Contested Illnesses Research Group
Brown University , Providence RI

Rebecca Gasior Altman began graduate work in the Fall of 2002. Her research interests lie at the intersection of medicine, the environment, science, and social movements. Beginning in the 2005, she began work on a qualitative, multi-sited dissertation project that will explore community participation in biomonitoring or body burden science, which characterizes the presence of chemicals or their metabolites in human tissue and fluids. Her dissertation will document: (a) the structure and production of this emerging body of knowledge, (b) the social meanings attached to body burden data, especially when science offers little guidance to interpret its clinical significance for human health, and (c) contests over its social and policy implications. In doing so, she will disentangle the politics and paradoxes of community-science partnerships engaging with this cutting-edge area of research and its attendant uncertainties. Other research interests include: the medical sociology of iatrogenesis, “green transformation” of health and medicine, the activist experience, and long-term involvement in social movements.

She is currently a Research Assistant on a NIEHS funded project— “Linking Environmental Justice and Breast Cancer Activism”— with Phil Brown, Rachel Morello-Frosch, The Silent Spring Institute, and Communities for a Better Environment.

While at Brown, she has tried to incorporate a public sociology ethic into her writing and research. Beginning in 2004, Rebecca has served on The American Sociological Association Task Force for Institutionalizing Public Sociology, which is documenting the scope and breadth of public sociologies, teaching engaged and participatory research methods, as well as creating tenure and promotion standards that are inclusive of sociologists’ public work. She has helped organize workshops on public sociology, CBPR, and research ethics and has participated in community forums for building networks of environmental health and justice activism. Rebecca’s master’s thesis investigated the personal and familial experience of grassroots anti-toxics activism and explored how activists sustain their participation in grassroots organizing. This research was conducted in collaboration with a New England grassroots support organization, Toxics Action Center (TAC), which requested the study. Her work was used by TAC in training sessions for new staff, at leadership development retreats, and to facilitate workshops for activists at the TAC annual conference. She hopes to continue working with TAC in ways helpful to the organization.

Rebecca also serves on the American Sociological Association Task Force for Institutionalizing Public Sociology, which is documenting the scope and breadth of public sociologies, teaching engaged and participatory research methods, as well as creating tenure and promotion standards that are inclusive of sociologists’ public work.

Link to Rebecca Gasior Altman's Research Page