Problem Definition and Community Participation in Environmental Health Interventions: An Exploratory Study of...

Arsenic, a known carcinogen, naturally occurs in the groundwater in large parts of West Bengal, a state in eastern India. Communities that depend on groundwater face twice the lifetime mortality risk for cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and developmental disorders. This study, focused on arsenic-affected communities in the state of West Bengal, offers an initial exploration of how local stakeholders construct groundwater arsenic as a health problem. Arsenic remediation interventions involve a host of international, regional, and local stakeholders (public health departments, government engineers, community health workers, consultants, hydrologists, etc.). How an environmental health problem is constructed has implications for who is considered responsible, what causes it, and pertinently, how/whether affected communities participate in addressing the problem. Drawing from a culture-centered approach, this fieldwork-based study offers three distinct yet related problem construction discourses, viz. social/political, technical and personal, in how the problem of arsenic is construed locally, and how such discourses are related to a particular conceptualization of community participation in environmental health.