definitions of conflict and the legitimation of resources: the case of environmental risk

Sociological Forum, VoL 4, No. t , 1989

Definitions of Conflict and the Legitimation

of Resources: The Case of Environmental Risk 1

T h o m a s Die tz , z Paul C. Stern, 3 and Robert W . Rycrof t 4

Th& paper examines the social construction of conflict over environmental health and safety issues (i.e., environmental risk). Four explanations for such conflict are commonly offered in the environmental policy literature, gee examine the interests served by each. We hypothesize that environmental policy professionals hoM definitions o f conflict consistent with the values and interests o f the organizations for which they work and the professions o f which they are members. These definitions enhance the legitimacy of the resources those groups possess in relative abundance. Data from a survey o f risk professionals are generally consistent with these hypotheses. We con- elude by generalizing beyond environmental conflict to identify ways in which disputes about the nature o f a social problem or conflict are often at the same time struggles to determine the value of the resources available to social movements and their opponents.

KEY WORDS: social construction; conflict; environmental policy; definitions; resource mobilization.

1An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 1984 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of George Mason University, George Washington University, or the National Research Council or any of its constituent units.

2Department of Sociology/Anthropology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030. 3Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 20418.

4Center for International Science and Technology Policy, Elliott School of International Af- fairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 20052.

47

o884-8971/89/o3oo-oo475o6.00/o © 1989 Plenum Publishing Corporation

48 Dietz, Stern, and Rycroft

INTRODUCTION

Since the early 1970s, the social construction approach has been a major source of insights into conflicts over social problems (Schneider, 1985; Spector and Kitsuse, 1977). When issues are matters of intense social conflict, the social constructions offered by participants in the conflict are critical elements in political struggles. Each definition of a problem embodies presump- tions about who or what caused the problem and who or what must change (or be changed) to solve it. Each definition ties substantive positions to sym- bols of shared cultural values. Thus definitions can influence the positions of uncommitted citizens and shape their judgments about the legitimacy of different positions. And each definition has implications for the power to make decisions about the problems at issue.

Over the last decade, scholars of social movements have used the social constructionist approach to considerable advantage, and recently this perspective has begun to appear in the policy literature. For example, Stern and Aronson (1984: ch. 2) explore the policy implications of defining energy either as a commodity, a social necessity, or a resource with ecological implications. They show how each definition of energy legitimates the position of a different set of actors, points to a different course of action, and lends power to different interests.

In the environmental policy literature, much of the debate is about the character of controversy as well as about the nature of the problems. This paper, then, focuses initially on social constructions of conflict. We believe such a focus provides insight into the dynamics of environmental policy. Defining a conflict is a means of legitimating, and thus according value to, resources that may be mobilized in the struggle between actors. Just as acceptance by key actors of a particular definition of a problem may determine how a problem is to be solved, acceptance of a particular explanation of conflict can determine who legitimately participates in debating solutions to the problem and who gains or loses power.

Here we examine conflicts over environmental threats to human health and safety, or environmental risk. We begin by identifying four views of the causes of environmental conflict prevalent in the contemporary environmental policy literature. Each tends to legitimate different resources and thus lends advantage to different actors in the system. We hypothesize that participants in environmental policy debates tend to subscribe to definitions of the conflict that legitimate resources that they value or that are possessed in relative abundance by groups whose values and interests they share. For people active in such debates, the relevant groups are their employers and the professions of which they are members. Using data from a survey of individuals prominent in environmental policy conflicts, we appraise those hypotheses. We then generalize our argument by discussing three generic characteriza-

Definitions of Conflict and Legitimation of Resources 49

tions of social problems in industrial capitalist societies and the ways in which each of these views legitimates a particular set of resources.

CURRENT DEFINITIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT

The environmental policy literature reveals a pervasive dissensus about the nature of conflict over environmental threats to human health and safety. We found four prevalent characterizations of those conflicts: differential knowledge, vested interest, value conflict, and mistrust of expert knowledge. (For a related set of distinctions that has influenced our think- ing, see National Research Council, 1984.)

Differential Knowledge

One view of environmental conflict emphasizes that the issues involved are complex, fraught with uncertainty, and hard to understand. It holds that detailed and quantitative analysis is necessary to assess risks; that most people understand neither the technologies that generate, control, or monitor pollution, nor the theoretical and methodological bases of risk analysis; and that as a consequence the great majority of the general public is ignorant at best, and at worst, is prone to unreasonable fears and expectations. In short, this view emphasizes an uninformed public as the root cause of conflict. For example, a report of the National Research Council states, without citing evidence:

Public attitudes toward hazardous industrial wastes and their disposal reflect a number of misconceptions. Among these are the beliefs that hazardous waste generation can be eliminated, that waste discharges can be avoided, that waste disposal can be made risk free, and that hazardous waste disposal technologies are equally risky to the local environment and health. (National Materials Advisory Board, 1983:15)

Proponents of this view sometimes derogate their political opposition as irrational. For instance, the editor of Science wrote in the context of debate over "so-called hazardous wastes . . . . Those people who depend on the media for information and guidance have been frightened, some to the point of hysteria" (Abelson, 1983:1003).

Implicit in this line of thought is the belief that experts understand the risks well, have realistic expectations, and are in a better position than most people to make judgments about how safe is "safe enough." The implication is that if ordinary people were better informed, they would make the same judgments as the experts. Although public perceptions of risk often do not coincide with the judgments of scientific or technical professionals (Slovic et al., 1980), expert judgment is sometimes systematically biased (Kemeny,


1980; Slovic et al., 1982). For many of the most controversial risks, there is insufficient empirical basis for any clear expert judgment (Zinberg, 1983). Thus the differences between expert and public views of risk may not always mean the experts know better. At any rate, perceptions of risk almost always involve matters of judgment as well as knowledge.

Defining risk conflicts as disagreements between the knowledgeable and the uninformed increases the value of technical expertise as a resource, and therefore the power of those individuals and institutions with access to it. This view of environmental conflict usually lends advantage to corporations that earn profit from risky activities and to their representatives. They possess substantial expertise "in house" and also have ample financial resources with which to hire expertise. In contrast, environmental organizations have strong support from the public but limited access to scientific expertise. (For evidence of the unequal distribution of such expertise between industrial and environmental groups, see Dietz and Rycroft, 1987.)

Vested Interest

Another view of environmental conflict emphasizes that the risks and benefits of science and technology are rarely distributed evenly throughout the population. In this interpretation, conflict over environmental health and safety risks is an example of the familiar political struggle between the potential winners and losers from a policy under consideration. This view is illus- trated by this analysis of the acid rain debate:

The current unregulated acid rain situation produces certain benefits to some and uncertain costs to others. Proposed regulation of acid-causing emissions, however, promises certain costs for those who presently enjoy certain benefits but uncertain benefits for those who presently incur the uncertain costs. (Rhodes and Middleton, 1983:7)

Casting environmental conflict in terms of vested interest legitimates any actor that stands to gain or lose, regardless of scientific expertise; it thus increases the value of people-based resources compared with the differential knowledge formulation. The view may benefit different interests under different conditions. It implies the need for bargaining, and some participants (industry in particular) are usually in strong bargaining positions in our society. But raising equity issues in environmental disputes sometimes works to the advantage of traditional risk bearers (the poor, aged, etc.): Thus the vested

~Schnaiberg (1983, 1986) notes that environmenta! and appropriate technology movement organizations have sometimes raised equity issues while advocating policies that do not have strong or clear equity impacts.


interest definition of environmental conflict may be a double-edged sword, used to cut down claims that any particular position represents the public interest or high moral principle.

Value Differences

A third view of environmental conflict emphasizes underlying value judgments. It holds that because environmental policy choices almost always involve trade-offs and uncertainties, value systems are the only basis for making choices. Consider a debate over siting a hazardous waste facility. Any decision about the facility must weigh potential economic expansion against possible exposure to toxic chemicals. Therefore, differences between people in how much they value economic growth or in how averse they are to environmental hazards will cause conflict. The uncertainty that characterizes environmental issues serves to magnify these value conflicts.

Value judgments even enter into scientific analyses. For example: Neither benefits nor risks can be identified, let alone quantified, independently of the values and/or philosophical outlook of the assessors . . . . The identification and assessment of risk necessarily turn upon conclusions as to the adequacy of existing knowledge, and the significance and weight, pessimistic or optimistic, that is given to uncertainty. These are consequences of the value systems and philosophic outlook of the assessors. (Green, 1980:35)

Emphasizing value differences as a cause of conflict implicitly questions the legitimacy of arguments based on supposedly value-free risk analyses, especially if the analyses do not pay attention to some of the major values at issue. This emphasis usually serves to legitimize minority perspec- tives because it puts the technical analyses usually used by government and industry to promote potentially hazardous technologies on the same footing as the admittedly value-based arguments most often raised by environmental, consumer, and labor activists.

Mistrust of Expert Knowledge

The final view of environmental conflict is related to the explanations based on values and interests, but emphasizes the effects of these forces on knowledge. It argues that conflict occurs because people have learned to mistrust expert knowledge as interest serving. They realize that industry's scientists almost invariably support their employers' positions and that environmental groups' scientists do the same, and they mistrust even public agencies' scientific findings as possibly distorted by economic or political influence.

The following quotation illustrates this view:


From June to September, 1981, EPA has been conducting a series of secret "science courts."... Excluded from EPA's science courts were not only the traditional public interest groups, but the entire scientific and public health community as wello Regu- lation of toxic chemicals is not a matter to be hashed out in a star chamber pitting EPA scientists against industry scientists. The daylight of public and scientific community scrutiny gives integrity to EPA's scientific and regulatory processes. If the current occupants of EPA's highest positions do not understand that, then they will surely lose all right to claim that they can be trusted to act to protect public health. (Sandler, 1982:4-5)

This sort of mistrust threatens not only the technological projects of corporations and government agencies, but also the credibility of the scientific establishment. The emphasis on mistrust goes beyond the vested interest view of environmental conflict. It holds that interests affect knowledge as welt as opinion, and that even knowledge developed by purportedly disin- terested parties, such as government, is not immune.

The view that experts and the institutions for which they work cannot be trusted to act in the public interest has ambiguous implications for the legitimacy of different participants. Some observers, who believe the mistrust of expert judgment is without legitimate reason, see it as a public relations problem. The remedial strategy is to regain trust. This strategy can be distinguished f rom the educational approach implied by the "public ignorance" view in that the emphasis of education is on conveying facts, whereas the emphasis in public relations is on changing attitudes.

Other observers believe that public mistrust of expert knowledge has a legitimate basis and conclude that major public policy decisions should be made by the citizens rather than by any elite. They suggest as a remedial strategy policies to further increase people power, such as the use of public funds for research conducted by environmental and consumer organizations. They argue that because no single source of expertise can be trusted, public decision making is best served by a process that makes expertise available to all concerned parties: Truth emerges from a discourse in which all sides, informed by expertise, participate actively.

Social Construction and Social Reality

It is appropriate to ask which of these views of environmental conflict is most correct. But the question is difficult to answer because the scientific analysis of conflict is part of the conflict's social construction (see Schnaiberg, 1977, 1980; Stern and Aronson, 1984). Each definition of a conflict carries an implicit hypothesis about where truth is to be found and thus sets a different agenda for research. Different lines of research not only flow from but also tend to validate different theories of the conflict.

Our concern in this paper is not to find the most correct definition of environmental conflicts or simply to delineate competing definitions. Rather,


it is to examine the political functions of alternative definitions of environmental conflict. The above discussion implies one conclusion: Each definition tends to legitimate a particular set of participants and a particular set of resources in the conflict, and to delegitimate other actors and resources. If social definitions are important in these ways, those immediately engaged in the conflict should differ not only in their substantive positions (e.g., Lynn, 1986) but also in how they characterize the conflict. Interested individuals can be expected to subscribe to definitions that are consistent with their values. The differences should be most profound among "risk professionals," those individuals whose daily work focuses on environmental conflict and who must mobilize resources to achieve their organizational goals. Risk professionals may choose to work for organizations whose values correspond to their own or may come to espouse certain positions publicly because they are speaking for their organizations. In either instance, these individuals will be sensitive to definitions of conflict that legitimate or delegitimate resources easily available to their organizations. Similarly, risk professionals have career trajec- tories that are linked, at least in part, to the policy relevance of their expertise (Dietz and Rycroft, 1987; Schnaiberg, 1977, 1980). Thus we would expect them to view the causes of conflict in a manner consistent with their professional interests as well as their organizational values.

Our position is not that of pure social constructionists. Although we believe societies and individuals can label things and activities as clean or polluting more or less as they choose (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; for a critique, see Abet, 1985), the freedom to socially construct reality is con- strained by the reality of environmental threats. A selection process ultimately links the reality of events to their social constructions: A society that treats as clean a water supply with high concentrations of typhoid bacteria, pesti- cides, or heavy metals will suffer a high toll of illness and death; a society that sees an implacable enemy as benign is likely to fall victim in war. So a construction discrepant with reality may prove very costly.

Also, reality sometimes constrains social construction because technological limits, physical laws, and natural processes make some things impos- sible. For instance, although it is possible to consider the earth's climate as an economic good, it is not possible for individuals to buy their way out of global climatic changes. Global climate is a nearly pure public good and, unless it becomes possible to escape to other habitable worlds, it would be a sophistry to treat it as a commodity. Few things in the world put such strong constraints on social construction, but many constrain it to some degree and an important constraint is the publicness of goods. There is a continuum from nearly pure public goods to nearly pure private ones, where the continuum is defined by the ease with which the goods are divisible and the extent to which people may be excluded from benefiting. Near the public end of the continuum are found such issues as the greenhouse effect, depletion of the ozone


layer, "nuclear winter," acid deposition, the destruction of ecosystems, and the clear-cutting of air-restoring tropical forests. The inherently public nature of such problems is undoubtedly one reason that the environmental movement has been so successful gaining support for state interventions.

Our focus on the ideological aspect of environmental debates and on the way those debates affect the political fortunes of the various actors is not meant to suggest that only ideas and social processes are at issue. The way a society thinks about environmental problems has real consequences for human lives and welfare, and may also affect the earth's physical and biological life-support systems. Much more is at stake in debates about the environment than the success of movement groups and their opponents, or even the economic interests of individuals and corporations.

Interests, Values, and Definitions

The competing definitions of environmental conflicts differ strikingly in that the differential knowledge view tends to legitimate scientific expertise vis-~t-vis public concern and, for the most part, the other views do the reverse. We offer two specific hypotheses for exploration. First, we expect that people who work in environmental movement organizations are likely to see environmental conflicts as based on vested interests or value differences, views that are consistent with the democratic and participatory norms of the environmental movement (Milbrath, 1984; Morrison and Dunlap, 1986) and that also increase the legitimacy and value of the wide public support the environmental movement enjoys. We also expect them to reject the differential knowledge formulation of environmental conflict, which supports an elitist philosophy and also increases the value of scientific expertise, a resource they lack. This group may also be inclined to endorse the mistrust formulation. In contrast, people who work for industry groups will tend to endorse the differential knowledge formulation, which legitimates technical knowledge and also labels their antagonists as badly informed or irrational. People who work for institutions that are not strongly tied to single interests may have more diverse views about the nature of environmental conflict. In terms of our taxonomy of conflict definitions, these hypotheses seem most congruent with the "vested interest" and "value conflict" positions.

Second, we expect that beliefs about the nature of environmental problems and conflicts are related to an individual's professional identity. For example, natural scientists are trained to use technical analysis to solve environmental problems. The view that environmental conflict is due to public misunderstanding or fears tends to give scientists opportunities to use their training and validates the importance of their findings. Attorneys are ex-


perienced in adversarial systems. The view that environmental conflict is due to vested interests is consistent with the political and adversarial terms most familiar to them. It also increases the importance of adversarial processes and thus gives attorneys opportunities to practice their trade.

D A T A A N D M E T H O D S

Sample

Our data are from face-to-face interviews conducted in 1984 with individuals who were active participants in the U.S. environmental-risk policy system. A snowball sample of 228 individuals was drawn, beginning with 30 individuals whom we knew, as a result of two years of ethnographic work within the policy system, to be key actors in conflict over environmental policy. During each interview, we asked respondents to nominate 5 other people whose "professional activities are centered on assessing environmental risks or debating policies intended to avert or mitigate risks." The list of all individuals nominated in interviews constituted our sampling frame. As inter- viewing proceeded, we added nominations to the frame and periodically drew names at random. Individuals were listed in the frame once for each time they were nominated, so the probability of appearing in our sample is a function of prominence in the risk policy system. Our response rate was slightly over 80°7o. In the analyses that follow, we have restricted the sample to individuals with a college degree (98% of the total sample) who work for the federal executive branch, Congress, law or consulting firms, environmental organizations, corporations or trade associations, or universities or think tanks. Seventeen individuals who worked for other kinds of organizations were excluded from the analysis because of insufficient representation of any one type of organization. Cases with missing data on any of the variables used were also discarded, leaving a working sample of 190 individuals.

We believe our sample to be representative of professionals working in the U.S. risk-policy system, but it is not a simple random sample from an infinite population. It is likely we have sampled a substantial fraction of the total population, which should reduce sampling error, but snowball samples, like cluster samples, tend to have larger sampling errors than simple random samples (Goodman, 1961; Sudman, 1976:210-212). As a result, the standard errors and statistical tests reported below should be considered rough guides to sampling uncertainty rather than precise probability statements. (For further details, see Dietz and Rycroft, 1987:117-121.)

56 Dietz, Stern, and Ryeroft

Variables

Sources o f Environmental Conflict

Respondents were asked which of several causes of environmental conflict was most important (the interview guide is in Dietz and Rycroft, 1987:125-144). The relevant survey items, along with the general rubric under which they fit, are as follows:

1. Knowledge differentials: "Misunderstanding and fears on the part of the public."

2. Vested interests: "An uneven distribution of net risks and benefits in which those who benefit from a situation don't bear the risks."

3. Value differences: "Differences in individual values regarding risk- taking and uncertainty."

4. Mistrust of expert knowledge: "Public mistrust of government"; "Pub- lic mistrust of industry."

In addition to asking each respondent to identify one source as most important, we asked respondents to rate each source as a "major source of controversy, a minor source of controversy, or not a source of controversy." Analysis of the rating produced results very similar to those from analysis of the forced choice, so we report results only for the latter.

Background and Institutional Affiliation

Our hypotheses concern two key characteristics of individuals- education and institutional affiliation. Since our sample is highly educated, we have focused on the field in which respondents earned their highest degree and aggregated fields into six categories: humanities and social sciences; taw; biology and environmental science; medicine and public health; economics and business; and the physical sciences, mathematics, statistics, and en- gineering.

Institutional affiliation is an indicator of the interests a respondent represents. Members of the risk-policy system work for a variety of organizations. We limit our analysis to six categories of institutions: the federal executive branch, Congress, law or consulting firms, environmental organizations, corporations or trade associations, and universities or think tanks (e.g., Resources for the Future, Brookings Institution, National Research Council, Electric Power Research Institute). We have aggregated law and consulting firms into a single category because they play a similar function in the risk-policy system, serving as "expertise for hire." Trade associations function as representatives of corporations or groups of corporations, so their


function is much like that of the government affairs offices of many private firms. Think tanks, at least ostensibly, play a neutral role as providers of research and expertise. While some think tanks are far from neutral, there is no clear a priori way of assigning them to other categories.

In addition, we have grouped our respondents into three age/cohort groups: those under 30, those 30-44, and those 45 or over at the time of interview. These three groups would have been under 16, 16-30, and over 30 in 1970, a critical year in the development of the environmental movement. Thus these categories are designed to capture any cohort effects that might result from being a high school or college student at that time, or from being otherwise influenced by publicity about environmental problems at critical points in the life cycle. Finally, we have inctuded gender as a dichotomy. We include these variables as controls because they often correlate with general environmental attitudes (Borden and Francis, 1978; Honnold, 1984; Van Liere and Dunlap, 1980).

Methods of Analysis

The "source-of-controversy" variable is a polychotomous dependent variable. In large, simple random samples, multinomial logit analysis is the most appropriate method for analyzing such variables (McFadden, 1973, 1976; Manski, 1981). But because of the character of our sample, we do not believe that use of maximum likelihood estimates from a multinomial logit model offers any advantage over the use of multivariate nominal scale (MNA) analysis, in which each category of the dependent variable is treated as a dichotomy to be predicted by the independent variables using ordinary least squares (Andrews and Messenger, 1973). For a simple random sample, the multiple nominal scale analysis yields inefficient parameter estimates, in contrast to maximum likelihood estimates of the logit model (Goldberger, 1964). But since our sample is not a simple random sample, nor particularly large, the properties of the multinomial logit estimator are not obvious. In contrast, ordinary least squares methods are quite robust against violation of assumptions, given even moderate sample size (Gillespie, 1977; Knoke, 1975). In addition, MNA coefficients have a number of properties that facilitate their interpretation, while multinomial logit analysis requires interpretation of a complex, nonlinear function. Thus we have chosen MNA over logit analysis.

RESULTS

Table I displays the results of a multivariate nominal scale analysis (MNA) of explanations for environmental controversy. The grand means in

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the first row in the table represent the proportion of respondents selecting each explanation of conflict as "most important." About two-fifths of our respondents selected knowledge differentials as most important, while about one-fifth selected each of the other three explanations as most important. When respondents were asked whether each source of conflict was a major source, a minor source, or not a source of controversy, each explanation was considered a major source by the majority of respondents. Nearly three- quarters labeled public misunderstanding a major source, nearly two-thirds considered public mistrust a major source, while inequities and value differences were each considered a major source by just under 60% of respondents. Thus, our respondents see each of these explanations as important, but as expected, there is little consensus about their relative importance.

In the MNA reported in Table I, the coefficients for any single category of an independent variable sum across categories of the dependent variable to zero. Thus the results of this analysis can be summarized by looking across equations, as well as by examining each equation separately. In addition, this property of MNA means that the coefficients for any one equation can be calculated from the other equations, so that one equation, corresponding to one category of the dependent variable, is redundant. Because of the nature of our sample, conventional hypothesis tests of the statistical significance of individual coefficients do not provide an adequate guide to substantive importance. As a rule of thumb, we consider any MNA coefficient of mag- nitude greater than 0.10 (a 10% difference between individuals in that category and the grand mean, net of other independent variables) substan- tively important. Although this rule is arbitrary, using other rules would not lead to theoretically important changes in our interpretations of the data.

We hypothesized that individuals working for environmental organizations would endorse other definitions. Environmentalists in our sample strongly reject knowledge differentials as an explanation, while dispropor- tionately endorsing mistrust of expert knowledge as the greatest source of conflict. Corporate employees endorse knowledge differentials, while rejecting either value differences or vested interests as explanations. These results are consistent with our hypotheses. Congressional employees join environmentalists in rejecting ignorance as a cause of controversy and differ sharply from corporate representatives in identifying vested interests as important in environmental controversy. Since Congress is explicitly a forum for political conflict and is openly lobbied by various interests, this set of effects is not surprising. Other institutional affiliations, about which we also offer no a priori predictions, show substantially weaker relationships to beliefs about the sources of controversy. Executive branch employees reject vested interests as an explanation, perhaps in response to controversies about corporate influence on environmental policy during the Reagan administration. They also endorse value differences as an explanation, which may be a response to the


intractability of their position in the middle of regulatory controversies or to a view of themselves as mediators rather than actors. Law and consulting firm employees endorse knowledge differentials while rejecting value differences, a view consistent with their position as sellers of expertise.

The effects of professional identity are weaker than those of institutional affiliation. Individuals educated in the humanities or social sciences reject knowledge differentials as the most important source of controversy, while supporting to some extent each of the other three explanations. Physi- cal scientists, as expected, endorse knowledge differentials and reject value differences. Also, individuals trained in business or economics reject mistrust of expert knowledge, and biologists and environmental scientists reject vested interests as the greatest causes of controversy.

Gender and age/cohort have effects that are weak and insignficant by conventional standards. Other cut points for the age/cohort categories produce relationships that are still weak and quite similar to those reported in Table I.

In sum, the results are consistent with our hypotheses. In particular, employees of corporations and their associations are most likely to assert that the most important source of environmental conflict is knowledge differentials between experts and the public, whereas environmental organization employees reject knowledge differentials as the most important source of controversy. The effects of professional identity are considerably weaker, but roughly consistent with a view that perceptions of conflict are shaped by professional socialization and interests. Age/cohort and gender have very weak effects controlling for the other variables.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the contention that environmental conflict is defined in ways that parallel the values and political interests of different actors in the conflicts. Each definition seems to advance a set of political actors by lending legitimacy to the resources it commands in abundance relative to others. While we have examined in detail only conflicts around environmental risk, we believe the argument can be generalized. We elaborate below, focusing on major types of resources and the ways they may be legitimated by particular definitions of social problems.

Types o f Resources and Types o f Conf l ic ts

Expert authority and public opinion or "people" are two types of resources that can be mobilized by a social movement or its opponents in


a wide range of social conflicts. Material resources and money constitute a third important type. We suggest that in the general case one effect of conflict over the definition of controversies is to influence the relative legitimacy of such types of resources.

Each type of resource is a very broad category. For instance, "people" may show their support by responses on a survey, votes, expressions of moral outrage, or actions ranging from letter writing to guerrilla warfare. And one type of resource can be exchanged for another to some degree. Members (people) pay dues (money), experts can be hired, and so on.

Corresponding to each resource type, we can identify an ideal type of conflict in which one type of resource is considered especially legitimate. In capitalist democracies, conflicts that are defined as "economic" are those in which the use of material resources is considered more legitimate than the use of other resources, conflicts that are defined as "political" are those in which public support is considered the most legitimate of resources, and conflicts that are defined as "scientific" or "technical" are those in which expertise is considered the most legitimate of resources.6 Thus the choice to consider a social problem as essentially or primarily economic, political, or scientific has implications for the use of resources in the attendant conflicts.

Actual conflicts rarely match these ideal types exactly. But problems and conflicts are often seen as falling into these categories, and these definitions affect the legitimacy and value of resources. In this way, disputes about the nature of a social problem can affect the relative strength of the con- tending actors. I f an issue becomes defined as essentially or primarily economic, then money is a legitimate resource in conflict about it, and public opinion may not be; if such an issue is redefined as primarily political, then public opinion and values become more important resources, and money may become illegitimate. The classic example is slavery in the United States, where the abolition movement was successful in redefining what had been seen by many as in large part an economic issue into a mainly political one, thus shifting the character of the conflict.

Legitimacy affects the value of a resource. For instance, material resources are important in political conflicts, but when an issue is socially defined as political, the legitimate role of money, and therefore its value in conflict about the issue, is circumscribed. Financial campaign contributions are essential in choosing American governments, but while it is legitimate for a politician to take positions that are popular in order to gain votes, it

6These categories are not all-inclusive. Some conflicts, which might be called "institutional," are by social construction relegated to the "normal" processes within a particular institution such as the church, the school, the community, or the family. What is defined as institutional is sometimes contested, as indicated recently by the successes of movements to redefine "family" conflicts such as spousal and child abuse as political and thus subject to legal sanction.


is not legitimate to take positions favored by wealthy interests to maximize their campaign contributions. Contributions that are too large, or from the wrong sources, are legally proscribed and can cost candidates the support of voters who see them as violating democratic norms.

There are also, of course, social definitions of appropriate ways to use each legitimate resource. In U.S. domestic politics, public opinion, lobby- ing, and peaceful demonstrat ions are broadly perceived as legitimate ways to use popular support , but assassinations, riots, and other violent actions are not. Donating to a political campaign is a legitimate use of money, but buying votes through bribes is not. That is not to say that riots and bribes have no effect on the political process, nor that there is unanimity about their legitimacy, bur rather that they violate widely held norms for political action in American society and thus have negative as well as positive effects for those involved.

The social definition of an issue influences not only the relative value of resources in attendant conflicts but also the kinds of arguments that are considered appropriate and relevant. In conflicts over issues considered to be economic, decisions are justified in terms of economic efficiency or profit. In political conflicts, notions of justice, morality, or equity are seen as legitimate criteria. In scientific controversies, justifications are stated in terms of objective truth.

D y n a m i c s o f Legi t imat ion

Social definitions of issues are always contestable and subject to change as the result of active efforts to reconstruct them by social movements and their opponents. 7 We believe definitional struggles are often important factors in the dynamics of social change. Consider the historic conflict between labor and capital. Early in the industrial revolution, relations between labor and capital were usually defined as economic transactions between persons, and the legitimate role of the state was to protect property rights and en- force contracts. But the labor movement , as part of its struggle for power, worked to define labor-capi ta l conflict as political as well as economic, as involving issues of justice and right as well as o f exchange. The success in promoting that view legitimated state intervention to provide minimum standards for wages and working conditions, and to structure the conflict be-

7Although we emphasize conflict between social movements and their opponents, we do not presume that the state or other actors are passive. In some cases the state seems to operate as an agent of political actors who have a preferred definition of a social problem at issue. For instance, characterizations of energy and environmental issues made by U.S. government officials changed markedly after the election of Ronald Reagan in I980 (Kash and Rycroft, 1984).


tween labor and capital through various formal mechanisms of union certification. The new definition also legitimated public opinion, labor lob- bying, strikes, boycotts, and other people-based resources available to the labor movement. In short, by increasing the value of people as resources, a definition of labor-capital conflict as political gives labor more power than it has when its only recourse is to outlast the company being struck. The struggle to define the boundaries between the politics and the economics of labor-management issues is ongoing, with labor recently arguing that workers and communities ought to be fully informed about the hazards of industrial processes and to be consulted on plant closings, changes that would widen the domain of the political. At the same time, capital is pushing to "deregu- late" in the area of occupational safety and health, which would move that type of conflict out of the political arena.

Even when there is consensus that an issue is political, disputes about its nature influence the value of resources and determine the legitimacy of various ways of using them. For example, there seems broad consensus that abortion is essentially a political issue, with rights and morality the foci of debate. But the social construction of the conflict can still influence whose participation is considered legitimate. Thus Luker's (1984) argument that the debate over abortion is a conflict of values between childless, wage-earning women and housewives for whom motherhood is central to their self-concepts legitimates both sides as stakeholders. However, in Petchesky's (1985) view, the conflict is a power struggle over women's sexuality between the affluent old men who finance anti-abortion groups and young women who have not yet made their career choices. Thus, Petchesky questions the legitimacy of the anti-abortion position on the ground that its main adherents would illegiti- mately interfere with other people's lives.

The recent history of environmental conflict provides a good illustra- tion of the dynamics of social construction and the attendant struggles over the legitimacy of resources. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, conflicts over environmental hazards were usually considered as economic. They were typically treated as matters of land or water rights and of civil damages, and resolved through contract, property, and tort law (Covello and Mum- power, 1985; Hutt, 1978). But in recent decades, scientific studies began to show that human activities, through their effects on the envrionment, might have consequences of a sort that Western industrialized societies usually manage through the political system (Hays, 1987). The studies raised the spec- ter of serious "public bads," shared disamenities from which individuals cannot easily escape by their own action. Among the most serious and most widely shared were alterations of the global climate sufficient to inundate population centers and to dry major agricultural regions, and alterations of the atmosphere or water supply sufficient to cause millions of cancers. In


response to news of such possibilities and other problems that were more localized in their effects, an environmental movement developed, dedicated to addressing the problems. The accumulating scientific evidence, brought to public attention by scientists and the emerging movement, created broad awareness of the adverse effects of pollution and led to a reconstruction of environmental problems. Trespass and nuisance laws no longer seemed appropriate mechanisms for dealing with the issues; instead, the relevant prece- dents seemed to come from treatment of threats from major epidemics, foreign enemies, or organized criminal elements, all public bads that were addressed through political action at the national level. Thus what had been treated as economic issues came to be seen as political, with regulatory action added to tort law as appropriate methods of resolution. The success of the transformation is demonstrated by broad public support for the environmental movement and by the emergence of large new federal agencies to deal with environmental problems. 8

The reconstruction of environmental problems from economic to political has posed a challenge for the opponents of the environmental movement. When environmental regulation is weak or absent, many industries benefit in that they keep the profits of production but share the costs of pollution widely with the whole society. It has therefore been in industry's interest and consistent with a free-market approach to public policy to define pollution problems as essentially economic. Attempts to develop the con- cept of marketable "pollution rights" can be seen as supportive of such a definition, and the resistance to implementing proposals based on that con- cept is an indication that it is no longer socially acceptable to leave environmental decisions so fully to the market (Hays, 1987). Recognition of the public-good aspect of environmental protection promotes a participatory approach to public policy and works to the advantage of the environmental movement. It sanctions appeals to public opinion, which supports the movement, and it implicitly portrays environmental movement organizations as working in the public interest.

In this social climate, it is generally in the interest of opponents of the environmental movement to define enviromental issues as scientific or technical rather than as political (Dickson, 1984: ch. 6; Mazur, 1985; Schnaiberg, 1980: ch. 6). Such a definition would offer substantial advantages to indus-

sWe have argued elsewhere that support for the environmental movement often comes from people who believe their action is required to prevent or ameliorate a social ill (Stern et al., 1986). Success in constructing environmental problems in terms of their social consequences and in focusing attention on responsibility for them induces people to see the problems as moral issues and increases their willingness to participate in the environmental movement, Raising moral issues helps define environmental problems as political, and thus tends to advantage environmentalists and their political values; diffusing moral issues has the opposite effect.


try because corporate material resources, which far outstrip those of the environmental movement, are easily translated into scientific expertise by hiring consultants and funding research. 9 Such a definition would at the same time devalue public opinion and, by implying that there is a correct answer that scientists can furnish, would suggest that those who oppose the majority of scientists are misinformed. The notion of environmental problems as essentially technical is also compatible with a pejorative characterization of environmental groups as working in pursuit of "special interests" rather than the common good. A technical perspective presumes that optimal policies can be attained through unbiased analysis yielding increasing approximations to a single truth. At present, scientific/technical and political definitions com- pete to characterize most environmental conflicts and produce the specific arguments about the reason for environmental conflict we have found in the policy literature. At stake in this continuing debate is the value of the resources available to the interests concerned. Any shift in the construction of the conflict can change the relative value of resources and can therefore affect policies, including allocations of the state's resources, and alter the placement of issues on the public agenda.

Resources, Ideology, and Attitudes

Our analysis suggests a link between resource mobilization theory (Jenkins, I983; Olson, 1965) and the work of both European "identity the- orists" and American environmental sociologists who emphasize ideological factors in social movements. Some European scholars have argued that the "new social movements," including the environmental movement, are engaged in "the social contestation around the reinterpretation of norms, the crea- tion of new social meanings and a challenge to the very boundaries between public, private and political domains of action" (Cohen, 1985:694; see also Eder, 1985; Habermas, 1981; Offe, 1985; Touraine, 1985; Touraine et al., 1983). Similarly, many environmental sociologists have emphasized the importance of worldviews, or definitions of the relationship between humans and their environment, in environmental politics (Catton and Dunlap, 1980; Cotgrove, 1982; Dunlap and Van Liere, 1984; Dunlap and Olson, 1984; Milbrath, 1984). Our analysis shows that such ideological or value positions

9There are exceptions to this generalization. Opponents of the environmental movement sometimes benefit from political arguments, for instance, the argument that environmental regula- tions endanger public goods such as economic growth, employment, or competitiveness in international markets. And environmentalists sometimes benefit from an emphasis on scientific evidence. A n instance may be the problem of acid precipitation, which came to public attention and remains a topic of concern largely because o f scientific research from noncor- porate sources in affected geographic areas (Regens and Rycroft, 1988).


become politically significant through their effects on resource mobilization: when "social meanings" and values change, the balance of power in social conflict shifts because of changes in the values of the resources available to be mobilized. Social movement organizations and their opponents do more than work to acquire resources-they atso engage in ideological struggle to legitimate the use of those resources and to delegitimate the resources available to opponents (see also Downey, 1986; Gamson, 1975; Gamson and Modigliani, 1987; Touraine et al., 1983).

This study also begins to define connections between macrolevel dynamics of social change involving movements and their opponents and micro- level psychological processes that determine individuals' support for those groups. In a previous study (Stern et a l , 1986), we examined the psychological factors that lead individuals to lend support to a social movement that seeks a collective good. Here we discuss the ways collective-goods movements and their opponents attempt to achieve their goals by shaping socially shared conceptions. Although both arguments are presented in a static form, catching individuals and social conflicts at a single point in time, they provide a mechanism for the type of dynamic analysis called for by many students of social movements (e.g., Snow et aL, 1986; McAdam, 1983). Social movements and their opponents attempt to legitimate resources and influence beliefs and attitudes. As beliefs and attitudes change, support for various sides in a conflict and the relative legitimacy of resources shift; the actors respond by altering their arguments and strategies. In short, the strategies of movements and their opponents coevolve. Each side works to define the issues and conflicts in ways that both advance its ideological position and lend it tactical advantage by increasing the value of its most abundant resources.

Writers on social movements since Marx have discussed the efforts of political actors to influence definitions of issues and conflicts. Gramsci (1957) theorized at length about the "war of position"- the struggle for ideological hegemony. If his is a strategic analysis, ours is an attempt to look at tactics and to map the battlefields.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was sponsored in part by grants from the Russell Sage Foundation ("The Washington Danger Establishment"), the National Science Foundation (PRA-84-13069), and the William and Flora Hewlett Founda- tion ("George Mason University Problem Solving Project"). Computing resources were provided by the Center for Academic and Administrative Com- puting of The George Washington University and the Academic Computing Service of George Mason University. We thank Kevin Avruch, Frederick


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