Chemical Industry and Local Residents: The Role of the Territorial Factor in Danger Perception. T. Coanus, F. Duchene, and E. Martinais, Laboratoire RIVES
In the field of risk perception, habitual approaches use mainly quantitative techniques requiring standardized data (provided by questionnaires). In the case under study - two industrial sites situated near Lyons (France) with a high concentration of chemical or petrochemical industries - a joint urban, geographical and anthropological approach made it possible to highlight the importance of the "territorial factor". Risk evaluation as practiced by local residents is not an abstract mental operation that could be likened to the reasoning of specialists. On the contrary, the perception of danger is part of a more holistic relationship with the environment, be it physical (the scenery, odors, noise, meteorology and sitology) or human (memory of accidents, local history, changes in social relationships and population). Thus there emerges a veritable "urban territory", the potential danger but one dimension among others. The interviews showed that the local residents’ perception of danger is not a stable point of view, but a continuous process of questioning, nourished daily by minor events (pollution, fumes, odors) as well as by word of mouth. The reasons underlying the frequently mediocre efficiency of habitual communication strategies therefore become clearer. First of all, they are aimed at a nonexistent, "average" citizen (in the statistical sense), and take no account of the anisotropy of the territory surrounding the source of the danger. Furthermore, these strategies are considered to be dealing with a specific and temporary information problem, whereas a) the residents’ questioning is continuous, and b) they develop systems of "symbolic protection" that extend beyond the strictly informational dimension.
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