| This research examines the problem of pesticide drift---a term that refers to the offsite, airborne movement of pesticides away from their target location---and analyzes public debate in California about regulatory response to the problem. Two interesting contradictions indicate the need for critical interrogation of pesticide drift regulation. First, in spite of recurring incidents and a wide array of scientific evidence suggesting the need for tightened restrictions on agricultural pesticide use, regulatory response to pesticide drift has been minimal, uneven, and reactionary. Second, two very different conceptions of the problem emerge in public discourse: one narrative about pesticide drift as a rare, minor series of 'accidents', and another narrative about pesticide drift as a common, everyday problem. While the former legitimizes the current regulatory response, the latter raises troubling questions about the ability of current regulatory practice to accurately evaluate the full extent of the problem or, furthermore, to effectively regulate pesticide use in a health-protective manner. I characterize the primary framings of the problem; identify the predominant framing that governs regulatory response; analyze the ways in which that framing resonates with regulatory structure, regulatory practice, and distributions of social power; interrogate the consequences of that trajectory; and highlight the efforts of activists to overcome those structural and discursive factors in order to push for greater regulatory action. This work is based on qualitative, in-depth interviews and ethnographic and archival research that I conducted in California between 2002 and 2006. I argue that the predominant framing of pesticide drift as a series of isolated 'accidents' intersects with highly devolved regulatory structures, undue industry influence over regulatory decision-making processes, narratives about scientific rationality, and longstanding vulnerabilities endured by farmworkers and other members of agricultural communities in ways that particularize pesticide drift incidents, render most pesticide exposure invisible, and naturalize regulatory inaction. At the same time, I illustrate how activists have struggled to reframe the issue, challenge regulatory response, and build coalitions in order to press for health-protective restrictions on agricultural pesticide use. |
