The toxic waste movement: A new type of activism

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Abstract
Unlike other health‐related social movements such as the women's movement and an‐tinuclear movement, the toxic waste movement is not composed primarily of highly educated, upper middle class people who are motivated by global concerns. Toxic waste activists are typically working class and lower middle class people, politicized initially by perceptions of danger to the health of their families. However, awareness of global dangers and the larger political‐economic issues related to toxic waste contamination often emerges in the mobilization process. This movement is part of a larger social trend toward increased public demand for a role in scientific and technological decision making, which challenges scientific criteria for assessing risk. Whereas toxic waste activism is better explained by “new social movement”; theory than by resource mobilization theory, the former does not account for the toxic waste movement's class composition. Drawing on the political process model and frame transformation approach, we developed the beginnings of a “new global movement”; approach in order to capture the complexity of toxic waste activism.

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