and federal biodefense agenda plans would do locally—not whether fear was a valid basis for one’s support or opposition. As John Edmund, director of UCD’s already functioning Center for Vectorborne Diseases, put it, “[Biocatastrophe has become a] greater concern as worldwide travel, the possibility of bioterrorism, and diseases resistant to antibiotics have increased. The threat of these new and emerging diseases from around the world is just getting worse and worse” (O’Hara 2001). According to this logic, the benefit would be realized through increased biosecurity locally, regionally, and nationally. In the advent of a biological crisis event, proximity to a new Davis NBL would

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improve coordination and response time, because at that time, there were no BSL-4 NBLs west of the Mississippi. According to Bob Grey, executive vice chancellor at UCD’s medical school: Scientifically, this is a critically important field that would complement our infectious disease research and prevention program. . . . It would also enable the campus to explore how it might play a role in better protecting the residents of California and the nation against emerging and life-threatening infectious diseases. (O’Hara 2001)

Administrative elites also expressed less formal reasons why their risk management plans should be publicly supported in Davis and also why the opposition should be ignored. For instance, university and supportive local officials often sought to downplay the novelty and risk associated with an NBL by highlighting the routine nature of the research conducted within it. This included reference to campus strengths in related scientific fields and the secure laboratory work already done on campus. They argued that because research on vector-borne diseases and other biological pathogens was already being conducted on campus, an NBL would add negligible new risk, while providing great benefits. Indeed, university advocates claimed an ultrasecure biolab like the proposed NBL had been in the works for some time. California state officials had been considering one for several years by then. Biodefense advocates also made the case that what was good for UCD would be good for the town. As such, an advanced scientific research facility as part of a national network of biocontainment laboratories would boost UCD’s national and international reputation, increase its funding opportunities, and help it attract new talent to campus and town. These developments would indirectly benefit Davis insofar as what benefited the campus would invariably benefit the local community, too. Finally, supporters tried to undermine the legitimacy of claims made by the opposition. To do this, they relied—like their adversaries in the Stop the UCD Biolab Now! group—on civic relations that had emerged from past conflicts and mobilizations. For instance, one local administrator who supported UCD said of the opposition:

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The group in Davis—we call them “CAVERs” [Citizens Against Virtually Everything]—were given the chance to move on the [biodefense laboratory] issue before UC administration had a chance to frame the issue appropriately. The CAVERs are a [local] NIMBY group that is essentially a conservative antichange group that adheres to liberal ideological elements on the surface [but are really] small-town reactionaries.

Important in its absence, however, was an economic development argument in Davis, particularly considering its presence in both Galveston and Roxbury. In Galveston, economics was a primary argument both for and against an NBL. This was also the case in Roxbury. For instance, many believed that although Boston proper would benefit from an NBL, Roxbury would not. In contrast, the closest Davis advocates came to an economic benefits appeal was suggesting that the NBL would bring elite researchers and staff to the area. According to this argument, such wellpaid professionals would supplement the local economy, of course, and might even promote biotech spin-offs. This justification was heavily muted in Davis’s civic dialogue and subsequent risk dispute based on the general antipathy expressed toward urban and economic growth there and thus was of marginal impact and importance. Outside of UCD’s efforts to secure biodefense funding, local advocates of biodefense did not form an independent civic group, nor did they generate a distinctive set of claims in support of it, aside from letters to the editor and expressing their views at public events. In most instances, however, they denounced the opposition as irrational, unreasonable, and ill informed. What is more, although the number of vocal local supporters of biodefense was fairly small, their presence was important because it showed there was some local public support for UCD’s biodefense plans. Principles of Opposition On June 6, 2003, Stop the UCD Biolab Now! filed suit in Alameda Superior Court of California in an effort to block UCD and force it to withdraw its federal funding application. Their suit claimed technical flaws in UCD’s environmental impact statement, which had been submitted to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as part of its 98

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grant application (Baily 2003). On September 30, 2003, the Department of Homeland Security, on behalf of the National Institutes of Health and NIAID, announced that Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Boston University Medical Campus in Roxbury would receive federal grant funds to build and host an NBL. UCD would not be awarded funds for reasons that were never made public. Furthermore, no Regional Center of Excellence designation would be forthcoming either. In my interviews with them, opponents of UCD’s biodefense plans proudly asserted that they had played a major part in this result. That may or may not be the case, but it was not my intent to prove or disprove such a “causal” relationship. Rather, I present this as an example of how local civic politics shape local impressions, and with those impressions the basis for risk disputes. In Davis, while fears of accidents, sabotage, and even acts of terrorism were articulated as important bases for opposition, they were not what initially motivated the local civic mobilization or the most pressing concerns expressed by those with whom I spoke. It was only after a series of disclosures and discoveries associated with UCD’s procurement process were found to clash with Davis’s civics and discourse that outrage and concern sponsored a civic mobilization to stop UCD’s biodefense ambitions. The core concern was both UCD’s perceived recreancy as well as the lack of community control over a facility and risk management plans many thought had a very good chance of negatively affecting their communities and way of life. The opposition did rhetorically use “fear,” such as fear of biological catastrophe, to shock, galvanize support, and denounce adversaries. However, it was not expressed to me as a core motive behind local opposition. I say this based on my conversations with the civically engaged, none of whom expressed abject fear (nor did they appear fearful or “panicked” in my discussions with them) of the proposed NBL or biological research as the core justification for their opposition. The expressed sense of governance impropriety and misconduct, however, was marked. It grew from UCD’s initial undisclosed meetings with local elites, the lack of public inclusion, and the monkey’s escape from a BSL-3 laboratory on campus all played a part in alarming local civic partisans, who are ever vigilant regarding “their town.” As they began to press UCD for more information, what initially had been labeled a public 99

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health laboratory appeared to involve the military and might also require heightened secrecy and security. At this point, a handful of university faculty mobilized as well, concerned with what such a laboratory might mean for campus culture and research priorities. As the civically engaged investigated the policy and grant application further, it came to light that UCD might not be in control of the NBL in cases of emergency or national security. Citizen control is a common issue in Davis’s civic domain. When asked directly about these matters, the UCD provost and other lead administrators stated unequivocally that the university was prohibited from conducting weapons-oriented research on campus. Yet, the policy, funding source, and ultimate control of the prospective NBL—at least as it appeared in the RFP and the federal biodefense agenda itself—indicated that it would. The minutia of the policy that lay behind the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research were being interpreted several ways (Mair, Maldin, and Smith 2006; NIAID 2002a, 2002b). Locally, this raised even more concerns about transparency, authenticity, and the trustworthiness of the trustee institutions involved, especially UCD. Last, UCD’s hire of a public relations firm to promote its local biodefense ambitions was repeatedly mentioned in the context of the public dispute. According to local residents, citizen discussion, dialogue, and shared governance were required. An issue of this magnitude necessitated authentic exchange, not a slick marketing campaign. One activist from the opposition commented on the hire of a public relations firm and how this impacted her impressions of the NBL and the university’s intentions. She felt that it represented a fundamental breach in honesty: Now, do you trust the federal and state governments and the university? I don’t know which follows through, but they have stated commitments [to the public]. Well, I mean, these are just sort of some examples. The university came out and said one thing and then is doing another, and then seemed to be doing yet another! Do we trust the university? No, I don’t expect them to follow through. I mean, the university hired a PR firm. They obviously hired a PR firm to snow us. . . . We don’t trust this university any longer.

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By using a PR firm to get its message out and improve its chances in the procurement process, the university’s claims lost credibility. These events, actions, and claims, and the interpretations of them, laid the basis for the risk dispute that ensued over UCD’s biodefense plans in Davis. The cluster of concerns expressed in the public debate that followed reflected claims centered on governance impropriety, mismanagement, and misconduct that exposed strongly held civic expectations, or perhaps what more accurately should be locally called civic “entitlements” in Davis. For those already ambivalent or cynical about UCD’s place in local civic politics, the events proved that the university was neither willing to work with the community nor capable of safely managing an ultrasecure facility of this kind. mobil i zi ng ag a i nst ucd a n d biodef e nse pl a ns If measured by its capacity to secure local public support, promote cooperation with its biodefense plans, or neutralize opposition, UCD’s local campaign was a failure. Perhaps UCD’s biggest mistake was not acknowledging its place in a highly politicized civic domain—a domain in which it is a central player—and the terms upon which local civic politics frequently turn. The civic context involves a very active political class who are ready to assemble whenever local government, UCD, or commercial developers propose projects, especially if the projects are considered to be out of step with local civic priorities.12 Since the 1970s, commercial and residential growth has been hotly contested in any and all of its forms within the city limits (and often beyond them) through organized petition drives and public ballot measures. Since 1986, for instance, there have been seven citywide growth-control measures put to public ballot in Davis. All have either passed or failed in the direction of slowing, controlling, and heavily regulating the types and directions of urban/suburban growth in Davis. While urban/suburban growth may seem unrelated to a dispute over a highly technical, government-funded risk management plan like UCD’s quest for an NBL, in Davis the connection between growth and this new biodefense issue was quickly established. Just as previous movements

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had expressed concerns about “maintaining the character of Davis,” the antibiodefense activists based their arguments on a similar premise and set of civic principles. The initial intensification of concern is in large part attributable to a growing sense among the civically engaged that local expectations and entitlements were being steamrolled to facilitate UCD’s ambitions. The heightened apprehension galvanized local scrutiny, a fairly consistent reaction in town and one not isolated to the biodefense issue. Civic mobilizations in Davis routinely emphasize their home rule prerogative, especially when fighting what they deem to be the unilateral decisions of city administrative, economic, and university elites. The energetic network of civic activists who are often at the center of the civic disputes in Davis are locally known as “the progressives” (see Li 2010; Lofland 2004). Their ranks consist of both long-time residents and more recent émigrés. The causes they have consistently engaged reflect issues, concerns, and risks—the “stakes” if you will—that have come to define frequent bases for civic political dispute. Yet, what is at stake in Davis is not solely the prerogative of the progressives but rather the local agenda and perspective on the whole, as evidenced in local voting patterns and ongoing community-building efforts that have been more broadly supported in town and over time (Fitch 1998; Li 2010; Lofland 2004). Therefore, while the progressives are indeed a frequent impetus for local mobilizations, they are by no means the only residents to civically engage local issues, nor do they rely on obscure themes and sentiments. Quite to the contrary, they address issues that deeply resonate in Davis, which is precisely why for all their supposed “extremism,” they have proven a very effective force in Davis civic politics. As with other causes, the progressives were not the only ones to engage and oppose UCD’s biodefense ambitions. Indeed, many who opposed a university-managed NBL also expressed reservations about the progressives because of their penchant to foment civic conflict. For example, a resident who mobilized against the NBL shared that he was torn in his opposition between a university that wouldn’t budge and the progressives who violated some of the civic virtues they claimed to be fighting for— namely, public dialogue and shared governance: 102

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Actually, yeah, we had two camps in the opposition. One camp [the progressives] was “UCD shouldn’t have this at all.” I actually didn’t join that camp. I thought that was a little bit too extreme, unpractical. The camp I joined . . . said, “Well, we’re not going to oppose UCD running this facility, but we’d rather that [they] run it outside of town, a long way from an urban area.” But UCD, they wouldn’t give us an inch on that point. (And) there were certain individuals [in the opposition] that . . . became such bullies . . . they caused me to leave the movement [just before it was announced that UCD would receive no grant funds]. I didn’t want to be associated with people who want to do that.

Another one of my informants, who was associated with a faculty group who opposed UCD’s biodefense plans, characterized the town’s “progressives” in this way: [The progressives] are . . . [a] network of people who are just concerned about many, many community issues. . . . When this biolab proposal surfaced, they were there ready to move on it. They would be ready to move on other issues. They are a sort of mobilized little people in Davis.

Like the civic opposition, the campus faculty opposition also focused on the university’s apparent breach of shared governance in its pursuit of the NBL. They also feared that the NBL would be at odds with campus expectations and values. The faculty group, while self-consciously independent of the local civic group SUBN, articulated a distinct yet comparable set of claims against the university’s bid to build and manage an NBL. In particular, they held that the plans violated the university’s shared governance covenant, threatened the open liberal arts culture on campus, and undermined the integrity of peer-reviewed, published, and transparent “basic science” on campus because of the secretive nature of the research conducted at such a facility. The faculty group therefore emphasized a somewhat different set of issues than the community activists insofar as they focused on “campus civics and life” rather than community and town civics and concerns in Davis. However, on deeper inspection, both the community and the faculty activists emphasized violations of a shared governance convention and value commitments to an open, cosmopolitan community and an avowed 103

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dislike of anything that smacked of militarism, national security and secrecy, and outside control of local affairs.13 The clear correspondence demonstrates a particularly Davis-specific civic domain and discourse that animates impressions not only in town but also on campus. This civic domain and discourse contrasts with those mobilized in the other cases I investigated. The claim, then, that the risk dispute in Davis reflected the protest of a “small group of political extremists” ignores what regularly animates political contest in Davis and the multiple adherents such causes pick up besides those that are often the “face” of civic disputes. An enduring set of political-cultural sentiments consistently frame debate regarding what is at stake and therefore at risk in Davis. In leveraging local civics and the predominant public discourse on such matters, those that opposed UCD’s biodefense plans largely neutralized the claims of biodefense advocates. Indeed, the opposition’s claims helped them to gain allies and wider public support in a very short time. As such, theirs cannot be characterized as a peripheral view, at least not in Davis. Their claims locally resonated, and therefore if one wants to understand local civic response, they require additional explanation. The Stakes: Partisan Civics and Risk Dispute in Davis Many residents I spoke with who opposed UCD’s biodefense plans shared that they were initially ambivalent. When the news first broke, they claimed to know little about the federal biodefense agenda and next to nothing about NBLs. UCD, however, is a locally known player in Davis’s active civic domain. Whenever it announces plans, political interests in Davis take notice and if necessary organize to support or oppose them. This recent experience with UCD encouraged many who may not have had an interest or stake in an issue like biodefense and an NBL to educate themselves about the issue, to become vocal, and to mobilize. This reflects the rather incongruous roles UCD plays as both local benefactor and political rival to the community. UCD is the most powerful institution in town and, in many respects, the region as well, outside of the California state government in Sacramento. It is, for example, the largest employer in Davis and surrounding Yolo County. Because UCD is 104

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the largest and most powerful institution in the area, it often dominates the local agenda. However, UCD is not subject to local oversight and is not required to confer with either local government or civic groups when it plans for its own future. In fact, UCD largely functions as an independent arm of state government and tends to justify and pursue its interests as for the good of the state or even the nation not the local community. This practice clashes with the home rule civics that predominate in Davis local politics. As reflected in its agenda and track record, UCD is also a de facto “growth machine” in a town obsessed with controlling both its urban/suburban footprint and the size of its local population. UCD, for example, has consistently supported growth in Davis through increasing student enrollments (and therefore population surges), developing faculty housing, and encouraging commercial development, both on campus and in town, as it has sought to fulfill its state and national agenda.14 As such, when confronted with UCD’s plans to host and manage a federal NBL, the local discussion simultaneously centered both on its local power and influence and on its ongoing track record as a local trustee institution. Those opposed to its biodefense ambitions claimed UCD routinely planned and acted on campus initiatives that spill over and affect Davis as a community. Opponents also argued that these practices were pursued without public disclosure or serious consideration of local resident input, something that violated basic governance conventions held by many in town: So UCD has always been on the side of growth and lobbies City Council members hard, [at least] those who they think are their people. It’s the big, you know, heavy [in town]. . . . [UCD] has all these ideas on the books, but they never come forward [and share with the community]. . . . UCD never takes it to the City Council until the last minute, and then they try to ram these things through. . . . So then along comes the biocontainment lab. . . . The way UCD did it, it was not unexpected. UCD has a history of treating the community like this. . . . UCD ignores community desires and process.

Another resident in the opposition put it this way: We started to do some digging, and sure enough, there were plans to bring it and no one had been notified, it was very clandestine. . . . And that’s really what 105

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angered and upset a lot of local citizens. That something of this magnitude, and the ramifications hadn’t been brought to the public. It was just going to be, as we felt, foisted on the community without any real discussion about what the detriments were, and I don’t know how much you know about this particular university’s track record [in town], but it’s not good.

Local Civic Convention and Relations UCD’s perceived insensitivity to local preferences and an agenda that often conflicts with local home rule sentiments have generated deep suspicions and even distrust among many in Davis’s political class. Wariness of UCD as a local political actor and rival therefore reflects ongoing civic relations in town and the legacy of past issues and conflicts. UCD is perceived in some quarters as a civic and political rival because it supports “growth” even though it is simultaneously what made Davis Davis as well: a relatively well-off college town. (See Table 3.1.) On the one hand, if home rule is a central and unifying concern recurrently expressed in Davis civics and discourse, then UCD is the most consistent local, nongovernmental institution to challenge local home rule expectations. On the other hand, UCD is concurrently viewed with great hope because it is also the reason many came to and remain in Davis, and it is the basis for many when planning for their future. This is also true of those who protested against it and its biodefense plans. Impressions of governance impropriety were thus partly fueled by governance convention as well as extant civic relations in which suspicion was carried over from previous civic concerns and past disputes. In this way, politicized civic relations also played an indelible role in a priori structuring local impressions insofar as those who engaged the issue were familiar with one another and the positions and claims others frequently made in the context of civic dispute. In fact, UCD (and its supporters), in dismissing those who opposed them as the “usual suspects,” missed the fact that concern in town reflected a wider base than merely a handful of extremists from Davis’s political class. In many respects, then, the civic dispute was as much about who was proposing the NBL as it was about the technology being proposed. In the case of biodefense and the proposed NBL, civic relations helped to shape local impressions of the proposed plans and technology in very important ways. 106

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Residents’ concerns about UCD’s biodefense plans reflected both the high stakes associated with such a facility, such as the risk of accidents, and how UCD would handle future projects and issues. Local apprehension regarding secret planning between UCD and local elites pushed many of those I spoke with to dig in, investigate, and ask harder questions. Many of the civically engaged considered these negotiations as “conspiratorial” and deliberately conducted in a way to muffle the voices of those who would ultimately have to live near the new facility. This alarm was locally magnified because political elites—city, county, and state officials—also appeared to be lining up behind UCD’s biodefense plans. Those I interviewed repeatedly referenced elite political support—specifically the mayor’s video testimonial—as an example of how local governance conventions and due process expectations had been contravened. They also frequently cited the hiring of the PR firm and other instances of what they felt were disingenuous efforts and tactics the university and its supporters used to gain public support: So, anyway, we even have documentation that (UCD) spent a huge amount of money on public relations. [A public relations firm] did the film before the issue even came before the City Council to be discussed or voted on. . . . The mayor is in the film saying she thinks this is a fine project and approves of it. So here we are looking at this film, never come before the City Council, never been debated by the City Council . . . and no member of the public. And there is the mayor . . . nobody else. . . . We’re watching this, the mayor is saying, I think this is just a wonderful project and that the people [who live around the biolab in Canada] just think it’s wonderful. [Then the mayor adds], I wouldn’t hesitate to have my family living across from this project. . . . And we are all going, like, what in the world?

What moved many from ambivalence to alarm was therefore a growing sense that UCD was trying make an end-run around home rule by pursuing backroom deals and elite support—behaviors that flew in the face of local expectations and the civic conventions regarding governance propriety on which they were founded. In particular, the lack of full disclosure, absence of public dialogue, and dearth of local control over what was being planned left many asking if they could count on UCD to do 107

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right by the community. The most egregious infringement involved UCD’s rebuff of shared governance, and this would provide a galvanizing framework for what was locally at stake: Who ultimately had control over the future of Davis? In explaining her initial outrage, a leading figure in the community opposition echoed these concerns about UCD’s pursuit of its biodefense ambitions: It was a big enough thing. . . . We should have heard about it [long before we did]. Because of this, community reaction was immediate: strong and resentful. . . . It was absolutely unbelievable! We found out there was going to be some kind of public forum [a week in advance]. We had met for the first time a week before. I called up UCD when I found out about that meeting. I said, “You scheduled this at four o’clock. That’s ridiculous. No one can come. This is absurd. How can you call this a [public] meeting?

Elite vetting, the apparent fast-tracking of UCD’s agenda, and a sense that the NBL was a fait accompli therefore promoted great suspicion that UCD’s ambitions were neither properly governed nor scrutinized. Local civic response was therefore focused on the perceived violation of strongly held civic conventions—specifically the proper exercise of authority, the priority placed on inclusion of local citizens in decisions that affect them, and ultimately the ability of local citizens to accept or reject the plans based on their merits and liabilities. UCD’s violation of these conventionalized ideas about proper and shared governance has given it a reputation as an institution that overlooks community preferences and therefore cannot be trusted to look out for the community’s interests. Politicized civic relations, in conjunction with a perceived infringement of governance convention and conviction, therefore stimulated deep skepticism about both UCD’s intentions and the nature of the federal biodefense agenda itself. Investigations revealed disjunctures between UCD’s claims and elements of the federal policy itself; aspects of biodefense were either not fully disclosed or UCD was unaware and therefore not in control of them. In either case, something was wrong. This further unsettled many in town, including those who claimed they were neutral about biodefense. As with previous revelations, this promoted still greater concerns, more questions, and stronger denunciations from those who opposed a biode108

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fense laboratory and research in Davis. Indeed, as word spread that the proposed NBL might not be what UCD claimed it to be, so too did alarm that the community wasn’t getting the full story and that the cover-up might involve the collusion of local political and governmental elites with forces from outside the community such as the federal government or, worse, the Department of Defense. Civic Virtue and Ethical Misgivings This final cluster of concerns congealed into moral doubts and ethical misgivings. The federal biodefense plan’s association with the national security establishment, national defense, and secrecy and surveillance fundamentally conflicted with what many view as an aspect of Davis’s civic character and gave the NBL the patina of militarism rather than public health: Well, from my perspective it was more than simply dangerous. That was not the only issue. If it was simply a public health laboratory and was dangerous, then I might feel better about it. . . . But that is not what it was. I actually read the funding proposal, and I had a pretty good handle on the actual facts and what it was; a good portion of the funding came from the Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of it was to develop countermeasures or maybe antigens or vaccines for biological warfare agents. The defense and the creation of biological warfare agents are really somewhat related. That to me, it was something that morally I am very much opposed to.

Was the NBL and its research agenda a defense-related program and military facility, or was it public health and safety focused laboratory? For those who opposed hosting a biodefense laboratory in town, it was increasingly difficult to make the distinction. Biodefense and the NBL’s institutional ties contradicted Davis’s “peacenik” character and also its civic identity as a safe family-centered town, both of which had been cultivated by local civic movements and city government actions since the 1970s: It’s just that people in this town tend to be, want . . . the emphasis on, on peace and nonmilitary. There are just a lot of people like that here. I mean, this is the town that has a very, very strong liberal peace-loving element from the Vietnam days, and it continued, biodefense didn’t play well, it doesn’t play well in this 109

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town. . . . Homeland Security (was involved) and . . . the incredible amount of money that was being pumped into the NIH. . . . There’s really very little difference between biodefense research and bioweaponry.

This respondent is pretty well close to the mark. As noted above, the Davis City Council has taken public stances on a number of issues that many in town associate with Davis’s antimilitaristic civic character. Related to these moral qualms over militarism was the fear of potential secret police and undercover agents in town, as well as “off-limits” areas closed to foot traffic and the general public. As one faculty member who vocally opposed UCD’s efforts to secure an NBL put it, “You know, I mean, I was very concerned about the strong FBI presence, as much as anything else . . . in our streets. I was very concerned about that.” And because UCD planned to install the prospective NBL in the Putah Creek Arboretum, a park on campus heavily used by both university staff and the general public, there was also local concern that the area would be made inaccessible to foot traffic for security reasons. This location also sits at the juncture of two local freeways—Highway 80 and Highway 113—which, some opponents claimed, made it an easy target for an attack. In Davis, then, extant political relations, local governance conventions, and strongly held value commitments (i.e., civic virtues) founded the argument that an NBL in Davis would be a poor fit. Davis is a self-described “progressive and open” community, “a green city,” “a peacenik town,” and “a family-safe community” where an ultrasecure NBL and much of what was associated with it would be unwelcome. And everyone I interviewed admitted that even if the chances of an accident, sabotage, or an attack were small—even infinitesimally so—they were still too big for Davis. As this activist put it, the struggle was very hard but initiated for the right reasons: Basically, our citizens took on UCD and took on the city and took on the national government in some sense, and made our voices heard. And it was a very tough time. A lot of us took time away from our families; we educated the community as best we could. . . . And it took a lot of work. It took a lot of time, but it was necessary . . . because when you have a big organization like UCD, it is a tough thing to deal with if you don’t know how to do it. We were being asked to accept [the biolab] in our midst. We have children, and some of us have elderly 110

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parents, and some of us were being asked to—essentially this is how we felt about it—to put our community at risk. We felt putting a lab in a community, any community, was very wrong.

Overall, for residents of Davis and faculty who opposed a universitymanaged NBL, Davis was no place for a facility of this kind. conclusion : biodefe nse , h et eroge n eous r isk , a n d hom e rul e ci v ics Davis’s civic-political orientation strongly contrasts with the other community cases I address in this book. Despite responding to the same federal and local university plan, the actions of Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston all took different forms that reflect different local social and political histories and demographics. Davis’s civic domain reflects the active participation of residents who are highly educated, middle-class professionals, and mostly white. They regularly engage local issues to “secure their community” against changes that they believe will harm them, their way of life, and their beliefs. Animated by a set of civic expectations and entitlements that routinely frame what is locally at stake in Davis, residents mobilized against the biodefense plan because they believed it threatened their well-being, their local priorities, and their future aspirations. Civic ideals have inspired successive rounds of Davis residents to pursue civic reform, primary among these being a greater public stake in local governance. Where they have met with resistance, they have mobilized in the name of citizen involvement and supported candidates for city office who have promised access to local government and full disclosure in their policy making. Understanding civic politics and Davis’s response to UCD’s biodefense plan requires attending to the legacy of 30-plus years of active civic engagement and the community-building efforts of Davis’s political class— the people, groups, and institutions that have repeatedly mobilized to “reform” Davis (see Lofland 2004). For example, the biodefense issue animated a recurring tension between UCD and the community insofar as UCD is both central to the community’s character (and the primary means of making local life) and widely perceived as a partisan political 111

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player. UCD’s status as a distinctive political interest in the local political field reflects its status as simultaneously a local and nonlocal trustee institution. UCD mostly pays homage to state-level directives, not local ones, and its agenda has frequently been at odds with local concerns regarding growth. This is significant to why the biodefense debates played out the way they did in Davis, because the politics of growth, as reflected in attempts to control it, infuse Davis’s civics. It is a central plank in virtually all civic deliberations and disputes. While frequently cited in euphemisms regarding Davis’s “small-town character,” “neighborliness,” “homogeneity,” and “family-safe environment,” anxieties over growth reflect a deeper, idealized pastoral conception of how community life ought to be. Controlling growth through shared governance, both literally and figuratively, is therefore a key aspect of this vision and a continuous point of civic contention. These and related civic expectations and politics were not uniformly expressed across the different cities I investigated. Unlike in Galveston and Roxbury, full disclosure and direct participation in governing community affairs are expressed as entitlements in Davis.15 Many in Davis voiced varying degrees of surprise, which quickly turned to outrage, when they realized deliberations among elites and planning had been pursued before the public had been apprised. The sense of civic violation and concern was further amplified when it came to light that UCD might not, in the end, control the NBL they sought to host. Many expressed great concern that the NBL might be surreptitiously controlled from afar and be associated with trustees like the Department of Defense. This was not simply against political convention in Davis. It was also an issue of morality, as reflected in highly regarded civic virtues such as those reflected in commitments to egalitarian open dialogue, family-centric consideration, and peaceful means and strong antimilitarist convictions. A development like this was simply “beyond the pale” and therefore unacceptable. I must emphasize that a resident or trustee need not approve of or share a deep belief in what I have termed Davis’s home rule civics and discourse to be influenced by it. I am not suggesting that local civic politics and culture reflect the strong version often used to explain small-group culture and even “cultural risk” wherein assumptions and beliefs are treated by 112

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analysts as representing fundamental truths and membership is assumed monolithic and singular (Douglas 1992, 2003, 2006a, 2006b; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982). Indeed, my informants frequently cited Davis’s civics and discourse with some measure of ambivalence and sarcasm. They would lampoon it for its excesses and those they associated with it as at times extreme. Even those who generally approved of what they had locally wrought—a livable and high–quality of life community—expressed that at times Davis politics veered away from the pragmatic and toward unnecessarily partisan political contests. In any case, all my informants acknowledged that engaging in “Davis politics” required recognizing the distinctiveness of local civics in order to be heard. Ignoring Davis’s home rule civics, local political history, and the entitlements that locals believed went along with these left one vulnerable to local denunciation and with it the loss of credibility in any given civic political contest. Local civic convention mattered. The opposition expressed by Davis partisans therefore reflected a number of overlapping concerns that are not reducible to simple fear of an NBL. That is, while those opposed to the facility did express concern over its potential for accidents, sabotage, and bioterrorism, the fear of personal harm was not necessarily the core issue for those who opposed biodefense plans in Davis. Rather, it was the clutch of negatives that they associated with the facility, including the small chance of a catastrophe, that formed the basis for their opposition. The NBL posed a heterogeneous risk to local commitments and expectations concerning proper governance, community security, and even morality. In short, too much was at stake to support UCD’s effort to build, host, and manage a federal National Biocontainment Laboratory in Davis. references Baily, Pat. 2003. “Biosafety Lab Faces Lawsuit; July NIH Site Visit Possible.” UC Davis Dateline, June 13. Berger, Bennett M. 1979a. “American Pastoralism, Suburbia, and the Commune Movement: An Exercise in the Micro Sociology of Knowledge.” In On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riesman, edited by Nathan Glazer, Herbert Gans, Joseph R. Gusfield, and Christopher Jencks, 64–69. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 1979b. “American Pastoralism, Suburbia, and the Commune Movement.” Society (July/August): 64–69. 113

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———. 1981. The Survival of a Counterculture. Berkeley: University of California Press. City of Davis. 2007. “City of Davis General Plan December 2007.” http://community -development.cityofdavis.org/city-of-davis-general-plan-december-2007. Curda, Beth. 2003. “Mayor Says No to Biolab.” Davis Enterprise, February 23. CVEC (Center for Vectorborne Diseases). 2010. http://cvec.ucdavis.edu/. Davis City Council. 2002a. City Council Meeting, Davis, CA, November 20. ———. 2002b. “City of Davis UCD Growth and Campus Intentions to Pursue a BSL-4 NBL.” Davis, CA, December 5. ———. 2003. “UC Davis Presents Biolab Proposal to City of Davis.” Davis, CA, January 29. Douglas, Mary. 1992. Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. “Being Fair to Hierarchists.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 151 (4): 1349–1370. ———. 2006a. “The History of Grid Group Analysis.” Lecture Series. Toronto: University of Toronto. ———. 2006b. “Seeing Everything in Black and White.” Lecture Series. Toronto: University of Toronto. Douglas, Mary, and Aaron B. Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dunning, Bob. 2001. “Speaking of Rare Diseases.” Davis Enterprise, June 15. Fell, Andrew H., and Patricia J. Baily. 2005. “Public Response to Infectious Disease Research: The UC Davis Experience.” Institute for Laboratory Animal Research Journal 46 (1): 65–71. Fitch, Mike. 1998. Growing Pains: Thirty Years in the History of Davis. Davis, CA: City of Davis. Gans, Herbert J. 1995. The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy. New York: Basic Books. Gans, Herbert J., Nathan Glazer, Joseph R. Gusfield, and Christopher Jencks, eds. 1979. On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riesman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hall, Carl T. 2001. “Microbe Research Lab Plan—Officials Consider UC Davis as Site.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 14. Hoffman, Douglas. 2003. “Where’s the Majority?” Davis Enterprise, February 10. Jasper, James M., and Scott Sanders. 1995. “Big Institutions in Local Politics: American Universities, the Public, and Animal Protection Efforts.” Social Science Information 34 (3): 491–509. LEHR Superfund Site (Laboratory of Energy Related Health Research). 2014. UC Davis Safety Services. http://safetyservices.ucdavis.edu/ps/ec/lehr. Li, John. 2002. “What Is Wrong with the City of Davis?” In The Test of Time. Davis, CA: Institute for Public Science and Art. ———. 2010. “History of Current Davis Politics.” http://daviswiki.org/Town_History. Lofland, John. 2004. Davis: Radical Changes, Deep Constants. San Francisco: Arcadia. Lofland, John, and Lyn H. Lofland. 1987. “Lime Politics: The Selectively Progressive Ethos of Davis, California.” Research in Political Sociology 3:245–268. Mair, Michael, Beth Maldin, and Brad Smith. 2006. “Passage of S. 3678: The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act.” Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Baltimore.

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Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press. NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases). 2002a. NIAID Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research—2007 Update. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). ———. 2002b. NIAID Unveils Biodefense Research Agenda. Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). O’Hara, Crystal Ross. 1996. “New Center to Study Vector-Borne Disease.” Davis Enterprise, September 4. ———. 2001. “Officials Discuss Adding New Biosafety Center.” Davis Enterprise, June 4. ———. 2003a. “Biolab Proposal Protested.” Davis Enterprise, January 30. ———. 2003b. “Police Aren’t Sure If It Was Stolen or Lost.” Davis Enterprise, February 20. Riesman, David. 1957. “The Suburban Dislocation.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 314 (November): 124–146. ———. 1965. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rome, Adam. 2001. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UC Davis Faculty. 2003. “Faculty Against the Lab: Dozens of Faculty Believe Lab Would Put Students, Residents at Serious Risk.” Davis Enterprise, February 16. U.S. Census Bureau. 2010a. “Davis City, California: 2005–2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.” Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. ———. 2010b. “Dixon City, California: 2005–2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.” Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. ———. 2010c. “West Sacramento City, California: 2005–2009 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.” Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. Congress. 2002. “Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (the Bioterrorism Act).” 42 U.S.C. 262a. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress. Wolf, Bud. 2003. “Risk vs. Benefit.” Davis Enterprise, February 5.

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chapter 4

Roxbury, Massachusetts Direct Action Civics and Biodefense

i n t h i s c h a p t e r , we examine the risk dispute that ensued in Roxbury,

Massachusetts, as reflected in the local civics and discourse that shaped local reactions to Boston University’s biodefense plans. Rhetorically, the dispute pitted Roxbury’s largely poor residents of color against the city’s, state’s, and federal government’s “white” trustee institutions: Boston University, the mayor of Boston, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), the City Council, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was in essence a “positionally” grounded risk dispute. That is, the risk dispute over Boston University’s proposal to host an NBL at its Medical Campus (BUMC) in Roxbury turned on claims of race, class, and place and the divergent experiences and expectations reflected in such statuses. In Roxbury, initial ambivalence toward biodefense turned to outrage and local mobilization after a March 2003 open forum regarding BUMC’s ambitions to house and manage an NBL. At the meeting, BUMC’s associate vice provost for research and the principal investigator in the effort to secure federal funds for an NBL, Mark Klempner, was accused of disrespecting a group of civically engaged residents in attendance. This incident quickly metastasized, galvanizing and motivating opposition to the prospective NBL, as it revealed the project’s stakes in local socially and historically understandable terms. By October 2003—after federal government funds had been awarded to BUMC to construct, host, and manage an NBL—these same residents also felt that both the BRA and the mayor had misled them during earlier deliberations over a “New Roxbury Master Plan”—a plan that was to govern future development in the city district, including projects similar to the proposed NBL. Residents had conferred with the city beginning in 2000 regarding the New Roxbury Master Plan, demanding, and receiving, an expanded role as stakeholders in the urban planning process (see Hynes, Allen, and Law116

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rence 2007). Residents believed that the site upon which the NBL was to be built was originally set aside to construct something that would benefit them—perhaps a hotel, a grocery store, or an office building. While a public health facility was not going to benefit locals, at least it wasn’t, as one individual told me, a “bioterrorist laboratory.” According to residents, the NBL would bring few benefits and mostly risks to the already impoverished and marginalized population. In this respect, residents associated the NBL with other potentially dangerous developments in Roxbury such as the bus depots, incinerators, and power stations that already dotted their neighborhood and the city districts that abutted their part of the city and had organized to stop in the past (SafetNet/ACE 2004). Ongoing civic relations and impressions of them between the residents of Roxbury and the city, the mayor’s office, and BUMC therefore indelibly influenced initial impressions of the prospective NBL. Roxbury residents connected it to a long history of malfeasance and institutional recreancy, as well as the risky developments or “LULUs” (locally unwanted land uses) that routinely were sited in their part of town. In this chapter, then, I examine how the risk dispute over BUMC’s biodefense plans reflected long-standing relational tensions between Roxbury and other areas and institutions in Boston. I begin by sketching out the sociopolitical relations and civic legacy that stand behind Roxbury’s “direct action civics and discourse.” I then provide a descriptive account of BUMC’s local pursuit of an NBL for their Roxbury medical campus, followed by an analysis of how local civics shaped the residents’ understanding and response. I conclude by recapping the conventions, relations, and virtues that defined what was locally at stake and therefore considered to be at risk by residents. Much as in the case of Davis, I found that Roxbury residents’ claims against BUMC and its biodefense plans were neither entirely novel nor new to the neighborhood. Rather, they reflected long-standing local civic politics in which Roxbury residents sought recognition from municipal and state authorities and other local trustee institutions, a fair share of the benefits afforded to citizens (i.e., enfranchisement), and protection from the continued distribution of risk toward their neighborhood home. 117

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t h e pol i t ics of e n f r a nch ise m e n t i n rox bu ry Roxbury is one of Massachusetts’s oldest communities. Beginning as a small farming village in 1630, it is now a dense urban neighborhood located in the southern part of Boston. Today, Roxbury is one of the 21 recognized neighborhoods that the city of Boston services. Covering some four square miles, it is bounded by the Mission Hill district to the north, Dorchester to the east, Jamaica Plan to the west, and Mattapan to the south. (See Map 4.1.)

Everett Chelsea

Belmont

Somerville Charlestown

Watertown

Cambridge Back Bay Beacon Hill

Allston Brighton

Fenway/ Kenmore

East Boston

Winthrop

Central

South End

South Boston

Newton Brookline

Roxbury

Jamaica Plain

West Roxbury

North Dorchester

South Dorchester Roslindale Mattapan

Dedham

Hyde Park

Quincy Milton Braintree

Boston neighborhoods

Surrounding communities

m a p 4 . 1   Roxbury and Boston city neighborhoods 118

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Located at the head of the isthmus connecting Boston to the mainland, Roxbury was also once an important market and township known for its prosperity. Elites built their estates and summer homes on Roxbury’s and Dorchester’s hilltops, which were known for their views of the city and the countryside below. In 1868, Roxbury was annexed by the city of Boston because it had become an important manufacturing center with mills, tanneries, and textile industries. Roxbury’s mix of predominantly English, Irish, and German immigrants experienced prosperity through the first half of the twentieth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, Roxbury underwent a change that was not “natural” and was relatively abrupt. Following a pattern repeated across the country, this change struck Roxbury especially hard. Following World War II, America embraced isolationism and xenophobia, significantly targeting new urban immigrants. Many middle- and upper-class white residents fled the urban centers that they increasingly viewed as chaotic, crowded, and “polluted”—materially and morally—leaving them for the more open, ordered, and idealized “pastoral lifestyle” associated with the new suburbs. (See Chapter 3.) The residential exodus from Boston was relatively dramatic. In 1950, there were 800,000 residents, but by 1980, the number had fallen to 574,283. Most of those who left were white middle-class residents, dropping their share of Boston’s population from a prewar 95 percent white to 70 percent in 1980 and 59 percent by 1990.1 The simultaneous influx of people of color to Boston over the same period offset some of the population decline, changed its demographics, and transformed its civic politics. Initially, African American internal migrants from the South provided the bulk of newcomers, and in the 1980s, they became Boston’s largest minority. Through the 1990s, the percentage of whites in the city continued to decline, and the percentage of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean increased. 2 The demographic transformation was even more pronounced in Roxbury, where the majority of its residents are now (circa 2010) people of color (91.9 percent), primarily non-Hispanic blacks (59 percent).3 Like the Irish in the nineteenth century, new Bostonian immigrants in the past several decades—especially immigrants of color—have encoun119

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tered a city known for its entrenched political elite and bigoted white working- and middle-class neighborhoods (Formisano 1991). Immigrants of color have had to fight for recognition, as well as the rights long granted to enfranchised white citizens, such as public education, public transportation, and government representation (Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; Formisano 1991; King 1981; Loh et al. 2002; Medoff and Sklar 1994). I emphasize the city’s demographic transition from a largely prosperous, white, and politically enfranchised constituency to a largely migrant and disenfranchised constituency of color because race and class were signal themes in the risk dispute over BUMC’s biodefense plans. As claims, they find their basis in Roxbury’s legacy of civic relations that has taken shape over the past decades. (See Table 4.1 for a comparative view of income by Boston city district.) In particular, political mobilization has increasingly targeted the disproportionate share of risk borne by Roxbury residents, the city’s poorest neighborhood and one of the poorest in the state, compared to other wealthier, whiter districts in the city and suburbs (see Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; Formisano 1991; Keyes 1970; Loh et al. 2002; Medoff and Sklar 1994; O’Connor 1993). t a b l e 4 . 1   Roxbury, Massachusetts, Boston metro area socioeconomic and educational neighborhood comparison

City

Roxbury

Median family income

Per capita income

Education attainment— high school diploma or less

$32,007

$17,827

55.7%

Education attainment— bachelor’s degree or higher

12.3%

South End

$61,599

$53,416

30.4%

55.2%

Fenway

$62,012

$20,583

17.5%

71.0%

Jamaica Plain

$78,552

$39,301

22.9%

60.1%

Brookline

$65,981

$35,051

37.4%

38.7%

Cambridge

$69,071

$46,242

16.8%

73.3%

Boston

$59,571

$31,856

39.3%

42.5%

Massachusetts

$65,981

$35,051

38.0%

60.2%

USA

$52,395

$27,334

44.0%

27.9%

Source: Lima and Melnik (2013) and U.S. Census Bureau (2010a, 2010b). Note: Of the 24 districts and neighborhoods that make up the Boston metropolitan area, Roxbury is the poorest, with the lowest educational attainment levels. Note also that, collectively, Boston’s southern districts—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan—are the poorest areas of the city and distinct from the “South End” and “South Boston” neighborhoods.

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Civic engagement in the neighborhood4 has involved a good deal of confrontation, largely due to the lack of “recognition and respect”—a phrase my informants from Roxbury routinely used—that trustee institutions in Boston have paid to Roxbury and its residents over time. This state of affairs is compounded by the many “risks” and few “rewards” that Roxbury residents claim to experience locally. This has further taken shape in a confrontational style of civic engagement, reflected in the civic conventions, relations, and virtues those from Roxbury acknowledged and embraced, and reflected in what I term a “direct action civics and discourse.” Compared to Davis and Galveston, Roxbury residents’ style of civic political engagement was an avowedly “red” one, as its focal points were human rights, civil rights and enfranchisement, collective provision, and social and economic justice. Reflected in the direct action civics and discourse I observed, Roxbury residents mobilized and confronted BUMC, the city of Boston, and the federal government for the “injustice” of proposing to site and constructing a dangerous BSL-4 NBL in their neighborhood. As with Davis, I found the civic mentality reflected in the claims and justifications fielded by those from Roxbury to be revealing, exposing why residents responded to BUMC’s biodefense plans as they did, what initially triggered their concerns, and what this conveyed about the civic politics of risk there. And while local resistance to biodefense plans initially advanced more slowly in Roxbury than they did in Davis, once established, it was no less vigorous and actually grew stronger with time. Indeed, because BUMC was awarded NIAID funds to build and manage an NBL, and has since built the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory (NEIDL), local critics continue to battle the facility’s use as a BSL-4 laboratory a decade after its initial funding. Initially, however, it was a small group of civic activists led by a charismatic and well-spoken leader from Melnea Cass Boulevard’s tenements that mobilized against the prospective NBL. According to civic activists, this mobilization began when a small group of them attended an unannounced, yet open forum concerning BUMC’s biodefense plans. They had received an anonymous tip that they should attend the meeting, where experts, city officials, and other political elites would be gathered to 121

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discuss the prospective NBL. At the meeting, the Roxbury activists felt belittled by a university official when they asked what would be studied in the new facility. This disregard became a defining issue for the civic mobilization, a metonym that tied BUMC’s biodefense ambitions and the NBL to a legacy of social, economic, and environmental racism in Roxbury. Soon after, the biodefense laboratory was labeled a risky, low-benefit local development that was therefore “unjust.” In civic terms native to Roxbury and its history, the NBL had been foisted onto the least powerful residents in the city because they were the least able to oppose it. Theirs was a mobilization founded on moral outrage; central to it were civic themes recurrent in Roxbury of race, class, and governmental accountability, as well as civic virtues such as human and civil rights, distributive justice, and community enfranchisement. According to activists, BUMC’s biodefense plans were racist and classist; they symbolized the “expendability” of Roxbury and its residents because of their social position in society. Roxbury was being forced to host the NBL because no other community in Boston would have it. The resistance movement soon broadened beyond Roxbury. Civic and social movement groups from across the Boston metro area joined those from Roxbury in their fight, and together they formed the Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition. Despite the coalition, Roxbury civic activists were emphatic that they remain at the center of the dispute in what they viewed as their local struggle against callous trustees. Initially, the Roxbury activists’ stance would become a point of contention in the wider alliance. My informants from Roxbury shared that they were always suspicious of well-meaning “whites” from the suburbs who had a penchant for coopting their causes and movements. Despite initial tensions between the Roxbury group and those who sought to join in from outside Boston, the coalition did have some success in at least delaying BUMC and its biodefense ambitions. That is, while they did not stop BUMC from gaining federal funds or constructing an NBL in Roxbury, they did stall its use as an ultrasecure BSL-4. Additionally, they forced BUMC and the federal government to acknowledge and include them in all future deliberations. This was a significant 122

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win that surprised many veteran activists from outside of Roxbury and around Boston. The story that Roxbury’s civic activists repeatedly told focused on trustee disregard. This became the basis for the local and regional movements’ ongoing moral tale pitting civic activists against a local “bioterrorism laboratory.” It also fueled an understanding of biodefense and therefore the rhetorical basis for the fight; the story became a rallying cry for both the neighborhood activists and the wider alliance of social movement groups and individuals who later joined Roxbury residents, including peace and antiwar, animal rights, social justice, and “biotech” protest groups from across the city. While coalition members came to the biodefense issue with very different justifications, once the coalition was organized, all agreed that this was fundamentally an issue of justice and Roxbury residents should remain the central focus (Beamish and Luebbers 2009). The direct action civics and discourse I document in this chapter originated in the shared sense of injustice—based on their long history of neglect and marginalization by societal trustees—that Roxbury residents expressed. Biodefense was simply another instance and expression of this relationship with the city and society more generally. Trustees like BUMC and the city were yet again treating Roxbury residents as a disposable community because of who they were, reflective of their race and class. Roxbury activists therefore maintained a “positional” perspective—that is, their view and claims regarding the stakes were profoundly shaped by their social position relative to other groups and interests. This positional perspective manifested in residents’ deep-seated distrust of the city and BUMC as well as potential allies who were not from Roxbury and the immediate vicinity. Reflecting their positional perspective, too, when I examined the civic conventions, relations, and virtues the residents of Roxbury used to make sense of what biodefense meant for them, I found they clustered around preferences and expectations that emphasized a communal style of governance and a relatively confrontational approach to civic engagement. That is, their wariness took shape in the style of civic engagement they pursued, which emphasized direct public actions, confrontation of authority, and strong positionally based denun123

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ciations, mostly founded in claims of race and racism. This contrasted with the “routine advocacy” pursued by established social movement groups and individuals from outside Roxbury, mainly those from the suburbs of the Boston metropolitan area, and which was also evident in Davis. I call this style of civic politics a “direct action civics and discourse.” Table 2.1 depicts some of the signal themes and evaluatory principles that lay at the center of what I observed in the local civic mobilization. The Roots of Roxbury’s Direct Action Civics and Discourse The roots of contemporary civic politics in Roxbury both extend to local events well before BUMC’s biodefense plans and even reflect national events and trends. The direct action civics and discourse expressed in the dispute over BUMC’s biodefense plans echoed civic conventions of thought and practice, extant political relations, and resonant civic virtues that are the outcome of a half century of immigration, urban decline, and the civic causes and struggles that local residents encountered during that time. Issues over the years include civil rights, political recognition, school desegregation, urban development and resident displacements, and a lack of local economic opportunities. More recently, controversies have arisen over the continued siting of noxious facilities in Roxbury, city efforts at urban renewal and the surge in gentrification associated with them; such as has occurred around BUMC’s campus and the nearby Longwood Medical Area. The ongoing struggle for recognition combined with the legacy of past events and causes lent Roxbury’s residents and civic activists a basis from which to assess BUMC’s trustworthiness as well as how its biodefense plans might impact them. For many of the civically engaged, the NBL was yet another risk to one of Massachusetts’s riskiest communities (Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002). As noted above, the post–World War II period for Roxbury (and the nation at large) was one of rapid white flight out of the city and migration of African Americans searching for opportunities unavailable to them in the U.S. South. During the 1940s and 1950s, mechanization in southern agriculture and increasing social conflict over de facto racial apartheid left millions of African Americans without a way to earn a living and unwilling to live under feudal-like conditions. Many fled north and west to city 124

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centers in search of a better life. Boston—Roxbury in particular—was a key location for African American migrants. Disinvestment and devaluation of local property quickly commenced in response to shifting demographics. Because those leaving Roxbury represented a considerable amount of wealth and those immigrating in had little, the period was also marked by urban decline as money flowed out of the neighborhood. The deterioration started gradually and then quickly accelerated. Initially, it was wealthier and mostly white middle-class residents that fled Roxbury for the suburbs. Then banks, government-backed mortgage programs, and insurance interests redlined the area as property values fell, pushing the neighborhood into a steep decline. The city of Boston followed suit by quietly channeling public dollars and urban renewal efforts away from Roxbury and toward where it was politically efficacious to do so, such as the middle-income areas farther from the city center (Medoff and Sklar 1994). As conditions worsened, some property holders even began setting fire to their properties to recoup their losses through insurance claims. In the 1960s and 1970s, urban unrest in Boston was rampant and highly racialized, too. Just after World War II, Massachusetts unveiled a master plan for Boston’s highways in which Interstate 95 would be routed from south of Boston through Dorchester and Roxbury. Large tracts of housing were demolished to make way for the highway, and by 1960, it had created what became known as the Southwest Corridor. Yet, the demolition sparked a massive protest by neighborhoods along the proposed route. With the slogan “Stop I-95—People Before Highways,” the movement prompted then governor Francis W. Sargent to cancel the highway project in 1969. However, because the land had already been acquired and demolished, the Southwest Corridor remained blighted for nearly a decade. At this time, conflict over public school desegregation was also widespread, and it too accelerated the emigration of its remaining white and black middle-class residents (Formisano 1991). The 1967 riots and widespread arson by fleeing property owners further scarred Roxbury, leaving it a landscape littered with trash and vacant lots, burned-out houses and businesses, chain-link fences, and No Trespassing signs. All of this 125

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contributed to the specter of socioeconomic decline (Medoff and Sklar 1994; O’Connor 1993). By the 1980s, Roxbury was in steep decline as it became a magnet for the city’s dirtier infrastructures, light industry, and noxious land uses that were prohibited in other parts of the city, including bus and truck depots, recycling and trash transfer stations, dumpster storage yards, junkyards, waste incinerators, and power stations. Material decline has left an enduring legacy of pollution and local health impacts that are reflected in air quality and asthma rates. Brownfields and abandoned factories dot the area, some of which are now officially designated as Superfund sites (Loh et al. 2002; Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; SafetyNet, ACE, and UJP 2004). Social decline has also made residents feel that the city’s trustee institutions disregard Roxbury. These developments, social and material, were frequently reflected in my interviews with Roxbury activists: “If this was an affluent white community, . . . respect [would be] given to the community.” In the 1980s, Roxbury citizens and civic groups began to organize against this urban blight through “Don’t Dump on Us” campaigns (Medoff and Sklar 1994). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, local claims likes these were increasingly being framed as “environmental injustices,” a central mobilizing plank for those who have civically engaged to stop locally unwanted land uses. These and related civic movements in Roxbury have also sought political recognition and influence over the directions of community development. They have also petitioned for developments that would benefit local residents and promote neighborhood job growth, prosperity, and community well-being, while not inviting more risk. Urban Renewal, Risk Distribution, and Civic Mobilization Since 1957, efforts at urban renewal in Roxbury have been spearheaded by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), which has actively promoted biotech development in and around Boston University’s Medical Campus (BUMC) and the Longwood Medical Area (Schweitzer 2002). As far back as the 1960s, the BRA envisioned South Boston as a prime locale for medical and biotech development. In 1965, the BRA approved the South End Urban Renewal Plan that sited the area between BUMC 126

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and the Southeast Expressway for medical facilities that would compliment development projects across the metro area at some of the country’s most prestigious universities, medical schools, and hospitals. In 1991, Boston University proposed, and the BRA and Boston City Planning Commission approved, a master plan for BioSquare Phase I to build a handful of new research facilities, a hotel, and a parking garage on just off Melnea Cass Boulevard. The BRA, with the mayor’s endorsement, was especially keen on promoting biotech development in this area, which would become particularly significant in the NBL dispute. In the summer of 1999, Boston University submitted a new proposal for BioSquare Phase II to build two research buildings, a parking facility, and a helipad. The plan for Phase II, while specifying the probable “environmental impacts” of the development, made no mention of Boston University’s biodefense plan or the possibility of an NBL. The construction of BioSquare Phase I was completed by 2002. Whether a biolab of this kind was known at this time, I cannot say. Civic activists from Roxbury, however, noted the omission and protested that they had deliberately been misled. In October 2003, BUMC secured federal funding for an NBL. Construction began in March 2006, and the facility was completed in September 2008 at the intersection of Albany and East Brookline Streets. Because of legal action brought by Roxbury residents and their allies, the NEIDL operated initially as a BSL-2 laboratory (Allen 2005, 2006). In September 2013, federal court cleared the way for BSL-3 work to begin at the NEIDL, and scientists were slated to begin research on virulent strains of tuberculosis soon after (Lazar 2013). In May 2014, the last hurdles to BSL-4 designation and research on “Category A” pathogens were cleared when the Boston City Council voted eight to five against a proposal by councilman Charles Yancey to ban all BSL-4 research in the city. Soon thereafter, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders removed the final legal hurdle to the NEIDL’s full operation in certifying that BUMC’s risk assessment—the focal point of legal challenge by local opponents—was thorough and therefore adequate. Denouncing the top-down model of redevelopment practiced by the BRA, one that focused on biotech/medical facilities and that dovetailed with BUMC’s building and hosting the NEIDL, Roxbury residents sought 127

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a more participatory form of redevelopment for their neighborhood. In 2000, residents of Roxbury’s Tremont Street tenements, as well as those from along Melnea Cass Boulevard, organized to influence the BRA’s new Roxbury Master Plan, which sought to “revitalize” their own and adjacent neighborhoods in Boston. According to one of the residents who played a lead role in organizing the civic group: We came together for the Roxbury Master Plan so each one of the [public] housing developments that are directly by vacant parcels on Melnea Cass, where the mayor wants to develop, have their say. So we came together to get resident representatives [at] the decision-making tables, that would speak up for the residents that they represent in the housing developments.

These same residents, who had already civically engaged issues of urban renewal and development, were later the first ones to react to BUMC’s biodefense plans. The risk dispute that ensued largely reflected civic themes already at play: Roxbury residents were seeking recognition and enfranchisement from city elites and therefore a place at the table in planning their neighborhood’s future. Due to this history, an important basis for local impressions during the biodefense risk disputes was the civic relations between Roxbury and the city of Boston, local universities, other trustee institutions (i.e., federal and state), nonprofits, and even social movement organizations from across the metropolitan area. These relations shaped initial impressions of intent and believability and were based on prior interaction and social and political experience. Specifically, Roxbury residents I interviewed expressed suspicion about many of these outside institutions, groups and individuals and in some instances voiced outright distrust, accusing them of ulterior motives. Scholars of environmental justice (Peña 2005; Pulido 1996; Pulido and Peña 1998; Sze 2007; Sze and London 2008) and community relations (Beamish 2001; Beamish and Luebbers 2009; Erikson 1976; Hayden 1997; Jasper and Sanders 1995; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990; Molotch, Freudenburg, and Paulsen. 2000) have examined how different social positions and experiences shape people’s views of local politics, public

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grievances, social causes, adversaries and allies, and business collaborations. “Positionality,” as it is called in race and justice literature (Omi and Winant 1986; Pulido and Peña 1998), is therefore an important aspect of the contemporary civic politics of risk insofar as it structures differential impressions. I maintain that positionality was central to Roxbury’s risk dispute as reflected in local perceptions, relations, and claims making. w h e n biodefe nse c a m e to rox bu ry In January 2003, four months after the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) issued a formal request for proposal, BUMC publicly announced its intention to apply to build, host, and manage an NBL. BUMC, like its counterparts in Davis and Galveston, also pursued an aggressive public relations campaign. In an effort to cultivate local support for its biodefense ambitions, it enlisted city and state political elites, including, at that time, Mayor Thomas Menino, Governor Mitt Romney, U.S. Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, City Council members, scientific and medical experts, and community leaders (Smith 2003a). BUMC and the city also folded the prospective NBL into the already vetted and approved BioSquare Phase II Plan, promising local jobs for residents and community input once they were awarded federal funds to build and operate a laboratory of this kind. Then, on February 7, 2003, BUMC formally submitted an application to the NIAID/NIH. According to civic activists from Roxbury, they first heard of BUMC’s biodefense plans via an anonymous tip, not from the city or the university. In March 2003, the leader of the civic group that had been organized to represent Roxbury’s “Crosstown neighborhood” received an anonymous phone call suggesting that the group attend a public forum that was going to discuss a new biotech initiative. 5 Residents and activists from the neighborhood had recently become familiar with and increasingly concerned about the city’s BioSquare Phase II development plans. In 2000, they had organized their civic group to contest both continued biotech development(s) in their neighborhood and the rapid gentrification of Roxbury associated with it, especially the area near BUMC’s campus and the Longwood Medical Area (Powell 2002; Schweitzer 2002). Indeed, two

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years before, Massachusetts Institute of Technology had tried to build its own biolab in the southern part of Boston, but the plans were quickly dropped after residents protested (see Hynes, Allen, and Lawrence 2007). BioSquare held no upside, claimed Roxbury activists, only risks to the neighborhood. It threatened to displace them and other public housing residents and therefore bring more hardship to those already suffering. New parking structures, office complexes, and high-tech laboratories would promote higher urban densities, traffic flows, and ambient air pollution in what was already the district with the highest density and lowest air quality in Boston. Roxbury residents were all too familiar with “redevelopment” of this kind: fraught with risk and providing little local benefit. The first meeting included city officials and experts from across Boston’s public health sector and medical schools. The civic activists who attended reported that they were the only Roxbury residents and people of color present. Mark Klempner spoke about a number of issues associated with their bid for an NBL. According to the attendees I spoke to (and newspaper accounts), Klempner highlighted the NBL’s commercial potential, including biotech spin-offs and high-paying biotech jobs that would benefit the city as a whole. He also argued that the prospective NBL dovetailed with the city’s aspirations to become the nation’s preeminent biotech center and that it would complement the 4,000-plus biolabs already functioning across Boston’s metropolitan area. The NBL would also be a key anchor in what advocates hoped would become a new biotech corridor along Melnea Cass Boulevard. This was precisely one of the worries articulated by residents who had previously mobilized to defend residents’ interests. According to the civic activists, Klempner never addressed how residents might benefit from the facility or the city’s wider plans to “revitalize” their neighborhood as a biotech hub. Most of those who lived nearby had neither advanced degrees nor specialized training in biotech-related fields. Indeed, many lived in one of the ten public housing tenements along Tremont Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard and might be displaced if the city’s and BUMC’s biotech and biodefense plans were fully realized. For all of these reasons, the public forum fit with residents’ expectations of urban governance as they had experienced it in the past and caused many 130

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to feel disregarded. After all, neither BUMC nor the city had invited local residents to attend and had touted benefits that most neighborhood residents would not be able to enjoy (not to mention implicitly externalizing the risk involved with them). While distressing, this was not surprising to many residents I spoke with. It was precisely why they had organized to defend their local interests in the first place. The lack of alarm after the first BUMC forum might have been due to the residents’ dependence on the public hospital that BUMC runs; lowerincome residents from the southern parts of Boston—Roxbury, South Boston, South End, Dorchester—rely on the Boston Medical Center for much of their health care.6 Many I spoke to expressed their high regard for the hospital. This revelation that the NBL might represent something very different from a hospital or an extension of the services rendered unnerved many people. Some weeks later, the same activists received a second anonymous call, again urging them to attend a second meeting regarding BUMC’s biodefense ambitions. Much like the first meeting, which again included experts and administrators from across the city, they found themselves the only community residents in the audience. Klempner spoke at this meeting as well, but this time he delved deeper into the specifics associated with such an ultrasecure NBL, including what operations would take place in it and what connections it would have to the federal biodefense agenda of which it was a part. Specifically, he indicated that researchers would study diseases like the plague and anthrax so that new microbiological and biomedical applications could be developed in an effort to secure the nation against the threats of bioterrorism and disease pandemics. The civic activists from Roxbury shared with me that at the time they knew little about many of the diseases the provost took up and discussed, although like most Americans they too knew of the plague and had become familiar with anthrax after the 2001 attacks. They admitted knowing even less about the research and technical talk BUMC’s Klempner mentioned. What they did know, however, was that plague and anthrax were not ordinary, run-of-the-mill diseases; they could be deadly, and BUMC wanted to bring them to Roxbury. According to a Roxbury civic activist, “They was talking about the plague, about anthrax, and other 131

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diseases that the lab would study. We was surprised, thought this was a public health lab. This was different.” The civic activists assumed the NBL would be just another public health facility like those that were already part of BUMC’s Roxbury campus. And although they didn’t expect a public health facility to benefit them directly, at least it wasn’t a threat like a “bioterrorist lab.” Mustering the courage to speak in front of a packed room of experts at the second meeting, the leader of the Roxbury civic group asked Klempner whether the biolab would really be studying diseases like the plague and anthrax. According to those present (civic activists, experts, even a newspaper reporter), his response was at first evasive, although he finally did reaffirm that these diseases would be studied (see Schulman and Smith 2004). A BUMC professor of public health—who did not live in Roxbury and was not associated with the civic activists—asked if BUMC intended to hold public forums where community members could ask questions.7 Klempner allegedly responded, “If you had qualified members who could understand this, we would.” He then turned to a scientist sitting near him and said, “Oh, you have a Ph.D. I can talk with you” (Hynes, Allen, and Lawrence 2007; Schulman and Smith 2004). This exchange, whether verbatim, paraphrased, or even partly fictional, exposes conventions, relations, and virtues that defined the core of the subsequent risk dispute. According to civic activists, Klempner’s remarks both reinforced their sense of disenfranchisement and validated their assumptions: they and their neighborhood were expendable, which is why Roxbury was selected for an NBL in the first place. In the words of civic activists from Roxbury who had attended that meeting: We was like, “What are they talking about? . . . All these diseases? What diseases are they?” [Klempner] was like, “Well, it seems like you all don’t know nothin’, so we’re not going to even bother with you.” We kept asking Boston University . . . to talk to the community . . . but that never happened. They just pushed us aside. We was told we needed to go back to the community and get some educated people [who could understand them]. When everything is said and done . . . Boston University is irresponsible.

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[How did] Boston University treat us? Totally disrespectful. . . . We would have been able to amicably work and understand what [Boston University’s] perspective was. . . . Once you tell me I’m not worth squat but you want to (use my neighborhood), we’re going to have a problem. . . . We had a problem.

Between these first two meetings in early 2003 and the following October’s announcement that the federal government had awarded BUMC $128 million in biodefense funds, a handful of civic activists sought to further politicize the issue but had little initial success. According to them, except for their city representative, the Boston City Council members largely ignored them. As time progressed, however, actions and events galvanized those in Roxbury as well as motivated those from across Boston metro to join in a risk dispute. After BUMC was awarded federal funds, civic activists from Roxbury reached out and established links with sympathetic groups and individuals from each of Boston’s nine city districts, forming the Citywide Coalition. BUMC and the city of Boston also convened a number of public forums. This raised the visibility of both BUMC’s efforts and the efforts of those that opposed them. The first of these postfunding public forums took place in December 2003, drawing approximately 350 people to the Boston Public Library for a Q&A focused on the prospective NBL, which revealed the growing concern with BUMC’s biodefense plans (Schulman and Smith 2004). As word of BUMC’s biodefense plans and the federal policy associated with them spread, civic activists in Roxbury increasingly received unsolicited encouragement and support from groups and individuals from “outside” Roxbury, many of whom hailed from the suburban townships that ring Boston and therefore do not have formal representation in Boston’s city district system of government. These activists formed the Outside Boston Committee (OBC) to coordinate their protest activities with those from within the city, particularly the group from Roxbury. The overarching alliance of all the different groups and individuals was called the Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition. Many of those who joined in opposition to the BUMC’s biodefense plans already belonged to ­social

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movement organizations that came to the coalition with causes, rhetoric, tactics, and strategies, as well as experience with other protest events and campaigns. One of the first things the coalition did was submit a petition to Boston’s mayor, the City Council, and Boston University’s Board of Trustees. The letter denounced a Roxbury-based NBL as ill conceived and was signed by 165 accomplished scientists, physicians, public health specialists, and academics (two of whom were Nobel Laureates). Titled “No Place to Hide,” it publicized the issue and lent legitimacy to the Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition (SafetyNet, ACE, and UJP 2004). The petition also put the mayor, the City Council, and Boston University on notice that their plans were not uniformly embraced by the scientific establishment and therefore were not unassailable. In the winter of 2004–2005,8 ten neighborhood residents filed suit in Massachusetts State Superior Court. Their case, Ten Residents of Boston v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, et al. (450 Mass. 242), focused on whether the BRA, Boston University, and state agencies had violated Massachusetts’s Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). The suit charged that the federal environmental impact statement (FEIS) that Boston University had submitted for federal approval—one that had been endorsed by the city and state agencies—was not compliant with MEPA and its environmental impact report requirements (EIR).9 The plaintiffs claimed that the trustees had failed to adequately address the risks associated with an NBL, as reflected in their provision and approval of the FEIS’s “Section 5, Operational, Safety and Security Issues.” In other words, the project trustees had not included consideration of the full range of possibly contagious pathogens that might be at issue,10 nor had they considered alternative locations for the facility, both of which are required under the MEPA. Plaintiffs took special issue with the latter violation. Roxbury is one of the most densely populated districts in Boston. Given the concentration of people in the area, the plaintiffs asked, why had Boston University and the federal government not considered less populated areas for such a facility? The failure to consider alternative locations, according to the plaintiffs, was especially flagrant in light of the special risk a facility of

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this kind presented to an already at-risk community of color characteristic of Roxbury and nearby Boston city districts (Allen 2005). In July 2006, the presiding Massachusetts state judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, stating that Boston University’s environmental assessment was inadequate because it both failed to address the risk of direct human-to-human contagion and had not evaluated possible alternative sites. Boston University had argued that the MEPA did not require them to consider race, ethnicity, national origin, or economic status in the assessment of potential project impacts or in the risk of communicable disease, as these did not constitute “damage to the environment.”11 Yet, the judge conveyed that Boston University’s justification and defense of their FEIS were unreasonable. In the ruling, the judge compelled the Massachusetts’s Department of Environmental Protection to revoke its certificate of environmental compliance, stating that Boston University is required to assess both worst-case scenarios involving contagious disease and identify potential alternative locations. The ruling also specified that Boston University must address whether the health impacts of a contagious pathogen would be “materially different” in Roxbury’s densely populated area versus another less populated locale. And while the judge’s ruling supported the Roxbury Ten and the civic opposition movement, it did not grant the injunction they had sought to stop the NBL’s construction. Rather, it allowed the city to interpret which parts of the originally certified FEIS were in compliance. As a result, construction continued while Boston University sought to satisfy the court order. On January 18, 2005, news broke that researchers at one of BUMC’s already-functioning BSL-3 laboratories (a biosafety level below the BSL-4 rating of the NBL) had contracted tularemia (also known as “rabbit fever”)—a contagious disease that can be fatal. Not knowing they had been contaminated with a live strain of tularemia, the exposed researchers had unwittingly gone home and therefore brought the disease outside the laboratory. The contamination of two researchers had occurred in May 2004, eight months before news broke about the incident. On September 20,

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2004, a third researcher was also stricken with tularemia. The researchers had supposedly been working with a benign strain of the disease, so it was unclear how they contracted it. BUMC scientists quickly performed a DNA analysis on the research samples used. What they found raised doubts that the strains of tularemia involved were indeed benign. The DNA profile of the sampled tularemia bacterium varied enough that it suggested potential virulence. As a result, BUMC halted all research at the laboratory out of concern for further infections. These events obviously bolstered the Roxbury activists’ claims. Biocontainment laboratories were not failsafe, and BUMC was not trustworthy, as advocates liked to claim. Around the same time (fall 2004/winter 2005) that BUMC officials reported the tularemia contaminations to city, state, and federal health authorities, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released their FEIS draft for BUMC’s NBL. BUMC and NIH also held public hearings at the time. BUMC, the city, and federal health officials did not publicly disclose the tularemia contaminations at this time. Even the formal FEIS omitted the contamination, stating unequivocally that there had never been any laboratory-acquired infections at any of BUMC’s functioning biological research laboratories. Once the tularemia incident was exposed, the lack of public disclosure significantly harmed their credibility (Baily 2005) and served to increase local civic and citywide resistance to their biodefense plans (Shane 2005). While controversy raged over the tularemia contamination, on February 2, 2006, the NIH gave final approval to BUMC’s plans and released federal grant funds to begin construction. In response to these events, in May 2006, Roxbury’s opposition group filed another suit, this time in federal court, requesting an injunction to stop funding and construction of BUMC’s NEIDL. The federal court case, Allen v. National Institutes of Health,12 was handled by different law firms, but many of the same plaintiffs as the state case, as well as the same Roxbury civic group and coalition of social movement groups, were involved. The federal case would markedly turn up the pressure on the biodefense trustees, especially its federal sponsors. The federal suit charged that the NIH had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (Allen 2006). Specific allegations stated that 136

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the NIH had failed to adequately assess the risks that a BSL-4 facility posed to the public and had failed to consider alternative locations. The suit also alleged that the NIH had prematurely awarded BUMC a grant to build and host an NBL before having done these basic assessments. What is more, the plaintiffs argued that at its root this was a matter of environmental justice insofar as the public that would be most adversely impacted by the proposed facility would be poor people of color. If the NIH had conducted an adequately expansive environmental impact assessment, the plaintiffs contended, the NBL would never have been proposed for Roxbury. In October 2006, the presiding federal judge deferred the injunction, but like his state counterpart, he ruled that the NIH had not complied with NEPA in its environmental review. The judge ordered the NIH to conduct a supplemental environmental review in accordance with NEPA, compelling NIH and BUMC to examine additional measures and identify and assess the risks associated with a BSL-4 facility, including the transport of pathogens to and from the laboratory. He also required that they develop a community relations plan that would allow for community input and involvement. Finally, he required that part of the FEIS must include a discussion of the limitations and protocols for recombinant DNA research. To ameliorate a risk dispute that was now expanding far beyond local and isolated concerns, the NIH announced plans to convene an independent “blue ribbon panel” of risk experts to assess the original FEIS and develop an inclusive and adequate EIS for Boston University’s NEIDL, which had begun construction. In January 2007, NIH and Boston University submitted their response to the judge. Their proposal promised that they would conduct an NEPA-compliant supplemental environmental analysis that assessed possible contagious infectious diseases and contained protocols to address the potential for accidental release. The events and claims outlined above, then, characterized the risk dispute that ensued over BUMC’s biodefense plan in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Roxbury residents’ civic concerns and claims appealed to collective provision and social and economic justice, as well as the unfair distribution of societal risk targeting their community. The actions of BUMC, the city, 137

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and NIH confirmed for those already sensitive to issues of community disenfranchisement and trustee disregard that they had been explicitly targeted for such a facility because they were poor people of color who lived in Roxbury. As one local activist reflected, “Roxbury is the dumping ground. If there’s trash to be dumped, it’s dumped in Roxbury.” a ci v ic pol i t ics of disr eg a r d, disr e sp e c t, a n d dise n f r a nc h ise m e n t Roxbury’s history and the impact the legacy of that history had in shaping the risk dispute were unmistakable. Indeed, it is impossible to disentangle the former from the latter. The NBL simply exemplified grievances that have animated, and continue to animate, Roxbury’s direct action civics founded in social, political, and economic marginalization. For instance, Boston is notorious for promoting local initiatives that benefit those outside Roxbury but rarely those within it.13 Urban renewal projects have been regularly justified in the name of improving Roxbury but have proceeded mostly without resident input and often at their expense (Beamish and Luebbers 2009; Medoff and Sklar 1994; O’Connor 1993). Longtime Roxbury and southern Boston area political activist Mel King described Roxbury’s marginalization and political disenfranchisement this way: “Excluded from the suburban jobs and housing . . . blacks [in Roxbury] faced job segregation, educational segregation, housing segregation, and gerrymandering so that they would have no local political voice” (King 1981, p. 26). Activists’ perceptions of and arguments against biodefense therefore derive not from biodefense alone but from a history of broken promises and failed opportunities that reflect the race and class position of Roxbury’s residents (see, for example, Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; Leong 1995/1996). In this regard, Roxbury’s direct action civics and discourse are largely a product of positionally defined civic relations where residents tend to react toward and base arguments on their perceived relationship to those proposing a plan that they believe will discriminate against them. This explains their criticisms of societal trustees and “white institutions” such as city government, prominent universities, and even the 138

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nearly ubiquitous social movement organizations that populate the Boston Metropolitan area for their continuing sense of disenfranchisement. Given the civic and political field within which they operate, many of the civically engaged residents initially responded to BUMC’s biodefense plans with ambivalence rather than fear, viewing them as yet another “development” that was unlikely to benefit them. Because the civic mobilization to stop the NBL grew out of an association of neighborhood residents and activists who had originally organized to influence Roxbury’s new Master Plan, they were prepared for an issue of this kind. Preferably, according to the activists, the new Master Plan would create jobs and community services that would benefit the neighborhood and city district and incorporate discussions with local residents on different development options and strategies (Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002). The residents and community advocates with whom I spoke were especially concerned about local youth programs and the loss of affordable housing. In their deliberations with them, these activists claimed, the mayor and BRA were receptive to their demands and preferences. Residents claimed that the NBL, and biolabs and facilities like it, would not provide opportunities to those who lived in the neighborhood because of its educational and socioeconomic profile. Yet, after meetings and discussions regarding the possibility of a hotel, office building, retail shops, movie theater, and possibly some light manufacturing to fill the vacant lots that dot Roxbury, the city announced its plans to develop a biotechnology corridor near Melnea Case Boulevard (Schweitzer 2002). In 2003, the BioSquare II development plan included BUMC’s NBL (Smith 2003b). The NBL, although straightforward about the city’s desire to court biotech development, was, according to civic activists, not as forthcoming in its discussions with the community. One resident put it this way: I asked [BUMC] why they wanted to build [the lab]. Frankly, I told them, I told the news media, I’m not as much against [BUMC] doing the research—I’m not against the lab. I’m against the location and where they want to build it. That was supposed to be a hotel there. They were supposed to build a hotel ’stead of the biolab, . . . but this is what they do, they let the community help plan what

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they want built on certain land, and then we think the deal is sealed, you know, and then the next thing you read—I don’t know how we got from a hotel to a biolab.

As mentioned earlier, residents’ unease with the NBL began after attending the two public forums where Klempner spoke. The five residents and two civic activists (both women from the tenements along Melnea Cass Boulevard) who had attended the second meeting, the public forum in which BUMC’s lead administrator had reputedly talked down to them, reported that they left convinced that the city and BUMC had ignored them precisely because they were black and poor. One civic activist shared how Klempner’s comments motivated their cause as it confirmed the deliberate disregard for them and their “kind”: All these diseases? What diseases are they? [The BUMC official] was like, “Well, it seems like you all don’t know nothing, so we’re not going to even bother (with) you.” He’s really calling us, like dumb. . . . “Unaccomplished,” that’s what he said, some kind of word. . . . So [a] white lady from South Boston, she said, “You bringing this to Roxbury, and they’re organizers from Roxbury, . . . so can you answer their question?” And [he] was like, “Well, when they learn a little bit more.” Basically he didn’t listen to us. So we went downstairs and . . . said, “We are going to learn everything about what they’re talking about; we’re going to investigate, we’re going to take classes; we’re gonna do this, and we’re going to tell everybody and their mama about this. . . . So that’s how we started.

Local response to the NBL was therefore also reflective of an ongoing cluster of political relations and associated social grievances. Civics in Roxbury, like the other cases, are largely played out among known actors and institutions. Governance impropriety has become conventionalized, as recreancy is expected, and response to it involves a set of relatively scripted claims and justifications. Specifically, claims making against political marginalization and disrespect took shape as denunciations of racism and classism and appeals to social justice. As one resident put it: It’s crazy. It’s crazy, you know? Why the poor neighborhoods? It’s about respect. We just fighting because we love our neighborhood, we love our residents, 140

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you know? This is where we live. This is where we was raised. Nobody do it, we have to do it, you know? People step over other people if we don’t step up.

Boston University’s biodefense plans were therefore not viewed as an isolated risk management project, or even a project meant to manage risk at all, but rather, given the civic-political context and interactions locals had with trustees, those plans were deemed exploitative, unjust, risky, and therefore racist.14 The NBL symbolized both the expendability of Roxbury’s residents and the disregard they associated with many trustee institutions. Once this impression took hold, biodefense quickly became an issue of human rights, morality, and social justice. It represented the continuous and unfair distribution of risk from other places that could harm their homes. Individuals, groups, and institutions from outside Roxbury that did not acknowledge the primacy of these wrongs were not to be trusted. Viewed through a civic lens shaped by the social and positional experiences of those from Roxbury, BUMC officials’ treatment of residents became symbolic of their larger plight and a galvanizing basis for local and, later, citywide mobilization. Almost every person I interviewed mentioned the initial public forums held by BUMC in which residents had not been invited and then were treated dismissively by BUMC administrators: Arbitrary and capricious. . . . If there is anything that could characterize the way they went about this process, [it’s that]. In the first place, they didn’t care about community and community input. . . . They framed it in economic terms, not in human safety and [community] needs terms. . . . And with that they lined up economic interests [the unions, construction firms], and [it’s] their way of saying they don’t care about the . . . people.

The NBL proposal was in this sense a metonym for all that was civically “wrong” in Roxbury, past and present. A “Positional” Politics of Risk Beyond high levels of cynicism directed at the city and BUMC, however, activists and residents from Roxbury also expressed skepticism of the “white progressives” who sought to ally with them against biodefense 141

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plans. In this case, reference to “white progressives” subsumed race, class, and place insofar as the individual activists and groups from outside Roxbury, while not uniformly white, did tend to share more privileged social, economic, and racial positions. In this respect, what was identified as at stake reflected important demographic and socioeconomic differences that dovetailed with the impact that distinctive political legacies had on the civically engaged. The activists and residents from Roxbury were mainly African American, Afro-Latino, and Latino; lacked advanced degrees; and called the poorest neighborhood of the city home. By contrast, most of those who joined the movement from other parts of the city and from outside the city itself held advanced degrees, were middle class and mainly white, lived in some of the metro areas’ wealthier communities, and worked at or had attended the region’s exclusive universities. In essence, the grievances, motives, and manner of political process and engagement that these “outside” Boston activists paid homage to—their civic and political conventions of thought and practice—were in many ways fundamentally different from those that animated the Roxbury residents and activists. Indeed, these differences were front and center in the initial interactions of these groups (see also Peters 2004): In my community, people are sometimes resistant to the idea of building citywide coalitions because we’ve been screwed before. White progressives with more resources might join our struggle and end up getting more of the funding, and they’ll end up taking leadership on something that more directly affects our communities. We have to learn from our past and be cautious, but we also have to find ways to build coalitions that keep the core group of residents in the forefront. The people who are most immediately affected by the struggle should not get overshadowed by coalition members who might have more resources. Sometimes progressive people who care about what is happening in the community are associated with powerful institutions. Here in Roxbury, we are surrounded by academic institutions that are nationally known and that seem to know everything in the world that there is to be known and yet there’s no clear way for us to benefit from all this knowledge that’s housed right next door.

For their part, activists from outside Boston also struggled in their alliance with the Roxbury group, given the clash between their styles of civic 142

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engagement. Tensions arose because the civic conventions, relations, and virtues each group relied on to interpret and oppose biodefense plans were grounded in fundamentally distinctive civic and discursive logics and expectations. These differences, and the tensions that resulted, highlight the larger point I seek to convey in this chapter regarding the positional basis for the risk disputes that ensued in Roxbury. The activists who came to the biodefense issue from outside Boston’s city districts formed what became known as the Outside Boston Committee (OBC). They approached the issue with a very different set of stakes and style of civic and political engagement than did the Roxbury group. Some specifically objected to the new biodefense agenda, seeing it as an unnecessary military expansion and a breach of international treaties limiting the creation, study, and use of lethal chemicals and biological organisms. Others claimed that the billions being spent on biodefense were a needless expenditure of public money on “bioterrorism” and “exotic pathogens,” rather than “real” public health threats that already killed thousands of Americans every day (Byravan and Krimsky 2003; Ecklein and Gosselin 2006). Additionally, a small group of animal rights activists opposed the biolab for reasons of animal cruelty. The largest number of OBC activists fell into the first and second categories, protesting the NBL for its perceived connection to war and antiweapons proliferation and a concern with the diversion of public resources to the war on terrorism rather than toward pressing public health issues. These activists and social movement groups made some of the same antimilitarist arguments as activists from Davis made about the immorality of the NBL and the research that might be conducted there. Representing a range of peace and antiweapons proliferation groups that hailed from Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, and Newton, they focused on the broader, nonlocal implications of the NBL rather than on the local issues and civic experiences and legacy that animated Roxbury activists.15 One activist who was an early organizer of the OBC described the coalition and the concerns that initially had mobilized the groups involved: There are basically two lines of opposition. One comes mainly out of community residents [Roxbury] about the danger of this laboratory, how building this 143

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huge facility in their neighborhood will change the character of their part of Boston, and seeing this as another example of environmental racism. And then, I think, there are people coming out of the antiwar community who see it as much more of a struggle against U.S. militarism and Boston being an important medical city. . . . I think early on there was greater discomfort, there were peace activists from the suburbs who would come to meetings and say, “Oh, we have to oppose this lab because it’s going to develop biological weapons.” And the community people, they didn’t like that at all.

Differences like these initially generated substantial tension in the Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition as participating civic activists hashed out their priorities. Because Roxbury residents feared their cause might be coopted—paraphrasing the informant quoted earlier, “people from Roxbury are sometimes resistant to building coalitions because we’ve been screwed before [by] white progressives”—they aggressively defended their lead role, style of civic engagement, and moral justifications for opposing biodefense plans in their neighborhood. They expressed an ongoing concern that their interests would be subsumed, even crowded out, by the set of grievances championed by well-resourced, well-educated, and well-connected activists and groups and individuals from outside Boston. The Roxbury group insisted that they take the lead in both substance and style. While these groups were allies in a fight against a common adversary, their differences generated friction that forced some important activists and groups to leave the alliance. At a deeper layer, the tensions reflected divergent styles of engagement, conventions regarding the exercise of authority, and established relations with social and political authority in and around the city. Some of those from outside Roxbury, at least in my personal interviews, even aimed their criticisms at fellow OBC activists for capitulating to the Roxbury group. These informants claimed that it was “guilty, wealthy, white liberals” who had sold out the OBC cause and rationale for opposing biodefense plans. In their opinion, this was a strategic blunder because the “the black group . . . just didn’t know how to do things.” According to some in the coalition, the Roxbury activists of color lacked the political experience and

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resources necessary to succeed in stopping BUMC and its ambitions to manage a “military biolab.” What is more, many of these OBC activists, experienced in the ways of contentious politics and partisan negotiation, approached the dispute over biodefense with a strong sense of efficacy and realpolitik.16 Politicking and even negotiating their original positions and claims, while not preferred, might be necessary to “win.” These tactics and style of political engagement relied on a more “personalistic,”17 as well as “reformoriented advocacy,” approach to political engagement and strategy that was markedly different from the direct, confrontational, and communal style pursued by Roxbury residents. For instance, upon joining in the dispute, the OBC immediately sought to enlist local scientific and medical experts, lobby state representatives, and draw up city and state legislation in an effort to regulate the proposed NBL, in the event that it was built (see Fox 2004). To do so, they tapped their political networks and enlisted the support of experts and elites, which required a good deal of cultural capital. To them, this was a realistic and responsible approach given their belief that the NBL would eventually be constructed. With legal regulations, extreme types of research and germs would be illegal and potentially more productive research would commence. When OBC activists suggested to the coalition that they should seek to regulate the NBL (something they had already begun to do), Roxbury’s civic activists and residents reacted negatively, surprising members of the OBC. To those from Roxbury, the NBL was a dangerous, unjust, and immoral plan. They were committed to stopping it, not regulating it. A reform-oriented strategy that assumed the NBL’s construction directly contradicted the moral stakes that infused Roxbury residents’ cause and justifications. Pursuing the strategy to regulate a constructed NBL would also mean turning away from direct action and turning toward legislators and experts. This, for residents, in some measure also meant validating the disrespect shown Roxbury in the procurement and siting process. In short, pursuing regulation meant they had lost. Resident activists believed this strategy actually smoothed the way for an NBL, while undermining the moral power of their demands and denunciations. It also

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meant giving an inch to those who disrespected them and who, once given that inch, would inevitably try to take a mile: This [was] at the very beginning [of the coalition], we had a very hard time because we had an array of different levels of education and different levels of power. . . . One thing that we wanted to stress, and we stressed from the very beginning when the citywide coalition was being formed, was that the [Roxbury group and residents] had to have the lead in the organizing and the decision making. So that no one would take off and do their own thing. So with any coalition meeting that we had, we always discussed everything that everyone was doing. . . . So when [OBC started] talking about regulation and legislation . . . [we had] a meeting with our [local] leaders, who we felt were our leaders and advisors and ask[ed] them if this is something that we should do. And so the presentation was made by [OBC people and a state legislator] about what the legislation would be about, what it would cover, how they’d have to create the legislation, how this would be a model, how we could get senators and representatives to support regulating laboratories like this . . . throughout the city of Boston. . . . It was a little topsy-turvy because the Roxbury group was more like, we want to make sure that we educate everyone in the city. Regulating the lab felt like we were saying, “Okay build the lab, but just regulate it,” and so to go before the media or anyone else, we couldn’t talk out the side of our neck! It’s either “You want the lab and you want it regulated” or “You don’t want the damn thing at all!” [We] decided to stick to “We don’t want it at all.”

Instead of reform and regulate, Roxbury activists advocated taking direct action to stop the NBL. They canvassed blocks, knocked on doors, handed out antilab materials, packed city council meetings and public forums, publicly denounced city and university officials, and planned streets rallies and events to protest and gather support. In all of this, their intention was to challenge directly and vividly what was locally at stake and expose the injustice represented in it. The differences in impressions, tactics, and cultural repertoire each group of activists brought to the dispute therefore reflected their positionally distinctive civics and discourses. The focus on routine political advocacy and reform, lobbying, expert opinion, and legislation to regulate the controversial NBL likewise reflected the experience, expectations, and 146

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status of those from outside Boston and the high level of comfort they had with political and bureaucratic machination and their belief in their own civic efficacy. The OBC activists held to a participatory, personal, and relatively pluralist model of political engagement in which “political actions” such as lobbying, policy making, political negotiation, and media manipulation are hallmarks. In this model, politics, while a public avocation, is to be pursued by politicized individuals and forged through open and public dialogue and personal negotiation, where spirited exchange among participants is the expectation. For instance, OBC members consistently spoke on behalf of their groups and interests, seldom rhetorically deferred to a leader or “the cause,” and even criticized the coalition’s efforts as ineffective, poorly planned, or violating their personal inclinations. In this regard, they expressed expectations that were relatively consistent with a more personalized form of civic and political engagement wherein egalitarian principles and direct, participatory style of democracy are unquestionably “right” (Lichterman 1995, 1996). Reflecting this civic style, some OBC activists expressed discomfort with the leader-centric communalism and model of political engagement pursued by the Roxbury group. As an activist from a Cambridge social movement group put it, There’s basically [their leader], who’s basically the entire organization—she’s not, but she seems to do most of the work. She’s a very bright woman, but she’s very authoritarian, meaning that it’s basically [her] way [or she will denounce you].

By contrast, those from Roxbury expressed very different principles and forms of civic engagement. They did not speak out as “politically engaged individuals” but rather as representatives of the community. In my interviews, for example, when pressed to share personal insights or opinions, Roxbury residents typically deferred, suggesting I attend a meeting of their civic group to gain further details or speak to the lead organizer of their group. This pattern applies to criticisms of the movement and coalition as well. Those from the Roxbury civic group avoided criticizing one another and their community leaders. Their critiques saved scorn for their adversaries and (in some cases) their coalition allies who 147

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had initially opposed the NBL and biodefense plans for reasons and in ways that were not their own. While OBC activists admitted they had struggled over these and related issues, many of the OBC members that endured eventually embraced the primacy of Roxbury’s cause. Indeed, some of my informants claimed that the Roxbury group had inspired them. For example, a lead OBC organizer shared: The antiwar people . . . tried to work with the community people. . . . We needed to do it in order to build up opposition as widely as possible. . . . Now, I think, a lot of the peace people involved in [the coalition] have both of the perspectives.

Another OBC member remarked that the Roxbury group and its leader had changed her reasons for opposing the NBL from peace and antimilitarism to the deceptive way the trustees had treated people and siting the facility among the most needy in the city: When I came on board with this issue, [I was against the militarism represented in the Biodefense]. But [the Roxbury leaders’] description of the university’s treatment of this small group from the neighborhood [was] enough to make [any] red-blooded, free-minded, American’s blood boil. . . . And so originally I went into it as kind of a peace and antiwar thing and that was pre-Iraq war. So it’s been quite a journey for me.

Eventually, then, despite early tensions in the Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition, those that remained affirmed the cause and primacy of Roxbury’s fight against BUMC’s biodefense plans. Pragmatically, this meant that the Roxbury group had final decision-making authority and that their claims and moral justifications would be front and center in coalition rhetoric and strategy. For instance, those who remained active in the coalition often described their own participation as support for Roxbury residents, who were “rightly” at the center of this dispute: We had [eventually] agreed . . . it was [Roxbury’s] campaign and that we were essentially joining with them to support [them]. . . . Some of us had deep-down issues of race, though: most of us are white, and most of the leaders of the

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[Roxbury] activists and the other parts of the Boston community are African American, and we, you know, were very attentive to working on those issues.

Another activist from outside Boston also shared that the OBC mainly sought to support the Roxbury group’s efforts in the ways of protest they knew best: The work that I’ve been involved with and the others in the [OBC] . . . included planning campaigns, getting signatures, penning op-ed piece[s] for the local newspaper[s], but [we were] always trying to coordinate with the central campaign. This was being run out of the South End, and the Roxbury group [was in the lead].

As is evident, then, those from outside Roxbury initially approached biodefense as involving a general set of moral issues that were not directly related to the biolab’s material presence in Roxbury or its potential local impacts. Rather, they focused on more general, abstract issues such as militarism, antiwar, and peace and the public health funding boondoggle they associated with the diversion of public money toward a bioterror laboratory. By contrast, Roxbury residents focused on local impacts to them and people like themselves in Boston’s southern city districts where government and university malfeasance and the unjust distribution of risk toward the city’s poorest communities reflected racist practices and decisions. The tensions that resulted between the OBC and Roxbury’s activists were therefore largely due to positional differences between the two that were further grounded in distinctive and conflicting experiences and resulting impressions of what and who was at risk from federal biodefense plans and BUMC’s planned NEIDL, as well as how best to stop them from manifesting in Roxbury. conclusion : dir ec t ac t ion ci v ics a nd r isk just ice Roxbury’s history of migration, race and class relations, rapid urban decline, and municipal neglect has taken political shape in the direct action civics and discourse residents have come to embrace when seeking to intervene in city politics and the local political field. To be heard and gain 149

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civic enfranchisement, residents of Roxbury have been pushed to publicly and directly confront trustee authority. Through claims of social justice and human rights, Roxbury residents and movements have gained strategic political advantage over institutions and interests that have in the past shut them out because they wield a good deal more social, political, and economic power than residents do. The direct action civics and discourse expressed in the risk dispute over BUMC’s biodefense plans therefore echoed extant civic and political relations, local civic conventions of thought and practice, and resonant civic virtues that are the legacy of Roxbury’s ongoing social and community history. This history strongly shaped what activists believed was at stake in BUMC’s biodefense plans. Activists foregrounded the positional relationship that Roxbury residents, who are primarily poor people of color, have had with the city of Boston and the wealthier, white residents and civic groups that populate the city and its suburbs. Again, over the years, residents of Roxbury have engaged issues over civil rights and civic enfranchisement, school desegregation, urban development and resident displacements, and a lack of local economic opportunities. More recently, risk disputes have focused on issues of environmental justice that have led to mobilizations against the city’s placement of noxious, risk-laden infrastructures and the continued encroachment into their neighborhood of medical and biotechnical developments that have spurred a surge in gentrification (Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; Formisano 1991; King 1981; Loh et al. 2002; Medoff and Sklar 1994). The civic relations that have resulted from Roxbury’s interactions with civic groups, trustees, and institutions from outside their part of town—including the city of Boston, the state, local universities, and the plentiful nonprofit organizations and social movement groups that populate it—were repeatedly mentioned in my interviews. These civic relations, both political and positional, were used to underscore what was at stake in BUMC’s biodefense plans. Along with civic relations, those that engaged biodefense also adhered to civic conventions of thought and practice that shaped their impressions of what was at stake and influenced their interactions with their coalition allies. Specifically, Roxbury residents expressed conventionalized concerns with “civic disenfranchisement” and race- and class-based “disrespect,” 150

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the outgrowth of decades of both local and nonlocal institutional recreancy. Roxbury activists and residents engaged civic politics expecting to confront authority and act directly to halt what they saw as a dangerous and unfair plan for their neighborhood. What is more, their comments also revealed that they viewed their allies in the coalition to stop BUMC’s NBL—mostly activists from “outside Boston”—with a degree of skepticism due to their different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as residence outside Roxbury. While their assistance was welcomed, dependability and different concerns were at issue. Adding to this were subtle but significant differences in how various groups of activists conceived and performed civics. Echoing the religious and civil rights leaders of previous decades and disputes, the outspoken leader of the Roxbury group was unapologetic in her direct and sometimes confrontational style. She and the Roxbury group used public denunciation and relied on claims of race- and class-based injustice to cajole their allies and confront their adversaries. When talking to their charge and cause, Roxbury activists frequently justified their mobilization with reference to “the neighborhood,” “the community,” “our people,” “black people,” “people of color,” “poor people,” and “white institutions.” The moral basis for the civic virtues to which Roxbury’s activist laid claim also set them apart from the OBC and further shaped their view of risk and opposition to biodefense plans. Centered on their neighborhood and the inequitable distribution of risk, their claims highlighted issues of civic provisions and therefore how risk and benefit were routinely distributed in the city. As such, the civic virtues to which the Roxbury group paid homage were avowedly “red” in social and political character. They expressed concern over human rights, civic enfranchisement, and social and economic justice. Therefore, outside of civic conventions of thought and practice and the civic and political relationship Roxbury had to other Bostonian institutions and groups, the risk dispute also exposed value commitments to collective provision that were in tension with those espoused by their adversaries but their allies as well. BUMC, the federal government, the city of Boston, and their supporters justified their biodefense ambitions as a risk management plan meant to protect the public and serve the common good. Roxbury residents’ 151

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claims, however, worked to neutralize this justification as they questioned the justice of installing a risky technology in an already at-risk community. Residents held that biodefense trustees were diminishing their local well-being in order to make society more secure. This was therefore a question of civil and environmental rights that Roxbury residents were being denied, all in the name of improving conditions for others better off than they. The alleged denial of both civil and environmental rights supplied the Roxbury group with growing support from across the city and increasing political leverage over time. It also took shape in the lawsuits that Roxbury residents filed against the state and federal governments. These suits claimed that residents’ rights had been violated by the biodefense proposal insofar as it addressed neither the already existing risks in Roxbury nor how the NBL might further burden a vulnerable population (Hynes, Allen, and Lawrence 2007). In analyzing the civic conventions, relations, and virtues expressed through Roxbury’s civics and discourse, then, I found them to reflect themes and impressions that were native to the positional experience of its residents. Reflecting these aspects, the civic mobilization there thus reflected basic concerns with risk and equity that are not reducible to oversimplifications of “fear” or “panic.” Similarly, this mobilization can’t easily be placed on a liberal/conservative political continuum, as is often the habit of those seeking to understand social movement mobilizations. Of course, those from Roxbury did claim that the NBL was a dangerous facility and that therefore their safety would be compromised. However, their claims neither reflected nor were founded in personal fear but rather were mainly centered on the unjust nature of putting those who were already subject to higher levels of risk than the (white) population at even greater risk. As such, the NBL became a metonym for social and economic injustices foisted onto the poor people of color living in Roxbury and nearby city districts. references Baily, Steve. 2005. “BU Flunks the Trust Test.” Boston Globe, January 19. Beamish, Thomas D. 2001. “Environmental Threat and Institutional Betrayal: Lay Public Perceptions of Risk in the San Luis Obispo County Oil Spill.” Organization and Environment 14 (1): 5–33. 152

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Beamish, Thomas D., and Amy J. Luebbers. 2009. “Alliance-Building Across Social Movements: Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition.” Journal of Social Problems 56 (4): 647–676. Byravan, Sujatha, and Sheldon Krimsky. 2003. “Boston Residents Should Decide Future of Biolab.” http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=156. City of Boston. 2013. “Boston, a City of Neighborhoods.” http://www.cityofboston.gov/ neighborhoods/roxbury.asp. Ecklein, Joan Levin, and Claire Gosselin. 2006. “Building Biocontainment Laboratories 3 & 4 in Boston—The Fight Back.” Paper presented at the Sixth Review Conference on the Treaty of Bioweapons, Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, Geneva. Erikson, Kai T. 1976. Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon & Schuster. Faber, D. R., P. Loh, and J. Jennings. 2002. “Solving Environmental Injustices in Massachusetts: Forging Greater Community Participation in the Planning Process.” Projections: The MIT Journal of Planning 3:109–132. Formisano, Ronald P. 1991. Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Fox, Gloria. 2004. “Ensuring Safety and Security in Biomedical Laboratories and Facilities.” House Bill #4937. State of Massachusetts Legislature, Boston, MA. Hayden, Dolores. 1997. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hynes, H. Patricia, Klare Allen, and Eloise Lawrence. 2007. “The Boston University Biolab: A Case of Environmental Injustice.” Paper presented at the State of Environmental Justice in America 2007 Conference, Howard University Law School, Washington, DC. Jasper, James M., and Scott Sanders. 1995. “Big Institutions in Local Politics: American Universities, the Public, and Animal Protection Efforts.” Social Science Information 34 (3): 491–509. Keyes, Langley C., Jr. 1970. The Boston Rehabilitation Program: An Independent Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. King, Melvin. 1981. Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Commumity Development. Boston: South End Press. Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, and Stephen Robert Couch. 1990. The Real Disaster Is Above Ground: A Mine Fire and Social Conflict. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Lazar, Kay. 2013. “Federal Judge Rules in Favor of BU’s Biolab.” Boston Globe, October 1. Leong, Andrew. 1995/1996. “The Struggle Over Parcel C: How Boston’s Chinatown Won a Victory in the Fight Against Institutional Expansion and Environmental Racism.” Amerasia 21 (3): 99–119. Lichterman, Paul. 1995. “Piecing Together Multicultural Community: Cultural Differences in Community Building Among Grass-Roots Environmentalists.” Social Problems 42 (4): 513–534. ———. 1996. The Search for Political Community: American Activists Reinventing Commitment. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lima, Alvaro, and Mark Melnik. 2013. Boston in Context: Neighborhoods. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority. Loh, Penn, Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, Standrick Wiggins, David Noiles, and Cecelia Archibald. 2002. “From Asthma to AirBeat: Community-Driven Monitoring of Fine Particles and Black Carbon in Roxbury, Massachusetts.” Environmental Health Perspectives 110 (Supplement 2): 297–301. 153

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Medoff, Peter, and Holly Sklar. 1994. Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood. Boston: South End Press. Melnik, Mark, and Nanette Dyer-Blake. 2009. New Bostonians 2009. Boston: Boston Redevelopment Authority. Molotch, Harvey L., William R. Freudenburg, and Krista E. Paulsen. 2000. “History Repeats Itself, but How? City Charter, Urban Tradition, and the Accomplishment of Place.” American Sociological Review 65 (6): 791–823. O’Connor, Thomas H. 1993. Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal 1950– 1970. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge / Kegan Paul. Peña, Devon G. 2005. “Anatomy, Equity, and Environmental Justice.” In Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement, edited by David N. Pellow and Robert J. Brulle, 131–151. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Peters, Cynthia. 2004. “Community Organizer: Cynthia Peters Interviews Klare Allen.” Z Magazine, July/August. Powell, Jennifer H. 2002. “Roxbury Group Says Menino Ignoring Them.” Boston Herald, March 29. Pulido, Laura. 1996. Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Pulido, Laura, and Devon G. Peña. 1998. “Environmentalism and Positionality: The Early Pesticide Campaign and the United Farm Workers’ Organization Committee, 1965– 1971.” Race, Class, and Gender 6 (1): 33–50. SafetyNet, ACE, and UJP. 2004. “No Place to Hide: An Open Letter to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Boston City Councilors, and Boston University Trustees.” SafetyNet, ACE (Alternatives for Community and Environment), United for Justice with Peace (with the support of UJP), Boston. SafetyNet and ACE. 2004. “Community Alert: Why We Oppose Boston University’s Bioterrorism Lab.” SafetyNet and ACE (Alternatives for Community and Environment), Roxbury, MA. http://www.ace-ej.org/BiolabWeb/Takeaction.html. Schulman, Daniel, and Adam Smith. 2004. “When Bioterror Moves Next Door.” Sunday Boston Globe Magazine, August 8. Schweitzer, Sarah. 2002. “Vision Lacks Allure: In Cross-Town Residents Doubtful of Biotech’s Benefits.” Boston Globe, March 18. Shane, Scott. 2005. “Exposure at Germ Lab Reignites a Public Health Debate.” New York Times, January 24. Smith, Stephen. 2003a. “BU Center May Seek Biosafety Lab Funds.” Boston Globe, January 16. ———. 2003b. “Menino Backs Biosafety Lab Plan Says BU Medical Center Needs to Get Area’s Support.” Boston Globe, January 18. Sze, Julie. 2007. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sze, Julie, and Jonathan London. 2008. “Environmental Justice at the Crossroads.” Sociology Compass 2 (4): 1331–1354.

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chapter 5

Galveston, Texas Managed Civics and Biodefense

i n t h e p r e c e d i n g t w o c h a p t e r s , we examined local response to

biodefense plans in Davis and Roxbury, where civic relations were politically charged based on the legacy of prior events and ongoing social and political issues. In each case, civic conventions and resonant civic virtues also shaped local assessments and therefore public discussions of what was considered to be at stake with the local university’s biodefense plans. In both communities, biodefense plans were initially viewed with ambivalence, which quickly turned toward skepticism, even cynicism, as the actions taken and answers provided by the university, city, and federal government (i.e., biodefense trustees) increased local concerns rather than allayed them. Galveston’s response to biodefense took a different form: there, the initial ambivalence expressed by residents at public forums, in letters to the local newspaper, and in comments submitted to the National Institutes of Health’s environmental review turned toward acceptance and support. While many of my Galveston interviewees were initially hesitant about the National Biocontainment Laboratory (NBL), all but 1 of my 56 informants claimed their concerns had been adequately addressed and that they now supported the University of Texas Medical Branch’s (UTMB) biodefense ambitions. As in the other two communities, in Galveston, governance conventions, political relations, and resonant civic virtues were used to interpret and understand UTMB’s biodefense plans. In Galveston, however, the NBL was viewed as a fulfillment of local hopes and aspirations, rather than a risk or liability. Many of the civically engaged persons I spoke with viewed the proposed biolab as economic opportunity, a means to increase the island’s national notoriety and therefore stature, an instance of scientific and technical progress, and a moral duty they were compelled to support. Also contrary to my other community cases, many in Galveston 155

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explained that while they had initial reservations, they came to support the initiative because of UTMB’s “leadership.” In this regard, UTMB’s proactive efforts worked to its advantage, as the university courted the approval of the island’s social and economic elites, as well as assertively answered citizens’ questions at public forums, in local opinion columns, and through smaller meetings with neighborhood and civic groups. Indeed, as one of my informants shared: [UTMB has ] been very aggressive at the national level as well as the local level [promoting their interest in an NBL]. Locally . . . they’ve completely answered my concerns. And anybody else that I have talked with is now in favor of it. I don’t know of anyone now that is dead set against it. The people that I associate with on a normal basis, both socially and otherwise, they seem to be, if not in favor, ambivalent. There’s just no big controversy about it here.

As this informant’s comments illustrate, response to the biodefense lab in Galveston was very different from Davis and Roxbury. Was this local support simply a function of university leadership and an excellent risk communication strategy? While this may be the most parsimonious answer, based on my findings, this is not why Galveston’s civic response was overwhelmingly positive. As I indicated in Chapter 2, the risk communication strategies that the three universities in Galveston, Roxbury, and Davis pursued were virtually the same. Yet, these strategies provoked very different civic responses in the three communities. The different examples revealed that civic response was not merely or even primarily a result of “the plan,” “the technology” (i.e., NBL), or “the specific efforts and tactics of the trustee institution responsible.” Rather, the three distinctive responses reveal that there were clearly distinctive civic conventions, relations, and virtues at play that shaped how biodefense and its sponsors were locally received. This chapter therefore explores the notable difference in Galveston’s civics and discourse and therefore local reactions to an NBL and biodefense plans compared to the other two community cases. As in the previous chapters, I break down the basis for local civics and discourse (i.e., conventions, relations, and virtues) as expressed in the local dialogue that ensued over UTMB’s biodefense plans. I begin by sketching the social and political histories that underlie Galveston’s managed style of civics and 156

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discourse. I then outline UTMB’s pursuit of federal funds to build and host an NBL and to be designated a Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases research (RCE). Following this largely descriptive account of “when biodefense came to town,” I then analyze how Galveston’s managed civics and discourse shaped local response to biodefense plans. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that the claims levied in support of the NBL, and therefore UTMB’s larger biodefense ambitions, reflected a civic and material history that smoothed the way toward local support, avoiding a risk dispute. i sl a n d p ol i t i c s i n g a lv e s t o n , t e x a s Galveston is a barrier island off the northwest coast of the Gulf of Mexico, some two miles from mainland Texas. (See Map 5.1 of Galveston Island.) The island is approximately 1 to 3 miles in width and 27 miles long. The Gulf-facing side of the island is lined with sandy beaches, and the landfacing side contains inlets, marshes, and bayous. The city of Galveston lies on the far northeastern tip of the island, and UTMB occupies 80 acres of real estate in the city center. As a European settlement, Galveston’s modern history began in the early 1800s. After winning independence from Spain, the Congress of Mexico established the Port of Galveston in 1825. Following independence from Mexico, the Texas Congress recognized Galveston in 1839. Port activities, mainly cruise lines and other forms of marine tourism, remain central to Galveston’s economy. Indeed, because Galveston Island consists of sand and clay, has no naturally occurring potable water, and does not support vegetation for agricultural or ranching activities, the options available for making a life there have always been limited. Despite this, Galveston has had a strategic asset since the 1840s: it sits across the water from the Bolivar Peninsula to the north and east. Together, Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula are bookends to a channel called “the Bolivar Roads,” through which all regional shipping must pass as it seeks access to Galveston Bay, Houston, and the Texas interior. From the 1840s until the turn of the twentieth century, Texas’s other major city—Houston1—remained dependent on Galveston’s terminal to convey its cotton, sugar, pecans, seed, cattle, and hides to inter157

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national markets (McComb 1986, p. 47; Sibley 1999). Galveston’s port and ­deep-water harbor therefore vaulted it to the top of Texas’s wealth pyramid, and its leaders commanded strong political influence in Texas and beyond. 2 During the mid-twentieth century, Galveston was one of the busiest cargo ports in the world, competing directly with New Orleans as a major disembarkation point for U.S. cotton on its way to the world’s textile centers in New York and London. By 1899, Galveston was the leading cotton port in the world and the fifth largest port in the United States. In 1900, exports from Galveston’s were valued at more than $85 million (Sealy 1999). During the nineteenth century, Galveston also served as a major point of immigration, known as the “Ellis Island of the West” based on the large number of European immigrants who entered the United States via its port of call (McComb 1986; Noonoo 2009).3 158

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As it entered the twentieth century, however, Galveston’s fortunes were completely transformed. On September 8, 1900, a hurricane—“the Great Storm”—hit Galveston with 145-mile-an-hour winds and a 15-foot storm surge. The storm shattered the city, leaving a 30-block-long, 4- to 10-foot-deep pile of debris: “the broken remnants of urban life” (McComb 1986).4 While Galveston had been hit by many hurricanes before, and there have certainly been devastating hurricanes since, 5 the Great Storm socially, politically, and economically devastated the island, changing the way of life and ultimately shaping civics into the present. After the storm, island commercial elites executed a coup, taking over local government. Once in control, they fortified Galveston and their own interests, building an impressive seawall and raising the entire city 18 feet above sea level through extensive backfilling. These were extremely expensive and technologically intensive endeavors well beyond the means of most communities of that day. Indeed, a much less prosperous and politically influential set of economic elites would not have been able to commandeer the funds necessary for these and subsequent public works projects. From the beginning of the twentieth century, local elite paternalism and patronage have been conventionalized in Galveston’s civics and discourse. In the wake of the hurricane, and despite the new government’s efforts, Galveston never regained its economic or regional political footing. As it slid into economic stagnation and decline, Galveston turned to new ways of economic survival. Embracing new nicknames such as the Gulf’s “Sin City” and “the free state of Galveston” (McComb 1986), it became known for drinking, gambling, and prostitution. Yet, even this economic revenue was short-lived, as the Texas state attorney cracked down on the gambling casinos in 1957. Following the demise of Galveston’s gambling syndicate, even many of Galveston’s legitimate businesses left the island for lack of opportunity. Throughout the last decades of the twentieth century, there has been little left except UTMB’s medical school and the money, businesses, and foundations run by the island’s elite families. Largely dependent on beach tourism, the vacation home real estate market, fishing, and the medical school, Galveston has for many years been exploring ways to bring it back 159

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from the brink. Many in the community felt that UTMB’s biodefense lab would help do just that. The Roots to Galveston’s Managed Style of Civics The legacy of this history provided the basis for what I have termed a “managed civics and discourse.” By this, I mean a conventionalized civic orientation in Galveston that reflects greater comfort with delegative expressions of public authority and of being “represented” by those individuals and institutions that are locally regarded as island “trustees”—specifically UTMB and local or “native” business elites—on matters like local development and dealing with potential risks to local life. This mentality embodies a soft form of paternalism exercised within the context of democratic governance. It is important to note, however, that greater comfort with what I term a managed style of civics and discourse does not obviate civic dispute, even protest. Galveston’s residents have indeed mobilized in the past to prevent developments considered “too risky” as well as those that have clashed with local preferences. Galveston’s managed style of civics and discourse also bespeaks of the strong civic relationships and sense of co-determination that locals expressed with regard to island trustees. This played out in the biodefense debates when residents stated that the UTMB’s good fortune would translate into the entire community’s improved economic potential and would enhance the national stature of the island community. In this regard, Galveston civic relations—much as in the other civic community cases—also reflected who was considered on the “inside” and “outside” of the community’s social and political life. One important difference between Galveston and the other communities I studied lies in how that distinction was locally made. Shared civic virtues and associated value commitments were a common point of reference in my interviews. Many interviewees shared with me their commitment to “progress” that was reflected in the hopes and aspirations they projected onto UTMB’s plans. Residents largely claimed to believe UTMB’s promises of scientific advances, medical breakthroughs, and economics gains, and they felt they had a moral duty to support advancements of this kind. Shared beliefs and value 160

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commitments like these helped to smooth the way toward local acceptance of biodefense plans. Therefore, in contrast to the red politics expressed in Roxbury’s civic discourse (human rights, enfranchisement, and social justice) and the green politics in Davis’s (pastoral-domesticity, egalitarianism, environmental concerns, and antiwar sentiments), Galveston’s residents advocated a “bluer politics” that valued and trusted more modernizing institutions like science, medicine, and capitalism for their assumed ability to secure a better future for locals and ultimately improve local conditions. What is more, as reflected in my informants’ comments, compared to Davis and Roxbury, they embraced a more “representative” style of democratic practice, wherein elected leaders, unelected “leading citizens,” and local trustee institutions were afforded more authority and autonomy in their deliberations, as well as in decisions that affected the community as a whole. Because of this, Galveston residents focused on the opportunities represented in UTMB’s biodefense initiative and downplayed the risks. What is more, across my interviews, informants routinely described progress as a moral duty and argued that it was their obligation to support local biodefense plans to manage risks to collective well-being and improve the human condition. From this, one might surmise that Galveston is simply a quiescent community. That is, because residents did not mobilize against biodefense, one might assume that mobilization is generally rare and therefore those from Galveston are not likely to engage in risk dispute. This, however, is not the case. In fact, in 2004—a year after UTMB was awarded a federal RCE designation and funds to build and host an NBL—vocal civic opposition did emerge over a different local development: British Petroleum’s (BP) proposal to build a liquid natural gas (LNG) transfer facility on nearby Pelican Island. That project, unlike UTMB’s biodefense plans, was not interpreted as fitting well with local conventions, relations, or values and was therefore locally opposed. Many of my informants used the differences between BP’s and UTMB’s plans to explain why local response to the two projects was so different. Therefore, the comparison is instructive. My informants, some of whom civically engaged and opposed BP’s terminal, emphasized the potential 161

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dangers of tankers containing 250,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas docked less than two miles from Galveston’s center. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of those I spoke with expressed little alarm or threat by the prospects of UTMB running a BSL-4 research laboratory in Galveston’s city center where some of the world’s most potent pathogens would be received, stored, and shipped and where researchers handling them would be working. At its heart, the issue reflected the civics native to Galveston that were reflected in its civic discourse. The LNG transfer facility was not proposed by an island trustee, did not mitigate acknowledged island risks, nor did it add what many hoped would come to pass. Instead, it simply added risk, while providing little in the way of locally acknowledged or preferred benefits. As a consequence, those civically active in Galveston mobilized to stop BP, while they embraced UTMB’s biodefense plans. According to one of my informants, local support for biodefense and rejection of an LNG facility boiled down to local civic relations: “British Petroleum didn’t have the credibility with the community that UTMB has.” And while a single reason may not entirely explain local response, his observation held a good bit of merit and highlights the important role that local civic relations played in Galveston and, more generally, in the reception that biodefense plans received from local constituents: There were a lot (of people) upset about the (BP’s proposed) LNG. . . . People were terribly concerned about the LNG storage tanks . . . about the ships coming in. These are the big tankers full of LNG, and there is always somebody complaining that these things will explode. Which they can, but it is very unlikely. . . . But the key thing, British Petroleum didn’t have the credibility with the community that UTMB has. So when (UTMB) says something, their credibility was high compared to BP. That was the biggest factor. And BP brought in British-speaking executives, which was not a good thing to do. You bring in the Texan types or at least Americans. . . . Those British accents—a lot of people asked just what the hell they knew about Galveston?

While UTMB’s credibility is not unquestioned in Galveston,6 the university’s plans are a major concern when it comes to the island’s future. In this regard, UTMB and its perceived civic relationship with the com162

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munity were less politicized and competitive and more aspirational than were references to other local universities in the other locales. Because of this, UTMB usually gets the benefit of the doubt in local affairs, at least according to my informants. Thus, while Galveston residents do mobilize vocally and publicly when they disagree with a proposed economic development, university, or community project, they do so reflective of a specific civic mentalité and set of priorities. This makes it all the more clear that civically and politically engaged residents supported UTMB’s biodefense ambitions because they understood it as congruent with their civic principles, preferences, and aspirations. A less nuanced treatment would have missed this distinction and therefore missed that opposing BP’s Pelican Island plan was not incongruent with supporting UTMB’s bid to build and host a local NBL. A majority of the research on public risk disputes has undervalued the role that dynamic civic and political contexts play in public response and dispute, highlighting instead parsimony, overtly psychologized characterizations, and references to irrationality and bias as explanations. Civic domains like Galveston’s are characterized by civic groups and individuals who often vie with one another in fieldlike relations, sometimes coalescing and other times competing and clashing over community directions and outcomes. Civic mobilization in such circumstances is emergent, based on contingency that, while patterned, is not the definitive function of a specific community trait or single variable. Indeed, the seemingly contrary responses to UTMB’s and BP’s proposals require deeper analyses of the civic dynamics at play to understand why one project and not the other was locally supported. The difference was in how Galveston’s civics and discourse entwined UTMB’s efforts, as an important island trustee, with local interest imbuing biodefense with a general sense of progress and a positive future. By contrast, BP was an outsider charged with secretive dealings with the Port Authority—an unelected board—and involved a development proposal that conflicted with civic aspirations (ocean tourism, education, medicine, biotech), was associated with indelible disasters from the past (circa 1947) and present (circa 2005 in nearby Texas City), and an industry many I spoke with considered excessive and backward (i.e., petroleum and petroleum refining and the associated environmental ruin). 163

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Galveston’s managed civics and discourse therefore reflects the legacy of its political and material history and the cluster of relations, conventions, and virtues that have been forged by its residents and institutions over time. Therefore, while biodefense was a new issue, like the other community cases, it was examined in light of principles that were in place long before UTMB revealed that it would pursue an NBL. As in the other cases, the “real history”—a verified chronicle of events—is not as important to my analysis as is the civic history that locals deployed when arguing what was justifiable, right, or wrong, because this is what they relied on in the context of local public deliberations. The managed civics and discourse I observed in Galveston’s public dialogue regarding biodefense plans hearkened to three historical and recurrent social and material themes: Galveston’s former prosperity and subsequent decline after the great storm of 1900, the historical need to manage the risks of disease and seasonal hurricanes, and the island’s long reliance on a small number of social and economic elites and, more recently, trustee institutions for island “security.” Through economic gambits, acts of paternalism, and philanthropic patronage, these individuals and institutions have played a powerful role in local life and politics and therefore have shaped civic expectations. The legacy of each of these manifested in a local civics and discourse that shaped both what was and was not deemed acceptable risk in Galveston. An Island Legacy: Disease, Hurricane, and Risk Management Due to its relative isolation and large number of epidemics, in the nineteenth century, Galveston became an ideal laboratory for medical doctors, their students, and medical associations.7 Indeed, repeated epidemics8 on Galveston Island created the pretext for the establishment of the Texas Medical College in 1881, now UTMB (Burns 2013). From its founding, UTMB has been understood as a local trustee, charged with managing the risks that disease posed to the island and the entire state. Currently, the university’s medical center is the island’s only source of health care; local dependence is therefore also an important aspect of UTMB’s civic relationship with island residents. It is why many people—including some of my informants—relocated to Galveston from 164

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other locales in Texas and beyond. Health care in Galveston is local and immediately available. The establishment of UTMB also illustrates the entwining of local civics and an ongoing history of managing risks, in which local economic elites have played an important role. Initially, the Texas legislature did not allocate enough funds to house and train students at the newly established medical school. The funds for the college’s first medical school building and hospital were donated by Galveston’s Sealy family—heirs to John Sealy’s fortune, which he amassed through banking, shipping, railroad, and cotton business interests.9 This was just one of many such interventions carried out by the island’s social and economic elite. A role such elites would play in Galveston throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and now twenty-first centuries. During this period, philanthropy by wealthy Galveston based foundations10 has bankrolled local hospitals, schools and colleges, and historical preservation efforts. Indeed, since its 1881 establishment, the Sealy family and its Sealy and Smith Foundation have donated $500 million to UTMB alone (Messa 2002). Philanthropy, however, has not been the only type of elite intervention in island affairs. Island business elites have also involved themselves in Galveston’s civic politics for most of its history, having with some regularity both stepped up and stepped in to paternalistically manage situations for both their personal and collective benefits. For example, following the Great Storm, Galveston’s wealthiest businesspeople wanted to fortify the island against future storms and accompanying economic catastrophes.11 As handpicked members of the Central Relief Committee (CRC), these individuals held important leadership positions in the city’s recovery effort (Rice 2013). Many CRC members also belonged to the Deep Water Committee” (DWC), a cabal originally organized to lobby the state and federal governments for dollars to deepen Galveston’s port and remain competitive with Houston and New Orleans. Using the hurricane’s devastation as their justification, the DWC12 accused the mayor and the City Council of incompetence and took control of local government (Cartwright 1991; McComb 1986). The government they installed was a “commission form” of city government (Frederickson, Wood, and Logan. 2001), at the time a new form 165

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that would subsequently sweep the country during the Progressive Era. In this model, the state’s governor appointed a commission to run the city’s rebuilding efforts.13 The commission form combined legislative and executive functions, streamlining government but also centralizing power and authority into the hands of a small number of island economic elites.14 The business elites who had proposed and pursued the coup governed Galveston from 1901 to 1917. The commission form stayed in place until 1960, when the city manager form replaced it.15 Following the Great Storm, a primary concern among the newly anointed elite government was the recurrent risk posed by hurricanes and storm surges. The new commissioners settled on an ambitious risk management plan: constructing a three-mile-long seawall, raising the entire city well above sea level through backfill, and building a stormproof bridge. They spent an astonishing sum of money for the time—some $7.5 million ($200 million or more in 2014 U.S. dollars)—to manage risks to the island and, in so doing, Galveston’s continued viability. Yet, in fortifying the island, they simultaneously reinforced, perhaps even initiated, a civic mentalité that is still characteristic of Galveston: risk management interventions to address such threats to island life, while also deepening local dependence on elites and island trustees for civic direction (Cartwright 1991; McComb 1986). Civic paternalism by wealthy families and their foundations endures in Galveston, and it was routinely referenced by my informants as an important force in local civic politics. As a lead scientist in UTMB’s biodefense effort put it when discussing “town and gown” relations: There’s a long history of the town and the university going back now a hundred years. And there’s really tremendous support for the university. . . . I was in [another university town] previously, and I didn’t really sense this in that community. . . . The community here is smaller, [and] most or many of the families in town have been here for six or seven generations, such as the leading families in town, the Sealy and Moody families. And their support has been enormous for UTMB over the years. The Sealy and Smith Foundation, which was started by one of Galveston’s leading families about a hundred years ago, has given over

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$500 million over the years to the university. They contributed $8 million to the building of the Shope Laboratory.

In the end, then, island business elites had secured their personal interests and therefore Galveston’s, but at a price: the island’s continued economic competitiveness. As historian David McComb shared in his history of Galveston Island, the inward turn and focus on risk held consequences for Galveston’s future as well: Human technology made it possible, . . . for the city of Galveston to remain on such unstable land. . . . The city did not flourish. . . . Houston, the nemesis to the north, left the Island City far behind in the race for population, wealth, and power. Galveston simply survived. The public defenses against nature came at a high cost, but they succeeded for the most part. Hurricanes still caused damage, but Galveston was not quite so dangerous for human existence. (McComb 1986, p. 149)

w h e n biod e f e n s e c a m e t o g a lv e s t o n As in Davis and Roxbury, ongoing civic relations laid the basis for many of my informants’ initial impressions of the proposed NBL and likewise helped to frame the questions and responses. Yet, unlike the other locales, that “familiarity” promoted support, not opposition. In 1998, UTMB proposed a small, privately funded ultrasecure BSL-4 facility of its own.16 While the Shope Laboratory (as it is now named) is much smaller than the subsequently proposed NBL, it focused on the same “Category A” pathogens. Campaigns for both overlapped in time as well as topic: the Shope Laboratory campaign lasted from 1998 to 2004,17 and the NBL campaign lasted from 2002 to 2009.18 A majority of my informants, in fact, either failed to see them as separate efforts or required prompting to remember the Shope Laboratory at all. Therefore, in what follows, I begin by briefly recounting UTMB’s efforts with the Shope Laboratory, tying this into their subsequent efforts with the federally funded NBL. The Shope Laboratory The Shope Laboratory was a UTMB-initiated project whose development was almost wholly reliant on private and university funds. It would be the 167

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first full-sized BSL-4 facility of its kind constructed, housed, and managed on a university campus in the United States. According to UTMB, it was intended to augment the university’s growing expertise and reputation as a infectious diseases research center. UTMB claimed such a laboratory would keep it “on the cutting edge for identifying certain kinds of emerging viruses, determining whether they cause diseases and, if they do, developing treatments for them” (Schladen 1998b; see also Schladen 1998a). At the outset, however, UTMB administrators expressed some concern regarding community reception of their proposed biolab. Similar to their subsequent efforts with the NBL, they initiated a vigorous risk communication effort. At their first public forum in October 1998, although fewer than 100 residents showed up, those in attendance voiced many questions and concerns regarding the safety of such a facility, especially given the threat posed to such a facility by hurricanes. According to newspaper accounts, by the end of the forum, residents had expressed opinions ranging from questions like “What can we do if we just don’t want [a biolab] here?” to comments that they would be “proud to take part in the future of humanity by doing this” (Schladen 1998a). On November 6, 1998, the university held a second public forum. At this meeting, unlike the first, UTMB encountered little community concern or opposition. The lack of controversy, coupled with local elite support, led UTMB to present their biodefense plans to the University of Texas Board of Regents (Jackson-Hudson 1998). Granted approval, the university gained financial backing in 2002 from a reliable island trustee, the Sealy and Smith Foundation of Galveston (the same foundation that financed the island’s first UTMB hospital as well as other university and island projects). UTMB’s Shope Laboratory was formally dedicated on November 17, 2003, and fully operational by 2004. After construction of the Shope Lab was under way, on November 6, 2002, UTMB announced the creation of a new university center that would “build on campus strengths” and consolidate both biodefense and tropical and emerging infectious diseases programs: the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (CBEID). The Shope Lab would be administered by the new center. The center would also later oversee the NBL. 168

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The Galveston National Laboratory 2002–2009 UTMB publicly announced its intention to apply for federal grant funds to build and host an NBL on December 10, 2002. The effort included a bid for federal designation as an RCE. On December 18, 2002, UTMB held its first public forum on these matters (Noonoo 2009). At this initial meeting, a handful of residents again asked questions regarding how safe a laboratory of this kind could be on a hurricane-prone island like Galveston. The threat posed by hurricanes, among other local hazards, is a constant reminder in Galveston of how precarious life on the island can be and how important it is to manage risk to local life. What is more, while organized opposition to UTMB’s biodefense ambitions did not materialize, there were initial murmurs of discomfort reflected in the 2003 letters to the editor published in the local newspaper, the Galveston County Daily News. Of these five letters, three opposed the lab, one was unsure, and one supported the lab. Of the ambivalent and opposing letters, three asked whether UTMB could be trusted given recent revelations and a controversy surrounding its record keeping and management of its willed body program, and the fourth opposed an NBL because of the hurricane threat (see Thompson 2002b for details on UTMB’s “willed body program controversy”). For example, letter writers concerned with UTMB’s mishandling of donated cadavers asked: Do we really want to trust an organization, which has conclusively demonstrated that it is unable to track something as large as . . . cadavers, to maintain track of something as small as Petri dishes and bubonic plague, or, God forbid, such as hemorrhagic fevers as Ebola or dengue fever? (Carstarphen 2003).

The supportive letter focused on improving educational facilities on the island and alluded to the NBL as an economic opportunity because with it, “more jobs, more people will come” (Tooms 2003). Eleven Galveston County Daily News editorial columns were also published during the same period; all of them were affirmatively positive.19 While this public discussion hardly compares to the public eruptions that ensued in the other civic community cases, and is therefore a very 169

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limited picture of Galveston civics and discourse, it does highlight at least some initial public discomfort with an NBL. It shows that local civic elites and island trustees were already supportive—from the local newspaper to the mayor and city council, chamber of commerce, and a good number of local civic organizations. This is also distinct from the relations and discussions that took place in Davis and Roxbury, where less complete elite unanimity was in evidence, even in the early stages. Because there was no organized civic opposition in Galveston, the issue remained relatively quiet even as UTMB held public meetings with a handful of groups and organizations, including the University Area Association, the City Council, the Galveston Economic Development Partnership, and the Galveston Chamber of Commerce. On September 5, 2003, UTMB received confirmation that it had been awarded the designation RCE (Thompson 2003b). On September 30, 2003, UTMB was notified that it had also been awarded funds to build and host an NBL (Thompson 2003a). The only organized resistance came from outside of Galveston. The Sunshine Project—a watchdog organization based in Austin, Texas, whose self-described mission was safeguarding against military biotechnology abuse—filed a request under the Texas Public Information Act for UTMB’s 2002 Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) records to assess UTMB’s biosafety protocols (York 2003). Then, in February 2003, the Sunshine Project and six co-signing antiproliferation groups also submitted an open letter to UTMB asking that they pledge not to conduct secret military research at the prospective NBL (Hammond 2003). 20 Yet, because there was no vocal civic agitation against UTMB’s biodefense plans, the number of events and the intensity of the public discussion were minimal. Indeed, UTMB was often praised. For example, the Galveston Chamber of Commerce presented UTMB with its 2003 Business of the Year Award “for securing national and international prominence to its institution and to Galveston Island.” The chamber lauded UTMB’s biodefense plans for creating new jobs and bringing positive national notoriety to the city. The next opportunity for public dialogue arose when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated the environmental impact assess170

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ment process required of all federally funded developments. The federal environmental impact statement (FEIS) that results is meant to address all potential environmental impacts and community concerns, including safety plans and the potential for accidents; local impacts due to personnel increases; air and water quality issues; and the range of social, economic, and material impacts that might result from a proposed development. All items raised by stakeholders must be positively addressed before an FEIS statement can be finalized and the proposed development certified and pursued to completion. On March 31, 2004, the NIH convened the first stage of the assessment process, the FEIS Scoping Meeting. Both oral and written comments were accepted at the meeting—36 in total. (See Figure 5.1 for the frequency of public comments submitted to the FEIS process and to the Galveston County Daily News.) Several residents disparaged the FEIS

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f i g u r e 5 . 1   Frequency, letters to the editor, Galveston County Daily News, and submitted FEIS comments, January 2003–December 2004 171

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process as unwarranted: “Such studies should have already been done given the i­ mportance of the lab. Let’s get on with it.” A peace activist and chairman of the local Sierra Club shared that while he was not concerned with the safety of an NBL, the authorities should observe ethical standards against research involving recombinant DNA or military applications (Thompson 2004). None at the meeting, however, expressed open hostility to UTMB’s (or NIH’s) biodefense plans. The strongest expression of public disapproval came from a senior citizens group’s leader who asked, “Why in our backyard? I’m sure they told the people of Three Mile Island there was no danger.” He then suggested that Pelican Island—a mere mile away—would have been a better site for the biolab than UTMB’s east end of campus (Thompson 2004). The final opportunity for public discussion and comment in Galveston came on November 4, 2004, with a second NIH forum, the public hearing on the FEIS draft. This meeting, like the Scoping Meeting, involved little in the way of statements of opposition, and no organized opposition was present at the forum. Between 2003 and 2004, 38 FEIS comments were submitted by the public. In the same period, 14 op-ed/letters to the editor penned by local citizens were published in the Galveston County Daily News. (See Table 5.1 t a b l e 5 . 1   Themes, letters to the editor, Galveston County Daily News, and submitted FEIS comments, January 2003–December 2004 Themes

Position

Hurricane/accident

Disapproving

Economy

Supportive

FEIS comments

Letters to editor

Totals

9

8

17

11

1

12

Progress

Supportive

7

1

8

Mistrusta

Disapproving

3

4

7

Duty

Supportive

2

 

2

Ethical research

Ambivalent

2

 

2

Notoriety

Supportive

2

 

2

Due process

Ambivalent

1

 

1

Public access

Ambivalent

Totals

1

 

1

38

14

52

Note: For each op-ed article/FEIS comment, I counted the themes represented, noting the primary, secondary, and tertiary themes developed by the author(s). Therefore, there were more themes (52) than articles (36). a Reference to UTMB’s willed cadaver program.

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for the prevalent themes represented in public comments ­submitted to the FEIS process and the Galveston County Daily News.) Of the 52 total FEIS comments submitted and op-ed letters published, 24 disapproved, 24 supported, and 4 expressed ambivalence toward an NBL in Galveston. The most common and recurrent themes in the supportive remarks were the potential for economic gain (mentioned in 12 instances), association with progress (8), moral duty (2), and improved community reputation/ notoriety (2). In the disapproving remarks, the risks of hurricanes and accidents were by far the greatest concerns (mentioned in 17 instances), followed by UTMB’s capability to reliably manage a facility of this kind (7). For those residents questioning UTMB’s management capacity, the recent cadaver donor fiasco was foregrounded. While cadaver record keeping is technically unrelated to an NBL, the controversy was civically relevant to residents (Thompson 2002a). Finally, in the ambivalent remarks, the most prevalent recurring themes were research ethics (mentioned in 2 instances), civic process (1), and impeded access to campus health facilities based on increased security (1). The cluster of hopes and concerns expressed in Galveston’s relatively thin public dialogue centered on issues of local prosperity, progress, duty, and notoriety on the one hand and hurricanes, accident potential, and administration credibility on the other. While several residents initially expressed ambivalence, UTMB’s civic standing and role as an island trustee helped turn that nascent doubt into acceptance and then support, rather than opposition and open protest. For my interviewees, UTMB’s aggressive risk communication strategy and assurances regarding the failsafe nature of the facility—even when ambivalence remained—were enough to gain their support, even for those that expressed initial doubts. According to most residents I spoke with, then, UTMB was doing what it was expected to do in pursuing human health and well-being, promoting scientific progress in a time of national need, and growing as an institutional presence on the island. According to this civic logic, the biodefense lab was therefore justified by its economic benefit, positive notoriety, and the morally grounded common good it would serve. No one I interviewed from Galveston condemned UTMB for seeking the biodefense lab, even if some did express initial reservations. 173

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My interviews included conversations with many of those who had written opinion letters in the local newspaper and/or who had submitted public comments to the federal FEIS in which they had expressed strong reservations concerning an NBL in Galveston. Indeed, I targeted those who had shared public comments for my interviews. 21 The strongest words of opposition I encountered were from one interviewee who said: The more I think about consideration of a biohazard lab on Galveston Island, the more convinced I am that it’s a very, very bad idea. One of the things that I have thought about in that consideration is . . . the human one. . . . It doesn’t take an explosion to . . . release something very hazardous.

All but the above informant shared that their concerns had either been entirely or in the main answered and that they supported NBL and biodefense agenda as it was necessary. More important, Galveston residents were aware of the critiques levied against biodefense in Davis and Roxbury. For example, my informants mentioned the risk disputes occurring in both locales and arguments made in each against biodefense plans. Yet, the civically engaged in Galveston with whom I spoke downplayed the claims levied in these other places as unthreatening, untrue, or unimportant. They often did so by contrasting the risks posed by the prospective NBL with the dangers island residents confronted in the form of hurricanes and the nation from disease outbreaks and bioterrorism. For instance, the following informant shared that he found the biodefense agenda pursued by UTMB as unsurprising and then went on to list the risks posed by hurricanes and the region’s petroleum industry as reflected in the Texas City disaster of 1947 (which he notes as occurring in 1960): My concern as with [those] I talk to is why [Galveston] was chosen. [So I asked UTMB why I should support them.] They answered, very simply that they already had a similar [biolab] that while not as elaborate, did the same research. . . . [It] would just be the continuation of or the expansion of what was already there. . . . I thought it a very unique response to my question. . . . But I support the lab; life is a gamble, you know. It’s as dangerous crossing the street as me getting in my car and driving home. And, of course, Galveston, we really live through disasters: in 1900 the whole island was destroyed, in 174

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1960 some ship exploded in Texas City. . . . Hurricanes come and go; we’ve lived through two of them in the past year, Katrina . . . and Rita. So, you know, when you live on the coast, you’re living dangerously.

Indeed, more than one of my informants from Galveston made this point, that biodefense plans and an NBL could not possibly pose more of a risk than the nearby petrochemical infrastructures in Texas City, Galveston Bay, and the Houston Canal. t h e pol i t ics of a m a naged st y l e of ci v ics a nd discourse In the brief civic history related in the opening, I conveyed the roots of Galveston’s contemporary civics and discourse as both reflecting the island environment and events and conditions that stretch back to the nineteenth century. Events like the Great Storm continue to play a role in contemporary civics insofar as they have generated the social and political conditions from which the local stakes in Galveston emerge, supplying local partisans a shared civic vocabulary, a set of aspirations, as well as admonitions. It is this legacy, as reflected in Galveston’s contemporary managed civics and discourse, that smoothed the way toward local support of UTMB’s biodefense plans rather than stoking a local risk dispute. For instance, the local symbology and pragmatics that surround hurricanes, medical science, sensitivity to diseases, and the role island trustees like UTMB and other “leading citizens” have played in Galveston’s civics shaped local understanding of what was at stake with an NBL and a biodefense agenda. In this regard, Galveston’s managed civics and discourse shaped what was locally judged to be an acceptable risk. Managing the Risks of Island Life, Conventionally Politically engaged residents often referred to civic convention in Galveston, such as its local character and temperament and how authority and decisions were made locally when speaking of UTMB’s biodefense plans. This often involved reference to historical events, the role of local elites in civic affairs, and what motivates politics in town. For example, one of my informants recounted: 175

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Galveston has been a diamond in the rough for so long. It is just being rediscovered. This [biodefense] is a big issue in Galveston. . . . City Council people, some try to stop development, others being pro-business. They don’t like development. They like the old way in Galveston, and Galveston has got the history. We were, at one time, the capital of the state of Texas. The 1900 storm and all this stuff—the worst natural disaster in this country’s history [ended that]. Galvestonians are resilient. . . . We [were] the Wall Street of the Southwest. . . . And politics? You have your old families, your Moody’s, your Kempner’s. . . . They controlled the city for so many years, and that is why development didn’t happen too rapidly because [they] had such a reputation of being unfriendly to outside developers and businesses. . . . And let me tell you this. . . . [Biodefense] never would have happened if it weren’t for the university being proactive with the city. [Biodefense] has its negative points, but there are more positives than negatives. And I think people understood that.

Comments like this were not uncommon in my conversations, although most were not nearly as detailed. They were illuminating insofar as they highlight civic convention and the role the island’s history played in shaping local public conversation, including the one that ensued over UTMB’s biodefense plans. In referencing the influence of “old families” and the leadership role the university played in local affairs, my informants made it clear that they were comfortable with a kind of administrative authority that was largely rejected in the other two civic and community cases I explored. Indeed, many of those I spoke with from Galveston, even those who admitted initial ambivalence, claimed that their approval hinged on the university’s leadership, which worked to ally their concerns. What is clearly evident in comparing Galveston to Davis and Roxbury, then, is that UTMB and its president were lauded for behavior that was roundly criticized in the other community cases, which highlights how civic expectations and relations can shape local impressions and with them the likelihood of risk dispute. For example, like the other universities, UTMB’s risk communication strategy included securing elite support before disclosing their plans to the public. Once they had aligned elites, they then actively courted public opinion through prescripted public forums, small interest group meetings, 176

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and the creation of a Community Advisory Board staffed by local civic leaders. Yet, in Galveston, these practices were praised, while in Davis and Roxbury, they were denounced as inauthentic, violations of shared governance, and even racist. Again, only one of my informants from Galveston criticized these practices; he publicly opposed an NBL in Galveston, believing it to be a bad idea on a hurricane-prone island. He also felt strongly, contrary to other civically engaged residents, that UTMB had pursued its quest for a biolab in a “secretive” manner. The local public, he asserted, had not been included until UTMB had secured the support of local, regional, and state elites and the project was therefore a “done deal” once the citizens of Galveston had found out: UTMB’s discussions were very secretive with city council and county and state officials before it was made public. I have no doubt about that. There were a lot of discussions that . . . you could say it was a done deal before any public discussion.

While I assume this informant was not the only person who did not support the NBL locally—even though my research compatriots and I pursued a rigorous search for anyone who publicly engaged and opposed the plan— the dearth of comments and concerns like his is important nonetheless, because a muted or absent public voice typically means a given interest does not influence a public outcome. What is more, it also was not that the other residents to whom I spoke were unaware of or denied UTMB had pursued its interest in an NBL in this manner. Rather, those I spoke with expected UTMB to pursue such a strategy and did not consider it an infringement on their community’s rights and well-being. Even those who continued to have ambivalent feelings toward the biolab told me that, all things considered, they supported the project. As one resident put it: Well, my initial response was one of concern. . . . I was concerned about the protection of the community from a BSL-4 laboratory. Oh, I think the terrorism thing is completely overblown in this country. . . . I think it is used as a weapon of terror against us by our own government so that they can get away with whatever they want. But that’s neither here nor there. My initial ­concerns

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were that this is a barrier island, subject to flooding and hurricanes and tropical storms, and what were the protections against a force five hurricane? I fully support [an NBL] at this point in time. I believe that research in that area is absolutely essential—not for purposes of creating weapons, but for . . . creating defenses against all sorts of diseases. . . . So I think the research is necessary.

Also common across my interviews, and present in the comment above, was a consistent downplaying of the potential risk posed by an NBL, contrasting it with the “real dangers” and risks the island and even the nation confronted. Those I spoke with expressed much more concern with the risks posed by hurricanes, as well as the island’s proximity to the Bolivar Roads, Galveston Bay, and the Houston Channel—where ships routinely carrying volatile cargoes and petroleum refining/storage facilities and chemical plants line the shore—than with those associated with ultrasecure biolabs and the superbugs that would studied there. Again, UTMB was doing what it was expected to do in pursuing cutting-edge research on germs, while growing as an institutional presence on the island in doing so. In a word, the risks associated with UTMB’s leadership, and therefore the NBL it proposed, had been conventionalized in local expectations. So, unlike Davis and Roxbury, where risk was associated with leaders who lacked credibility and who were seen as foisting an ill-conceived plan on their locale, in Galveston, local expectations and even aspirations were associated with the university’s efforts and its leadership. It was an economic engine, a basis for scientific and technical progress, and a means of improving human health and well-being, all of which would undoubtedly increase the island’s national notoriety, stature, and prosperity. Indeed, reminding residents of these real threats versus the opportunities presented by UTMB, in 2005, British Petroleum’s refinery in Texas City exploded, killing 15 workers and injuring 170 others. This was the year after local news broke that BP was seeking to site an LNG transfer terminal near Galveston city. Relatedly, my informants pointed out that there were many historically proven “bad things like that around” the island. UTMB, science, medicine, and progress were not among them: 178

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I mean, people who are in the community can see the potential of bringing [an NBL] to Galveston and to UTMB; they recognize the risks. . . . Things down here are a little bit different. . . . We have Union Carbide, and British Petroleum. So people are used to having . . . bad things like that around. And so in some ways I think that probably helps lessen concerns, because people are used to having [risky] stuff around. Quite frankly, the research done in the NBL and on campus is trivial compared to what can happen if one of those things [LNG] went up.

The managed civics and discourse I observed in Galveston therefore helped explain why UTMB’s “aggressive” risk communication strategy promoted support while it promoted opposition in Davis and Roxbury. Indeed, my informants praised UTMB’s strategy, drawing on it to highlight their “leadership” on the issue: I went to one of the community meetings, and [UTMB] was very upfront about what it was, the types of research [the NBL] would pursue. They [also] addressed it in terms of, if there’s a storm coming, how soon, how fast could they secure the experiments. And they addressed everybody’s questions, and if people had concerns at the end of the meeting, . . . somebody from UTMB was at that person’s chair, getting their name, number, and either addressing their concerns or giving their information to somebody else that could talk to them about it and give them the answers they were looking for. I can’t think of anybody in the community that felt their questions weren’t answered and that their concerns weren’t addressed in some manner.

In Davis and Roxbury, because the local universities were neither as trusted nor afforded a priori credibility, their risk communication efforts were not automatically accepted by residents as authentic and truthful. In Roxbury, for instance, virtually the same risk communication strategy of taking individuals aside to persuade them of the merits of a local biodefense laboratory provoked outrage because it was viewed locally as a “racist effort” to divide and dominate neighborhood residents who had engaged the issue. By contrast, in my conversations with the civically engaged from Galveston, they also made reference to those on the island who rarely 179

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joined in these public discussions, but their explanations of the locally disenfranchised were markedly different from, for example, Roxbury’s. Their lack of participation in public conversations, according to some I spoke to, reflected apathy, lack of time, or low levels of education. Given the tone of their comments, I took this to mean my informants believed that those who did not participate in Galveston’s civic domain were, in some measure, at fault for their lack of engagement. My informants also mentioned the seasonal residents with vacation homes on the island who were not vested in local politics and therefore not concerned enough to engage local civics. In this regard, the ongoing civics and discourse in Galveston seemed to obviate an explicitly race- or class-based version of biodefense involving inequity, although more than 25 percent of Galveston’s population consists of persons of color, many of whom are mired in poverty. Civically Related: The University, Local Elites, and Race and Class in Galveston UTMB’s local legitimacy, according to my informants, reflects its historical role on the island and its continued importance to the civic aspirations of those with whom I spoke. Its “good leadership” in the context of Galveston’s civics and discourse should be seen as having “cemented its ambitions” to host an NBL rather than having gained it local acceptance and support. However, while Galveston’s residents may have been ready to support UTMB, one should not view that support as inevitable but as requiring that the right things be said and that civically resonant assurances be made. One reason that UTMB commands so much local respect is that it is the leading local and regional health care provider and has been since its founding in 1881. In this capacity, UTMB has been a recognized local trustee and risk manager for well over 100 years. Outside of the three letters to the editor regarding the university’s cadaver program, few shared with me anecdotes regarding UTMB’s dishonesty, inauthenticity, or failure to follow through, even if some of my informants did share complaints. 22 For instance, some noted that UTMB had recently laid off a number of workers due to budget constraints. This, they shared, had angered some 180

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local people. This exposes two interrelated items of interest. Instead of showing independence from UTMB, the resentment expressed over these layoffs exposed the depth of local relational dependence on UTMB as a local trustee. In the other community cases, dependence was also an issue, but those communities had a different type of relationship to the university, if not materially, then socially and politically. I would add, outside of scattered complaints like these, in the main, UTMB and its agenda were held to be both fair and in line with the directions of the community at large. Historically, managing island risks has required securing basic necessities and safeguards that have made permanent inhabitation of the island possible. Again, Galveston has no naturally occurring fresh water, little native vegetation, a high incidence of disease, and frequent storms and hurricanes. To make life possible, then, island leaders and leading institutions have responded by such actions as creating reliable links to the mainland, eradicating endemic diseases, securing an off-island source of fresh water, modifying and maintaining harbors and ports, constructing and maintaining a massive seawall, raising the entire city above sea level to guard against seasonal storm surges, and, as recently as 2009, rebuilding after hurricanes devastated the island (Green 2000). Indeed, it was quite clear from the civic dialogue that ensued over UTMB’s biodefense plans that it reflected a local “nature-culture” (Latour 1993) that further exposed deeply instantiated expectations regarding the active management of island risks. In other words, resonant risks emerged from local material experience, the material context, and ongoing material concerns native to the island and life on it. These played an important role in shaping how Galveston’s civically engaged addressed and assessed UTMB’s biodefense plans and therefore how dialogue about it unfolded there differently than in the other two locales. For example, the need to be prepared for natural catastrophes was much less pronounced in the civics and discourses representative of Roxbury and Davis. In fact, a strong case can be made that those communities felt that “manufactured risks” were more dangerous than, for example, naturally occurring diseases or acts of bioterrorism. In Galveston, by contrast, the benefit associated with UTMB’s pursuit of its biodefense ­ambitions was 181

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judged greater than the risks it posed. What is more, UTMB’s plan were also considered “right” given that they were meant to protect the community, and society in general, from risks, and therefore it was a moral duty to support them. UTMB’s credibility showed the important role that ongoing civic relations played in how Galveston residents interpreted and responded to its biodefense plans. Civic legitimacy and enhanced social trust reflect the ties and associations among the civic groups and individuals, economic interests, and trustee institutions that populate Galveston’s civic domain. The civically engaged I spoke with often referred to the involvement of UTMB and local social and political elites in Galveston’s civic affairs. My informants shared that a kind of civic paternalism was characteristic of Galveston; if big decisions or developments were forthcoming, then the island’s trustee’s, both institutions and civic elites, most assuredly were already involved and had vetted the project: UTMB’s reputation is such that they’re the “father figure” on the island; they’re not God, but they’re next to him. They don’t do too many things wrong. . . . Pretty much UTMB can do what it wants on the island, with the blessings of the city fathers and the community. Because medically they do a great job for us. . . . They work with the city administration; they work very closely with UTMB. I don’t know specifically . . . but there’s no doubt in my mind that UTMB got all the support it could get from the mayor’s office, the City Council, the department of public health [before it went to the public]. It’s just part of everyday living here. And UTMB, when they finish with that building [NBL], they’ll build another one.

Another informant put it this way: UTMB has a political voice [on the island]. It is the upper crust of Galveston, besides the industry and commercial people. They have a say in the political outcome of the offices and certainly that of mayor and council people that are in their district. . . . Can they shape politics? I think certainly to an extent they can. Do they run it or control it? No. But they do have a significant influence over local events.

The role of local elites—“old money,” the “old families,” and “the upper crust,” as they were referenced in my interviews—also came up frequently 182

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when discussing biodefense and island civics. One of my informants, a local businessperson, spoke directly and positively about the influential role these business elites and their scions have played in the past and present: There has been a lot of internal support over the years [for Galveston]. . . . We have a couple forefathers [on the island]. One is George Mitchell of Mitchell Energy, and Galveston is where he was born. He developed the Woodlands in north Houston. He has had a love for Galveston, he has maintained that love, and was responsible for redeveloping the Strand 20 years ago. We have got the Moody family, which runs a national bank and an American national insurance company—untold wealth. But they are from Galveston; they love Galveston, too. They have invested in Galveston. Then we have the Fratillo family. They have over 20 different restaurant/hotel chains that they operate. Galvestonborn, pretty much raised in Houston, but they built a convention center on the seawall. Then we have the Kempner family. . . . I think the greatest thing now is that with all the wonderful things that the families have done, the outside investment community has now come into Galveston, too. . . . Galveston is still an unbelievable deal.

In another instance, a UTMB research scientist and faculty member, who is also a resident of the island, shared his feelings about the decision makers. These included those like himself who were affiliated with the university, business interests, and of course the “old families”: The NBL was in a lot of the discussions. . . . People like myself who live in the area and also a bunch of other scientists, maybe a third are scientists and then another third were businessmen in the area [they engaged the issue]. We also have sort of an old-fashioned community. The town is old, and there are a lot of old families and a lot of the old families have given . . . a lot of money, [they] would have given back to the community. Our hospital is named John Sealy Hospital. The Moodys and the Sealys and these old families, they still exist on Galveston Island, and they still run the banking and other businesses. Those were the kind of people who were, partly at least, discussing the biolab.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Galveston’s response to UTMB’s biodefense ambitions, then, was the distinctive manner by which locals identified and therefore perceived the efforts of their local university, 183

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city administrators, and island commercial and financial elites. This was revealing insofar as it exposed the predominant civic mentalité there as compared to the other community cases I investigated. In Galveston, all those I spoke with perceived UTMB’s willingness to answer their questions and discuss local reservations as a sign of good faith and a reason to support them. It is the primary reason, many I interviewed claimed, that their initial ambivalence quickly turned toward support. For instance, the author of an op-ed critical of UTMB—one of a handful published in 2003 in the local newspaper—related to me how and why he came to support UTMB’s biodefense ambitions. He was emphatic, saying (he is also quoted above), “They’ve completely answered my concerns. And anybody else that I have talked with is now in favor of it.” One meaningful measure of that support was the high amount of social trust many placed in UTMB both indirectly and directly. While lower levels of social trust would, of course, be expected from those who opposed local biodefense initiatives in Roxbury and Davis, even Galveston’s supporters—when compared to supporters in the other locales—expressed higher levels of social trust in the local university. What is more, those from Galveston also showed higher levels of social trust in other trustee institutions such as city government, the federal government, and even science and scientific practice. This was borne out in the limited telephone survey I conducted where those from Galveston expressed higher levels of trust and investment in these institutions than did my respondents from Davis and Roxbury. 23 Finally, one might surmise from the absence of explicit reference in the public discussions and appraisals of biodefense to local civic relations involving racial, class, or ethnic experience and/or grievance that Galveston was either demographically homogeneous or lacked politically contentious social relations like these. This is an inaccurate characterization. Galveston is indeed racially heterogeneous and also involves a range of socioeconomic classes, including extreme wealth and poverty (see Table I.1). Indeed, 17 percent of Galveston’s families and 22 percent of its individuals live below the poverty line. Yet, claims of injustice and inequity regarding biodefense were not as apparent as they were in Roxbury. Neither, however, were there denunciations concerning a violation 184

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of participatory democracy, citizen involvement, and a clash of moral values like in Davis. Claims like these did not mar UTMB’s bid for an NBL. In my conversations with the civically engaged, when probing their sense of “who had (and had not) publicly engaged UTMB’s biodefense plans,” my informants commonly related that there were many on the island who hadn’t joined in the public discussion and that many normally did not do so: The average citizen probably has read that (an NBL) exists, if they take the newspaper. They don’t appear to be heavily concerned here. . . . The majority of the jobs are low-pay service jobs, and most of those guys just believe in living day to day, and they don’t care. It’s not that they wouldn’t care if they had time to look into it and to know about things like that; they just don’t have the time. They’re working. . . . The groups primarily (that engaged the issue) were civic groups, the religious groups and pastors, the better-educated people in the community, and those representing the more wealthy families, the “old money.” I guess it’s as good a way to put it as any. And some of the nouveau rich people, the corporate (real estate) investors in the community, but not so much; you get down below this level, [and] they’re not all that aware and they’re not all that informed. . . .

Again, in commenting on the “average citizen” in Galveston, those I spoke with tended to blame the bulk of the island’s population for their lack of engagement and civic input. The lack of an inclusive public conversation regarding biodefense and other local social issues was therefore neither viewed as a “flawed deliberative process,” like in Davis, nor a form of “local injustice, like in Roxbury, but was held to reflect apathy on the part of the island’s “general population.” The population consisted of both well-to-do seasonal residents with vacation homes who did not care to participate and poor, working-class persons of color who “didn’t have the time,” “the education,” or the requisite “understanding” and therefore concern to engage in local civic politics. In the following quote, another informant, the only one who freely admitted to being against an NBL on the island, explained the lack of local resistance and protest this way: I think (the lack of public engagement) is because of UTMB’s support, the size of the island, and the character of the island. We are about one-third black, 185

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one-third Hispanic, and one-third white on the island. The population is about 60,000. The number of homes that are second homes that are mostly vacant, except for the summer season or for vacationing or for the weekends, is probably about 20 percent. And then you have the indigent and you have the poor, which probably comprise, maybe, 35 percent of the island. So as far as having a middle class, it’s a very narrow band, and the makeup, maybe, 30 percent . . . and then you have 20 percent that are very well-to-do. So the makeup of the island . . . lends itself to the type of politics and (the lack of a local) reaction that you had (regarding the NBL).

According to many of those who civically engaged the NBL issue, then, Galveston’s general population had not participated, and they rarely did on most other civic issues because they were not interested, not capable, or not qualified to do so. Some vocal proponents even went so far as to suggest that they should not participate in a matter they deemed the domain of technical experts and the island’s most important trustee, UTMB, because they didn’t “understand” it. As this informant put it: [The general public’s] biggest concerns are . . . about diseases getting out (of the biolab). If you don’t understand how the thing works—and they don’t understand the viruses and diseases we work with—I can see where their concern comes from. . . . So you have some people absolutely terrified of the (biolab) because they don’t understand (it). And these are not scientists. I mean, even people who are in the community and can see the positive potential of bringing this to Galveston and to UTMB may not understand it.

Therefore, it was partly the absence of a civics and discourse that connected race and injustice on the one hand, coupled with low expectations concerning local civic participation on the other, that muted the possibility for local political contention and mobilization like what occurred in Roxbury and Davis. A Moral Commitment to Biodefense Plans In addition to reflecting the historical role of the university in local politics, Galveston’s civics and discourse also exposed civically shared value commitments and moral standards—what I have labeled “shared civic vir186

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tues.” Many residents, for instance, emphasized that an NBL and the larger biodefense plans of which it was a part would help advance science, cure diseases, and improve response in the event of bioterrorist attack, as well as improve the community’s stature. This, many of my Galveston informants told me, made their support a “duty” to the island and to society: I guess when you kind of look nationally or internationally and see the potential disease risk that’s out there . . . you weigh that and you say, well, okay, then hopefully we’ve got the right kind of safeguards locally [on the NBL] and we’ll do okay. I believe we have to be in support of it; that’s my perspective.

Beyond simply curing diseases and protecting against acts of bioterrorism, however, an NBL represented something deeper: a moral value and commitment that went to the heart of a Galveston’s civics and discourse but that was peripheral to Davis’s and Roxbury’s. An NBL and the biodefense agenda were understood as promoting advancements in science, medicine, and, locally, even the economy and therefore represented “progress.” In Galveston, this made it morally “right” almost by default: I think that it is an opportunity to investigate emerging diseases. . . . I think one of the other by-products is that if there is some concern about . . . a bioterrorist attack, you have to have . . . the antidotes, and I think that’s another important aspect of it. But I think the most important aspect of is . . . the world’s health . . . is never going to improve unless we can get a handle on some of these diseases. I don’t have a feeling about them personally, except that I feel it’s a necessary investment for our future of science, medicine, and society.

In both Davis and Roxbury, by contrast, local biodefense plans and even references to “progress” were viewed with a good deal of cynicism. As it relates to cynicism regarding biodefense, because the university’s and federal government’s (i.e., biodefense trustees) responses to questions were sometimes untrue or incomplete, it only served to exacerbate concerns rather than allay fears. Local biodefense plans, an NBL, and the trustees associated with them were viewed as the greater risk—a risk to a current way of life, a risk to local health and well-being, a risk to future community hopes and aspirations—than were foreign terrorists plotting biological attacks or fanciful plagues from other parts of the world. This 187

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interpretation of biodefense plans and interactions with the sponsoring trustee institutions worked over time to amplify the sense of imperilment in the other cases rather than obviate them. By comparison, my Galveston informants tended to downplay the potential risks because of the ambitions and outcomes locally associated with the university, biodefense plans, and the prospective NBL. Many of the people I spoke to listed benefits that justified their support, such as scientific advances, vaccines and cures, and local economic development, all of which would enhance life in Galveston as well as its reputation. According to my interviewees, then, UTMB’s plans would positively impact the island, the country, and even the world at large. Even while admitting the risks, those I spoke with expressed that the progress associated with such a plan and research facility more than made up for them. Even if residents couldn’t reap immediate benefits from the biolab, they could count on the moral payoff that accompanied the “nobleness” of their local support. Their commitment to progress and therefore the betterment of Galveston was expressed as a moral duty: they felt obligated to support such efforts, manage risks to collective well-being, and improve the human condition. As one of my informants put it: I think it’s a noble, scientific pursuit. I mean . . . there’s pretty heavy scientific presence around here. . . . There’s a certain amount of excitement that we might be doing something about tropical diseases here, things that really afflict a lot of people.

UTMB’s success in securing federal funds to build and host a cuttingedge NBL was also repeatedly mentioned as a source of local pride and something that would bring the island the kind of notoriety residents aspired to: The Shope Lab—that made Galvestonians feel real proud. . . . It was the first of its kind in the country, and now we [the community and UTMB] were up against all these big institutions that want to be first recognized as a Regional Center of Excellence, and then after winning that, going to the national competition and winning the national competition for an NBL. And we were very proud of it. 188

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In this regard, local support also dovetailed with a shared desire to improve Galveston’s national renown, which was further associated with the virtue of housing a public health–oriented NBL of this kind. In Galveston, civic virtues like contributions to science, medicine, and the economy were expressed as accepted common goods. Indeed, many of my informants explained that support was not just a matter of serving personal interests, but it reflected a collective obligation. The common good is a moral and ethical claim, too, involving principles regarding what is “right” and “wrong” and civic rules regarding what constitutes proper conduct reflective of them. As discussed earlier, comments like these reveal a “bluer” civics than the red and green civics expressed in the other cases, in which a majority of the civically engaged in Galveston expressed their support for UTMB and its biodefense plans as reflecting a duty and a moral commitment to progress and modernization. Civic relations with island trustees were frequently characterized as “acting on Galveston’s behalf.” Ultimately, an NBL and UTMB’s biodefense plans were supported in Galveston, unlike in the other locales, because they were considered authentic, beneficial, necessary, and morally right. conclusion : r educing r isks a n d promot i ng progr ess Like Roxbury and Davis, it was obvious that the legacy of recent events and Galveston’s longer civic history influenced my informants’ remarks about what was locally at stake with UTMB’s biodefense plans. Together, they supplied a common set of expectations and a vocabulary of motive with which those who civically engaged biodefense plans justified their positions. A clear and vocal majority of those who civically engaged the biodefense issue in Galveston endorsed UTMB’s plans, sharing that they were a positive local development. For most, the island’s leading institution— UTMB—was doing what was expected in pursuing an agenda that would reduce risks and improve human health and well-being. At its root, the NBL and UTMB’s pursuit of it were therefore justified for the benefit it provided, whereas the risks associated with it were marginalized. Once 189

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UTMB provided assurances that the community had nothing to worry about, civic support for the NBL was virtually unanimous. The potential for catastrophe that Galveston routinely confronts— from tanker traffic to hurricanes—was used by locals to downplay the risk posed by the new policy program and an ultrasecure BSL-4 facility. Again, Galveston has the unenviable distinction of being the victim of the worst natural and industrial disasters in U.S. history: the 1900 Great Storm and the 1947 Texas City Disaster. Nearly everyone I spoke to mentioned these disasters, as well as the 2005 explosion at BP’s refinery in Texas City, some 15 miles away. These catastrophes could have sensitized residents to risk in general and made them more suspicious of large-scale and risky projects such as the NBL. Indeed, Roxbury rejected the NBL on the grounds that it would add to a risky local environment and that it was therefore discriminatory. This, however, was not the case in Galveston. Residents’ experiences with, and continued reliance on, risk interventions championed by local trustees and trustee institutions have promoted a view of them as both trustworthy and necessary (at least among the civically engaged). Ironically, then, while the NBL could have been viewed as adding risk and uncertainty to an already threatening set of local conditions, those circumstances were instead often used by my informants to downplay the risks posed by an ultrasecure NBL. As I’ve shown, then, local civic opposition to UTMB’s biodefense ambitions never arose in Galveston because long-standing local civics and discourse—conventions, relation, and virtues—eased local concerns and promoted acceptance. Despite this, I want to emphasize again that support for UTMB’s biodefense lab was not a foregone conclusion—nor was opposition in Davis or Roxbury. Rather, support in Galveston was publicly negotiated (as was opposition in the other civic community contexts), and primarily reflected shared terms, beliefs, and commitments that were consistent with locally acknowledged and community-based civics and discourse. As with the other communities and cases, community responses emerged from how biodefense plans and associated institutions were viewed through the prism of local civics and discourse—and the politics associated with them—and therefore whether those plans were 190

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considered to dovetail or deviate from local civic experiences, expectations, and, with them, preferences. Those who supported Galveston’s biodefense ambitions believed that UTMB was sincerely trying to address societal risks and therefore focused their evaluations and justifications on common good claims. Extolling the virtues of progress, scientific and medical advances, and economic growth, residents understood the issue to be a moral duty that required their personal support, even sacrifice. In doing so, they were convinced that the biodefense lab would ultimately deliver benefits to them as both residents of the island and of the society at large. Providing a strong contrast with the other communities, in Galveston, those who civically engaged the issue and were aware of critics in Davis and Roxbury even went so far as to condemn them as ignorant of the facts, politically extreme, or selfish. references Bunnell, Joseph. 2001. “Killer Virus.” UTMB Quarterly 3 (1): 18–21. Burns, Chester R. 2003. Saving Lives, Training Caregivers, Making Discoveries: A Centennial History of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Austin: Texas State Historical Association. ———. 2013. “University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.” Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/moc01. Carstarphen, John. 2003. “Leery of UTMB’s New Biosafety Laboratory Bid.” Galveston County Daily News, January 19. Cartwright, Gary. 1991. Galveston: A History of the Island. New York: Atheneum. Frederickson, H. George, Curtis Wood, and Brett Logan. 2001. “How American City Governments Have Changed: The Evolution of the Model City Charter.” National Civic Review 90 (1): 3–18. Green, Nathan C. 2000. Story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Gretna, LA: Pelican. Hammond, Edward. 2003. “An Open Letter to the Leadership of the University of Texas Medical Branch Center for Biodefense.” Sunshine Project, Austin. Jackson-Hudson, Angela. 1998. “UT Gives Green Light to Viral Lab.” Galveston County Daily News, November 13. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McComb, David G. 1986. Galveston: A History. Austin: University of Texas Press. Messa, Christian. 2002. “A Charitable Purpose.” UTMB Quarterly 4 (1): 38–41. National League of Cities. 2013. Forms of Municipal Government. Washington, DC: National League of Cities. Noonoo, Jemimah. 2009. “Waves of Migrants Made Galveston into Texas’s Ellis Island.” Houston Chronicle, March 4. Reporter, Staff. 2004. “Chamber Roasts Mayor, Hands Out Awards.” Galveston County Daily News, February 6. 191

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Rice, Bradley R. 2013. “The Commission Form of City Government.” Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/moc01. Schladen, Marty. 1998a. “Residents Vocal About Proposed Lab: Crowd Voices Its Concerns to UTMB Officials in Public Hearing.” Galveston County Daily News, October 15. ———. 1998b. “UTMB to Make Pitch for High-Security Viral Lab.” Galveston County Daily News, August 8. Sealy, Edward Coyle. 1999. “The Galveston Wharves.” Handbook of Texas Online. http:// www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/etg01. Sibley, Marilyn M. 1999. “The Houston Ship Channel.” Handbook of Texas Online. http:// www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/rhh11. Thompson, Carter. 2002a. “Donor Program Woes Unleash Complex Emotions.” Galveston County Daily News, August 18. ———. 2002b. “UTMB Fights Release of Information.” Galveston County Daily News, November 15. ———. 2003a. “UTMB Named National Biocontainment Lab.” Galveston County Daily News, September 30. ———. 2003b. “UTMB Named Regional Research Center.” Galveston County Daily News, September 5. ———. 2004. “Feds Take Public Comment on UTMB Lab.” Galveston County Daily News, April 1. Tooms, Kathryn. 2003. “GISD Needs Better Buildings.” Galveston County Daily News, December 7. Weems, John Edward. 2013. “Galveston Hurricane of 1900.” Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/moc01. York, Jonathan. 2003. “Activist Opposes Creation of U of Texas System Research Lab.” Daily Texan, November 22.

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Conclusion The Civic Politics of Risk

i n c o m m u n i t y a t r i s k , I analyze the nature of risk perception, risk

management, and public risk disputes in the context of contemporary American civic and political life. I specifically explore local civic response to a new U.S. federal risk management agenda in three communities: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston. Each community was “at risk” for a new National Biocontainment Laboratory (NBL) and intensified biodefense research planned for university campuses in each location. I argue throughout this book that the widely varying local public responses to the risk of biological threats and their management reflected localized civics and discourse. My focus on local civics and discourse reveals the distinctive history that grounded civic conventions, ongoing political relations, and resonant citizen virtues that individually and together animated the local civic politics of risk in each case I investigated. Indeed, the variant civic logics I analyze in this book highlight the tensions that arise when communities and society in general confront potentially transformative interventions and economic developments that engage state, market, and civil societies where diverse cultural logics and values concerning social organization, exchange, and means of collective decision making—and therefore “governance expectations”—prevail. What was articulated as at risk in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston exposed distinctive conceptions and expectations concerning both what composed proper community governance and with it equally distinctive renditions of what constituted, and therefore how to best sequester, the common good from looming threats. These were revealed by and reflected in local claims and justifications for supporting and opposing local biodefense plans. In Galveston, local civics and discourse eased locals toward acceptance in the main because the university was considered a vital trustee whose efforts would enhance local well-being. By contrast, in Davis and Roxbury, local civics and discourse quickly turned initial 193

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ambivalence toward first concern and then open hostility. Residents and civic activists in these two communities questioned the authenticity of both university and federal claims about biodefense’s benefits, such as its ability to manage and obviate rather than produce new risks, be they material, such as a threat to one’s person, or moral, such as the biolab as militaristic and a part of the security state, in nature. Revelations about who would control the NBL, accidents that had occurred in biolabs on BUMC’s and UC Davis’s campuses, and connections to the DoD spurred further apprehension over the “true motives” behind federal and university plans. Residents in Davis and Roxbury therefore expressed concerns about both the prospective NBL planned for the nearby campus and the larger biodefense policy itself, as well as its institutional associations and affiliations. Many believed that both the NBL technology and policy violated civic expectations, value-commitments, and aspirations and therefore did not “fit” locally. Community at Risk offers a more complex and complete analysis of how risk perceptions, risk management, and public risk disputes are situated by local civic and political dynamics than the majority of the previous literature. Based on my findings, I argue that reducing public risk disputes to cognitive limitations (Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982), functionalist group structures (Kahneman 2011; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990), or general American polity (Kahan 2008; Kahan et al. 2006) simply misses too much. Each of these, while delivering a partial answer, fails to show and/or explain how concrete sociopolitical contexts involve collectively generated and resonant local civic pragmatics that shape public risk disputes. Through an analysis of such civic dynamics, Community at Risk provides a view of what founded varied responses to the same federal risk management plan in three different communities. Evidence from my study therefore sheds considerable light on a more general issue rarely taken up in the risk studies literatures: the contemporary civic politics of risk. As I show, even across communities at risk for the same policy and technology, justifications for opposition and support can and do vary widely. In Roxbury, it was “red politics” that emphasized issues of social justice, collective provision, and the unequal distribution of risk toward their 194

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community based on “positional concerns” of race and class. In Davis, it was “green politics” that emphasized a pastoral ideal, an entitlement to shared governance, and the perils associated with ideas like “progress,” “urbanity,” and “growth.” Finally, in Galveston, it was “blue politics” that emphasized that risk interventions such as biodefense were in the island’s best interest. This acceptance of local biodefense plans in Galveston further reflected greater comfort with a weak form of local elite-paternalism and technocracy associated with the proposed NBL and its promise of “progress.” In each local case, then, a prevailing civics and discourse helped to frame what was locally considered at stake and therefore what was (or was not) considered an acceptable risk. By exposing the basis for distinctive impressions and risk claims, Community at Risk has detailed how community-based civics and discourse can shape public risk disputes. Building on those scholars who have documented how people rely on collective political and cultural “repertoires,” I too found that risk perception and dispute must be accounted for at multiple levels of collective belonging and problem solving (see Eliasoph 1998; Etzioni 2004; Gamson 1992; Jasper 1996; Lamont 1992; Lamont and Thévenot 2000; Lichterman 1996, 2005; Moody and Thévenot 2000; Perrin 2006; Putnam 2001). My informants did not simply perceive the world and its risks by way of their individual thoughts and experiences, or through singular affiliations and memberships. Rather, in explaining themselves they frequently borrowed from cultural models rooted in their local civic domain, while also making reference to larger issues and trends to contextualize the setting within which the proposed biodefense plan was situated. They regularly relied on civic localisms to tease out and understand, persuade, petition, and dispute others who were co-located with them in their community’s civic domain. As empirical Chapters 3 to 5 detail, civic dynamics therefore helped explain why and how each of the three communities responded to the same federal risk management plan. Only a handful of studies have pursued comparative study of technical controversies and risk disputes of this kind (Aldrich 2008; Jasanoff 2005; Jasper 1990; McAdam and Boudet 2012; Rucht 1990, 1995; Sherman 2011; Walsh, Warland, and Smith 1997). Even fewer yet have sought to expose the “situated” nature of lo195

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cal civic and community response to the risks posed by new technologies, toxins, environmental trends, and sitting proposals (Beamish 2001; Boholm 2003; Norgaard 2011; Sjoberg 1998; Wynne 1982, 1983, 1996). None have done so through both intensive field research and multiple case comparison as I have sought to do in Community at Risk. By highlighting the influence that local civic politics played in acceptance and rejection of biodefense plans, I show how risk is collectively experienced and perceived at the local level and furthermore how attempts to manage risk require greater attention to the civic contexts where public engagement often proceeds and is carried out. Attention to meso-level civic dynamics and the local politics of risk is crucial to understanding contemporary risk disputes in what is now a risk society. The risk disputes that ensued over biodefense plans provided a unique opportunity to explore and compare the civic and political processes involved in local community-based risk assessment, acceptance, and resistance, as well as how risk is managed by the state in the twenty-first century. By exposing the distinctive basis for local political mobilization, as well as assent, Community at Risk provides a view of what lies behind the politics of risk generally and why risk disputes are an endemic aspect of present-day community life in America. At this point, it is time to rehash and clarify the empirical and theoretical contributions that Community at Risk has sought to make. I therefore begin with a brief recounting of my comparative treatment of each civic-community case and the specific contributions Community at Risk makes to risk and community studies literatures through the analysis. I end with how Community at Risk pushes toward a deeper understanding of risk society at the local, meso-level via its focus on and analysis of civic political dynamics. c om pa r i n g t h e c i v ic p ol i t ic s of r isk : gr e e n, r ed, a n d blu e The biodefense initiative and the communities I investigated provided an excellent opportunity to compare civic political dynamics and how they shape local impressions and discussions of risk. Three civic domains en-

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gaged in intensive dialogue regarding the same risk management policy and new technology (an ultrasecure National Biocontainment Laboratory) at a time of extreme uncertainty and national threat (2001–2009). The material risks presented by the NBL technology and the diseases stored inside, such as the chance of accident or sabotage; the risk management agenda and the policy and plans it laid out; and the national political context within which it was being pursued were constants across the community cases I investigated. What is more, as articulated in Chapter 2, the risk communication strategies pursued by the three universities in each locale were very similar as well. However, local justifications for support and opposition, and therefore civic response, varied widely. Rare are field studies where the circumstances are akin to a naturally occurring experiment and therefore supply this kind of comparative leverage. It is these comparative findings and the local civic distinctions and their implications to which I now turn. To get at what risk and the efforts to manage it meant in each community, I compared the public actions and dialogue that ensued in each over biodefense plans. In each civic context, the public evaluative criteria and claims did reflect those general political-cultural ideals one might expect in the United States, including the government’s responsibility to protect the public from risks like bioterrorism and disease, democratic rule, individual rights, and proper due process. Yet, civic responses to biodefense plans also involved distinctive local expectations reflective of local social and political history and social commitments and causes native to each community and place. The legacy of these uniquely shaped what was considered “at stake” with biodefense plans in each community. I have specifically explained this variation in response through the variant civic conventions, ongoing civic relations, and distinctive civic virtues that were characteristic of local claims making. Together, civic-centered conventions, relations, and virtues clustered in each locale, manifesting as civics and discourse native to each place. The local civics and discourse provided residents an a priori and resonant narrative and set of cultural resources around which they could evaluate, publicly engage, and dispute those plans in the context of their community’s civic domain. The civics

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and discourse expressed expectations concerning proper governance as well as what constituted the common good locally. (See Table 2.1.) Civic conventions were conveyed via reference to local civic standards regarding the exercise of authority, rights and obligations of citizenship, and citizen involvement in community affairs. They were often discussed in term of the historical character, temperament, and traditions of the community in question. Civic relations reflected locally politicized and competitive, even rivalrous, field-like civic domains. Civic relations therefore shaped local impressions insofar as relations among residents and trustee institutions came to the biodefense issue with meaning; those that engaged the issue interpreted and attributed intention to those with whom they communicated because most of them were already acquainted with one another from prior interactions and experiences. Trustee institutions, such as universities and/or federal, state, and city governments, were locally known entities with reputations that had been established long before biodefense plans were announced in 2003. Responses to local biodefense plans were thus shaped by role expectations, presumed intentions, local positional distinctions, and past conflicts from which expectations regarding intention and trustworthiness emerged. In all three communities, civic virtues were also frequently levied as moral critique or praise. Those opposed to the biolabs, for example, described biodefense and the local university’s desire to host an NBL as militaristic, authoritarian, and unjust. Those supporting them often claimed biodefense and the proposed NBL as signs of progress, a moral duty that would enhance domestic and world health, and a plan one must support for the good of all. The invocation of civic virtues by the politically engaged were also largely expressed as nonnegotiable moral absolutes that frequently included references to what was just or right and therefore were conveyed as an obligation and duty to support. Claims to such virtues held special gravity in the local civic dialogue and debate with others outside the claims maker, including adversaries. They therefore represented locally effective means of publicly justifying the “rightness” of one’s claims and cause in terms that resonated within the local civic domain. My case studies therefore

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demonstrate both the universalism associated with such moral justifications (Jasper 1996; Jasper and Nelkin 1992; Jonsen and Toulmin 1988; Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye 2000) as well as that local civics and discourse are reflective of experiences, relations, material conditions, and past issues and outcomes specific to a given community. The distinctive civic domains and civic discourses I investigated also shed considerable light on why in the post-2001 environment and a time of high national insecurity, localized community reactions to biodefense plans varied so greatly in the cases I studied. My comparative study exposes a political situation and dynamic increasingly common in the contemporary U.S. context, yet still relatively understudied: the locally situated and civically founded politics of risk. As analyzed in Chapter 3, a “home rule civics and discourse” prevailed in Davis that featured political symbols, causes, and relations that focused on past community-building efforts and struggles in town, strongly held attitudes regarding direct participation in “shared governance,” and moral-commitments to a particular kind of “pastoral domesticity.” These dominated a civic dialogue that quickly turned toward heated risk dispute over the University of California–Davis’s (UCD) biodefense ambitions. Many in Davis considered biodefense to be at odds with local concerns, priorities, and community aspirations. Davis residents felt strongly entitled to share in the governance of their town, including what the university planned for its campus. This has historically resulted, on occasion, with Davis residents butting heads with trustee institutions such as the state and federal government, as well as with UCD. They have also collided with neighboring communities, because civic partisans in Davis have vigorously opposed nearby developments that they consider threatening to their civic priorities. Political engagement in Davis reflects a “green politics” committed to decentralized governance and civic control, slow urban growth, environmental protection, and peace-based antimilitarism. Local support of these and related concerns is frequently justified in terms of securing local well-being, enhancing domestic life for families, protecting the safety and security of children, and providing a moral example to the rest of the

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country. While frequently collapsed in political studies, Davis’s “green politics” are quite different from “red” and “blue” politics characteristic of Roxbury and Galveston. These and related concerns framed what was at stake when UCD announced its plans to pursue federal NBL funds in 2003. The material and moral well-being of Davis was at stake, as was resident control of local governance. Indeed, many of my respondents explained that they had immigrated to Davis and had chosen to stay because it was a “safe and secure place.” They had neighbors they could trust. Local politics, while highly charged, was mainly focused on the right issues and concerns. And while they had their complaints regarding the material environment— air and water quality, for example—they thought that Davis was a very healthy place to raise a family. UCD’s proposition to bring an ultrasecure biodefense laboratory to town was initially received with a good deal of ambivalence. However, once UCD’s efforts were associated with past procurement improprieties and false statements, as well as revelations regarding the prospective laboratory’s association with trustee institutions freighted with moral concerns (i.e., the Department of Defense and “militarism”), biodefense became a serious local concern. As I argued in Chapter 3, civic politics in Davis echoes the pastoral ethos of the mid-twentieth century urban-to-suburban migrations, while also reflecting post-1970s civic relations and expectations forged through years of civic engagement and local efforts at community building. The result in Davis is a cluster of relations, conventions, and virtues that reflect a progressive-protectionism and what I have termed a “home rule” civics and discourse that inform and shape local politics and public debate on issues from school funding and downtown business development to UC Davis’s ambitious biodefense plans. Indeed, Davis’s civic domain and the conventions, relations, and virtues associated with it have fomented a civic political-culture that strongly contrasts with many of its regional neighbors. Neighboring critics have come to call it (pejoratively) “the Republic of Davis” for its opposition to the development trajectories, interests, and ways of life embraced by bordering communities. Just below the surface of Davis’s home rule sentiments and 200

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outside labels like these were also issues of class and race. In the context of the biodefense debate, these took form in sardonic acknowledgment by many of my informants of Davis’s “privilege,” overwhelming “homogeneity,” and “bland” character (i.e., middle-class, highly educated, and majority white population) in contrast to the poverty, high crime rates, and “highway-town aesthetics” of surrounding towns and cities. Home rule civics has also taken form in Davis in civic mobilizations to stop changes and trends that are deemed to threaten the local way of life. Again, these are typically framed in terms that echo pastoral aesthetics and concerns and “green” politics. For those opposed to the NBL, biodefense undermined their sense of a secure community they controlled, where domestic life and well-being was insulated from the social, cultural, and material risks associated with the modern, urban, environmentally stressed, and militaristic society that surrounded them. (See Table 2.1.) In Roxbury, as detailed in Chapter 4, what I term a “direct action” civics and discourse shaped not only the struggle over biodefense plans with Boston University Medical College and the city of Boston, but also impressions and relations among the metro-wide Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition. The focal points for civics and discourse in Roxbury were issues of race, class, and equity stemming from local histories of de facto segregation, white flight, municipal neglect, and continuing disenfranchisement and disrespect of the neighborhood’s minority residents. Positional relations and impressions like these, in which whites and white institutions were viewed suspiciously, heavily influenced response to BUMC’s biodefense plans. The direct action civics and discourse expressed in Roxbury therefore echoed extant civic and political relations, local civic conventions of thought and practice, and resonant civic virtues—all of which were forged in the crucible of Roxbury’s ongoing social and political history. Specifically, the civically engaged foregrounded the positional relationship that Roxbury and its residents—who are primarily poor people of color—have had with the city of Boston and the wealthier, whiter residents and civic groups that populate the city and its suburbs. Over the years, Roxbury residents have engaged in local disputes over civil rights and civic enfranchisement, schooling desegregation, economic 201

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opportunity, and, more recently (and increasingly), urban development, gentrification, and environmental justice. They have led mobilizations against the continued encroachment into their neighborhood of both commercial enterprises that do not benefit them and the city’s noxious, riskladen infrastructure(s) (Faber, Loh, and Jennings 2002; Formisano 1991; King 1981; Loh et al. 2002; Medoff and Sklar 1994). The civic relations that have resulted from Roxbury’s interactions with the rest of the metro area—including the city of Boston, the state, the local universities, and the plentiful nonprofit organizations and social movement groups that populate it—were repeatedly mentioned in my interviews. Both political and positional relations were frequently used by Roxbury residents to interpret what was at stake, as well as to petition against BUMC’s local biodefense ambitions. Along with such positionally informed civic relations, those that engaged biodefense adhered to civic conventions that likewise shaped their impressions of what was at stake. That is, local expectations concerning how trustees did and did not exercise what were locally considered their responsibilities also influenced how Roxbury’s residents understood biodefense plans. Specifically, Roxbury residents expressed a set of conventionalized civic concerns, such as their disenfranchisement and the frequent race- and class-based “disrespect” they experienced at the hands of city trustees. “Institutional recreancy”—the failure of trustee institutions to carry out their responsibilities with the degree of vigor necessary to warrant social trust (Freudenburg 1993, 2001)—was a fairly common claim among my informants. City institutions, according to my informants, often made promises that were rarely fulfilled. To a great degree, then, Roxbury residents engaged local politics expecting to confront authority and act directly to stop what they believed was a risky and unfair plan for their neighborhood. What is more, their comments also revealed that they viewed their allies in the coalition— mostly activists from “outside Boston”—with suspicion, given their past experience with groups from outside Roxbury and Boston’s southernmost neighborhoods. While assistance from these outside activists was welcomed, residents remained suspicious of their dependability and deference to local people, causes, and concerns.

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Adding to the high level of relational skepticism to “outsiders” was a subtle yet significant difference in how local civics were conceived and performed by those from Roxbury when compared to the other communities I studied. Echoing the religious and civil rights leaders of previous decades and disputes, the outspoken leader of the Roxbury group was unapologetic in her direct, aggressive style of political engagement and was supported in it by those in her immediate circle. She, the Roxbury group, and other residents from Roxbury relied on public denunciation and claims of race- and class-based injustice to apply pressure and gain political leverage. Roxbury activists justified their mobilization with reference to “the neighborhood,” “the community,” “our people,” “black people,” “people of color,” “poor people,” and “white institutions.” In brief, theirs was a communal fight for civic recognition and collective provision and against the continued association of their neighborhood with “risky” developments. Finally, the moral basis and civic virtues to which activists laid claim also set Roxbury apart from the other community cases in this study. The debate was centered on issues of how risk and benefit were distributed in the city generally and Roxbury specifically. As such, residents invoked “red” civic virtues and politics focused on risk distribution and human rights, civic enfranchisement, and social and economic justice for their community. In a phrase, they focused on collective provision. Therefore, outside of civic conventions and the civic relations Roxbury had to other Bostonian trustee institutions, individuals, and civic groups, residents’ claims in the risk dispute also exposed local civic virtues that focused on issues of social and racial justice, in-group loyalty, political recognition, respect, and ultimately the enfranchisement of people like themselves: poor, people of color, and living in the inner city. (See Table 2.1.) Finally, as covered in Chapter 5, in Galveston, a managed civics and discourse prevailed wherein the civically engaged mostly downplayed the risks posed by an NBL and, instead, emphasized its possible contributions to their island’s, and even the nation’s and world’s, “progress.” Galveston residents embraced a modernist faith in the power of humans (with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology, and the economy) to improve their

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society. Again, this strongly contrasts with the civics expressed in Davis and Roxbury, where faith in progress was tempered by its association with unwanted risks (Davis) and the unequal distribution of risk (Roxbury). In Galveston, politics took form in local hopes for increased economic prosperity and in general claims supporting scientific and medical “advances” in biodefense. The focal points for Galveston’s managed civics and discourse were the important roles that local elites and trustee institutions have played and continue to play in community affairs, the consistent relativizing of risk, and the emphasis placed on progress. A key distinction in Galveston is the notion of “local” as it relates to civic affairs. As I explained in Chapter 5, less than a year after Galveston residents had supported UTMB’s plan to build an NBL in the city, many of those same residents mobilized against British Petroleum’s (BP) plan to build an LNG transfer station. While these positions might seem contradictory from an outsider’s perspective (as both involve hazardous materials and the strong possibility of health-related disasters and therefore high risks), they are in fact consistent with Galveston politics regarding local versus “outsider” institutions. Residents considered UTMB an important island trustee that would protect local interests. In contrast, residents considered BP an outsider that had engaged in secretive dealings with the Port Authority, a development proposal that conflicted with local civic aspirations, and one that was associated with disasters from the past (1947) and present (2005) in the region. Residents therefore interpreted UTMB’s biodefense plans as a positive local development. The island’s leading institution was fulfilling local expectations: improving human health and well-being, promoting scientific progress, reducing local health risks, and growing as an institutional presence on the island. At root, biodefense and a prospective NBL were justified. What is more, the risks it might pose were routinely downplayed and relativized in my interviews, given the “real” risks the island routinely confronted. And while some did express discomfort with an operational NBL on a barrier island known for hurricanes, once they had received assurances from UTMB that they had nothing to be concerned about, that the NBL would be failsafe and would achieve great things, civic support was virtually unanimous. 204

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In contrast to the red politics of Roxbury and the green politics of Davis, Galveston residents advocated what might be termed a “blue politics” that valorized modernizing institutions like science, medicine, and capitalism for their ability to secure a better future and ultimately improve the human condition. Because of this, Galveston residents focused on the opportunities represented in UTMB’s biodefense initiative and downplayed the risks associated with it in the other civic domains and community contexts. What is more, my Galveston informants also regularly described progress as a moral duty and argued that it was their civic obligation to support such an effort to manage risks to collective well-being and improve the human condition. To do otherwise would be selfish and would represent a shirking of one’s civic responsibility. (See Table 2.1.) More important, Galveston’s support for biodefense was not an instance of naiveté, bias, or irrationality, any more than Davis’s and Roxbury’s opposition to it were. Those from Galveston were aware, as were those from the other communities, of outside critiques and support raised in the other community cases I studied. For example, in Galveston, the risks associated with accidents, secret military research, and acts of sabotage or terrorism at the prospective NBL were all trivialized as unthreatening, untrue, or unimportant. My informants from Galveston invariably relativized the risk posed by the prospective NBL by comparing it to the “real risks” they and others on the island confronted, given its history of hurricanes, diseases, and industrial disasters. These catastrophes are a constant reminder of what locals considered “really” dangerous and in need of risk management. Again, as an informant in Chapter 5 said, “I support the lab; life is a gamble, you know. . . . Galveston, we really live through disasters. . . . Hurricanes come and go . . . when you live on the coast, you’re living dangerously.” While this might have promoted general risk aversion, it did not, because UTMB’s biodefense plans were deemed an acceptable risk, while other plans and the risks associated with them, like BP’s attempt to install a liquid natural gas terminal, were roundly rejected as too risky. The answer, I found, lies in Galveston’s local civics and discourse. In tracking local civic response to biodefense plans in the three communities, then, I found that individual cognitive-psychological biases, 205

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functional group memberships and structures, and established political ideology and/or general American polity inadequately explained what was unfolding in each case I explored (cf. Dake 1991; Kahan 2008, 2012; Specter 2009; Sunstein 2002, 2005). Each civic domain involved a distinctive local “political field” and therefore array of political actors, political relations, and actions. These field-like relations exposed and highlighted the civically engaged as “related” but not necessarily in agreement or part of the same in-group. Indeed, the civically engaged were often in competition with one another, even while co-participating in causes and occupying the same local civic domain. At the extreme, cognitive and small-group explanations of local civic response are too reductive to explain the social and political dynamics of risk perception and dispute. On the one hand, they reduce collective response to risks to individual cognitive shortcomings unrepresentative of the collective and political nature of interpretation in public risk disputes. On the other hand, they overstate the power of group membership and social boundaries and regulations to functionally structure individual thought and action. In this regard, the civic domains I studied did not neatly fit with these conventional explanations of public risk dispute. They were not quasi-trading floors populated by isolated, self-seeking individuals whose calculations are biased by faulty cognitive models nor reflective of singular in-group dynamics that produce a kind of culturally scripted “groupthink” that inherently biases local risk perceptions and responses. Broad national American polity and political-cultural categories—such as political ideologies, political party identification, or political identities like “conservative” and “liberal”—were also unable to adequately explain these three sites. Indeed, the differences I observed within allied groups were often as great as between adversaries. For instance, in Roxbury, strong differences and disagreements characterized the coalition of activists who opposed biodefense. Yet, while important differences existed, claims and arguments were channeled in similar directions as residents and trustee institutions shared the same civic domain. As such, they acknowledged through use a similar civics and discourse. The convergence of local claims making therefore reflected their loose association and co-membership in the local political field. Debates focused on 206

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control over local resource endowments and the direction of local community development. In all three sites, activists and trustee institutions also seemed to agree that even the less politically engaged residents (the local “general public”) needed convincing, as they too were stakeholders. Therefore those that engaged the biodefense issue tended to rely on locally acknowledged and resonant claims and justifications whose origin and local influence could neither be reduced to one group or individual nor adequately explained via reference to general American polity and political-cultural categories. Furthermore, all three communities are generally considered “liberal” in their regional contexts based on their demographics, center-left politics, and past civic causes. For instance, environmental risk was a shared concern across all three. Yet, “liberalness” could not fully explain local civic dynamics insofar as expectations regarding “social welfare” took very different forms in each locale. In Davis, for example, there have long been civic-political struggles between self-described “progressives” and “establishment democrats”—both of whom describe themselves as “liberals”—over the shape and type of local growth. What is more, in my analysis of civic politics, I found that the term politically liberal (in the context of U.S. national politics) had a different definition in each community. Both within and between the community cases, then, the variation among civically engaged individuals, civic groups, and macro-American political categories (i.e., liberal/conservative) was great enough to require another form of analysis. In short, the civic pragmatics of each community did not neatly cohere with reductionist psychological or small-group arguments or with macro-political labels like liberal and conservative, because the qualities of each could be found in all three. The answers I found lay in meso-level civic dynamics, which provided residents with a locally resonant set of community-centered civic pragmatics. Residents in all three locales relied on shared experiences and local symbologies to make sense of what the university and federal government were proposing for them. The communities differed from one another, however, in their variant expectations and entitlements regarding governance convention, political relations (and rivalries), and community centered value-commitments. I therefore show how such established and 207

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distinctive civics and discourse shaped understanding, political dialogue, and public engagement concerning biodefense plans, which ultimately set the terms for the local dialogue and from it local risk disputes in two of the three communities I studied. As I show, understanding local response to “risky” proposals requires analysis squarely focused on the civic terms and conditions for local governance and political engagement. I also argue that in seeking to manage risks, trustee institutions should seek to understand local civics and discourse as reflecting much more than “technical assessments” of risk afford them, such as reflected in the identification, measurement, characterization, and evaluation of various technologies and hazards (Crouch and Wilson 1982; Heimer 1985; Lowrance 1976; Petak and Atkisson 1982; Shrader-Frechette 1985, 1991; Starr 1969, 1985). The overriding focus of such expert-driven assessment and analysis has been the estimation of probabilities, including mortality and morbidity rates and economic gains and losses (Petak and Atkisson 1982). These are, of course, important calculations, and they were also part of the risk disputes in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston. Yet, tensions between such “technocratic” and “civic” aspects of biodefense plans—that is, the technical, merit-based, and authoritarian facets of technocratic decision making on the one hand, and the constitutional/due process, participatory, and collective aspects of civics on the other—also supplied the pretext for initial concern in both Roxbury and Davis. In all three community contexts, “technical assessments” of the risks associated with what biodefense sought to manage—bioterrorism, lethal diseases, global pandemics—as well as risks associated with the plans themselves—accidents, acts of sabotage, and potential targets—were used to support and oppose the local agenda, casting doubt on the effectiveness of simply stating “the facts” as a firm basis for dispute resolution. In these locations, facts were emphasized based on their coherence with professional, local, and personal views of what was considered at stake. In this regard, the bases for risk dispute are almost always deeper than one group’s facts and another’s fictions but instead turn on locally acknowledged “matters of concern” (Latour 2004). In seeking to explain such local matters of concern and express the civic aspects of risk, I borrowed from research focused on civic and 208

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political-culture, comparative politics, and community studies. While these literatures are of obvious importance to understanding collective response to risk and its management, they have yet to be widely engaged by risk studies scholars. Nor have they addressed risk as a prime basis for citizen and civic mobilization. Scholars working in these varied areas have shown how social and cultural environments shape individual and collective perceptions, and therefore civic expectations and behaviors. To understand the politics of risk and risk disputes, one must consider factors common to it: racial, class, and gender identities (Peña 2005; Pulido and Peña 1998; Schlosberg and Oxford University Press 2007; Sze and London 2008); citizenship, civic relations, and public sphere dynamics (Calhoun 1992; Fraser 1990; Habermas 1975, 1991; Hauser 1998); the forms of capital—social, cultural, symbolic, economic—that distinguish membership in groups and classes (Bourdieu 1984, 1990; Lamont 1992; Lamont et al. 1996); the specific characteristics of the arguments and styles of political engagement (Gamson 1992; Jasper 1996; Lichterman 1996; Moody and Thévenot 2000; Perrin 2006); and the impact of past political engagements and mobilizations—“contentious politics”—on contemporary issues (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Sherman 2011). Unlike many risk perception and response studies, then, Community at Risk seeks to redirect focus onto the public and civic aspects of risk disputes instead of individual cognition or macro-political elements. By highlighting the public square dimensions of dialogue and debate, I have sought to clarify how local civic politics in three contemporary American communities influenced the terms and conditions for discussion of a “risky” development: the federal government’s new biodefense agenda. I have explored and exposed how civic partisans, engaged in local disputes over the biodefense initiative, deploy civically founded political-cultural repertoires to make sense of, support, and oppose trustee institutions and their risk management plans. In a phrase, I have sought to provide deeper understanding of the contemporary civic politics of risk. Indeed, through comparative treatment of local civics and discourse in Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, I found that the evaluative criteria and claims used reflected the distinctive local histories of social and political relations and values that shaped individual and collective understanding. 209

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Local civics and discourse did so by providing civic disputants with homegrown and actionable lessons, tools, tactics, rhetoric, and political “repertoires” (Tilly 1995). Localized civics and discourse therefore situated both micro- and macro-concerns, giving them concrete meso-level pragmatics. Civic pragmatics were reflected in local impressions of the risks and benefits that biodefense plans represented and how those risks and ­benefits were locally expressed in public conversation. These were linked to civically situated impressions of authority, its exercise, and due process; of ongoing political relations, causes, and rivalries; and of rights, social obligations, and moral commitments. The fulfillment or violation of such local civic principles promoted or eroded confidence in the trustee institutions and sponsors of biodefense plans, which shaped how residents perceived the overall “riskiness” of the proposed policy-technology. As a political-cultural force, local civics and discourse therefore indelibly shaped the local politics of risk. My community cases therefore highlight the role of “soft power” as it played a key part in shaping public dialogue regarding risk in each of the three cases and in the risk disputes that ensued in two of them (Nye 2004). Across Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, community-centered civics and discourse resonated with, attracted, and co-opted residents (Selz­nick 1980). That is, local response mostly reflected cultural suasion, not coercion, threats, or visceral fears. This ability to persuade further reflected locally established a priori political-culture that helped to shape residents’ impressions of the biodefense proposal, those who were sponsoring and supporting it, and those who were questioning its worth. This was bounded rationality insofar as what was and was not deemed risky were very much a reflection of local conventions of thought and practice, known political relations and rivalries, and resonant civic virtues and value-commitments. The conventions, relations, and virtues I document were themselves the legacy of local institutionalization processes wherein successive participants in local issues, causes, and public debate had developed common points of reference, affiliations and rivalries, and shared outlooks and predictable disagreements. These in turn helped to shape residents’ opinions. Community at Risk therefore supplies a critique of a good many risk perception studies, particularly research efforts to find the “cause” for 210

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public misperception and “risk panic”—which, of course, assumes that the public is already wrong, illogical, and less intelligent than the objective, neutral, and technologically sophisticated state, its surrogates, and the technocrats who administrate these and related trustee institutions (cf. Mazur 2004; Sunstein 2002, 2007; Wildavsky 1988). As I have shown, risk as an experience and perception—especially at the collective level—is neither singular nor object-specific but rather multiple and object-associative. Put another way, in the civic contexts I investigated, interpretations of “what was at risk” (i.e., the stakes) were not motivated by a singularly focused “fear” of a new ultrasecure biolab, the threat of an accident, or the risk of an act of sabotage or terrorism. Rather, such interpretations were shaped by a heterogeneous collection of risks and opportunities in each locale. One key example of the influence that local civics and discourse had in shaping impressions is illustrative. While a majority of my informants across the three communities claimed to know little or nothing about biodefense plans prior to university pronouncements and also claimed they were initially ambivalent about the NBL, that ambivalence quickly turned into either support or opposition. In Galveston, local civics and discourse eased local concerns and helped cement residence acceptance of the biolab and associated research agenda (although not by everyone). In Davis and Roxbury, by contrast, the prevailing civics and discourse facilitated skepticism and public opposition to the local university’s biodefense agenda. Again, not everyone opposed biodefense plans in either locale, but here, too, the assumed consensus was skepticism and discomfort with those plans and the trustee institutions responsible for them. conclusion As developed in the Introduction, Community at Risk was in part motivated by a desire to address a series of important questions regarding the public and its response to risk and efforts to manage it. I was dissatisfied with explanations of public response that primarily reduced it to cognitive limitations, strong functionalist in-group structures, or general American polity, essentially placing all the blame on the public for engaging in “risk panic.” I wanted to know why public reactions to the federal g­ overnment’s 211

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biodefense plans were so varied at a time of collective anxiety and perceived national vulnerability, how societal trustees like the federal government and its surrogates pursued ambitious risk management plans, and how trustee strategies and risk management plans were related to public response. The answers reflected the local civics and discourse I observed in all three cases. In each community, the legacy of local social and political history, the relationships among the politically active, and the virtues and value-commitments that resonated locally were all used to make sense of and respond to biodefense plans. These findings led to more questions about how local civic politics shaped both local impressions of biodefense and the claims made by local civic partisans. I wanted to know what roles the ongoing social and political struggles, issues, and political rivalries played in the local reception of biodefense plans and what, if any, connections existed between a priori governance expectations and risk acceptability and/or dispute. I discovered that “governance” is not a singular expectation but a collection of expectations linked to distinctive versions of the common good and how it is best secured. Governance involves multiple and interrelated aspects, including both the “soft,” social, political, and culturally founded structures, processes, and beliefs associated with acts of collective decision making (and their perceived violation) and the “hard,” formal, and state-founded laws; due process rules; policies; and bureaucracies of government that are often associated with the planning, procuring, and establishment of risk management plans. Community at Risk therefore complicates conventional explanations of risk dispute, which often insist that the public and the individuals that oppose the state, industry, and their surrogates are simply misperceiving objective risks and that through proper education would calculate more accurately and objectively (and therefore support whatever it is they are resisting). I have shown that collective risk perception is simply more complex than this. Community at Risk illustrates that many contemporary arguments like this gloss over critical and nuanced aspects of public risk disputes such as attributes of the civic and political contexts, especially locally situated governmental expectations that animate public understanding, political engagement, and conflict over new plans and technologies. By ignoring 212

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the civic and discursive aspects of public risk disputes, explanations that emphasize cognitive shortcomings, cultural bias, and general American polity fail to acknowledge the tensions between governance institutions and civically founded expectations on the one hand and the technocratic, even authoritarian tendencies often associated with ever-increasing risk and its technical management on the other hand (Beck 1996; Jasanoff 2005). Again, this is not a triviality: the legitimacy of state power in the United States—from the local to the national—in great measure reflects the state as a trustee’s dual capacity to both authoritatively intervene in “external risks” to public security and ensure that democratic institutions, due process, and individual rights are acknowledged and maintained (Habermas 1975). In the United States, a growing number of citizens have come to doubt the veracity of claims to failsafe plans that the government and its trustee institutions and surrogates promise when they pursue plans that claim to protect the public safety or to promote general prosperity. By focusing on the role of civics and discourse and naming the elements consistently invoked to interpret and therefore understand the stakes across these cases, I have sought to open up civics to risk studies, encouraging scholars of civic and political culture, comparative politics, and community studies to engage with risk. Community at Risk builds on what we know while opening up the investigation of a phenomenon that currently defines our age: the politics of risk. By comparing political engagement and expression across these communities, Community at Risk reveals the important roles that local civic contexts and associated political dynamics play in both perceptions of “what is at risk” as well as in related evaluations of plans to manage it. As I have argued, in each civic community case a different civics and discourse was used to justify support of or opposition to biodefense plans. Each further reflected a distinctive, civically founded cultural logic that both enabled and constrained public expression: in Davis, this was a home rule civics that reflected pastoral idealism and a kind of antiestablishment protectionism; in Roxbury, this was a direct action civics founded in racial politics, positionality, and a deep sense of injustice; and in Galveston, this was a managed civics and resounding faith in human progress as reflected in science, medicine, and economics. 213

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By highlighting the influence that local civic politics played in acceptance and rejection of a federal biodefense plan, Community at Risk therefore shows how risk was collectively experienced and perceived at the local level. The risk disputes that ensued over biodefense plans provide a unique opportunity to explore the civic and political processes involved in local community-based risk assessment, acceptance, and resistance, as well as how risk is managed by the state and its surrogates in the twentyfirst century. Attention to meso-level civic dynamics and the local politics of risk is crucial to understanding many contemporary risk disputes in what is now assuredly a risk society. Distinctive civic domains and accompanying civics and discourses explain why in a time when the nation’s anxiety over terrorism and bio­ security had risen dramatically, localized reactions to federal biodefense plans were so varied. By exposing the distinctive local basis for political mobilization as well as assent, Community at Risk provides a view of what lies behind the politics of risk at the local level and why risk disputes are an endemic aspect of present-day community life in America. references Aldrich, Daniel P. 2008. Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Beamish, Thomas D. 2001. “Environmental Threat and Institutional Betrayal: Lay Public Perceptions of Risk in the San Luis Obispo County Oil Spill.” Organization and Environment 14 (1): 5–33. Beck, Ulrich. 1996. “World Risk Society as Cosmopolitian Society? Ecological Questions in a Framework of Manufactured Uncertainties.” Theory, Culture and Society 13 (1): 2–32. Boholm, Asa A. 2003. “Situated Risk: An Introduction.” Ethnos 68 (2): 157–158. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1992. Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, Habermas, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Crouch, E. A. C., and R. Wilson. 1982. Risk/Benefit Analysis. Cambridge: Ballinger. Dake, Karl. 1991. “Orienting Dispositions in the Perception of Risk: An Analysis of Contemporary Worldviews and Cultural Biases.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 22 (61): 61–82. Eliasoph, Nina. 1998. Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Etzioni, Amitai. 2004. The Common Good. Cambridge: Polity.

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———. 1995. “The Impact of Anti-Nuclear Power Movements in International Comparison.” In Resistance to NewTechnology: Nuclear Power, Information Technology, Biotechnology, edited by Martin Bauer, 277–292. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schlosberg, David. 2007. Defining Environmental Justice. Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Selznick, Philip. 1980. TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study of Politics and Organization. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sherman, Daniel J. 2011. Not Here, Not There, Not Anywhere: Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste. Washington, DC: RFF Press. Shrader-Frechette, Kristin S. 1985. Risk Analysis and Scientific Method: Methodological and Ethical Problems with Evaluating Societal Hazards. Dordrecht: Reidel. ———. 1991. Risk and Rationality: Philosophical Foundations for Populist Reforms. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sjoberg, Lennart. 1998. “World Views, Political Attitudes, and Risk Perceptions.” Risk: Health, Safety, and Environment 9:137–152. Specter, Michael. 2009. Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. New York: Penguin. Starr, Chauncy. 1969. “Social Benefit Versus Technological Risk.” Science 165:1232. ———. 1985. “Risk Management, Assessment, and Acceptability.” Risk Analysis 5:97–102. Sunstein, Cass R. 2002. Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Worst-Case Scenarios. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sze, Julie, and Jonathan London. 2008. “Environmental Justice at the Crossroads.” Sociology Compass 2 (4): 1331–1354. Thévenot, Laurent, Michael Moody, and Claudette Lafaye. 2000. “Forms of Valuing Nature: Arguments and Modes of Justification in French and American Environmental Disputes.” In Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States, edited by Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, 222–272. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, Michael, Richard J. Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1990. Cultural Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview. Tilly, Charles.. 1995. “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britian, 1758–1834.” In Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, edited by Mark Traugott, 15–42. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Walsh, Edward J., Rex Warland, and Clayton D. Smith. 1997. Don’t Burn It Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators. University Park: Penn State University Press. Wildavsky, Aaron B. 1988. Searching for Safety. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Wynne, Brian. 1982. Rationality and Ritual: The Windscale Inquiry and Nuclear Decisions in Britain. Chalfont St. Giles, UK: British Society for the History of Science. ———. 1983. “Redefining the Issue of Risk and Public Acceptance: The Social Viability of Technology.” Futures 15 (1): 13–32. ———. 1996. “May the Sheep Safely Graze? A Reflexive View of the Expert-Lay Knowledge Divide.” In Risk, Environment, and Modernity, edited by Bronislaw Szerszynski, Scott Lash, and Brian Wynne, 44–82. London: Sage.

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m y r e s e a r c h for Community at Risk began with my participation as

a National Science Foundation fellow in the Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Program. Part of the fellowship funding agreement was that fellows would develop a study relevant to our areas of interest and the NSF program’s mission: improved hazards research, planning, and response. Having just completed an industrial history of Southern California’s petroleum industry1 and a book on a massive oil spill there, I was very interested in public response to risk, risk management, and from them the shape and basis for public risk disputes. I was especially keen to better understand how local social and political dynamics shaped understandings of risk and efforts to manage it (Beamish 2002). In my earlier efforts, I had found community understanding and response to reflect an amalgam of social and political aspects: ongoing political rivalries and relations, local governance expectations and political conventions, and strongly held value commitments. These and related aspects of public risk disputes deviated from the oversimplifications typical of explanations and their focus on individual cognitive calculation biases; visceral fears, phobias, and penchant for public “denialism”; and accusations of public irrationality and “risk panic.” I also believed that the recent emphasis on conventional political ideologies, like “conservative” or “liberal” outlooks, were reductionist. Because my fellowship started in 2003, the United States was still reeling from 9/11, the anthrax attacks, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were by this time in full swing. The source of the anthrax attacks was a mystery at that time (Bhattacharjee 2008; Broad and Shane 2011; National Research Council 2011; Skane, Walsh, and Yeibio 2011), so fears of further biological attacks were rampant among security elites as well as the public. Indeed, at the time (circa 2003–2006), the Bush ad219

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ministration was fanning the flames of a moral panic to gain support for their domestic security plans as well as the wars they were waging abroad. In the context of these and related risks and national concerns, while I was a professor at the University of Georgia, I listened to a radio program about civic protests in Davis, California, against the University of California’s (UCD) proposal to build and host a federal National Biocontainment Laboratory on its Davis campus. I had just moved to Athens, Georgia, after spending two years in Davis as a postdoctoral researcher from 1999 to 2001. The national context, fear of anthrax attacks, the new federal agenda, and Davis’s break with what seemed to be a national consensus at the time—supporting the federal government in its effort to fight terrorism—caught my interest. Captivated, I began to research NBLs and the federal biodefense policy that lay behind their local deployment on university campuses and in civilian contexts, because, before then, most ultrasecure BSL-4 biolabs were built on military bases. I also began collecting news media accounts for the locales where universities and public health departments had responded to the federal requests for proposals. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a leading agency in the biodefense effort, had requested proposals in February 2002 from interested research and public health institutions to act as surrogates and construct, house, and manage an NBL on the federal government’s behalf (NIH/NIAID 2001). Again, the research institutions that applied for NIAID funds included Boston University Medical Center; Oregon Health and Science University; New York State Department of Health; University of California at Davis; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Maryland School of Medicine; and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Analyzing a community’s support or opposition through the prism of media coverage does not, of course, provide a definitive account of local sentiment. However, barring collusion between journalistic and trustee institutions, the media typically devotes considerable coverage to public disputes because they are considered newsworthy by prevailing definitions of “what is news” (Entman 1989; McCombs et al. 2011; Molotch and Lester 1974, 1975; Tuchman 1978). One can assume that if a local risk

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dispute and protest emerged regarding something as high profile as biodefense plans, the local news media would devote considerable coverage to it. Presuming this to be the case, my news story counts for local newspapers where NBLs were proposed were indeed revealing. Initially I focused on local/regional newspapers with the highest circulation rates and tallied stories—news columns, editorial columns, and letters to the editor (i.e., op-eds)—that addressed local biodefense plans in a direct (the topic of the article) or indirect (mentioned in passing) manner for one year before funds were awarded for the construction of the NBLs (circa 2001–2003). The totals were as follows: Albany Times Union, 5 stories; Boston Globe, 21 stories; Chicago Tribune, 2 stories; Davis Enterprise, 237 stories; Galveston Daily Democrat, 25 stories; Maryland Baltimore Sun, 3 stories; and Portland Oregonian, 20 stories.2 I counted these articles not only to get a better sense of how intense local response appeared to be but also to get an idea of what was locally at issue (if indeed biodefense was considered an issue). Obviously, Davis, California, initially stood out for the sheer volume of articles, editorial columns, and op-eds published in the local newspaper and therefore for its immediate and vocal response to the university’s biodefense plans. Intrigued by the prospects of investigating local community reactions and claims making, I decided to pursue a cross-community comparison. My focal interest would be the meso-level, where local politics plays out. From my previous research, I suspected that this would look very different from national politics and social movements, as well as the psychological attributions routinely projected onto “the public” when experts, trustees, and elites examine the reasons people support or oppose “risky” proposals. I also believed that local civic dynamics might look quite different from the relatively unnuanced and functionalist in-group dynamics emphasized by the cultural theory of risk (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990; Wildavsky and Dake 1990). Again, the study of risk perception, management, and dispute has tended to cluster at either the macro-societal or the micro-cognitive level, reducing public understanding to levels of analysis that miss where they frequently originate: the meso-community level. (See Chapter 1.)

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The case-comparative method seemed an especially strong approach because my objective was exploration, description, and theory building as opposed to theory testing. The aspects and dimensions of risk I sought to expose through investigation of the civic and community levels are not well known and require greater elaboration and further refinement, so this method was preferable (Ragin 1989; Ragin and Becker 1992; Ragin, Nagel, and White 2004; Yin 2003a, 2003b). Specifically, I wanted to know how things emerged and unfolded in each community, with a focus on why exactly things happened the way they did (Denzin and Lincoln 1998; Ragin, Nagel, and White 2004). Finally, because my study focused on community response to an unfolding set of events, “control” in the classic research sense wasn’t relevant (Ragin 1989). I chose Roxbury and Galveston because Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) were awarded NBLs in October 2003 that were not slated for completion until 2009, giving me time to conduct fieldwork and gather data. I chose Davis for a combination of both practical and theoretical reasons. First, Davis stood out for its immediate and intense opposition to UCD’s biodefense plans. Although the risk dispute had ended in October 2003 because no federal funds were awarded to UCD to either build an NBL or become a Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, I had amassed a year’s worth of research on the community’s response. What is more, by 2003, no risk dispute had emerged in Roxbury or Galveston. Why had Davis reacted so strongly while the others had not? When BUMC and UTMB were awarded NBLs, opposition had begun to stir in Roxbury, but it was not yet intense or obvious from afar, while those in Galveston seemed solidly in support of the plan. By late 2004, Roxbury residents had mobilized, and their protests had blossomed into a full-fledged movement and a coalition committed to stopping the construction of the NBL (Beamish and Luebbers 2009). Roxbury, Galveston, and Davis also shared important civic and political similarities that made comparing them and their responses to a risky development all the more informative and not easily explained by existing theories about public risk perception and dispute. All three communities 222

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were put “at risk”—both materially and political-culturally—by the same biological threats, the same policy (biodefense research agenda), and the same technology (NBLs) proposed for their locale, as well as the same federal agencies and with them modes of governance. Therefore, given my research interests, it would be the local civics and discourse native to each community context that would be put to the test and exposed by the proposal to site such a facility nearby. Important to my community comparisons as well was the similarity in university risk communication approaches. That is, as I collected data, I discovered that the “risk communication strategies” each university relied on to promote its biodefense ambitions were virtually the same (see Chapter 2). Also, all three communities had some familiarity with the construction of public health labs and facilities. All of them are situated adjacent to top-flight research universities and have long-standing relationships with those universities and the developments and initiatives they have promoted and sponsored in the past. All three communities are also considered “liberal enclaves” in their regional contexts, based on the center-left political causes that have been pursued in each over time. For example, civic mobilizations in each have sought to secure the community against threats to the environment. At the same time, the label liberal enclave concealed as much as it captured both within and among the communities. Civic dynamics were simply too complicated to explain public response vis-à-vis reliance on it. “Party affiliation” and continuums like “conservative-liberal” simply didn’t explain local support, opposition, and ambivalence. Classifications such as these, while helpful in explaining behavior in a two-party political system, do not explain local civic responses because these three so-called “liberal” communities responded differently to the same “risks.” (See Chapter 1 for details on this aspect of the study.) Very important too was that public response in each community was local, not organized or promoted by “national” concerns or social movement organizations. Although all three have active civic groups that involve themselves in community issues, only residents from Roxbury and Davis mobilized to stop biodefense plans. They would do so for different reasons. 223

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Similarities like these acted as naturally occurring “controls” that made for provocative comparisons. Again, they highlighted the role that locally situated civic and political dynamics played in shaping public understanding and reaction in each. r ese a rch st r at egy As I said, I compiled data from local newspapers, city council meetings, public forums, and citizen mobilizations—discursive coverage specific to each community. In collecting and assessing these and related materials, I took special care to note the names of citizens, administrators, consultants, and experts that frequently appeared in the local public discourse about biodefense. I assembled a list of individuals who were quoted in local newspapers; who wrote op-eds; who spoke at public events and forums; who had submitted comments to environmental impact statements, legal challenges, and petitions; and who had participated in radio, TV, or other media programs. The number of times a person was noted as speaking about the issue was an important indication of his or her level of engagement and connection to recognized local civic and political interests. These materials also helped identify key citizens and civic groups that early on had engaged biodefense or had knowledge of it as a local civic issue. I specifically distinguished and targeted two types of civic informants. One was issue elites—those who played leadership roles in support of or opposition to the biodefense plans. This was usually evidenced by references to them as “leaders” or because of the role they played in framing the dialogue and debate for the general public. The other group was engaged citizens—those who were involved in public dialogue and debate concerning the issue but had not played a leading role in it. I focused on these persons for their high levels of civic participation and developed a personal understanding because my interests concerned civic dynamics and processes and their relationship to risk disputes. This required that I purposively isolate and assess the views of those who had civically engaged the biodefense issue. I was therefore not interested in assessing “local opinion.” My approach contrasts with those who use social surveys of representative subsets of the general public to gain insight into local views and from them make claims regarding general beliefs and 224

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sentiments. Both are of significant interest but promise very different rewards. For my purposes, the general public was not of interest because they don’t drive local politics any more than regional, state, or national politics. The politically engaged do so, and they often heavily influence the opinions and outlooks of the “general public.” The civically and politically active and engaged, in each locale, were therefore my focus in Community at Risk. Having generated lists for each community case, I and my research assistants contacted potential informants and set up in-person, in-depth interviews when possible or conducted telephone interviews when it was not. My conversations were structured by a short-question protocol that reflected comments of which I was already aware given my investigations of local news press accounts. I asked them how they found out about the plan, what their initial thoughts were, why they were for or against it, and if they trusted the local university or the federal government. I also noted what my informants said about the NBL and the biodefense issue because they were attuned to the community’s relationship with the university and the town’s general political character. I analyzed their answers with an eye for what they exposed about local governance expectations, community aspirations, and personal concerns. Finally, because my conversations sometimes involved sensitive topics and revealing comments about both the individuals I interviewed and their allies and adversaries, I promised all my informants confidentiality. Therefore, the names and identities of my interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement. At the same time I was conducting interviews, I was also reviewing local social and political histories of the three communities for deeper insight into past and significant events, civic initiatives, and political trends. I wanted to be sensitive to the collective memories and local symbologies that my informants brought up when discussing their support, opposition, or ambivalence on the biodefense issue. With these data and the developing sense I was getting from speaking to the residents, I began to thematically code the interviews, transcripts, and archival documents I had on hand. As I did so, I began to observe patterns in the civic dialogue of each community. In each civic domain, specific points of evaluation were emphasized that reflected expectations 225

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concerning governance propriety, ongoing political relations, and virtues and values that were locally resonant. Both my informants and those who spoke at public venues used these principles of evaluation and petition as political and cultural resources to make the case both for and against biodefense plans in the context of community discussion. Of great interest to me, the bases for local evaluation and public claims differed by community case. These observations led me to focus more on the “civic domain” in each case, because this was where stakeholders tried to influence one another and manipulate the public conversation. My focus, therefore, was on the “open,” relatively dynamic political character of what often appeared to be public contests in each community’s civic domain. And while the specific content of each community’s civics and discourse was unique, the civic dynamic I observed was not. I believe it is generally characteristic of public risk disputes at this level of analysis: the meso-civic level. I say “open” and “dynamic” not because the processes I observed were wholly “open-ended” or “inclusive” in an ideal sense but because in each community civic engagement involved more than one voice and a good deal of public debate, appeals, and justifications on the part of all who engaged the issue. The civically engaged had to gain rhetorical traction with a wider swath of the local public, as well as other civic partisans, including their adversaries, to effectively support or challenge rival interests in the local civic domain. In an effort to do so, the civically engaged from each community tended to deploy locally resonant cultural resources that simply could not be reduced to either the beliefs of a single individual or an in-group or be adequately explained by reference to national politicalculture discourse. Local civic politics, reflective of resonant terms and conditions, strongly shaped local views of biodefense plans and whether an NBL was acceptable. ov e rv i e w : c om pa r at i v e data In Community at Risk, I considered each community locale and civic domain as a separate unit for analysis. Again, because each reflected a local response (rather than a coordinated national movement) and was “at risk” for the same federal agencies, new policy agenda, and new technol226

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ogy (the NBLs), as well as encountered virtually the same university-led risk communication strategy, the circumstance provided a unique level of commensurability rarely available in field-based studies like this. The commonalities across the cases supplied a strong basis for comparison and thus a valuable means of cross-case evaluation. First off, the strongest bases for my conclusions were the in-depth and telephone interviews conducted with the civically engaged from each of the three communities. I also collected local and national mass-media coverage of the biodefense initiative in an effort to ascertain how, as an issue, it was framed for the public at multiple levels of analysis: local, regional, state, and national. Of special relevance, given my interest in local civics and discourse, letters to the editor and opinion columns were collected and analyzed for their content, as such fare is a significant indicator of local sentiments (cf. Gamson 1992). I also compared how the trustees involved similarly and differently pursued their sponsorship of the NBL and association with biodefense plans. Finally, I collected a trove of documents such as environmental impact statements, video footage of public forums, transcripts of public testimony, legal testimony, legal documents, white papers, federal commentary, expert commentary, journal articles, policy documents, and other related materials. In some instances, where these represented authentic exchange and therefore were reflective of local, civic dialogue, I added them to my database and thematically evaluated them for their content. In the case of video footage (of public forums in Davis and Roxbury), I had them professionally transcribed and analyzed them for their content, too. Below, I provide in more explicit detail an overview of my data sources and the collection methods I used to investigate and draw conclusions for Community at Risk. in t erv iews The 267 interviews my research assistants and I conducted provide the crux of my analysis and the conclusions I’ve drawn. Of these interviews, 120 were in person and in-depth: 33 in Davis, 49 in Roxbury/Boston, and 38 in Galveston. I initially asked my respondents general questions such as how they perceived the university’s efforts to house an NBL; what their initial thoughts about it were; what their primary reasons for supporting, 227

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opposing, or remaining ambivalent about the project were; whether and in what ways their impressions of an NBL and biodefense plans had (if they had) changed; and in general what they considered most memorable about the university’s pursuit of an NBL. While listening to their answers, I also probed for a deeper understanding of their impressions of the local social and political contexts for what this revealed about the community, the university, and other local social and political forces, beliefs, and opinions. All of my face-to-face interviews and some of the telephone interviews were recorded and transcribed with the interviewee’s permission. In the handful of instances where the interviewee did not want to be recorded, I took abundant notes. I then transcribed the text and analyzed the interviews and a good portion of the archival materials for their content with the assistance of Atlas.3 I also conducted 136 telephone surveys. These included 42 questions, which were both closed- and open-ended. The survey asked basic demographic questions and questions about the informant’s impressions of the proposed NBL, the biodefense agenda, the university, the opposition, and so forth. The telephone interviews, however, were not simply surveys because the informant was encouraged to add to or modify any responses. In many cases, the telephone survey interviews became de facto over-thephone in-depth interviews, too. We interviewed 50 people in Davis, 55 in Roxbury/Boston, and 31 in Galveston. The questions varied slightly, depending on the community. Note that many of the following questions are collapsed for the sake of space, and these are not all the questions I used. In the actual survey, references to “local government/federal government/the university” or “supporters/opponents” would each have appeared as separate questions. •

When you initially heard about the NBL, what were your first impressions of it? (favored, mixed feelings, opposed, no opinion) • Have your feelings changed over time? If so, at this time? (favored, mixed feelings, opposed, no opinion) • How often have you discussed the NBL facility with your neighbors, acquaintances, or friends? (frequently discussed, sometimes discussed, have not discussed)

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•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Have you attended any public meetings on the NBL issue? (attended most or all of the public meetings, some or at least one of the public meetings, have not attended any public meetings) In your opinion, how honest have supporters/opponents of the NBL been in their presentation of the facts? (very honest, somewhat honest, not very honest) Do you trust “state-of-the-art scientific expertise” to build a truly safe NBL? Would you characterize your trust in scientific expertise as high trust, moderate trust, low trust, or do not trust? Do you trust the local government/federal government/the university to account for and/or represent your wishes (on this as well as other issues)? Would you characterize your trust in the university as high trust, moderate trust, low trust, do not trust? How good a neighbor has the university been to the local community and surrounding communities? Would you characterize the university as a very good neighbor, sometimes a good neighbor, sometimes a difficult neighbor, or a difficult neighbor? In your opinion, how much would the NBL contribute to the general public health in the United States? (very much, pretty much, not much) In your opinion, how likely is it that the NBL will lead to economic growth in the local area? (very much, pretty much, not much) In your opinion, does the NBL pose a local danger? (Yes, it would be a danger to the local community; or No, it would not be a danger to the local community.) In your opinion, how likely are you or someone you know to economically benefit from the NBL? (very much, pretty much, not much) How much information about the NBL issue have you learned from the local newspapers, city council meetings, the university, local opposition groups, nongovernmental and “outside groups,” or the federal government? (most information, some information, hardly any information, no information)

Finally, 11 “interviews” were in the form of transcripts taken from local public forums or media interviews where respondents who were central to the biodefense issue engaged in extended question-and-answer

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sessions regarding the biodefense initiative and in doing so addressed many issues and questions germane to my study: Davis (7), Roxbury/ Boston (4), Galveston (0). I treated these 11 transcriptions much as I did the other “interviews” and analyzed them for their content, looking for patterns in the assumptions, expectations, claims, and justifications the informant relied on to understand biodefense. Those interviewed for the study were purposively (rather than randomly) selected and came from four primary pools of potential informants: government officials involved in planning and implementation; local university administrators involved in planning and procurement; faculty and faculty groups unrelated to procurement who publicly supported and opposed an NBL; and local community persons and participants in civic groups who actively engaged the issue locally and publicly. I also interviewed journalists who had covered the story for their views, but I did not include them as “community representatives.” What is more, as mentioned before, in each location, I targeted two primary groups of informants for interviews both in-depth and by telephone: civic “issue elites” and civically “engaged citizens.” Again, issue elites were those who played a significant part in leading, framing, advocating, and sponsoring a specific position to the NBL (Gamson 1961, 1992; Gamson and Modigliani 1989). Engaged citizens were those who expressed strong sentiments about the NBL and biodefense plans for their community through some “public” forms of commentary, participation, or political engagement. And again, I was not targeting local citizens who were not aware or who had not engaged the issue because their views were not part of the civic dialogue and therefore the focal interest of my investigations in Community at Risk. As for distinguishing levels of civic and political engagement—issue elite status versus engaged citizenship—I did this by noting how many times an individual was quoted in news articles, authored a letter to the editor, or spoke at public forums, and noted civic affiliations, petition signatures, and commentary in public documents such as environmental impact statements4 or legal case transcripts. A density of public references prioritized a respondent for in-depth interview because the frequent reference suggested they were “issue elites.” Those who had been noted in 230

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the public dialogue but not as frequently were mainly targeted for telephone interviews. To this I add an important caveat: all but one BUMC administrator and most UCD administrators I contacted who were associated with the university’s biodefense effort would not agree to be interviewed in person. UTMB’s administrators, however, mostly opened their doors to my requests and investigation. I won’t conjecture as to whether this was an issue of organizational and/or administrative culture or if it simply reflected the political dynamics I studied, because both BUMC and UCD were either under attack by civic groups at the time I made my requests (BUMC) or had failed to gain federal funds after a bruising local campaign (UCD). What is more, the National Institutes of Health were singularly unhelpful as I tried to access public documents surrounding the procurement process in Boston/Roxbury and Galveston. Indeed, they were so unresponsive that I was required to submit a Freedom of Information Act Request to gain public documents that required no security clearance or demonstrable rationale for withholding them. This struck me as odd, but it is typically the experience of many who confront risk management plans and processes when trustees like the NIH/NIAID seek to fulfill their mandates and the public asks them what, when, where, why, and how? Because I wasn’t able to interview many of the lead administrators, I turned to other methods of gaining “their views.” I therefore collected and analyzed a number of secondary source materials like transcriptions of public forums and question-and-answer periods, interviews published in secondary sources like newspapers and journals, radio interviews (also transcribed), and newspaper opinion columns. I analyzed these the same way as the in-depth interviews for direct and indirect references to what motivated them and how they publicly justified their plans in light of community and/or expert criticisms and denunciations. sit e v isits a nd et h nogr a phic con t e x ts In addition to interviews, I also visited each community for two or more weeks5 to both conduct interviews and see and experience each community context and place firsthand. During my stay in each, I conducted interviews at my informants’ homes, in coffee shops, at the local library, and at the 231

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represented universities. While in Galveston, I was also able to visit the newly constructed but not yet operational Galveston National Laboratory in a tour guided by a UTMB administrator. And while in each community, when I was not interviewing, I spent the time pursuing archival materials that were unavailable to me over the Internet or by mail by visiting city hall, the public library, and the campuses at the center of the local issue: UCD, BUMC, and UTMB. t he n ews medi a The media can generate community attention, reaction, and opposition (Mazur 1981, 2004). Media can portray local events and potential risks as “taken care of” or “under professional control,” thus ostensibly taking the issue out of the public discourse or conversely sponsoring implicit support of it (Molotch and Lester 1974, 1975). At minimum, news media help shape the context in which individuals form their positions and in which many government agencies take their actions (Gamson 1995; Gitlin 1980). For this project, I pursued a three-tiered news media collection and analysis strategy. My objective was to ascertain, to the fullest extent possible, how the NBL as an aspect of the larger biodefense initiative was initially framed for the public by assessing national and local newspaper coverage and by analyzing editorial columns and letters to the editor that related local opinions and positions on the biolabs. I began by assessing national news media stories in the five leading U.S. newspapers. I conducted media searches using NewsBank, which allows retrieval, by key word, of articles from U.S. newspapers. I initially focused on the five major national newspapers, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Christian Science Monitor. To ascertain, by contrast, how the local public was informed of the NBL and biodefense issue, I reconstructed local print media coverage. In an effort to generate a relevant, comprehensive, and workable pool of newspaper stories, I limited my collection to mass-circulation newspapers within the city limits and the closest “major” circulation newspaper, which I defined as a paper that falls within the top 50 in national circulation. For Roxbury, these included the Boston Globe (circulation ranked fourteenth) and the Boston Herald (ranked fortieth), both in Suffolk County 232

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in Massachusetts. In Galveston, these included the Galveston County Daily News of Galveston County and the Houston Chronicle of Harris County (ranked tenth). In Davis, these included the Davis Enterprise of Yolo County and the Sacramento Bee of Sacramento County (ranked twenty-seventh). I collected news stories spanning the biodefense issue’s initial development by case, beginning in January 2001 through January 2004 in Davis and 2001 to 2006 in Galveston and Roxbury/Boston. In Roxbury/Boston, I also kept abreast of developments where legal aspects of the siting controversy continued through 2013. Finally, I also pursued a separate analysis of opinions and editorial commentaries in each location. Letters to the editor provide a complimentary means of gauging local public sentiments in social science research, so I collected and analyzed them regarding local civic response to the NBL. Specifically, content analysis of such letters supplied another means of measuring public sentiment for two reasons. First, they are one of the few sanctioned venues where nonelites can voice their impressions and articulate their opinions. Second, it has been shown that the arguments of letter writers do not significantly differ from those of non-letter-writing and engaged citizens and thus provided another means of gauging social response to the NBL (Benford 1997; Gamson 1992). d o c u m e n t s , a r c h i va l m a t e r i a l s , a n d ot h e r sou rces of data Finally, along with in-depth and telephone survey interviews, transcripts of public Q&A testimony of administrative elites, and newspaper and opinion letter analysis, I also collected and analyzed archival materials like official correspondences; environmental impact statements; court documents; meeting minutes; scientific and technical documentation concerning the biodefense initiative, NBL technology, and biological pathogens; public relations and “promotional materials” from all sides of the issue; and video footage and transcripts from local media events, including city council meetings, public forums, protests, and publicly aired television and radio programs. In closing, the strengths of thoroughly analyzing all the aforementioned—interviews, ethnographic impressions, news media, opinion 233

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l­ etters, archival materials from public forums, submitted comments, and technical documents of range and sort—lay in their providing multiple points for comparison and contrast and therefore producing a stronger overall sense of what the biodefense agenda was and how the biodefense issue unfolded in each locale similarly and differently, what factors help explain local public response, and ultimately, what locally drove the civic politics of risk in each community. references Beamish, Thomas D. 2002. Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis. Urban and Industrial Environments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Beamish, Thomas D., and Amy J. Luebbers. 2009. “Alliance-Building Across Social Movements: Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition.” Journal of Social Problems 56 (4): 647–676. Beamish, Thomas D., Harvey Molotch, Randolph Bergstrom, and Perry Shapiro. 1998. “Petroleum Extraction in San Luis Obispo County, California: An Industrial History.” In Outer Continental Shelf Study MMS 98-0048. Camarillo, CA: Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Region. Benford, Robert. 1997. “An Insider’s Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective.” Sociological Inquiry 67 (4): 409–430. Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit. 2008. “FBI to Request Scientific Review of Its Anthrax Investigation.” Science NOW. http://news.sciencemag.org/scientific-community/2008/09/fbi-request -scientific-review-its-anthrax-investigation. Broad, William J., and Scott Shane. 2011. “Scientists’ Analysis Disputes F.B.I. Closing of Anthrax Case.” New York Times, October 9. Denzin, Norman K., and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. 1998. Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Douglas, Mary, and Aaron B. Wildavsky. 1982. Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkeley: University of California Press. Entman, Robert M. 1989. Democracy Without Citizens: Media and the Decay of American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Gamson, William A. 1961. “The Flouridation Dialogue: Is It an Ideological Conflict?” Public Opinion Quarterly 25 (4): 526–537. ———. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1995. “Constructing Social Protest.” In Social Movement Culture, edited by Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermas, 85–106. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. 1989. “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 95 (1): 1–37. Gitlin, Todd. 1980. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mazur, Allan. 1981. The Dynamics of Technical Controversy. Washington, DC: Communications Press.

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———. 2004. True Warning and False Alarms: Evaluating Fears About Health Risks and Technologies, 1948–1971. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. McCombs, Maxwell, Lance Holbert, Spiro Kiousis, and Wayne Wanta. 2011. The News and Public Opinion: Media Effects on Civic Life. Cambridge: Polity. Molotch, Harvey, and Marilyn Lester. 1974. “News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals.” American Sociological Review 39 (1): 101–112. ———. 1975. “Accidental News: The Great Oil Spill as Local Occurrence and National Event.” American Journal of Sociology 81 (2): 235–260. National Research Council. 2011. Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI’s Investigation of the 2001 Bacillus Anthracis Mailings. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Nevarez, Leonard, Harvey Molotch, Randolph Bergstrom, and Perry Shapiro. 1988. “Petroleum Extraction in Santa Barbara County, California: An Industrial History.” Outer Continental Shelf Study MMS 98-0048. Camarillo, CA: Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Region. NIH/NIAID. 2001. “Request for Proposals and Applications.” Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). Paulsen, Krista, Harvey Molotch, Randolph Bergstrom, and Perry Shapiro. 1998. “Petroleum Extraction in Ventura County, California: An Industrial History.” Outer Continental Shelf Study MMS 98-0048. Camarillo, CA: Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service, Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Region. Ragin, Charles C. 1989. The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ragin, Charles C., and Howard Saul Becker. 1992. What Is a Case? Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ragin, Charles C., Joanne Nagel, and Patricia White. 2004. “Workshop on Scientific Foundations of Qualitative Research.” National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA. Skane, William, Jennifer Walsh, and Luwam Yeibio. 2011. “Science Alone Does Not Establish Source of Anthrax Used in 2001 Mailings.” National Academies, Washington, DC. Thompson, Michael, Richard J. Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1990. Cultural Theory. Boulder, CO: Westview. Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press. Wildavsky, Aaron B., and Karl Dake. 1990. “Theories of Risk Perception: Who Fears What and Why?” Daedalus 119 (4): 41–60. Yin, Robert K. 2003a. Applications of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ———. 2003b. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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in t roduc t ion 1.  Mainstream press accounts of the anthrax attacks conveyed the debate regarding responsibility as between those who believed that they originated outside the country and those who believed them to originate domestically. None of the 60 to 80 threat reports gathered daily by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time could connect the envelopes containing anthrax spores to al Qaeda or other known terrorist groups. For example, in a lead Washington Post story regarding the anthrax attacks at the time, one senior official said, “Everything seems to lean toward a domestic source. . . . Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist-type operation” (Woodward and Eggen 2001). Yet, these comments contrast with those made by a UN weapons inspector who was quoted in a lead Associated Press article as saying, “The FBI’s profile of the anthrax killer as a deranged loner was refuted in December of 2001 as ‘a lot of hokum.’” The quoted expert, Dr. Richard Spertzel former head of the United Nations weapons inspection program in Iraq, added that the quality of anthrax sent in the attacks “is not the kind of thing you mess around with in a university lab. . . . The tainted letters were likely the result of terrorism sponsored by a foreign government” (Associated Press 2001). 2.  As defined by Cohen (1972), a moral panic occurs when a person, group, or set of conditions arises that are perceived to threaten societal interests and/or values and those values are used to promote societal disquiet by an individual or group. Such individuals and groups who seek to promote moral panic are labeled by Cohen to be “moral entrepreneurs.” Those that are held to threaten the social order he refers to as “folk devils.” 3.  Agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) via its National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) via its Foreign Disease Weed Science Research Unit, and the Department of Defense (DoD) via the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) are some of the primaries, but this does not exhaust the list of affected agencies and their affiliates that would help develop and pursue an aggressive, multipronged, risk-management plan that would focus on the nation’s biodefenses. 4.  The telephone survey interviews involved both closed- and open-ended questions, as well as the opportunity for an informant to discuss whatever he or she considered relevant. My informants frequently took advantage of this opportunity. I analyzed these open-ended responses as I did the in-depth interviews using qualitative software, Atlas, to discern and track patterns across my interviews and informants. The closed-ended questions were statistically analyzed using frequency distributions and correlations because this was not a probability sample but rather a purposively selected one. 5.  While I would have preferred personal interviews with all parties involved in each community’s civic dialogue regarding the prospective NBL and biodefense plans, I 237

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could not obtain direct access to many university administrators from either BUMC or UCD. Therefore, at times I had to determine university administrator views from archival sources such as published editorial newspaper columns, media interviews, and questionand-answer sessions at public forums. For instance, I collected 30 complete transcriptions from such public forums with trustees—federal, state, and university administrators involved in biodefense plans and the proposal to site and manage an NBL locally. I handled these and related interview- and comment-based archival materials the same way I did my personal interviews with community members and civic leaders, analyzing administrator claims and justifications for their content. The archival data I gathered also included extensive video footage of City Council meetings and public testimony from Boston and Davis that focused on the biodefense issue; select protest events from Boston and Davis; a comprehensive collection of op-ed/letters to the editor and general newspaper coverage of the biodefense issue for each location (circa 2002–2008); and the comments section of the federal environmental impact statements (FEIS) for Boston University Medical Campus’s federally funded National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory (NEIDL) and University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston National Laboratory (GNL). I also collected printed materials and flyers, attended public meetings or acquired tapes/transcripts when possible, listened to expert commentary, and followed the larger debate concerning U.S. biodefense policy and plans in the national news and more specialized presses. See the Appendix for greater detail on these and related methodological issues. 6.  My informants who opposed the focus on biodefense-related laboratories and research that emphasized exotic diseases cited the examples of the seasonal flu that kills more than 30,000 people a year in the United States and the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis and streptococcus bacterium, both of which pose serious threats to the U.S. population (CDC 2008; Ozonoff 2004). Some experts I spoke with therefore opposed the biodefense plans, claiming that the focus on biological terrorism and exotic diseases (Ebola, Marburg, hemorrhagic fever, smallpox) had politicized public health decisions. According to their argument, focusing federal funds and media attention on these exotic diseases detracted from the currently proliferating diseases that presented more immediate biothreats to Americans. Antibiotic-resistant diseases like tuberculosis and the seasonal flu fell into this latter category. Also underlying the critique of biodefense was the notion of “social epidemiology” and the roles that poverty and lack of affordable care play in disease diffusion (Berkman and Kawachi 2000). 7.  For details, see the underlying policy initiative (Mair, Maldin, and Smith 2006). 8.  The trustee institutions directly responsible for Project Biodefense included the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the National Center for Research and Resources (NCRR). 9.  The number of BSL-4 facilities and total square footage dedicated to them in the United States are difficult to determine because many of these laboratories are located on military bases, where they operate under high security and confidential conditions. 10.  By “political culture,” I mean a community’s expectations as to how collective decisions should be pursued and the greater good achieved. Political culture reflects aspects of formal government, such as bureaucratic machinations and legal due process rules, as well as expectations concerning governance, impressions of legitimate formal and informal systems of authority, and therefore what constitutes the appropriate exercise of authority according to a given group, community, or society.

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chapter 1 1.  Issues such as water fluoridation, nuclear power, chemicals, pesticides, biotechnology, recombinant DNA, stem cells, and vaccines, among a host of risk disputes, have become that basis for local and national social movements on the political left and right and have also resulted in formal political upheaval and dramatic policy shifts. On nuclear issues, see Jasper (1990), Nelkin (1971), and Rucht (1990, 1995); on biotechnology, see Evans (2002), Jasanoff (2005), Krimsky (1991), Krimsky and Wrubel (1996), Nelkin and Tancredi (1989), and Rabinow and Dan-Cohen (2005); on chemical contaminations and pesticides, see Brown (1992, 2007), Brown and Mikkelsen (1990), Kroll-Smith and Floyd (1997), Levine (1982), and Shrivastava (1992). 2. A technocracy is a form of governance in which scientists, engineers, and technicians hold the power to make decisions with collective social and political ramifications. Democracy, of course, is a form of governance in which citizens by way of their citizenship hold the power to make decisions with collective social and political ramification. 3.  This even though one of the first risk disputes was over water fluoridation, which was inspired by right-of-center issues such as the infringement of personal liberty (Gamson 1961; Mazur 1981). 4.  Others have called what I am calling risk disputes “technical controversies” (Bauer 1995; Mazur 1981; Nelkin 1992). However, because the civic dialogue and disputes I explore in each community were only partly “technical,” I have found risk dispute to better capture what was at issue and what I intend to convey. Again, by “risk” I mean a situation in which something of great worth—human life, property, and cherished values—is perceived to be at stake and where its future status is uncertain. Again, by risk dispute I refer to public conflicts that ensue when the state or its surrogates, i.e., “trustee institutions,” introduce what are perceived to be new risks or initiate plans to manage risks on behalf of society. 5.  My use and development of the concept “common good” reflects a broad cross section of scholarship in the area and overlaps with allied concepts and terms such as the public good, greater good, and even references to the commons, commonwealth, and the collective action dilemma (Bellah et al. 1991; Calhoun 1998; Etzioni 2004; Galbraith 1996; Hardin 1968; Lippmann 2005; Olson 1965; Williams 1995, 1999). 6.  Indeed, to reduce “the commons” to a material space socially organized around competitive individualism is reductionist, because even market conditions like those assumed by Hardin are vouchsafed by social, cultural, and political commitments and investitures. In fact, market relations are themselves simply one means of ethically organizing social interaction and material exchange; communal, moral, and associative systems of exchange are three others (Beamish and Biggart 2006; Biggart and Delbridge 2004; Polanyi 1957a, 1957b; Weber 1978). 7.  Other acronyms commonly used in risk disputes by trustees and their supporters to denounce those that oppose them include CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), NIMTOF (Not in My Term of Office), BIYBTM (Better in Your Backyard Than Mine), and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing at All Near Anybody) (Kunreuther, Desvousges, and Slovic 1988). 8.  This refers to the performance of (moral) work beyond what is required or expected. 9.  Noting that civic domains involve “field-like” relations is something community sociologists have theorized for some time, even if they have not done so with the same sophistication and insight as did Bourdieu. For example, Norton E. Long as early as 1958 239

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claimed that the civic domain emerges from “sharing a common territorial field and collaborating for different and particular ends in the achievement of overall social functions” (Long 1958, p. 255). 10.  I found “purity-sanctity” only peripherally present in the civics and discourses of the three communities I studied. This does not mean that it wasn’t present, as it surely was in some measure, if not directly, then implicitly. Rather, I believe its paucity reflects that biodefense, as an issue, did not provoke or promote religious participation or outrage per se but rather appeals to other kinds of value commitments. 11.  For example, Jasanoff (2005) in comparative research on national policy differences in the scientific regulation of biotechnology in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States found that national epistemological differences drove discernible policy shifts and with them generated distinctive risk regulatory regimes in each country. 12.  Risk perception theorists have exposed some basic differences between expert and lay public calculations of risk that frequently emerge in risk disputes. For example, building on cognitive studies of probabilistic judgments and choice, psychologists in laboratory and survey studies have found that when nonexperts rely on representativeness, availability, loss aversion, and anchoring heuristics, they overestimate rare threats and underestimate common ones (Kunreuther 2002; Kunreuther, Desvousges, and Slovic 1988; Kunreuther and Slovic 1996). 13.  Some who have developed cultural theory also claim a fifth archetypal cultural disposition: hermit or isolate (Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky 1990). 14.  In the first case, the linkage between culture and risk is said to reflect functional interdependencies between social values and social organization: values reflect organizational aspects of group life that, in turn, promote particular and predictable cultural biases, and with them risk perceptions. This is an obvious and untestable tautology. Second, while supposedly a set of gradations between deductively identified extremes, typological distinctions are applied by cultural theorists as if they reflected binary pairs wherein individuals are expected to “fit” into one of the four (or five) typological quadrants of isolates and/or fatalists, enclaves, individualists, and hierarchists. 15.  As a distinct contribution separable from “culture theory of risk,” Douglas’s gridgroup typology is indeed a very useful heuristic for comparing and contrasting cultural types, tendencies, and group structures—that is, fatalists, hierarchists, individualists, and egalitarians. In later years, Douglas shared that the typology was separable from the larger theoretical thrust of cultural theory, reflecting her attempt to “push what is known into an explicit typology that captures the wisdom of a hundred years of sociology, anthropology, and psychology” (Douglas 1992, p. 1; see Tansey 2004 for an extented discussion of the heuristic value of the grid-group typology). 16.  Those pursuing sociocultural approaches to risk disputes have criticized both the “methodological individualism” characteristic of much risk perception theory, as well as the reductionist assumptions and overtly functionalist claims of the cultural theory of risk. 17.  For a lucid discussion of the role that the “cultural supply side” plays in the symbolic boundary work performed by groups and collectives, see Lamont (1992), Moody and Thévenot (2000), and Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye (2000).

chapter 2 1.  By focusing on the “civic history,” I do not mean either a “better history” or an “unbiased history.” My point is to emphasize local civic history as an ongoing, active, and 240

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collective creation that is itself political in nature, in which some events are immortalized and come to reflect local civic identity, while others are not and are forgotten or even banished from collective talk. The bottom line is that there is no “real history” because history itself is an interpretation of issues and events of the past that takes place in the present. 2.  Again, most BUMC and UCD administrators would not agree to be interviewed. By contrast, UTMB’s administrators mostly opened their doors to my requests for interviews. To gain further insight into university perspectives and justifications, I collected and analyzed a number of secondary source materials. See the Appendix for details. 3.  See Stephen Del Sesto (1979, 1983) for an early content analysis of the testimony of pro- and antinuclear witnesses speaking about nuclear reactor safety before the U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1973–1974. Del Sesto showed how groups who testified both for and against nuclear power sought to project their world views onto the proceedings. He found that some groups were in a better political position to achieve this by using their influence and power and by hewing toward an acknowledged and legitimate formal rhetoric normative in such proceedings and away from moralizing, which was not. 4.  The risk communication strategies pursued by each of the universities I studied reflect what has largely become standard practice and what might best be called “risk communication orthodoxy.” Indeed, the practices pursued in the Davis case were outlined in a paper by Fell and Baily (2005)—both public relations administrators (official title associate director of news and media relations)—about their experience during UCD’s pursuit of a biolab as were those pursued by UTMB in a paper published by Löfstedt (2002) that focused on the university’s earlier (circa 1998–2000) effort to secure support for a small, privately funded BSL-4, the Shope Laboratory. (See Chapters 3 and 5 for details.) 5.  All my interviews were conducted in confidentiality. The names of my interviewees across all three cases are withheld by mutual agreement. 6.  The petition and its signees expressed alarm at the administration’s pursuit of an NBL, its association with national security, its emphasis on applied rather than basic science, and the chilling effect they believed it would have on campus life and the community. (See Chapter 3 for details.) 7.  The Roxbury group had originally organized to address city efforts at “urban renewal” and its associated gentrification and to promote neighborhood opportunities for residents—economic, educational, and environmental—as well as to resist parallel concerns with Roxbury’s status as, in the words of those who had engaged in such civic issues, “the city’s dumping ground.” 8.  Especially prominent were civic groups from outside Boston and Roxbury—mainly from the “suburbs” like Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, and Jamaica Plain—who were focused on issues of disarmament, pacifism, and antiwar; a handful of prominent public health advocates from BUMC and medical schools from across the city; and a few animal rights activists who opposed the potential biolab for its use of animals in research. 9.  Histories of each locale bear out this point (Cartwright 1991; Fitch 1998; Formisano 1991; Li 2002, 2010; Lofland 2004; Lofland and Lofland 1987; McComb 1986, 2000; O’Connor 1993; Surbrug 2009; UTMB 1967).

chapter 3 1.  To assess the level of perceived partisanship of each civic domain, during each telephone survey, respondents were asked to rate the honesty of NBL supporters and opponents 241

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using the following categories: not very honest, somewhat honest, and very honest. I rated each respondent’s “partisanship” by assigning each of these responses a numerical value (1) not very honest, (2) somewhat honest, and (3) very honest, and then took the absolute value of the difference between the questions. This yielded a scale from 0 to 2, with 0 indicating no partisanship (the respondent rated the honesty of both groups similarly), 1 indicating some partisanship, and 2 indicating strong partisanship (the respondent rated one group as very honest and the other as not very honest). In comparison to Roxbury/Boston and Galveston, Davis was the most strongly partisan, with only 21 percent of respondents receiving a 0 and 46 percent receiving a 2 (out of a total of 39 respondents). The mean score for Davis was 1.26. Respondents from Roxbury/Boston had a more mixed record, with 25 percent receiving a 0, 35 percent receiving a 1, and 40 percent receiving a 2 (out of a total of 48 respondents). The mean score for Roxbury/Boston respondents was 1.15. Galveston was the least partisan, with 47 percent of respondents receiving a 0 and only 26 percent receiving a 2 (out of a total of 19 respondents). The mean score for Galveston was 0.79. 2.  The “pastoral ideal,” as developed by Marx (1964), Riesman (1957), and Berger (1979a, 1979b), clustered the following social, political, and aesthetic concerns: antiurbanism, anti-industrialism, anti-technologicalism, pro-family, pro-civics, pro-(modified) nature, and agrarianism. As the basis for community building, pastoralism therefore manifested as a desire for (1) access to open, nonurban green space; (2) protection from nonmembers/nonlocals who implicitly take rhetorical form in the visage of the urban criminal and reflect deeper fears reflective of race, ethnic, and class fears and downward mobility; (3) increased connection, authentic relations, and community ties through faceto-face interactions, neighborliness, and civic engagement, coupled with the generation of “quasi”-kinship relations—in other words, a family-like community; (4) new civil-societal institutions through which upward mobility and new social relations could be promoted and sustained, including schools, churches, community centers, hospitals, newspapers, public transportation, recreation, parks, greenways, and bike paths; (5) freedom from technological “advances,” “progress,” and the standardization and crass-commercialism associated with industrialism; and (6) local, placed-based self-sufficiency that is now signified via references to “sustainability.” 3.  Passed into law weeks after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act broadened the federal government’s surveillance and law enforcement powers. The Act empowered the FBI to monitor email, Internet chat rooms, political and religious gatherings, library records, financial transactions, and consumer buying habits. In Davis, civic opponents and city government believed it unfairly encroached on citizen rights. In 2002, local city government brought to the floor a resolution protesting the USA PATRIOT Act II by declaring its unwillingness to cooperate with federal authorities if they enter Davis communities to conduct searches or surveillance. The measure unanimously passed on February 20, 2003. Important also is the history the Davis City Council has in passing acts—symbolic and otherwise—that reflect this antiwar/peace activism stance as a locally embraced civic virtue. For example, the Davis City Council has routinely approved resolutions upholding the progressive and antimilitarist civic virtues mobilized in the dispute over UCD’s biodefense plans. Such resolutions have supported a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons (1982), declared Davis a nuclear-free zone (1984), discouraged an attack on Iran (1998), urged a U.S. ban on the military or commercial use of depleted uranium (2000), denounced the USA PATRIOT Act II (2003), and called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (2006).

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4. By 2003, the United States was waging wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq. However, while these and related national events were galvanizing in Davis (as evidenced in letters to the editor and City Council resolutions), they were not the initial impetus for local civic mobilization, nor did they supply the dominant rhetorical frame for local opposition, even though they admittedly played a part in local opposition to biodefense plans. 5.  See Fell and Bailey (2005) for a history of UCD’s risk communication strategy and lessons taken from the dispute over the biodefense laboratory. 6.  My interpretation of this meeting is based on reviewing the video transcripts and public statements. I was not present at the meeting itself. 7.  According to the Davis Enterprise, of those who spoke at the meeting, 41 opposed the biodefense laboratory and 4 expressed support. (See Davis City Council 2003; O’Hara 2003a.) 8.  The grant application and policy documents made clear that DoD-affiliated research was a possibility, as was the potential for secret research insofar as neither was specifically precluded. Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security, not UCD, would have emergency control over the NBL. When civic partisans learned of this, it injected a new level of concern and rancor into the dispute because UCD could not satisfactorily reconcile its own institutional rules with the grant application and the policy on which it was based (see also Fell and Baily 2005). 9.  The RCE designation would provide $50 million in grant funds for research countering the threat posed by bioterror agents and emerging infectious diseases. This would have been in addition to the $200 million that was earmarked for construction of the NBL. 10.  In one case, local activists shared that university researchers had improperly disposed of radioactive material near some campus research laboratories south of Interstate 80. The story involves both legend and facts. The Laboratory of Energy Related Health Research (LEHR) did indeed conduct energy-related health research on campus and through experiments sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy. It is alleged that the lab exposed beagles to strontium-90 and radium-226 to extrapolate the effects of low levels of radiation on humans. Radioactive waste from the research activities is said to have been improperly buried in the southwest corner of the site in unlined trenches. This resulted in an Environmental Protection Agency designation as a Superfund site. The story, as independently related to me by several of my informants, was much more expansive than this and involved persons who had died of cancer and cruelty to animals. The lab, the contamination, and the Superfund site designation can, however, be verified (see LEHR Superfund Site 2014). 11.  Personal correspondence with the editor of the Davis Enterprise, October 2004. 12.  Mobilizations have critiqued the Davis City Council, neighboring cities like Woodland and Dixon, Yolo and Solano counties, and state and federal governments for their plans for highway exits, highway overpasses and underpasses, and other infrastructural developments in or near Davis city limits. 13.  It is important to note that no organized student group emerged that opposed UCD’s efforts to acquire an NBL. One student who played a major role in the local risk dispute, but he was associated with the community group, not a campus-based protest organization. 14.  For an analysis with many parallels, see Jasper and Sanders (1995). 15.  I mean “entitlement” in the denotative sense of the word: as having a right to something. I do not mean it in the connotative, negative way that it is often used to impugn persons for their excessive demands for services or rights.

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chapter 4 1. In 2010, the U.S. Census reported that Boston had 625,087 residents, with a demographic breakdown of 53.9 percent white or 47 percent non-Hispanic white; black/African American 24.4 percent (non-Hispanic black 22.4 percent); 0.4 percent Native American; 8.9 percent Asian; 17.5 percent Hispanic or Latino (of any race); 8.4 percent some other race; and 3.9 percent two or more races. 2.  The top immigrant groups in 2000 would be from Latin America and Asia, with Chinese, Haitians, and Dominican’s representing the largest immigrant groups. See Melnik and Dyer-Blake (2009). 3.  Based on 2010, U.S. Census estimates Roxbury’s demographic is as follows: 8.1 percent non-Hispanic white; 59 percent non-Hispanic black or African American; 24.8 percent Hispanic or Latino, who can be of any race; 2.3 percent Asian American; 5.7 percent Other. (See Table I.1 in the Introduction, “Community cases for comparison.”) 4.  The city administration uses 21 designated neighborhood areas in Boston (City of Boston 2013). 5.  In interviews and in a paper on the protest movement in Boston (Ecklein and Gosselin 2006), the leader of the Roxbury group claims that this initial meeting occurred in March 2002. Documentation of meetings held in Roxbury both in newspaper accounts and in the formal environmental impact report do not corroborate these early dates. Indeed, the NIAID did not announce its RFP for an NBL until October 2002. The dates I use come from my interviews with others, such as the person who claims to have made the anonymous call to ACE/SafteyNet activists, as well as with formal chronologies provided in the newspaper and by federal, state, and local authorities. 6. In 1996, Boston City Hospital merged with Boston University Medical Center Hospital to form Boston Medical Center. 7.  In another version of this story, it was a nonlocal activist—“a white woman from outside Roxbury,” as related to me—who stood up and asked this of Klempner. 8.  On December 6, 2004, the plaintiffs sent a notice of intent to sue; on January 12, 2005, the action was filed. 9.  Ten Residents v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, Suffolk Superior Court, Civil Action No. 05-0109- BLS2. 10.  The report only addressed response to a release event involving anthrax. 11.  Ten Residents v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, Suffolk Superior Court, Civil Action No. 05-0109-BLS2. 12.  Allen v. National Institutes of Health, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, Civil Action No. 06-10877-PBS. 13.  In the telephone survey I conducted of residents that politically engaged the issue locally, I wanted to assess the level of trust the interviewees had for the trustees involved—the city, the university, the federal government, and even “science” itself. In all, I conducted 55 telephone interviews with individuals who had politically engaged the biodefense issue from Roxbury and the greater Boston metro area, 16 of whom lived in Roxbury and the immediate neighborhoods adjacent to BUMC’s NEIDL (NBL). I asked each person how much he or she trusted “scientific expertise,” “local government,” “the federal government,” and “the university” (in this case BUMC). The possible responses were “no trust” (0), “low trust” (1), “moderate trust” (2), and “high trust” (3). Then I added the scores. I then ranked each response on a scale from 0 to 12, with 0 indicating no trust in

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any of the trustees and 12 indicating high trust in all of the trustees. The median score for the 16 Roxbury residents surveyed (2 supported the biolab and 14 opposed it) was 2, and the mean score was 3.8, indicating a very low level of trust in these trustee institutions. 14.  I am not saying that gender is not also a salient “positional category” in this movement because the majority of those from Roxbury who were civically engaged were women. In OBG, gender composition was more mixed. However, the activists to whom I spoke did not make gender an aspect of their discourse, motivations, or protestations, but rather they explicitly and implicitly emphasized race, place, and class in explaining their reasons and rationales for mobilization. 15.  The exceptions to this were a handful of veteran activists from the social movement organization United for Justice with Peace (UJP), who sought to ally with the Roxbury group, in part to open up “channels of communication” with civically engaged activists from the south end of Boston. 16.  For example, a central coalition activist stressed that while BUMC and the city were indeed behaving reprehensibly, she was also willing to admit that they had pursued the lab in pretty much the only way they could have, given a city notorious for its protest organizations: From the perspective of BUMC, they have done a real good job. They got the politics (right). They began in the right place, and they did all the right things. I can’t help but think that because if I put myself there, I would do it exactly like that, too. 17.  By “personalism” or “personalistic politics,” I mean a politics that recognized the centrality of individual personhood and that therefore emphasizes the significance, uniqueness, and inviolability of individual persons as political actors, with separate views and a right to express those views (see Lichterman 1995).

chapter 5 1.  Houston is about 53 miles by water and 45 miles by land from Galveston. 2.  This is evidenced in the federal, state, and private funding Galveston has secured for port expansions and other city and commercial infrastructures. Until the early twentieth century, Galveston was Texas’s largest and most prosperous city, with 35,000 to 40,000 people (McComb 1986). 3.  According to historical records, 200,000 immigrants entered the United States through the Galveston port between 1865 and 1924. This put Galveston’s port among the ten biggest immigrant ports of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Noonoo 2009). 4. In 1900, Galveston’s city population was 37,000. The storm cause 6,000 to 8,000 deaths, and 30,000 people were left homeless. Another 4,000 to 6,000 island residents who lived outside of the city were also killed (Weems 2013). The Great Storm of 1900 still holds the record as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, and until the 1980s, it was the most costly natural disaster as well. 5.  In the nineteenth century, 11 hurricanes struck Galveston Island. In the twentieth century, 10 hurricanes hit the island, including the Great Storm of 1900. In the past decade, two hurricanes have hit the island, with lasting consequences: Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2009. 6.  For example, there have been tensions between the university and townspeople in the recent past, such as during budget cuts and local layoffs in the late 1990s, as well as over the mismanagement of a cadaver donor program (Thompson 2002a).

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7.  Before UTMB’s investiture in 1881, doctors on the island had already organized into medical societies, founded two small private medical colleges, sat on the Galveston County’s Board of Health, and actively treated the local population. At this time, Galveston was home to the only medical school in Texas (Burns 2003). Given all the medical activity in the city, Galveston aggressively lobbied the Texas Legislature to establish the new University of Texas Medical College on the island. 8.  Because of its humid, subtropical climate and swarms of mosquitoes, Galveston is known for its vector-borne diseases. Galveston’s early history as a central port for goods and immigrations made it an ideal place for epidemics like yellow fever. Between 1839 and 1873, there were 12 yellow fever outbreaks, each of which killed thousands of people (Bunnell 2001). Later disease outbreaks on the island were so bad that they generated regional police actions, as surrounding cities like Houston would quarantine fleeing Galveston residents or simply not let them into the city limits. In 1881, the mortality rate in Galveston was 26 per 1,000 people, with yellow fever being the greatest killer (McComb 1986). 9.  Before his death in 1884, John Sealy had been one of Galveston’s wealthiest and most influential citizens. Sealy made his fortune in banking and owned a controlling interest in the Galveston Wharf Company. After his death, his widow and brother gifted the $50,000 he left for a new city hospital to be named in his honor. After this, students attending the new medical school pursued their studies while treating patients at the John Sealy Hospital. This hospital continues to operate and today is the island’s public hospital (Messa 2002). 10.  Three foundations in particular are important conduits for local funds and were established by nineteenth-century tycoons and their families: the Moody Foundation, the Sealy and Smith Foundation, and the Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund. All are dedicated to Galveston’s and/or UTMB’s “betterment.” 11.  Members of the Central Relief Committee were indeed elite: they directed all local banks and controlled 62 percent of the island’s corporate capital and 75 percent of its real estate (McComb 1986). 12.  The DWC was an ad hoc group of economic elites heavily invested in Galveston’s port who had originally organized to gain federal funds to deepen it. Once successfully sequestering federal funds, the DWC never disbanded but continued as a special interest group, exercising a good deal of power in island politics and the economy. 13.  Initially, the plan involved no local democratic provisions, but to mollify growing opposition, it eventually included the limited popular election of two of the five appointed commissioners. 14.  The commission form of city government involves appointed commissioners rather than elected officials as is done in the currently more common city manager form of city government. In Galveston’s case, each city commissioner was given the charge of a specific municipal function. This blended legislative and executive government functions. Those who supported the initiative looked on this favorably because it streamlined decision-making authority. Those who opposed it were unhappy because it also concentrated decision-making power in fewer, nonelected hands. 15.  The city manager form of government is practiced in medium to small cities and counties across the United States. The commission form remains dominant at the county level (Frederickson, Wood, and Logan 2001; National League of Cities 2013). 16.  The Shope Laboratory, as it is now called, is a much smaller facility of 12,000 square feet. Of this, 2,000 square feet are dedicated to ultrasecure BSL-4 laboratory space.

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Contrast this with the NBL/GNL’s total 186,268 square feet; 47,826 square feet of laboratory space; and 12,222 square feet dedicated to ultrasecure BSL-4 research. 17.  The Shope Lab was proposed in 1998, broke ground in 2002, and was operational by 2004. 18.  UTMB received a Center of Excellence Designation (RCE) in 2003. Funding for the NBL was secured in 2002, and the biolab was fully operational in 2009. 19.  Of these staff-written or invited columns, nine were written by GCDN staff columnists, one by UTMB’s principle investigator in UTMB’s biodefense effort, and one by a candidate campaigning for city councilor. 20.  Co-signing groups included Nuclear Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Citizens Education Project, Tri-Valley Cares, Western States Legal Foundation, and the Los Alamos Study Group. 21.  I found my informants by analyzing public accounts and records associated with the university’s pursuit of NBL funding. My informants reflected those who had gotten involved in the local civic issue, such as those who documented or spoke at public forums, op-ed authors, and those who voiced opinions in the “comments section” of the federal environmental impact statement. I and my research associates also asked those we interviewed for names of those they thought might be of interest. See the Appendix for a detailed account of my research strategy. 22.  It can be argued that Boston University currently plays this role in Roxbury, given that it recently took over and now manages Boston Medical Center. Yet, whereas in Galveston UTMB’s provision of health care has been continuous and sustained, in Roxbury BUMC only recently took control. 23.  In my original search for both “issue elite” and “engaged citizen” respondents, I included individuals who had written opinion letters to the local newspaper, commented in local public forums, submitted responses to the federal FEIS process, and/or had been quoted in local newspaper coverage. I sought residents who expressed the full range of support, opposition, and/or ambivalence to net the greatest number of people who had engaged the biodefense issue. In my interviews with them, both in-depth and telephone survey, only one expressed direct opposition to a Galveston NBL. When I interviewed the 13 UTMB public supporters, I asked closed-ended questions regarding “their trust in the university” (on a scale of “high trust,” “moderate trust,” “low trust,” and “don’t trust”). Twelve of them claimed they had “high trust,” and one claimed to have “moderate trust” in UTMB. In Roxbury, where I asked six civically vocal community supporters of BU’s biodefense plans the same questions, only one person claimed “high trust,” and five answered “moderate trust.” In Davis, where my survey netted only four civic supporters, none “highly trusted” the university, and four answered “moderate trust.” More important, while the number of respondents in all three cases is too small to generalize to the entire population of each community, this finding is suggestive insofar as those with whom I spoke were not representative of the “general population” but rather were opinion makers and issue elites in the context of local civic deliberations.

a ppendi x 1.  See Beamish et al. (1998), Nevarez et al. (1988), and Paulsen et al. (1998). 2.  Boston, Chicago, Davis, Portland, and Maryland markets all have access to multiple newspapers that cover “local” events. In this initial comparison, I counted the paper that generated the greatest number of stories about local biodefense plans.

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3.  ATLAS is a computer application that enables content analysis, cross-referencing, indexing, grouping, and frequency counts, which enhanced my ability to systematize and systematically analyze transcribed interviews and other electronically materials. 4.  The National Institutes of Health was required by federal law to produce an environmental impact statement before laboratory construction could begin in Boston and Galveston. In either case, I used the controversy that swirled around it in Roxbury and Boston and comments submitted to it during the public scoping and final submission process to better understand what was at issue locally. 5. By 2003, I was “in residence” in Davis and on a faculty, so my time “in place” was ongoing from that point. I spent four weeks in Boston doing research related to this effort. I spent two weeks in Galveston conducting interviews, touring the new Galveston National Laboratory, and getting a feel for the city and the island. A research assistant spent another ten days in Galveston conducting interviews that are included in this book.

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Italic page numbers indicate material in figures or tables. affordable housing, 125, 128, 130, 138–139 agrarianism, 80–81 air pollution, 84, 130, 171, 200 Albany Times Union, 4 Aldrich, Daniel P., 11 animal rights, 123, 143 anonymity of state, 42 anthrax attacks (2001): attacks and aftermath, 1–2, 219–220, 237n1; biodefense plans in response to, 1–6, 13; as collective event, 21; concerns supplanted by other threats, 66; Roxbury concerns about, 131–132 antiproliferation, 170 antiwar protests, 123 Austin, Texas, 170 authority-respect as moral domain, 48 avian influenza, 66

“blue” politics (Galveston), 160–161, 173, 186–189, 205 Boholm, Asa A., 53 Bolivar Roads, 157, 158, 178 Boston, Massachusetts. See NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts; Roxbury, Massachusetts Boston City Planning Commission, 127 Boston Globe, 4 Boston Medical Center, 131, 244n6, 247n22 Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), 126–128, 134, 139. See also Roxbury, Massachusetts Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC), 3, 72, 121, 126–127, 129. See also NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts; Roxbury, Massachusetts Boudet, Hillary, 11 Bourdieu, Pierre, 45–47 Boxer, Barbara, 87 Boyd, Susie, 87, 92 BP (British Petroleum) LNG facility proposal, 73, 161–163 BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority), 126–128, 134, 139. See also Roxbury, Massachusetts BSL-4 biolabs: Allen v. National Institutes of Health, 136–137; hazmat suit, 16; locations of, 15; need for west of Mississippi, 97; NEIDL prevented from use as, 122; Shope Laboratory, 167–168 BUMC (Boston University Medical Campus), 3, 72, 121, 126–127, 129. See also NBL campaign in Roxbury,

Baltimore Sun, 4 BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing at All Near Anybody), 239n7 Beamish, Thomas D., 123, 219 Bennett, Jane, 43 Berger, Bennett, 80, 242n2 biodefense/biosecurity, 13; “Biodefense for the 21st Century” plan, 2, 14; a “biosafety” laboratory, 67; military connotations, 67; as risky, 6–7 “Biodefense for the 21st Century” plan, 2, 14 BioSquare proposals, 127, 129–130, 139–140 bioterrorism, 1–3, 13–15 BIYBTM (Better in Your Backyard Than Mine), 239n7 249

index

BUMC (continued) Massachusetts; Roxbury, Massachusetts Bush, George W., 1–2, 219–220

155, 175–180, 190, 203–204; in Roxbury, 121, 123, 124, 140–141, 143–149, 150, 152, 201–203 civic domain, 11; defined, 16–18 civic entitlement, 79, 101–102, 112–113, 243n15 “civic history,” 65, 240–241n1. See also legacy of local history civic paternalism by wealthy families, 159, 160, 165, 166, 182, 195 “civic players,” 18–19, 45, 47 civic politics, 5, 33; Boston’s disenfranchisement of Roxbury, 138; comparing green, red, and blue types, 194–195, 196–205; different styles of “civic engagement” and, 10, 19, 65, 73, 111–112, 121–124, 141–148, 200, 226; materiality and, 43–44; role of historical legacy and, 18, 21–22; role of in risk management, 5, 209 civic politics of risk, 55, 121, 129, 163, 193–196, 209, 233–234 civic relations, 10, 18–19, 21, 41–42, 45–47, 64, 156, 193, 197–198, 207; in Davis, 79, 108–109, 200–201; in Galveston, 155, 180–185, 190, 203–204; in Roxbury, 121, 123, 124, 138–140, 143–144, 150, 152, 201–203 civic repertoires, 19, 54–55, 209–210 civic response, 3, 38, 69, 76, 86, 104, 156, 193, 197, 205, 223, 233 civics and discourse, 10–12, 18, 43–45, 198; defined, 18; direct action in Roxbury, 124–126, 138–139; home rule in Davis, 76, 78–80, 106–107; managed in Galveston, 186–189; relations in, 10, 18–19, 45–47, 198; research strategy and methods, 19; shaping what was deemed at stake, 22, 211; shared political-culture transcending, 20; virtues in, 10, 19, 47–49, 198. See also managed civics and discourse in Galveston civic virtues, 10, 19, 21, 47–49, 64, 156, 193, 197–198, 207; in Davis, 79,

California National Primate Research Center, 92 campaigns for NBL, 64–66. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California; NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas; NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health (CSHAH), 88 capital, social forms of, 11, 45, 145, 209 Category A agents and pathogens, 2, 15, 127, 167. See also BSL-4 biolabs CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything), 98, 239n7 CBEID (Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases), 168 Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (CBEID), 168 Center for Vectorborne Diseases (CVEC), 86, 96 “Centers of Excellence,” 4, 15, 92, 157, 169–170, 247n18 Central Relief Committee (CRC), 165, 246n11 Chicago Tribune, 4 cities, racial and ethnic migration in and out of, 80–81, 119–120, 124–126, 158 citizens: and citizen control, 100; in a democracy, 239n2; engaged, 224, 230, 233; rights and obligations of, 17–19, 33, 47, 79, 120, 198 civic: defined, 17; discussed, 16–20 civic clusters, 42–43, 74; conventions, 10, 18, 43–45, 175–176, 198; relations, 10, 18–19, 41–42, 45–47, 198; virtues, 10, 19, 47–49, 198. See also civic conventions; civic relations; civic virtues civic conventions, 10, 18–19, 21, 42–45, 64, 156, 193, 197–198, 207; in Davis, 79, 106–108, 200–201; in Galveston,

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109–110, 200–201; in Galveston, 155, 185–189, 190, 203–204; in Roxbury, 121, 123, 124, 137, 140–141, 143, 150, 152, 201–203 closed-door meetings, 72 cognitive behavior theory of risk perception, 50–54, 194, 205–206, 219 Cohen, Stanley, 237n2 collective: decisions, 17; events, 21; provision, 40–41, 74, 121, 137, 151; rights and wrongs, 47 “common good,” 7, 31, 33, 239n5; civic clusters and, 42; constituents of, 74, 198; at different social scales, 41; Galveston, 173, 189, 191; individual vs., 38–42; and risk, 38–42; Roxbury, 151–152 “commons, the” 239n6 communal politics, 74, 123, 145, 147 community studies, 209, 213 comparison of community cases, 3, 4, 5–6, 6, 11–12, 21–22, 55, 85, 120–121, 161–162, 176–177, 196–211 conciliatory relations, 74 “conservativeness,” meaning of, 206–207 CRC (Central Relief Committee), 165 CSHAH (Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health), 88 cultural capital, 45 cultural dispositions, 51 “cultural dopes” and perception of risk, 20 “cultural supply side,” 54, 240n17 cultural taboos and “ways of life,” 51–54 CVEC (Center for Vectorborne Diseases), 86, 96

politics in, 79–81, 161; as “ideal place,” 44; insistence on citizen participation, 44; local partisanship, 77, 81, 88, 93–95, 94, 99, 104–106; NBL funds not awarded, 76; as “peacenik” town, 86, 94, 109; as progressive and reactionary, 79, 82–83, 98; race and class issues, 80–81, 83–85, 179; as “Republic of Davis,” 200; shared government system, 79, 103–104, 108; suburbanism, 80–81, 101; “the progressives” in, 102–103; trust issues in, 81, 83–84, 100; UCD newcomers bringing civic-reform agenda, 81–82. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California Davis Enterprise: articles on NBLs, 4; comments on BSL-4 lab in, 87; faculty petition published in, 72, 90–91, 100, 103; letters to the editor, 92–96, 93, 94; reports monkey escape from BSL-3 lab, 92 Deep Water Committee (DWC), 165 deferential and delegative conventions, 74, 160 Del Sesto, Stephen, 241n3 democracy: defined, 239n2; as multi­ dimensional concept, 24, 44–45, 184–185; need for civic discourse in, 17; versus technocracy, 6, 31, 34, 208, 213 DHS (U.S. Department of Homeland Security), 109 direct action civics and discourse in Roxbury, 23, 117, 121, 123, 124–126, 138–139, 145–146, 149–152; civic disrespect and, 116, 133, 140, 145, 150–151, 201–202; example of, 146; table of comparative civics and discourse: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, 74. See also disenfranchisement; positionality and positional civic politics disenfranchisement, 74; Galveston, 180; Roxbury, 68, 120, 132, 138–139, 150, 201–202

Davis, California: character of, 201; concerned with manufactured, not natural, risks, 181; cynicism regarding “progress,” 187; demographics of, 6, 85, 85; desires to control growth, preserve “character,” 78, 82–84, 95–96, 101–102; environmentalism, 84; geography and physical layout, 77–78, 78; green

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disrespect as motivator, 74, 116, 133, 140–141, 145–146, 150 Distinction (Bourdieu), 46 documents and other sources of data, 5, 233–234 “Don’t Dump on Us” campaigns, 126 Douglas, Mary, 51–52, 240n15 due process: in Davis, 107; in Galveston, 172 “dumping ground,” Roxbury as, 138, 241n7 Dunning, Bob, 87 duty, moral, 74, 94; Galveston, 160–161, 172, 173, 182, 186–189 DWC (Deep Water Committee), 165, 246n12

164–166, 182, 195; UTMB and, 164–165, 168, 170, 176, 180–182 elites/trustees and Roxbury, 18; BRA, 126–128, 134, 139; crossover by, 54; distrust of in Roxbury, 116, 119–120, 121–123, 126–128, 129, 134, 138–141, 145; early lack of unanimity regarding NBL, 170; scientists opposing NBL, 53–54; as sponsors/benefactors of proposed programs, 35; universities as, 64–67 “Ellis Island of the West,” Galveston as, 158 engaged citizens, 224, 230, 233 entitlement, civic, 79, 101–102, 112–113, 243n15 environmental impact assessments/ statements: alleged flaws in UCD’s, 98–99; Galveston, 170–173; NEPA requirement for, 34; suit over NEIDL’s, 127, 134–137; supplement analysis on NEIDL, 137 environmental impact report (EIR) requirements. See environmental impact assessments/statements environmental justice movement, 126, 128–129, 144 EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), 34, 243n10 “establishment democrats,” 207 ethical research, 172 Etzioni, Amitai, 39 “expert imaginary,” 14

Ebola, 15, 169, 238n6 economic capital, 45 economic development argument, 48, 66, 98, 139–140, 155, 188, 193 economic opportunities and support/ opposition, 172; in Davis, 96–98, 104–105; in Galveston, 155, 169–170, 173, 176, 180–181, 188; in Roxbury, 130–131, 137–138. See also progress Edmund, John, 96 egalitarian, civic virtue, 74, 112, 147, 161 EIR (environmental impact report) requirements. See environmental impact assessments/statements elites/trustees and Davis, 7, 77, 82, 88, 90, 97, 99, 102, 107–109, 112, 170, 177 elites/trustees and Galveston: Community Advisory Board, 177; Fratillo family, 183; funding of seawall, 166; George Mitchell, 183; installing “commission form” of government, 159–160, 165–166; Kempner family, 176, 183; Moody family, 166, 176, 183; and NBL issue, 7, 155–156, 170, 176– 177; regarded as trustees, 160, 175, 182–183, 204; role of old families, 159, 182–183; Sealy family, 165–166, 168, 183, 246n9; soft paternalism and patronage by, 159, 160,

face-to-face engagement, reactions to, 71–72 “failsafe” claims, 31, 66, 69, 136, 173, 204 fairness-reciprocity as moral domain, 48 Fauci, Anthony, 3 FBI anthrax investigation, 1 federal environmental impact statement (FEIS). See environmental impact assessments/statements federal mandate for biosecurity, 13–15 FEIS (federal environmental impact statement). See environmental impact assessments/statements

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field relations, 46, 239–240n9 Fitch, Mike, 82 Fligstein, Neil, 46–47 “folk devils” and moral panics, 237n2. See also moral panic food safety, 14 Foucault, Michel, 50 Fratillo family, 183 Freedom of Information Act Request, 231 free rider problem, 39–40

governance, 6–7, 8, 12, 17–18, 31, 32, 35–42; and the common good, 7, 31, 33, 38–42; defined, 12; and democratic expectations, 6, 17–18, 20, 31, 34, 40, 44; and neoliberal forms, 50; and risk management, 6, 10, 31, 34, 37–38, 193–196, 211–214 “governmentality,” 50 “green” politics (Davis), 79–81, 161, 199–200 “grid-group” dimensions, 51–53, 240n15 group-loyalty as moral domain, 48 “groupthink,” 19, 206

Galveston, Texas: awareness of opposition in Davis and Roxbury, 191; “blue” politics and moral commitment to progress, 160–161, 173, 186–189; city manager form of government (1960–present), 166; commission form of government (1901–1917), 159, 165–166, 246n14; demographics of, 6; early history, 157–160, 164; economy, 159–160; gambling era in, 159; geography of, 157, 158; Great Storm of 1900 and aftermath, 159, 164, 166, 175, 176; health care in, 164–165; opposition to BP’s LNG facility proposal, 73, 161–163, 178–179; race and class issues in, 184–186; seasonal residents, 180, 186; Shope Laboratory, 167–168, 188; soft paternalism and patronage, 159, 160, 164–166, 182, 195; Texas City BP explosion (2005), 163, 178, 190; Texas City disaster (1947), 163, 174–175, 190. See also elites/trustees and Galveston; managed civics and discourse in Galveston; NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas; UTMB Galveston Bay, 73, 157, 158, 174, 178 Galveston County Daily News, 169, 171, 171–173, 172 Galveston Daily Democrat, 4 gentrification, 124, 129–130 gerrymandering, 138 global disease pandemics, as rationale for NBL, 14–15, 66

harm-care as moral domain, 48 hazmat suits, 15, 16 hermit/isolate as cultural disposition, 240n13 “heterogeneous” concerns, 22 Hinshaw, Virginia, 96 history, material, 43–44 home rule civics and discourse in Davis, 23, 76, 78–81, 93, 102, 106–107, 112–113, 199–201; defined, 79; pastoral sentiments and, 81; slow growth and, 78–79, 81–85; table of comparative civics and discourse: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, 74; UCD and, 102, 105, 106 Houston Channel, 178 hurricanes and risk perception, 73, 169, 172, 173–178, 181–182 ideologies, political, 206 in-group structures and dynamics, 20, 52, 74, 206, 211 “insiders” and “outsiders,” 80, 160, 163, 203 “institutionalization processes,” 42 island trustees, 170, 177. See also elites/ trustees and Galveston issue elites, 224, 230 Jasanoff, Sheila, 240n11 justice and injustice. See social justice and injustice “justificatory frameworks,” 21

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Master Plan, Boston Redevelopment Authority, 128, 139 materiality and material history, 43–44 “matters of concern,” 12, 208 McAdam, Doug, 11, 46–47 McComb, David, 167 Melnea Cass Boulevard, Roxbury: original master plan for, 127–128, 139–140; as proposed biotech corridor, 130; tenement residents of, 121, 140 Menino, Thomas, 129 MEPA (Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act), 134, 135. See also environmental impact assessments/ statements meso-level context of risk, 7, 9–10, 20, 41, 207 “methodological individualism,” 240n16 migration in and out of cities, 80–81, 119–120, 124–126, 158 military research concerns: at Davis, 67, 93–94, 100, 109–111; at Galveston, 170, 172; at Roxbury, 123, 143–144 Mitchell, George (Mitchell Energy), 183 MIT proposed biolab, 130 monkey escape from BSL-3 facility in Davis, 92, 99 Moody family, 166, 176, 183 moral absolutes, 48 moral domains, 48 moral duty, 74, 94; Galveston, 160–161, 172, 173, 182, 186–189 moral foundations theory, 84 moral panic, 1, 220, 237n2 motive, attributions of, 71

Kempner family, 176, 183 Kennedy, Edward, 129 Kerry, John, 129 King, Mel, 138 Klempner, Mark, 116, 130–132, 140, 244n7 Laboratory of Energy Related Health Research (LEHR), 243n10 Lamont, Michèle, 21, 55, 240n17 Latour, Bruno, 12, 43 legacy of local history, 18, 21–22, 49, 71. See also “civic history” LEHR (Laboratory of Energy Related Health Research), 243n10 “liberalness,” meaning of, 206–207 local “matters of concern,” 12, 208 local pride, 74, 188 local sacrifice for common good, 34–35 Long, Norton E., 239–240n9 Longwood Medical Area, 124, 126–127, 129 loyalty, 48, 74, 203 LULUs (locally unwanted land uses), 117, 124 Machado, Mike, 87 “mall town” sprawl, 83 managed civics and discourse in Galveston, 23, 157, 160–163, 203–205: moral duty and commitment, 186–189; race and class issues, 184–186; risks of island life, 175– 180; role of old families, 182–183; roots of in Galveston, 160–164, 175; table of comparative civics and discourse: Davis, Roxbury, and Galveston, 74; UTMB’s local legitimacy, 180–182, 184 manufactured hazards, 8 Marx, Leo, 80, 242n2 Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, 135 Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), 134, 135. See also environmental impact assessments/statements

National Biocontainment Laboratories (NBLs). See NBLs National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory (NEIDL), 121, 127, 136–137. See also NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 34, 136–137 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). See NIAID

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National Institutes of Health (NIH). See NIH NBL campaign in Davis, California: citizen control issues, 91, 100, 106; comments on BSL-4 lab in Davis Enterprise, 87; CVEC BSL-3 lab announced, 86; Davis NBL not funded, 4, 99; faculty petition opposing NBL, 72, 90–91, 100, 103; grant application filed, 3, 92; inconsistencies in UCD statements, 77; initial ambivalence from public, 104–106; initial support from mayor, senator, 87, 107; mayor reverses stand, 92; PR firm hired for campaign, 70, 100–101, 107; protest over escaped lab monkey, 92, 99; public announcement, first public meetings, 87–88; reactions to NBL and to secrecy, 88–89, 99, 100–101, 105–106, 108–109; risk dispute and military-use questions, 77, 85–86, 89–90, 100; SUBN presents petition to council, 91–92; SUBN protest group forms, 90; SUBN suit over EIS, 98–99; video of elite “fact-finding mission,” 88, 105–106, 107 NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas, 4; announcement of NBL proposal intent, 169; awarded RCE designation, 170; CBEID announcement, 168; FEIS meetings, 170–172; first public forum, 71–72, 169; Galveston National Laboratory awarded NBL funds, 4, 170; letter-to-editor concerns, 169, 171, 171–173, 172, 180, 184; opening of, 247n19; Shope Laboratory NBL, 167–168; Sunshine Project objections, 170; subsequent public meetings, 170, 179. See also Galveston, Texas; UTMB NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts: activists attending expert/ official forums, 72, 121–122, 130–133, 140; Allen v. National Institutes of Health, 136, 137; anonymous tips about BUMC

meetings, 121–122, 131, 244n5; blue ribbon panel to assess/develop EIS, 137; BUMC NBL announcement, 129; BUMC’s hostile attitude, 68; Citywide Coalition, OBC groups form, 133–134; failure to consider alternative locations, 134–135, 137; Klempner’s reported insults of activists, 116, 122, 132, 140–141, 244n7; NEIDL BSL-3 approval, 127; NEIDL BSL-4 use issue, 121, 122, 127; NEIDL opened as BSL-2 lab, 121, 127; NIAID funding awarded (2003), 121, 127, 133; “No Place to Hide” petition, 134; Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition forms, 122, 133; Ten Residents of Boston lawsuit, 134–135; tularemia exposure incident revealed, 135–136 NBLs (National Biocontainment Laboratories), 2; microbiologists’ open letter questioning priorities, 3; NIAID formal request for proposal (2002), 3, 129, 200; as part of national biodefense network, 15, 100; portrayed as bioweapons labs, 109–111, 123, 143–144; risk perception of, 108–109, 176–179, 187; seen as environmental racism, 143–144; seen as moral duty, 186–188; seen as riskier than terrorism, 187; seen as wasting public money, 143; Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research, 100; as a technology, 15–16 NEIDL (National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory), 121, 127, 136–137. See also NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts neo-institutionalism, 42 neoliberalism and risk technologies, 50 NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), 34, 136–137 news media, 221, 232–233. See also individual newspapers New York State Department of Health, 3

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NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases): BLS-4 use issue, 121; formal request for proposal (2002), 3, 129, 200; on proposed biodefense network, 15; respondents to RFP, 220; response to microbiologists’ open letter, 3; Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research, 100. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California; NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas; NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts NIH (National Institutes of Health): Allen lawsuit against, 136–137; environmental impact assessment (Galveston), 170–172; microbiologists’ open letter to, 3; Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research, 100 NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard), 39–40, 95, 96 NIMTOF (Not in My Term of Office), 239n7 “nobleness”/moral duty, 173, 186–189 “No Place to Hide” petition, 134 notoriety/reputation as motivator: in Davis, 97; in Galveston, 74, 170, 172, 173, 188

place identification, 43 plague, 86, 131–132, 169, 187 political class, 77 political-culture, 21, 33, 55, 209–210, 213, 238n10 “political fields,” 46. See also “strategic action fields” political ideologies, 206 political party identification, 206 politics. See civic politics population-based measures, 14 Portland Oregonian, 4 positionality and positional civic politics, 7, 23, 46, 72, 74, 116, 123–124, 129, 138–139, 141–143, 146, 149–150, 152, 196, 198, 201, 202, 213, 245n14 “possibilistic” vs. “probabilistic” thinking in risk management and national security planning, 14 power and experience, forms of, 46 probability- vs. scenario-based policy, 14 progress, 203–205; as argument for NBLs, 19, 66, 73, 172, 173; as civic virtue, 48; Davis arguments over, 89, 94–95, 195; Galveston moral commitment to, 160–161, 172, 173, 186–189; postindustrial debate over, 31–32, 36–37; viewed with cynicism, 8, 187 progressivism: in Davis, 79, 82, 102–103; in Roxbury, 141–142, 144 Project Biodefense, 238n8 public access, 172 public health, 66, 238n6 public housing and gentrification, 130 public school desegregation, 125 public sphere/civic domain, 16–17 purity-sanctity as moral domain, 48, 240n10 Putah Creek Arboretum (Davis), 110

OBC (Outside Boston Committee), 133–134, 142–149 Oregon Health and Science University, 3 Outside Boston Committee (OBC), 133–134, 142–149 partisanship, civic, 74, 241–242n1; in Davis, 77, 81, 88, 93–95, 94, 99, 104–106; in Roxbury, 145 pastoralism, 74, 80–81, 242n2 paternalism, civic, 74, 159, 160, 164–166, 182, 195 peace/antimilitarism as motivator, 48, 74; in Davis, 79, 86, 94, 109–110, 123; in Galveston, 172; in Roxbury, 143–144, 148–149, 245n15 Pelican Island LNG plan, 161, 163, 172 personalism as motivator, 74, 145, 245n17

“quasi-game,” winning a, 47 race and class issues: in Davis, 80–81, 83–85, 179; in Galveston, 179–186; in Roxbury, 72, 119–121, 179

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racial migration in and out of cities, 80–81, 119–120 radicalized relations, 74 RCE (Regional Center of Excellence), 4, 15, 92, 157, 169–170, 247n18 recombinant DNA concerns, 137, 172 redlining, 125 “red” politics (Roxbury), 79, 121, 151, 194–195, 203 reformist relations (Davis), 74, 82 Regional Center of Excellence (RCE), 4, 15, 92, 157, 169–170, 247n18 repertoires theory, 19, 54–55, 209–210. See also civic repertoires represented politics, 74, 160, 195 research strategy and methods, 221–226, 237–238n4; choice of subject communities, 4, 222–224; comparative data, 5–6, 222–224, 226–227; Davis, 68, 70, 98–103; documents, archival materials, other data sources, 233–234; Galveston, 173–175; initial research, 220; interviews, 227–231; meso-level focus, 221; news media, 232–233; references to local civics and discourse, 19; Roxbury, 68, 128, 139–143, 147–149; site visits and ethnographic contexts, 231–232; strategy, 224–226 Riesman, David, 80, 242n2 risk: acceptable vs. unacceptable, 7; as both technology and political rhetoric, 36; comparative politics on, 33, 209, 213; and context, 7; cultural theory of, 51–54, 221, 240n13; defined, 8; justice and, 122; and level of analysis, 7; “misperceived,” 9; politics of, 6, 8, 34; population density and, 130, 134–135; private vs. public, 38; public aspects of, 54; public perception of, 50; public vs. private, 38; risk management, 5, 12, 34, 49; scholarship on, 33, 49–55, 208; and social position, 7; sociocultural approaches to, 51, 54; sociology approaches, 33; technical assessments

of, 208; unfair distribution of, 137–138 risk as technology (i.e., “risk technologies”), 36–38, 50 risk communication, 22–23, 64–70, 73, 197, 223, 227, 241n4; and BUMC, 129–133; and UCD, 89–90; and UTMB, 156, 167–168, 173, 176, 179 risk disputes: both left- and right-wing phenomena, 36; civic dynamics and, 71–74, 74; CVEC not opposed in Davis, 86; in Davis, 94, 104–106; defined, 239n4; differences between residents and progressive allies over, 142–149; dispute defined, 9; emergence of, 36; in Galveston, 162–164, 166, 173–178; history of unwanted land use in Roxbury, 117, 120–122; involving American values, 40–41; lawsuits in Roxbury over, 134–137; local vs. nonlocal, 143–145; public risk disputes and governance expectations, 35–38; in Roxbury, 128; scholarship on, 9, 32–33, 49–55, 163; security surveillance concerns, 93–94, 110; terrorism vs. lab accidents, 93–97; threat of accidents, sabotage, 93; and track record of trustees, 35–36, 46; universities not trusted in Davis, Roxbury, 179 risk management, 31–32, 34–35, 39, 49–50, 55, 65–66; biodefense as a risk management plan, 2–6, 9, 24; research concerning, 11–12 “risk panic,” 36, 211, 219 risk perception: collective, 195, 206, 209, 212; literature on, 33, 49–54, 240n12; research on, 210–211 risk society, 8, 31–32 Romney, Mitt, 129 “routine advocacy,” 124 Roxbury, Massachusetts: affordable housing in, 125, 128, 130, 138–139; “common good” as motivator, 151–152; concern with manufac-

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social justice and injustice, 4, 10, 19, 38, 48, 72, 73–74, 79, 129, 146, 184–186; environmental and, 126, 128, 137, 150, 202; Roxbury and, 72–73, 74, 121–123, 137, 140–141, 146, 150–152, 161, 201–203 “soft power” in risk disputes, 22, 210 solutions to risk as the societal problem, 35 South End Urban Renewal Plan (BRA), 126–127 Southwest Corridor and I-95 dispute, 125 “space of position-taking and space of social positions,” 46–47. See also “political fields” Spertzel, Richard, 237n1 stakes, the, defined in relation to risk, 8–9, 211 state, market, and civil society, 8, 193 stature, notoriety, and reputational arguments in support of NBLs, 66, 74, 97, 168, 173, 188 Stop the Bioterror Lab Coalition: agreeing to put Roxbury residents first, 148–149; different leadership styles within, 147–148; formation of, 72–73, 122, 133; racial friction within, 122, 144, 148–149; regulating vs. stopping debate within, 145–146 Stop the UCD Biolab Now! (SUBN), 90, 97, 98–99 “strategic action fields,” 46–47. See also “political fields” Strategic Plan for Biodefense Research, 100 SUBN (Stop the UCD Biolab Now!), 90, 97, 98–99 suburbanism, 80–81, 101 Sunshine Project, 170 Superfund sites in Boston, 126, 243n10 “supply side of culture,” 21 symbolic capital, 45

Roxbury (continued) tured, not natural, risks, 181; cynicism regarding “progress,” 187; demographics of, 6, 120, 120, 142; disenfranchisement as motivator, 68, 120, 132, 138–139, 150; disrespect as motivator, 116, 133, 140–141, 145–146, 150; environmental racism and justice, 4, 122, 137, 144, 150, 201; geography and neighborhoods, 118, 118; history of race/class migration, 118–120, 124–125; insistence on citizen participation, 44; “red” politics in, 79, 121, 151, 194–195, 203; riots and arson in, 125; siting of noxious facilities in, 117, 124, 126; treated as “expendable,” 122; unfair distribution of risk, 117, 120–121, 137–138; “white progressive” coalition with residents of, 141–149. See also NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts Roxbury Ten (Ten Residents of Boston v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, et al.), 134–135 Sanders, Janet, 127 Sargent, Francis W., 125 SARS, 66 scenario- vs. probability-based policy, 14–15 scholarship: cultural theory of risk, 51; on public risk perceptions, 49–50; on risk, 33; on risk disputes, 9–11, 49–55, 163; on risk management (see risk management); sociocultural approaches to risk, 51–52, 54; sociology approaches to risk, 33 science, views on, 103, 187 Sealy family, 165–166, 168, 183, 246n9 seasonal flu, 238n6 Selznick, Philip, 42 Sherman, Daniel, 10 Shope Laboratory, 167–168, 188 Sierra Club, 172 Smith, Clayton D., 10 social capital, 11, 45

“technical controversies,” 239n4. See also risk disputes technocracy, 34, 195, 208; defined, 239n2

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University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). See UTMB urban density, 130, 134–135 urban renewal, and resistance in Roxbury, 124–128, 138 USA PATRIOT Act, 86, 242n3 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 109 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 34, 243n10 UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston): 2003 Business of the Year, 170; community assessment of biodefense plans, 181–182; economic dependence on, 180–181; expected by community to lead, 162–164, 173, 176–178, 180–182; as “father figure,” 182; infectious disease expertise, 164–165, 168; and Shope Laboratory, 167–168; social trust in, 184; willed body/ cadaver donor issue, 169, 172, 173, 180. See also NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas

Ten Residents of Boston v. Boston Redevelopment Authority, et al., 134–135 Texas City: BP explosion (2005), 163, 178, 190; disaster of 1947, 163, 174–175, 190 Texas Medical College, 164–165. See also UTMB Thompson, Tommy, 4 “town and gown” relations: in Davis, 81–82, 100–101, 105–109; in Galveston, 166; in Roxbury, 124, 127, 129–131 traffic issues, 130 trustee institutions: defined, 9, 10, 31; governance expectations and, 35–37 trust issues, 172, 229, 247n23; in Davis, 81, 83–84, 100; in Galveston, 169, 182, 184; in Roxbury, 116, 123, 138–141, 202, 244–245n13 tuberculosis, 238n6 tularemia exposure incident, 135–136 UCD (University of California–Davis) and shared governance, 81–82, 103, 108. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California UJP (United for Justice with Peace), 245n15 United for Justice with Peace (UJP), 245n15 universal moral foundations, 48–49 university campaigns for NBL: similarities among, 64–67. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California; NBL campaign in Galveston, Texas; NBL campaign in Roxbury, Massachusetts University of California–Davis (UCD) and shared governance, 81–82, 103, 108. See also NBL campaign in Davis, California University of Illinois at Chicago, NBL application from, 3 University of Maryland School of Medicine, NBL application from, 3

vector-borne diseases, 246n8 virtues. See civic virtues virtuous conduct, 17 “vital materiality,” 43 Walsh, Edward J., 10 Warland, Rex, 10 water pollution, 84, 171, 200 “ways of life,” taboos associated with, 51 “weaponized” pathogens, 2–3, 13 West Nile virus, 66 white flight, 23, 80–81, 119, 124–126 “white progressives” in Roxbury, 141–142, 144 Wolk, Lois, 87 Woodland, California, 84–85, 85 worst-case planning, 15 Yancey, Charles, 127 yellow fever, 246n8 youth programs, 139

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