"Mobilizing Science offers a sharp and focused analysis of the complicated relationship between scientists and lay-people in grassroots movements aimed at influencing policies on issues that have a strong technical component. McCormick grounds her arguments in two detailed cases that are extremely different in their overall contexts. Yet she is able to identify similar mechanisms at work, which have useful distinctions that are helpful in thinking about these types of movements more generally." —William Gamson, Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Media Research and Action Project at Boston College

"In this ambitious and impressive first book that is based on research on two continents, McCormick breaks new ground in the burgeoning literature on deliberative and participatory approaches to making technological decision-making more democratic. Among her contributions, she deepens the understanding of citizen-science alliances by exploring the mechanisms that make such alliances work and by analyzing the pathways that lead to their cooptation." —David J. Hess, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

This project seeks to better understand the phenomenon of environmental refugees from a structural and experiential perspective. It is based in the Tar Creek area of Oklahoma, home to ten different Native American tribes and a mining-related Superfund site. Our study will investigate the displacement of the 1000 residents of Picher, the “hotspot” of the mining zone, due to the State of Oklahoma’s buyout of the town. By documenting the role of science and politics in the buyout, the terms of state compensation, and the responses of Tar Creek residents, this project will highlight the centrality of race and class disparities in the experience of environmental harm, and the complex relationship between scientific research and the politics of environmental justice.

The State of Oklahoma’s buyout of Picher covers the town’s 1000 residents, some of whom are Native American members of ten different tribes, and most of whom are poor. Picher's unearthly landscape contains dozens of "chat" mountains full of metal-laden mining waste. This once bustling mining town was the center of the world’s largest lead and zinc mines. However, when the mines stopped functioning over 30 years ago, the town began to disintegrate. Today, mining waste continues to mark Picher and its residents as environmentally polluted and socially marginal.

This State buyout will be the second in two years. The first in 2005 compensated 55 families with children below the age of six who were considered especially vulnerable to developmental harm from mining waste-related lead exposure. This second buyout has been announced for a different reason: the instability of Pitcher's land. The mining shafts running beneath residences and schools have been under-mined, leading to severe risks of land subsidence. The plans for this most recent buyout are more ambitious and inclusive. While not officially “mandatory,” the state officials announced that those who chose to stay would do so at their own risk, returning to a “rural” life with no schools, electricity, or other state infrastructure.

The experience of Tar Creek residents has global applicability and relevance. There is a sizeable social scientific literature on displacement due to violent conflict and economic development (e.g. Malkki 1995, Cernea 2000, Escobar 2003) that illustrates the psychological, cultural, economic, and political repercussions of geographical and social dislocation. Understanding processes of displacement and integration into new communities as a result of environmental disaster is now a rapidly growing field that builds on this previous literature (e.g. Kroll-Smith and Couch 1989, Kibreab 1996, Watts and Peluso 2001, Baviskar 1995, Vandergeest et al. 2007). However, there is a broad range of cases that do not quite fit within the paradigm of “disaster” since they involve phenomena that occur over an extended period of time, where departing and recipient communities gradually develop perceptions and attitudes towards one another that intimately shape the process of displacement and rehabilitation. This includes displacement such as that caused by sea-level rise and erosion occurring in Alaska or island nations (Ebi et al. 2006) or toxic contamination that is only "discovered" over an extended period of time (Beamish 2002). Our task is to analyze in all its complexity one such instance of a gradually evolving disaster. As global warming begins to cause an increasing number of catastrophes that force migration, the questions and findings of this research will be of increasing importance. Displaced groups potentially face stigma, prejudice and social isolation, like the members of the Tar Creek community. These stigmatized social responses may affect poor people and people of color more frequently since they face a disproportionate burden of environmental problems (Bullard 1990, 1993). Preliminary work in the Tar Creek area shows that such racist and classist responses are being leveraged against certain residents, generating a cycle of marginalization, displacement, and new forms of marginalization (Zota 2006).

NO FAMILY HISTORY argues that a vast political economy of disease has caused us to focus on treatment, detection and cure, while missing a more difficult and political piece of the puzzle – how to prevent breast cancer. While treatment is critical to addressing the thousands of cases of breast cancer that emerge every year, the quest for effective drugs are not driven not only by sympathy, but also by economics. There is a great deal of money to be made from treatment while few people see profit in prevention. Nonetheless, change is afoot. A burgeoning group of activists is drawing attention to cancer-causing substances and skyrocketing rates. Researchers are developing new scientific tools and methods in order to detect exposures never previously considered but common to most women’s lives.

The book follows scientists and activists in the field to show that there are new ways to reduce breast cancer rates. It tells a story some deny, but most are waiting to hear.