The Community Divide is more Detrimental than the Plant Itself: Confrontational Stigma and Community Responses to Rural Facility Siting
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Rural communities are changing as ex-urban residents in-migrate with differing expectations than long-time residents of the surrounding agricultural community. The implications come into focus when techno-industrial developments are introduced in rural landscapes—potentially affecting residents’ place attachment. In the Township of Southgate, Ontario, a proposed biosolid (sewage sludge) processing facility resulted in hostile community conflict and emotional impacts that have driven a wedge between friends and family members. Utilizing in-depth interviews (n=22), this paper examines narratives of community in Southgate Township and the emotional impacts residents experienced during the facility siting process. The results suggest that divergent responses to facility development and landscape change has stimulated particularly strong intra-community conflict and emotions, altering the ways rural residents initially perceive their landscape and community as a safe tranquil place with a strong sense of community. Emerging from this analysis is the notion of confrontational stigma whereby residents worried the polarizing conflict that emerged in the community between those who oppose the facility versus those who support it for economic and agricultural purposes is leading to outsiders viewing their community negatively. Residents described how this depth of conflict could be more detrimental to the community than the effects of the facility itself. These findings suggest greater attention to community-level impacts of facility siting in rural areas in particular. This study makes recommendations for a facility siting process in rural communities that is more attentive to the diversity of rural residents, their range of place attachments and the potential for lasting social and emotional impacts within these diverse rural communities. Keywords: biosolids; community conflict; place attachment; community dynamics; waste processing; risk perception ------------------------------------------------------- Résumé Les communautés rurales sont en plein changement alors que les anciens citadins qui s' y installent ont des attentes différentes de celles des résidents de la communauté agricole avoisinante. Les implications deviennent évidentes quand les développements techno-industriels sont introduits dans les paysages ruraux-potentiellement affectant l'attachement des résidents à l'endroit. Dans la municipalité de Southgate, en Ontario, une suggestion d'usine de traitement de biosolides (boues d'épuration) a entrainé des conflits hostiles dans la communauté et des impacts émotionnels qui ont crée un fossé entre amis et membres de la famille. En utilisant la méthode d'entrevues approfondies (n=22), cet article examine les récits de la communauté, dans la municipalité de Southgate, et les impacts émotionnels que les résidents ont subis durant le processus d'implantation de l'usine. Les résultats suggèrent que des réponses divergentes au développement de l'usine et le changement du paysage ont stimulé des conflits et émotions intra-communautaires particulièrement forts, altérant les façons dont les résidents ruraux perçoivent initialement leur paysage et leur communauté, c'est-à-dire comme un endroit tranquille et sécuritaire avec un fort sentiment communautaire. L'on tire de cette analyse la notion de stigma conflictuel, notion selon laquelle les résidents se soucient de l'étendue d'un conflit polarisant qui émerge dans une communauté entre ceux qui s'opposent à une installation et ceux qui la supportent pour des raisons économiques et agricoles, ce dernier point de vue étant privilégié à celui d'une personne extérieure jugeant la communauté négativement. Les résidents ont décrit dans quelle mesure la profondeur les conflits pourrait être encore plus néfaste que l'usine elle-même. Ces résultats suggèrent de porter une plus grande attention aux impacts aux niveaux communautaires lors de l'implantation d'installations, en particulier en zones rurales. Cette étude fait des recommandations sur les processus d'implantation des installations dans les communautés rurales qui tiennent davantage compte de la diversité des résidents ruraux, leurs degrés d'attachement à un lieu et la possibilité d'impacts sociaux et émotionnels durables entre les diverses communautés rurales.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".