Villagers Strategies for Mitigating Environmental Health Risks

Abstract

The unclear scientific relationship between pollution and cancer, combined with weak governance systems, means that villagers have only incomplete information about pollution and disease. Their own lack of scientific knowledge is a further obstacle to their accurate perception of health risks. But villagers do not just resign themselves to their fate. They use the social structure and cultural mechanisms of the ‘familiar society’, to maximize their use of available information, and they rely on their life experience and common-sense strategies to mitigate the impact of pollution. Village social structure also affects the actions villagers take to avoid pollution. Thus, although they lack scientific guidance in mitigating health risks from pollution, their actions are informed by their own unique empirical logic.