Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Based on a grounded theory analysis of focus groups and interviews, this paper examines the ways 56 college seniors talk about work and career as they prepare to graduate. Specifically, the paper focuses on a discourse of waste and use that underlies students’ understandings of what types of post-college choices are “appropriate” for them. This construction reifies a logic of economic rationality and contributes to the corporate colonization of the lifeworld.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper delves into the nature of local opposition through content analysis of letters to the editor in seventeen counties named as candidate sites for a LLRW disposal facility. I use Kraft and Clary’s (1993) analysis of public hearing testimony on high-level radioactive waste siting controversies as a guide. Like these authors I find overwhelming expressions of opposition across these cases. I also find that this opposition does not fit the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) characterization as operationalized by Kraft and Clary. However, I find that NIMBY characteristics were prevalent early in the siting processes and diminished over time. This leads me to argue that it is best to conceive of public expressions of opposition, like letters to the editor and testimony at hearings, as acts of strategic framing rather than indicators of private attitudes. I conclude with some preliminary analysis that indicates that the changing character of opposition may influence siting progress.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper evaluates the pros and cons of the Russian proposal, currently under consideration within the International Atomic Energy Agency, to construct a multilateral nuclear waste repository on Russian territory for the importation and disposal of spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear power plants around the globe. While the proposal offers obvious advantages, including a host country possessing abundant nuclear experience as well as sparsely populated territory appropriate for the construction of an underground geologic facility, the less obvious drawbacks to this proposal must also be considered. In this article, we review the USSR’s and Russia’s poor environmental and questionable security records in the handling of both civilian and military nuclear materials, and question whether the current level of democracy in Russia could ensure that such a facility is not imposed on a unwilling but repressed target population – thus perpetrating a serious environmental justice both within Russia and the global community. If the international community is to move forward with this proposal in an environmentally sound, secure, and just way, we argue that serious steps must be taken to ensure that the construction and operation of the facility is under genuinely multilateral control and that every precaution be taken to avoid turning Russia’s impoverished Far East into the world’s nuclear dumping grounds.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ?Environmental Ethics and the North-South Divide: A Case Study of Long-Term Nuclear Waste Storage?A paper proposal for the 2006 meeting of the ISA Henry B. LyonGraduate StudentUniversity of KentuckyPolitical Science DepartmentThis paper continues my current research interests in the politics of nuclear waste. It builds on papers previously presented at ISA and ISA South.The thirty countries that employ nuclear power generation have built sizable inventories of radioactive waste. Nuclear waste resulting from the generation of electricity is held in temporary storage on site at these facilities. The problem of establishing and managing a long-term storage facility to hold this hazardous material seems intractable. No place on Earth, it seems, wants to be known as the planets nuclear waste dump. Well, almost no place on Earth. Russia has proposed to build a nuclear repository in Siberia for the international community, for a fee. And in the United States, a Native-American Nation in northern Utah has offered to relieve Nevada of the responsibility for Yucca Mountain, again for a fee. Will it be long before a truly global South state decides to outbid Russia for an international repository? This seemingly miraculous solution to the intractable problem of dealing, long-term with nuclear waste, is in fact too good to be true. The ethical questions this proposed solution raises mirror much of the history of North South relations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Situational crime prevention (SCP) techniques have proven successful in a variety of spheres. Even so, one setting that has increasingly relied on such tactics to control crime, namely schools, has not been subject to much evaluation. Given the pervasiveness of this trend, as well as the associated costs, this is a clear void in need of research. Using a cross-sectional, nationally representative sample of schools, this paper investigates the efficacy of a variety of SCP tactics with regard to numerous crime outcomes, net of statistical controls. The findings hold implications for both theory and policy.