Andrew Szasz is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Summary
Moment by moment the evidence mounts that unchecked modern industry is bringing us ever closer to environmental
disaster. How can we move away from the brink of extinction, toward a human society the earth can bear? In the
thriving popular politics of hazardous waste, Andrew Szasz finds an answer, a scenario for taking the most pressing
environmental issues out of the academy and the boardroom and turning them into everyone's business.
This book reconstructs the growth of a powerful movement around the question of toxic waste. Szasz follows the
issue as it moves from the world of "official" policymaking in Washington, onto the nation's television
screens and into popular consciousness, and then into America's neighborhoods, spurring the formation of thousands
of local, community-based groups. He shows how, in less than a decade, a rich infrastructure of more permanent
social organizations emerged from this movement, expanding its focus to include issues like municipal waste, military
toxics, and pesticides. In the growth of this movement, we witness the birth of a radical environmental populism.
Here Szasz identifies the force that pushed environmental policy away from the traditional approach, pollution
removal, toward the superior logic of pollution prevention. He discusses the conflicting official responses to
the movement's evolution, revealing that, despite initial resistance, lawmakers eventually sought to appease popular
discontent by strengthening toxic waste laws. In its success, Szasz suggests, this movement may even prove to be
the vehicle for reinvigorating progressive politics in the United States.