Misunderstanding Citizen Science: Hermeneutic Ignorance in U.S. Environmental Regulation

Abstract

In the United States, ‘fenceline communities' next to petrochemical facilities have been conducting and advocating for air monitoring since the 1990s, highlighting gaps in U.S. environmental regulators' monitoring programs. Citizen science is imagined to be valuable as a source of data for filling such gaps. But fenceline communities' air monitoring activities also underscore regulators' hermeneutic ignorance, namely their lack of appropriate concepts, categories, and metrics for understanding the temporality of air pollution as experienced by marginalized communities. Citizen science could play a valuable role in addressing hermeneutic ignorance, by providing more adequate epistemic resources for understanding the environmental harms. In the case of community monitoring programs, these have included epistemic resources for understanding the immediacy of air pollution and the chronic nature of unpredictable spikes in pollution. However, regulators confronted with community-led monitoring have acknowledged neither citizen scientists’ contributions to epistemic resources nor their own hermeneutic ignorance, limiting the potential for citizen science to address institutionalized ignorance. Recognizing hermeneutic ignorance shows the important role that epistemic resources play in institutionalizing ignorance, and points to reforms necessary if citizen science is to make robust contributions to environmental protection.