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- Title
Legitimizing Situated Knowledge in Rural Communities Through Storytelling Around Gas Pipelines and Environmental Risk.
- Authors
Carlson, Erin Brock; Caretta, Martina Angela
- Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this article is to demonstrate that rural landowners and community members' place-based, situated knowledge is expertise that should be taken into account by TPC professionals involved with technological or environmental development (e.g., in the energy sector). Method: This paper is grounded in the stories of 31 residents of rural West Virginia who share concerns about ongoing natural gas pipeline development. Through visual and place-based storytelling methods, walk-along interviews (Carpiano, 2009) and photovoice (Sullivan, 2017), a rich collection of stories and photographs that reveal the often-undocumented effects of pipeline development were gathered. Results: The stories of residents living in close proximity to natural gas pipelines reveal two main types of knowledge circulating in conversations about energy development: knowledge rooted in more traditional forms of epistemic authority, such as legal definitions and technical accounts of land; and situated knowledge derived from lived experiences of people directly impacted by technological and environmental changes. Conclusion: Ultimately, we argue that to embrace stories told by rural residents is to center the experiences of communities, which, in turn, legitimizes situated knowledge resulting from first-hand experience. This demonstrates that expertise can be located in spaces outside of corporate, technical, or academic knowledge, and encourages technical communicators to seek out that expertise in their own work.
- Publication
Technical Communication, 2021, Vol 68, Issue 4, p40
- ISSN
0049-3155
- Publication type
Article