Memo+4-Questioning+a+Text

Fortun, Kim. 2001. Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

// What phenomenon is drawn out in the text? A social process; a cultural and politicaleconomic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culturetechnology- economics? // --Kim Fortun is working on the concept of "enuciatory communities" that develop from the creation of double binds that create tension between local practice and outside force, mitigation of harms and risk of closure, and new and entrenched ways of living in a globalizing world. She also considers what advocacy means as both an outsider and insider, expanding beyond the limitations of tradition notions of advocacy as antagonistic to totalizing hegemony. The final phenomenon is how to advocate a position knowing full well that the complexity of the situation one targets is too complex to fully comprehend and even more difficult to enunciate. This holds true for both the author and groups promoting environmental justice, industrial cleanup, and other goals evolving from this global disaster. // Where is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy? // --The physical location of the book is primarily situated in Bhopal India with an epicenter surrounding a Union Carbide chemical plant that created a chemical disaster and killed thousands. It is also partly developed in the global social, legal and economic systems surrounding the plant, local government, and advocacy groups. // What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount? // --One possible answer would be the historical trajectory of UCC and UCIL in relationship to developments in India, global markets opening up, and trade relationships expanding. --Another answer is the trajectory of risks and harms mounting in the face of increasing production of chemicals, lack of oversight, and offshoring of production to less regulated regions. --One item that pops up a number of times is the location of when the trajectory to the disaster began. Was it the building of the plant, the East India Company chartering, colonialism, the Green Revolution, degrading of the plants facilities and worker skills, or a single disgruntled worker’s actions? // What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale? // --Macro: globalization, legislation, state involvement in litigation, “the difficulties and contradictions Third World governments face within contemporary culture and political economy” [144]. Constitutional clauses and impacts on how the Indian government acts at a local and national scale. --Micro: descriptions of legal proceedings, interactions with people and representatives of company, conflict over design parameters for plant within the company, the city of Bhopal through the eyes and activities of Chouhan --Nano: Chouhan’s and his families experience of the gas, sweeping up the ‘dirt’ [149] --Meso: UCC propaganda, company documents, public relations, stakeholder meetings, market ‘corrections’ of UCC stock and disaster turned into restructuring opportunity, details of how UCC “managed” disasters // Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example? What is the temporal frame in which players play? In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?” In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization? // Chouhan: UCC worker and activist and author Dr. Sathyamala: doctor and activist [149] middle class activists management of plantworkers at plantgovernment officials (crisis, management of national image, etc.)The author of the book // What cultures and social structures are in play in the text? Hegemonies at multiple levels? // --retainers in the western traditional approach criminal neglect, or at least moral questionability and offensive. --The advocacy role taken up by middle-class progressives calls into question the appropriateness of this form of representation [31]. Middle class intervention adds layers to the problem of constructing truth and developing confirmation of tactics, options, etc. --The politization of the disaster positioned government officials and politicians in a place where they acted as frame setters for legal proceedings and interaction on a national scale. To avoid making the country look 'bad for business' the settlement was limited and a "denial of natural justice" [39]. This was an extension of the paternalism of the state derived from post-colonial scientific socialism. --Scientific community in India standing in protest of the Bhopal settlement [145]. // What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds? // --Plaintiffs must use the law while at the same time the law reduces plaintiffs to subjects before the law without inherent rights allocated by constitution or precedence. --The India government has to be a protector of the people and be open to development --UCC admitting moral responsibility to save face while dancing around further responsibility --Does the Indian government open up medical studies to NGO’s to get more conclusive data or does it protect the government as a paternalist, elitism that can only relies on itself? --The NGO medical studies have to pass extreme methodological inquiry while trying to get the information out as fast as possible [152] // How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described? // --There are several items of concern in this text. The simplest is the toxicity of the chemicals being produced in the Union Carbide plant. Related are the techniques and technologies of monitoring the risks and mitigating the dangers within the plant [the text on page 35 is one case in point]. There are also issues of environmental testing of toxicity and how this branch of science is implicated in legal proceedings, healthcare allocation, and claims making. "what counts as knowledge", expertise, and knowledge making are present as both internal and essential to the phenonemons under investigation as well as a concern from Fortun's ethnographic stance. --What is a valid number for medical studies to be considered ‘proof’? [151] --  "Could the law ever be anything other than another technology that reproduces and extends capitalist economies?" [29] --[I will not pretend that the following comparison is equitable in harm, but the contemporary example seems to fit] This is no less true now when the most recent health problem coming out of capitalist industry is the salmonella outbreak in peanut butter. The company that owns the plant even acknowledges that they knew of the problem. If settlements are the default and norm of litigation, rather than compensation and criminality, then law will continue to be a problem for most. // What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text? // --The breakdown of assumed political boundaries plays a prominent role in the development of the Bhopal legal case and location of contention. The opening lines of Chapter 1 introduce the United States judge's position that locating the primary legal proceedings in the U.S. would be tantamount to imperialism. While this might be true it also reified national boundaries and made further advocacy work in the U.S. more difficult. // How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies bureaucratic function, economics, etc? // --Paternalism by the state mitigates rights of individuals. The legal system in India is influenced heavily by political interests. The caste system has impacts on the protections for individuals. Individuals that are unable to read and/or write must use proxies for their representation. --workers in the plant were never given information enough to make informed consent on accepting work and working within the plant [47]. --Individuals are forced out, without compensation or notice, from their homes by government officials in order to remove from the tangible record the houses that were effected by the gas leak [48]. --legislation without funding in the degrading of federal environmental protection; the gang of three [55-6]. --Citizen advisory panels are an information management tool for 'a unified front' of the chemical industry [65] // Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes? // --I think the relationship between the Reagan era dismantling of the EPA strikes a cord in the global phenomenon of ambivalence to environmental harms occurring in the Third World. --The West Virginia 'sister plant' story was a solid comparative choice. The chapter opens up the differences and similarities of advocacy on similar issues depending on where the parent company is located and the legal, social and cultural background of the area. In both cases, the West Virginia site and the Bhopal site maintained considerable power through its economic wealth and 'quality' of jobs. Yet, at the same time, United States citizens were granted greater access to officials, managers, and media to make their claims. // Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims? // --There is a challenge to the idea of stakeholder communities through the author's explanation and utilization of enunciatory communities. Rather than static entities that realign their focus on certain topics enunciatory communities develop out of problematics that force individuals and groups to coalesce around emerging issues, controversy, disaster, etc. // What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both? // // What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument? // // How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument? // // How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged? // // How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments other than those built in the text? // --This could have been a direct extention or verification of a sociological approach to social movements developing out of health risks. This could have been on modernity and risk society This could have been about post-colonialism and the problems of mirroring development from past-colonial powers. // What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text? // // What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability? Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant? // // What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained? If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews? How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred? // --Data: newspaper articles, company documents, advocacy pamphlets, company education pamphlets, interviews, participant observation in Bhopal, refrigerator magnets, public commenting events on regulation and research, advocacy experience in Bhopal, Kanawha Valley, Washington, DC, Poetry, // How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories? // --ambulance chaser lawyers coming in on the heels of the Bhopal leak. --union workers forming the ACT Foundation --'middle class advocates' --The environmental advocates of West Virginia // What additional data would strengthen the text? // What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a research project? Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood? --theory in the footnotes What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided? How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development? --There are sets of historical charts How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text? How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text? How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated? How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described? How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers? What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument? What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect? What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes? How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”? // How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not? // --One of the recurring themes is the difference between the careful, nuance of ethnography running in parallel to direct, fast advocacy statements. Competing demands are a constant reminder of the double bind the author was maintaining while trying to understand the proliferation of double binds coming out of the Bhopal disaster [52-3]. "Being well versed //in// the world became much more important than having an intellectual hold //on// the world" [54; author's emphasis]. --The author is open about her limitations in both cultural understanding and linguistic limitations. Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences? --While not the primary audience, I can imagine that there is a desire for a broad contingent of members of anthropology departments to read this book and work through their own roles as potential advocates. --How are double binds endemic to our existence would apply in many areas. What all audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope? --sociologists interested in social movements and advocacy should consider how ethnographies can help their efforts. --sociologists and political scientists that are still stuck in a mode of social structures and institutions being static could use this work. What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is not obvious? How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research? What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text?
 * What is the text about – empirically?**
 * What is the text about – conceptually?**
 * Modes of inquiry?**
 * Structure and performance?**
 * Circulation? **