Mobilizing Science

Sabrina McCormick is Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy & Sociology, Michigan State University. She is the author of No Family History: Finding the Environmental Links to Breast Cancer.

“Mobilizing Science offers a sharp and focused analysis of the complicated relationship between scientists and lay-people in grassroots movements aimed at influencing policies on issues that have a strong technical component. McCormick grounds her arguments in two detailed cases that are extremely different in their overall contexts. Yet she is able to identify similar mechanisms at work, which have useful distinctions that are helpful in thinking about these types of movements more generally.”-William Gamson, Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Media Research and Action Project at Boston College

• Introduction 1. Democratizing Science Movements: Conditions for Success and Failure 2. The Environmental Breast Cancer Movement and the Scientific Basis for Contestation 3. Dam Impacts and Anti-dam Protest 4. Government Institutions and Corporate Interests: Instigating Movement Challenge 5. Democratizing Science 6. Democratizing Science as a Mechanismof Co-optation 7. Long- Term Struggles and Uncertain Futures 8. A Case for Making Science Accountable Contributors Appendix References Index