Social Geography Discussions www.soc-geogr-discuss.net 1816-1499 1816-1502 8 1 2012 10.5194/sgd-8-1-2012 http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/8/1/2012/ http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/8/1/2012/sgd-8-1-2012.html http://www.soc-geogr-discuss.net/8/1/2012/sgd-8-1-2012.pdf 1 25 2012-01-09 Just passing through: the risky mobilities of hazardous materials transport J. Cidell jcidell@illinois.edu Department of Geography, University of Illinois, 220 Davenport Hall, 607 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA The scientific construction of risk is usually based on the probability of an event occurring in a specific location from a specific hazard. Hazardous waste transport is an example of a risk source that is fixed in neither time nor space, with materials traveling through the landscape. Residents living along fixed transportation routes likely to experience an increase in the amount and potency of hazardous materials traveling through their communities draw on distant places and spaces in order to define the risk they face as they try to make absent places and materials present. However, because those places and spaces <i>are</i> distant and absent, regulatory officials can resist their inclusion by arguing that only what is on site matters. This site of struggle over sources and construction of risks can best be understood through Law and Mol's spatiality of fire space. Using two North American case studies, this paper draws on the concepts of fire space and mobilities to explain the nature of the risk that mobile materials pose, including the disconnect between citizens' objections to increased hazardous materials transport and the environmental review and regulatory processes meant to prevent catastrophes from occurring. Adey, P., Budd, L., and Hubbard, P.: Flying lessons: exploring the social and cultural geographies of global air travel, Prog. Hum. Geog., 31, 773–791, 2007. Ali, S. and Keil, R.: Global cities and the spread of infections disease: The case of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Toronto, Canada, Urban Stud., 43, 491–509, 2006. Bear, C. and Eden, S.: Making space for fish: the regional, network and fluid spaces of fisheries certification, Soc. Cult. Geogr., 9, 487–504, 2008. Beck, U.: Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage Publications, London, 1992. Beck, U.: World at Risk, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA, 2009. Bickerstaff, K. and Simmons, P.: Absencing/presencing risk: rethinking proximity and the experience of living with major technological hazards, Geoforum, 40, 864–872, 2009. Bickerstaff, K. and Walker, G.: Risk, responsibility, and blame: an analysis of vocabularies of motive in air-pollution(ing) discourses, Environ. Plann. A, 34, 2175–2192, 2002. Bishop, P.: Gathering the land: the Alice Springs to Darwin rail corridor, Environ. Plann. D, 20, 295–317, 2002. Bloomfield, B. and Vurdubakis, T.: The secret of Yucca Mountain: reflections on an object in extremis, Environ. Plann. D, 23, 735–756, 2005. Brooymans, J.: CN could face federal charges for Wabamun Lake oil spill, Calgary Herald, 12 August, 2005. Cox, K.: Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or: looking for local politics, Polit. Geogr., 17, 1–23, 1998. Cresswell, T.: On the Move: Mobility in the Western World, Routledge Publications, New York, 2006. Edensor, T.: M6 – Junction 19–16: Refamiliarizing the Mundane Roadscape, Space and Culture, 6, 151–68, 2003. Edensor, T.: Mundane hauntings: commuting through the phantasmagoric working-class spaces of Manchester, England, Cult. Geogr., 15, 313–333, 2008. Eldeib, B.: Canadian National fined $250,000: Regulators say railway underreported Chicago-area crossing delays, Chicago Tribune, 21 December, 2010. Fotel, T.: Space, power, and mobility: car traffic as a controversial issue in neighbourhood regeneration, Environ. Plann. A, 38, 733–748, 2006. Franklin, A.: Burning cities: a posthumanist account of Australians and eucalypts, Environ. Plann. D, 24, 555–576, 2006. Giddens, A.: The Consequences of Modernity, Polity, Cambridge, 1990. Gordon, A.: Ghostly Matters, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1997. Gunder, M.: Ideologies of certainty in a risky reality: beyond the hauntology of planning, Planning Theory, 7, 186–206, 2008. Haalboom, B., Elliott, S., Eyles, J., and Muggah, H.: The risk society at work in the Sydney "Tar Ponds", Can. Geogr.-Geogr. Can., 50, 227–241, 2006. Hetherington, K.: Secondhandedness: consumption, disposal, and absent presence, Environ. Plann. D, 22, 157–173, 2004. Hinchliffe, S.: Locating risk: energy use, the "ideal" home and the non-ideal world, T. I. Brit. Geogr., 22, 197–209, 1997. Hinchliffe, S., Kearns, M., Degen, M., and Whatmore, S.: Urban wild things: a cosmopolitical experiment, Environ. Plann. D, 23, 643–658, 2005. Irwin, A., Simmons, P., and Walker, G.: Faulty environments and risk reasoning: The local understanding of industrial hazards, Environ. Plann. A, 31, 1311–1326, 1999. Jones, K.: Scale as epistemology, Polit. Geogr., 17, 25–28, 1998. Jones, P.: Performing the city: A body and a bicycle take on Birmingham, UK, Soc. Cult. Geogr., 6, 813–830, 2005. Kortelainen, J.: Old-growth forests as objects in complex spatialities, Area, 42, 494–501, 2010. Kuletz, V.: The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West, Routledge, New York, 1998. Latour, B.: Science in Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987. Latour, B.: Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999. Law, J. and Mol, A.: Situating technoscience: an inquiry into spatialities, Environ. Plann. D, 19, 609–621, 2001. Law, J.: Disaster in agriculture: Or foot and mouth mobilities, Environ. Plann. A,~38,~227–239, 2006. Law, J. and Singleton, V.: Object lessons, Organization, 12, 331–355, 2005. Leitner, H.: The politics of scale and networks of spatial connectivity: transnational interurban networks and the rescaling of political governance in Europe, in: Scale and geographic inquiry, Blackwell, Oxford, 236–255, 2004. Leitner, H., Pavlik, C., and Sheppard, E.: Networks, governance, and the politics of scale: inter-urban networks and the European Union, in: Geographies of Power: Placing Scale, Blackwell Publishing, Cornwall, 274–303, 2002. Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., and Sziarto, K.: The spatialities of contentious politics, T. I. Brit. Geogr., 33, 157–172, 2008. Maintz, J.: Synthesizing the face-to-face experience: e-learning practices and the constitution of place online, Soc. Geogr., 3, 1–10, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/sg-3-1-2008doi:10.5194/sg-3-1-2008, 2008. Massey, D.: Space, place and gender, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1994. Medd, W. and Marvin, S.: Making water work: intermediating between regional strategy and local practice, Environ. Plann. D, 26, 280–299, 2008. November, V.: Being close to risk: from proximity to connexity, Int. J. Sust. Dev., 7, 273–286, 2004. November, V.: Spatiality of risk, Environ. Plann. A, 40, 1523–1527, 2008. Parkhill, K., Pidgeon, N., Henwood, K., Simmons, P., and Venables, D.: From the familiar to the extraordinary: local residents' perceptions of risk when living with nuclear power in the UK, T. I. Brit. Geogr., 35, 39–58, 2010. Pyke, M.: Feds eye CN records after derailment near Bartlett, Daily Herald, 12 December, available at: http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20111207/news/712079668/, last access: 13 December 2011. Sheller, M. and~Urry, J.: The new mobilities paradigm, Environ. Plann. A, 38, 207–226, 2006. Sheppard, E.: The spaces and times of globalization: Place, scale, networks, and positionality, Econ. Geogr., 78, 307–330, 2002. Stanley, A.: Risk, Scale and Exclusion in Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste Management, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 4, 194–227, 2006. STB (Surface Transportation Board): EIS for the Proposed Canadian National Railway Company Acquisition of the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern Railway, available at: http://www.stbfinancedocket35087.com, last access: 8 January 2009, 2008. Swyngedouw, E.: Scaled geographies: nature, place and the politics of scale, in: Scale and geographic inquiry, Blackwell, Oxford, 129–153, 2004. Tetrault, S.: White House Budget: Sky may be falling over Yucca, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2 February, available at: http://www.lvrj.com/news/sky-may-be-falling-over-yucca-83323222.html, last access: 23 December 2011, 2010. USDOE (United States Department of Energy): Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, DOE/EIS-0250DF-S1, 2008. Urry, J.: Sociology beyond Societies, Routledge, London, 2000. Urry, J.: The "System" of Automobility, Theor. Cult. Soc., 21, 25–39, 2004. Williamson, T.: The Fluid State: Malaysia's National Expressway, Space and Culture, 6, 110–31, 2003.