ABSTRACT
In spite of its manifest policy importance, EIA has been the focus of very few explicit attempts at theoretical understanding. A vast literature on EIA has emerged, but it consists mostly of legal interpretations of EIA requirements, descriptions of actual practice and guidance on how to do EIA better, and polemical criticism of the worth of EIA. There are a small number of valuable studies that have attempted empirical assessment of how it has worked and why (e.g., Caldwell, et al., 1983; Culhane, Friesema, and Beecher, 1987; Ortolano, Jenkins, and Abracosa, 1987; Kennedy, 1988; Wood, 1995; Bailey, 1997) but few of these have attempted to contribute to theoretical knowledge about the kind of phenomenon EIA is-its deontology, teleology, epistemic principles, ontology, or internal logic (Bartlett, 1986b, 1997; Murray, 1990; Lawrence, 1997).2 Most significantly, the existing literature gives little recognition to the possible gender bias underlying scholarship on EIA. If EIA scholarship should turn out to be
gendered, it raises questions about the implications of such gender-bias for the practice of EIA.
