In this thesis, I have combined political ecology with the interpretative medical anthropology literature and the literature on trust to develop a new model, the political ecology of trust, which I then apply to the community of Walkerton, Ontario to analyze how residents' relationship with the institutions that treat, monitor, and regulate their drinking water influences their drinking water choices. Walkerton experienced an E. coli contamination of their drinking water in 2000, which resulted in seven deaths and thousands ill. As a result of the Walkerton Inquiry, the government inquiry that followed, both the local and the provincial government implemented a number of infrastructure and policy changes in order to re-establish safe drinking water in Walkerton and to prevent other communities from sharing a similar experience. The E. coli contamination and changes afterward alter the relationships residents in and around Walkerton have with the institutions responsible for their drinking water. To analyze the Walkerton case, I draw from political ecology the concepts of examining environmental health from within the framework of politics, economics, environmental conditions, and social relationships. These various entities, including the environment, are active participants in these relationships and influence each other, and interact within a context of unequal power. These relationships are also shaped by culturally constructed meanings which are discursive and conflicting. I also draw and expand on the trust literature for an understanding of what trust is and how it works. I expand and adapt five measures of trust and distrust, which I call fidelity/infidelity, competence/incompetence, honesty and transparency/dishonesty and opacity, accountability/immunity, and global trust/global distrust. I use these measures to examine how collectively they shape relationships of trust and distrust. Within this model, I address power in trust relationships, the tension between individual agency and contextual relationships, conceptualization of risk, how the construction of knowledge and meanings influences trust, and the way trust can operate in relationships with the natural environment. I apply these measures to the people of Walkerton, examining their relationship with and the perception of their local and provincial government and government agencies, private businesses contracted to manage local water supplies, private companies who bottle and market water, and untreated, natural spring water. Competence, accountability, and honesty/transparency are all measures that are part of power relationships, and unequal power in the trust relationship can undermine these measures. I find that the Walkerton residents I spoke with are highly ambivalent about their trust in their government but still feel that it is the government, rather than private enterprise or the market, that is best suited to protecting the quality of their drinking water. Few of the people I spoke to routinely drink the tap water unfiltered, and half of those who drink water from another source do so because it tastes better and the rest because they feel the other source is safer. Many of those who do not drink the tap water prefer to drink water from an untreated, nearby natural spring. These decisions are grounded in a combination of trust, constructed meanings, and political and economic relationships. Lessons learned from Walkerton can inform future research and policy to better understand and cope with environmental health issues.
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