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Description
Growers and the USDA showed increasing favor for agricultural chemicals over cultural and biological forms of pest control through the first half of the twentieth century. With the introduction of DDT and other synthetic chemicals to commercial markets in the post-World War II era, pesticides became entrenched as the primary form of pest control in the industrial agriculture production system. Despite accumulating evidence that some pesticides posed a threat to human and environmental health, growers and government exercised path-dependent behavior in the development and implementation of pest control strategies. As pests developed resistance to regimens of agricultural chemicals, growers applied pesticides with greater toxicity in higher volumes to their fields with little consideration for the unintended consequences of using the economic poisons. Consequently, pressure from non-governmental organizations proved a necessary predicate for pesticide reform. This dissertation uses a series of case studies to examine the role of non-governmental organizations, particularly environmental organizations and farmworker groups, in pesticide reform from 1962 to 2011. For nearly fifty years, these groups served as educators, communicating scientific and experiential information about the adverse effects of pesticides on human health and environment to the public, and built support for the amendment of pesticide policies and the alteration of pesticide use practices. Their efforts led to the passage of more stringent regulations to better protect farmworkers, the public, and the environment. Environmental organizations and farmworker groups also acted as watchdogs, monitoring the activity of regulatory agencies and bringing suit when necessary to ensure that they fulfilled their responsibilities to the public. This dissertation will build on previous scholarly work to show increasing collaboration between farmworker groups and environmental organizations. It argues that the organizations shared a common concern about the effects of pesticides on human health, which enabled bridge-builders within the disparate organizations to foster cooperative relationships. Bridge-building proved a mutually beneficial exercise. Variance in organizational strategies and the timing of different reform efforts limited, but did not eliminate, opportunities for collaboration. Coalitions formed when groups came together temporarily, and then drifted apart when a reform effort reached its terminus, leaving future collaboration still possible.
ContributorsTompkins, Adam (Author) / Hirt, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Rome, Adam (Committee member) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Rosales, F (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation examines the history of multiracial alliances among internationalist radical activists in the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Using the approaches of social movement history and intellectual history, I critically assess the ideological motivations radicals held for building alliances and the difficulties they encountered with their subsequent coalitional work in four areas of coalescence—the antiwar movement, political prisoner solidarity, higher education, and electoral politics. Radical activists sought to dismantle the systemic racism (as well as economic exploitation, patriarchy, and the intersections of these oppressions) that structured U.S. society, through the creation of broad-based movements with likeminded organizations. The activists in this study also held an orientation toward internationalist solidarity, linking the structural oppressions against which they struggled in the United States to the Vietnam War and other U.S. militaristic interventions overseas and viewing these entanglements as interconnected forces that exploited the masses around the world.
Scholarly and popular interpretations of Sixties radical movements have traditionally characterized them as narrowly-focused and divisive. In contrast, my research highlights the persistent desire among Bay Area radicals to form alliances across these decades, which I argue demonstrates the importance of collaborative organizing within these activist networks. Scholarship on coalitional politics also tends to emphasize “unlikely alliances” between “strange bedfellows.” In contrast, this project illuminates how sharing similar ideological principles predisposed these radical organizations to creating alliances with others. Coalitions remain integral to contemporary social and political movements, and excavating the possibilities but also problems within previous broad-based organizing efforts provides a usable history for understanding and confronting societal issues in the present day. At the same time, the multifarious manifestations of racism and other systems of inequality demonstrate the need to first understand how these oppressions affect minority groups uniquely, before we can understand how they affect groups in comparison to each other.
Scholarly and popular interpretations of Sixties radical movements have traditionally characterized them as narrowly-focused and divisive. In contrast, my research highlights the persistent desire among Bay Area radicals to form alliances across these decades, which I argue demonstrates the importance of collaborative organizing within these activist networks. Scholarship on coalitional politics also tends to emphasize “unlikely alliances” between “strange bedfellows.” In contrast, this project illuminates how sharing similar ideological principles predisposed these radical organizations to creating alliances with others. Coalitions remain integral to contemporary social and political movements, and excavating the possibilities but also problems within previous broad-based organizing efforts provides a usable history for understanding and confronting societal issues in the present day. At the same time, the multifarious manifestations of racism and other systems of inequality demonstrate the need to first understand how these oppressions affect minority groups uniquely, before we can understand how they affect groups in comparison to each other.
ContributorsBae, Aaron Byungjoo (Author) / Garcia, Matthew (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen J. (Committee member) / Delmont, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016