The Making of the 1967 Montana Clean Air Act

Abstract

This article uses the social definitional process approach to understand the making of the 1967 Montana Clean Air Act. This approach holds that it is how the various competing social groups define the objective situation (air pollution) as problematic and then act on these definitions that counts. Based on their cultural meanings of the problem, the competing groups engage in claims-making activities that they seek to have legitimated in law. In the struggle for the legitimation of the various competing definitions, the groups attempt to claim ownership (disownership) as well as to assign causal and political responsibility for the problem. In Montana it was the clean air forces who were able to have their cultural meanings legitimated in law and who placed causal responsibility for air pollution on industrial capital and political responsibility for solving the problem on the Montana State Board of Health.