The Production of Information for Genred Activity Spaces: Informational Motives and Consequences of the Environmental Impact Statement

Abstract

Genres, although aligning people to joint activity and joint attention, shape the substantive material or information represented within the bounded space of the text. Each genre creates a space that prompts the production of particular kinds of information to populate that space. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 that mandated the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was invented out of a perceived social need for greater information about the effects of human activity on the environment. The EIS has since spawned a constellation of related genres, has created a large informational market to fulfill the requirements of these genres, and has led to a proliferation of information. The set of relations among genre, information, and activity found in this one sphere of environmental information are suggestive of how information is produced and used in generic forms. © 2003, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.