The Social Life of Pollution: How Social Narratives Shape Pollution Perceptions and Meaning Making in Chicago, Illinois

In Chicago, Illinois, environmental injustices are ubiquitous. Shaped by a long history of structurally racist and xenophobic policies of segregation such as redlining and zoning discrimination, environmental pollution is released in neighborhoods on the South and West Sides at rates that are much higher than the North Side. Chicago remains one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States, resulting in Black and Latine populations experiencing disproportionate exposure to environmental pollution in their communities. In this presentation, I will present key findings and data from my Masters of Arts thesis study, which excavates the various social processes that shape Chicagoans’ perception and meaning making about environmental pollution in Chicago, Illinois. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic interview data from 19 participants living in Chicago, I uncover three main social processes that invoke various amounts of significance for Chicagoans’ pollution experiences; which I define as naturalization, contextualization, and reflection. Utilizing grounded theory methodology, my project constructs a theory of experiential and somatic knowledge production that adds to the literature of environmental social scholars to better conceptualize pollution knowledge and perception. Joining the symbolic interactionist tradition, I argue that pollution experiences are imbued with significance or insignificance for Chicagoans and are shaped by social narratives. While naturalization and contextualization work to decrease the significance and alarm in the face of a pollution encounter, the process of reflection often increases the encounters’ significance and related concern. These processes ultimately become important to understand, as meaningfulness of phenomena affect the action taken to address them. If pollution becomes a natural and justified feature of Chicago’s social world, our appetite to struggle for a more environmentally just and safe world can become neutralized.