In this piece Reno examines how the landfill is made knowable as a place, and how diverse actors like lawyers, waste-experts, and residents engage with the landfill. He talks about the ways in which the landfill and its effects on the environment and people's lives is rendered differently depending on what kind of evidence is valued in different forums of remedy. Thus the meanings of toxicity of the landfill that are possible to articulate is linked to what forms of evidence count, and whose ways of knowing the place are considered valid. For example, residents living near the landfill complain about the odor through odor stories but this is not taken as serious evidence by lawyers. At a later moment, since proving environmental pollution through odor stories of residents is hard, residents get involved in a class action suit where they make claims on the basis of "nuisance" narrative, and as property owners whose enjoyment of property is hampered by the landfill.
Anonymous, "JoshuaReno-Risk/Evidence", contributed by Oviya Govindan, Center for Ethnography, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 9 March 2020, accessed 19 April 2024. http://centerforethnography.org/content/joshuareno-riskevidence
Critical Commentary
In this piece Reno examines how the landfill is made knowable as a place, and how diverse actors like lawyers, waste-experts, and residents engage with the landfill. He talks about the ways in which the landfill and its effects on the environment and people's lives is rendered differently depending on what kind of evidence is valued in different forums of remedy. Thus the meanings of toxicity of the landfill that are possible to articulate is linked to what forms of evidence count, and whose ways of knowing the place are considered valid. For example, residents living near the landfill complain about the odor through odor stories but this is not taken as serious evidence by lawyers. At a later moment, since proving environmental pollution through odor stories of residents is hard, residents get involved in a class action suit where they make claims on the basis of "nuisance" narrative, and as property owners whose enjoyment of property is hampered by the landfill.