18 pages., via online journal., This essay explores the different meanings of the 1960s’ pesticide controversy
as conveyed by the multiple representations of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(1962). I argue that to understand the impact of Carson’s work on a heterogeneous audience in the early ’60s, we must move beyond an examination
of the book, Silent Spring, to consider its other media manifestations, as a
serialization for The New Yorker and as a television expose for “CBS Reports.” ´
Each conveyed a unique message stylized for the audience of that particular
media. This analysis demonstrates the problems and opportunities for scholars
attempting to gauge the influence of a book on the public understanding of
science. This argument also suggests that to understand the transition of
environmentalism from a grass-roots movement to near universal consensus,
we need to examine carefully the role of media in shaping divergent messages
for different audiences—a phenomenon that assisted in transforming local
environmental issues into a matter of national concern.
15 pages., via online journal., Jeju, an island in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality. We emphasize that community engagement in renewable energy governance does not have one but multiple and situated ways of mattering depending on local contexts.
