Don't Burn it Here: Grassroots Challenges to Trash Incinerators - Softcover

Walsh, Edward J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0271016647 ISBN 13: 9780271016641

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 1997

Synopsis

When first proposed in this country during the 1970s, waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators appeared to be ideal solutions to the growing mounds of trash in our "throw-away" society. Promising to convert useless garbage into electricity while saving precious landfill space, trash incinerators seemed perfectly timed to respond to a national need. Within a decade, however, a grassroots anti-incineration movement emerged as a vibrant offshoot of the environmental movement. In Don't Burn It Here, sociologists Edward Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith examine this grassroots movement through detailed analyses of the struggles surrounding proposals to build eight municipal incinerators in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. The eight case histories that form the heart of the book are comparable to hundreds of others across the U.S. The authors' research is based on interviews, focus group discussions, extensive newspaper files, and questionnaire responses from participants on both sides of the conflicts. A final chapter examines the similarities and differences between the three successful projects and the five defeated ones. An overview of the history of the modern incinerator in the U.S. and the emergence of a major national opposition movement provides the necessary context, and throughout the book, the authors make useful comparisons to other national movements seeking legal justice for deprived collectivities such as women and ethnic groups. This project was supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation's Fund for Research in Dispute Resolution. Striving to maintain a balanced treatment of both sides of the incinerator battles, the authors provide fresh theoretical and methodological perspectives on a new type of collective action. They also help to close the gap between theory and empirical data in the social sciences.

About this title

About the Authors

Edward J. Walsh is Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State University.

Rex Warland is Professor of Rural Sociology at Penn State University.

D. Clayton Smith is a data analyst with the Kentucky Department of Education.

From the Back Cover

In Don't Burn It Here, sociologists Edward Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith examine the grassroots anti-incineration movement through eight case studies of proposals to build municipal incinerators. These cases, set in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, are comparable to hundreds of others across the United States. The authors' research is based on interviews, focus group discussions, extensive newspaper files, and questionnaire responses from participants on both sides of the conflicts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0271016647
• ISBN 13: 9780271016641
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312