John Stone
2000 Great Lakes Commission - U.S. EPA Anthropology Fellow
The Great Lakes Commission proudly announces the conclusion of its first fellowship project hosted through the Great Lakes Commission Fellowship Program. This program was established in 1998 to create opportunities for Great Lakes professionals to work with GLC staff for up to 12 months on issues of shared interest.

The Program's inaugural fellow, John Stone, was sponsored by the Environmental Anthropology Fellowship Program of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Region 5). His fellowship project, titled the Risk Perception Mapping Demonstration Project, was conducted at the Commission between August 1999 and July 2000, and demonstrated the utility of an ethnographic approach to public participation in Great Lakes environmental management.

Abstract
This report presents the activities and preliminary findings of an environmental anthropology fellowship at the Great Lakes Commission (GLC). The fellowship project demonstrated the utility of an ethnographic approach called Risk Perception Mapping (RPM) to the public consultation and social research interests of the Great Lakes Commission and other relevant regional organizations.

These interests are reflected in the interrelated activities of a network of Great Lakes management agencies and organizations, including the GLC. In this report I refer to this network as "the Great Lakes Management Network," or "GLM Network" for short, although no formal institutional structure exists by that name.

An RPM demonstration project was conducted in a five county area surrounding the Fermi II nuclear power plant in southeastern Michigan, and focused on cultural, geographical, and social-contextual factors that can influence the nature and distribution of perceived risk among potentially affected populations.

Key findings pertain to perceptually-specific communities of environmental risk, with implications for what I call "participatory equity" in environmental management. Parallels are drawn with RPM research applied previously to other environmental management issues. Applicability to GLM Network interests was established in consultation with GLC commissioners, staff, and collaborators and focused on developing a method of population-specific information / education exchange through which more culturally sensitive indicators of Great Lakes ecosystem integrity may emerge.

Full Report (PDF, 192 pages)

Further information regarding the Risk Perception Mapping Demonstration Project may be obtained directly from John Stone at jvstone@umd.umich.edu or by calling 517/546.4981. For additional information about the SfAA/EPA Environmental Anthropology Fellowship Program and other joint SfAA/EPA activities, see http://www.sfaa.net/eap/abouteap.html.

Contact GLC President / CEO Dr. Michael Donahue at mdonahue@glc.org or call 734/665.9135 for further information regarding the Great Lakes Commission Fellowship Program.