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SCOTT FRICKEL
FORUM
on missing new orleans: lost knowledge and knowledge gaps in an urban hazardscape
| AS A RULE historians, philosophers, and sociologists of scientific knowledge study knowledge making; seldom do scholars study the nonproduction of knowledge or the creation of knowledge gaps. Yet scientific work involves the interplay of these two countervailing processes, and answers to questions concerning what kinds of scientific knowledge get made by who, where, and for what purposes hinge also on "undone science" and the consequent institutionalization of ignorance.1 This forum on "Toxic Environments/Toxic Bodies" provides an opportunity to reflect on those dynamics as they shape what we know and don't know about environmental toxins and public health, and what historians and others who study the past can do to recover those missing pieces. |
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Rather than cast my comments in terms of what we know or are beginning to know—concerning, for example, the effects of environmentally prevalent synthetic compounds such as bisphenol-A on human reproductive systems and development, or the ways that biomonitoring and body burden studies are helping to mobilize environmental health activists—I will focus on what we don't know and why that might be. My points of departure are two recently completed studies of the hazardscape in New Orleans prior to and following the landfall of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.2 Both studies examine the problem of urban soil contamination, but from different angles. The first investigates how knowledge about remnant industrial contaminants in the city may have become hidden and effectively lost over time; the second investigates knowledge gaps resulting from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) post-hurricane environmental hazard assessment. I want to use the findings from these studies to consider how lost knowledge and knowledge gaps are related spatially and how these two ways of missing New Orleans can inform a deeper appreciation of—and concern for—the historical nonproduction of environmental knowledge.
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| TAKING OUR CUE from research by environmental historians and historical geographers on the accumulation and disposal of "relict industrial waste," the first study investigates the conversion of industrial lands to other commercial and noncommercial uses between 1955 and 2006.3 Working with a total of 215 former industrial sites that we identified from mid-twentieth century manufacturing directories, we selected ninety-two at random and then conducted site surveys on each of those lots to assess patterns of contemporary land use.4 Our goal was to better understand the nature and spatial distribution of former industrial facilities throughout the city and to learn what those sites had more recently become. |
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