Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Through the use of heteroskadastic probit analysis, we examine the effects of both chronic (general) information and domain specific information on opposition to Genetically Modified (GM) foods among respondents in European Union nations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: One of the most contentious political fault lines affecting regulation of public health, safety, and the environment worldwide today involves debates over the so-called "precautionary principle" and its application to promising technoscientific advances. This paper uses the still roiling, acrimonious, and polarized politics of precaution that for a decade have framed policy debates over the development of genetically modified (GM) foods to access the "calculus of dissent" that citizens use to sort out competing claims about the risk of GM foods. We use results of the 1999 Eurobarometer Survey on biotechnology to test a theoretically driven causal model of attitude formation on this topic. We find that: (1) the predictive power of the model suggests its utility in future research; (2) a "values divide" lies at the heart of these debates, with attitudes shaped less by "good science" or "objective science" than by views of morality; (3) researchers and proponents of GM food production ignore or discount the insights of Douglas and Wildavsky's (1982) "cultural theory" of risk perception at their peril; (4) conversely, devotees of cultural theory minimize at their peril the critiques of cultural theory offered by Schrader-Frechette (1992) and those she calls "naïve positivists"; (5) all ignore or minimize at their peril the ability of citizen perceptions of government policymakers (and, hence, of government capacity building) to affect risk perceptions; (6) difficulties in improving EU support for GM foods since 1999 may be partially a function of misunderstanding the nature of the relationships involved in factors driving laypersons' calculus of dissent; and (7) while proponents of GM foods can affect these factors favorably, the task will remain a formidable one.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The workforce at the GM auto assembly factory in Lordstown, Ohio, fabled in the industrial sociology literature because of its militancy during a 1972 labor dispute, has been slowly whittled down over the past two decades from a high of 12,000 in the early 1980’s to around 2500 today, primarily through the process of attrition: not hiring replacements for retiring employees, instead transferring these assembly jobs to its burgeoning production complexes in Mexico and to non-unionized domestic suppliers. To explain why this famously radical workforce has accepted this downsizing, this summary of a longitudinal interview project with workers moves beyond accepted accounts of deindustrialization by considering the political, material and ideological conditions underlying concessionary bargaining . As its threats to relocate production have become less credible and consequential, GM has turned to tactics which actively secure worker consent to job loss (Burawoy 1985). In sum, Lordstown has witnessed the replacement of a hegemonic despotism (in which threats of capital withdrawal constitute a “war of movement”), with a hegemonic despotism (whose job reductions through voluntary retirements entail a “war of attrition”).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed