Politics of Urban Runoff: Building Relations through Active Citizenship - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 165

development strategies to their local communities, widening the gulf be-
tween government and the people.
Populist politics is frequently contrasted with rational politics, but this
is not to argue that it is an “irrational” form of politics. Rather, it pres-
ents an alternative to the expert-dominated, bureaucratic character of
rational politics. Shutkin identifi es Alice Hamilton, a pioneering urban
environmentalist who studied industrial disease and occupational hazards,
and Jane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House Settlement in 1888,
as early practitioners of populist politics in the United States. 25 Hamil-
ton and Addams championed grassroots activities to promote sanitary
and public health reform on behalf of urban immigrant and low-income
populations, but they tend to be marginalized in popular accounts of U.S.
environmental history because their work falls outside of the dominant
preservationist/conservationist debate of environmental management. 26 In
short, their expansive notion of environment that included humans was
in confl ict with the scientifi c management approach of conservation and
preservation advocates.
Today, the environmental justice movement serves as the most visible
form of populist politics in the United States. Political scientist DeWitt
John characterizes this approach as the conscience or emotive heart of
environmentalism and traces a political lineage from Andrew Jackson to
civil rights activist Rosa Parks and toxic chemicals activist Lois Gibbs. 27
Environmental justice proponents and other populist political actors cri-
tique rational politics by highlighting the suppressed voices of nonexperts,
namely community residents, who are adversely affected by the policies
produced through rational political activity. 28 Rather than developing
counterexpertise, they call for more democratic forms of policy making
to shift knowledge generation from the realms of science, engineering, and
economics to specifi c temporal and material contexts. As such, the univer-
sal, general, and timeless approach of rational politics is replaced with a
political program that is particular, local, and timely. 29 Political scientist
Margaret Canovan writes, “Populists see themselves as true democrats,
voicing popular grievances and opinions systematically ignored by govern-
ments, mainstream parties and the media. Many of them favour 'direct
democracy'—political decision making by referendum and popular initia-
tive. Their professed aim is to cash in on democracy's promise of power
to the people.” 30 Opening up environmental politics to more voices is
accomplished by acknowledging the importance of local experts, those
residents with intimate knowledge of local problems that are frequently
overlooked in expert debates about environmental legislation. 31