Epistemic Fencelines: Air Monitoring Instruments and Expert-Resident Boundaries

Gwen Ottinger

doi:10.4245/sponge.v3i1.6115

Abstract

Scientific instruments can help to shape and re-shape epistemic boundaries, especially those between communities of scienti?c researchers. But how do they function at boundaries between scienti?c communities and communities of non-experts? This paper examines the use of air monitoring instruments at the boundary between petrochemical facilities and nearby residential communities, asking whether a new generation of fenceline monitors shared by industry (and regulatory agency) experts and community members alter the epistemic boundary between the two groups. Arguing that epistemic communities organized around instruments are characterized, in part, by a common understanding of the evidential contexts for instrumental data, the paper shows how the evidential contexts in which experts and residents interpret monitoring data diverge. Instead of the new, shared fenceline monitors helping to reconcile differences over evidential contexts, those pre-existing contexts shape the interpretation of data from the new instruments–perpetuating epistemic boundaries between industry experts and community members.

Highlights

Scientific instruments can help to shape and re-shape epistemic boundaries, especially those between communities of scientific researchers. How do they function at boundaries between scientific communities and communities of non-experts? This paper examines the use of air monitoring instruments at the boundary between petrochemical facilities and nearby residential communities, asking whether a new generation of fenceline monitors shared by industry experts and community members alter the epistemic boundary between the two groups
Only if parties on both sides of the epistemic boundary represented by the fenceline can agree on the instruments’ evidential contexts, or what those monitors measure–a level of coordination not demanded by boundary objects (Fujimura 1992)–can air monitoring instruments be seen as organizing industry experts and community residents into new epistemic communities
Looking at how fenceline monitors operate at the boundary between residential communities and nearby petrochemical facilities extends an important finding of research on the work instruments do at the boundaries of scientific communities

Summary

FOCUSED DISCUSSION

Scientific instruments can help to shape and re-shape epistemic boundaries, especially those between communities of scientific researchers. This paper examines the use of air monitoring instruments at the boundary between petrochemical facilities and nearby residential communities, asking whether a new generation of fenceline monitors shared by industry (and regulatory agency) experts and community members alter the epistemic boundary between the two groups. This paper, argues that shared instruments for air quality monitoring are doing little to erode the epistemic boundaries between members of fenceline communities and scientists at oil refineries and regulatory agencies. Drawing on Pinch’s (1985) analysis of instruments and observational practices, I argue that epistemic boundaries coincide with the boundaries of instrumental communities only when instrument users have a common understanding of the instrument’s evidential contexts In their use of Summa canisters and buckets, I show, industry experts and community members, respectively, interpreted monitoring data in quite different evidential contexts. The case, I argue, suggests that instruments’ power to bridge or shift epistemic boundaries, while well documented with respect to scientific research communities, is likely to be much more limited where those boundaries separate communities of experts and non-experts who may have divergent approaches to fundamental questions of proof and evidence

INSTRUMENTAL AND EPISTEMIC COMMUNITIES

EVIDENTIAL CONTEXTS OF AIR MONITORS

MENDING EPISTEMIC FENCES?

CONCLUSION