Biomedical risks and citizenship: depoliticizing cell site deployment in the Netherlands and Southern California

Abstract

Cell phone technology has become a ubiquitous quasi-utility worldwide. Meanwhile, controversies around its health risks are continually emerging in locations around the world. In this paper, we argue that the ongoing controversy is primarily the effect of practices that are trying to govern cell site risks, rather than inherent uncertainties or qualities of the technology. We understand this as a process of medicalization that engenders bio-citizenship. We extend bio-citizenship theory by exposing how actors show an astute and reflexive awareness of the mobilizing potential of medicalization.

We study the governance practice of cell site deployment in the Netherlands and Southern California, USA and investigate how the risk issues and citizenship concerning cell site deployment are co-produced in four main governance practices. Network roll-out practices move health risks backstage, prevention practices push health risks and uncertainties into the future. Design practices actively avoid cell site risks, whereas care practices contain them. Government and industry have become aware of the contentious effect of cell site deployment and govern this to protect the roll-out of the technology. We call this depoliticization. Depoliticization can unintendedly open up new avenues for citizen mobilization.

Keywords:

• risk governance
• medicalization
• bio-citizenship
• siting controversy
• cell phone technology

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Rob Hagendijk, Jens Zinn, the participants of the Risk Workshop during the ISA TG04, ESA RN22 Mid-term Conference 2013 in Amsterdam and the anonymous referee for their input on previous versions of this paper. Gail M. Zuckerwise edited and fine-tuned the final version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ZonMW, The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development [Project Number 85600002.11].