Rebecca T. Richards

This analysis presents a case study of the Dunsmuir metam sodium spill and how community perceptions of public‐health effects were subsequently constructed. As a case of a particular toxic event, the analysis invokes existing theory regarding the social construction of risk, particularly the attribution of blame. We relate the significance of the attribution to blame to Ellickson's (1991) typology of competing social control systems and how the sudden imposition of the formal, legal social order may contribute to community responses to toxic contamination, particularly community perceptions of health. From community‐survey data, we conclude that a community's attribution of blame is a social response to not only environmental change but a shift in the social order. Implications of these findings for community health and disaster response are discussed.

Values attached to natural resources by cultural groups are often overlooked in defining the goals of ecosystem management. Resource values may be especially important when groups compete not only for the use but also the cultural meaning of a common resource. When groups increasingly differ in ethnicity and marginality, the resource values which they attach to that common resource may diverge sharply. As a result, ecosystem management goals may not adequately address the concerns of different ethnic groups who use a natural resource. This is the case with special forest products, an understudied component of ecosystem management. We examined the role of resource values and resource competition in special forest product harvesting in this investigation of North American matsutake or tanoak mushroom (Tricholoma magnivelare) collection in national forests in the Klamath bioregion. Data obtained through picker surveys, field interviews, and analysis of mushroom permits indicated that different ethnic groups varied in their harvesting experience, harvesting patterns, means of resource control, and resource values. These variations stemmed from competing resource use and diverging resource values and revealed how ethnic diversity contributes to resource conflicts and affects forest sustainability.