We are excited to share the upcoming fall schedule for the Program for Society and the Environment Workshop.  

The workshop will meet 10:30 am nearly every other Wednesday in Room 1101 of the Art/Sociology Building.  

We hope you will join us for another excellent semester!

September 2 – Richard Moss, Joint Global Change Research Institute. "Bringing Values and Context Into Climate Change Decision Making: New Challenges for Assessment"

September 16 – Marina Malamud, Scientific and Technological Research Council in Argentina (co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Military Organization). “Resource Based Conflicts in Latin America:  from Border Disputes to Internal Battles for Land Control.”

September 30 – Dana R. Fisher, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland- College Park. “The People’s Climate March as an Example of Social Movement Accretion” 

October 14 – Gabriela Vaz Rodrigues, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland- College Park. "A Sample-Based Estimation of Tree Cover Change in Haiti Between 2002 and 2010" 
*This project received funding through the PSE Graduate Research and Travel Grant

October 28 – Krystal Jones, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). “‘Agricultural Production as a Socio-Ecological System: Examples of Seeds, Foodsheds and the New Green Revolution for Africa”

November 4 – TBA

November 18 – Melissa A. Kenney, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC). “Indicators: Are They Useful for Decision-Making?”

December 2 – Jenny J. Preece, College of Information Studies. “Motivating Participation in Citizen Science: What Works and What Doesn't Work”

This post is the third in our series highlighting PSE presentations at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago. A full schedule of PSE presentations is also available.

“Power Disproportionalities: Linking Emissions Extremes to Social Forces.”
Anya M. Galli and Mary B. Collins
Saturday, August 22, 4:30-6:10
Regular Session: Corporate Power, Politics, and the Environment

Social scientists have provided extensive descriptive and empirical evidence of the problem of environmental injustice by showing that production and impacts of environmental harm are unequally distributed. But less is known about the specific processes and privileges that contribute to environmental inequality. Even though policies are in place to prevent environment harm and punish its perpetrators, institutions often fail to uphold their responsibility to protect the environment and, instead, implement policies in ways that benefit private industry rather than public interests.

The research we will present at #asa15 investigates the processes that create and maintain environmental harm by industrial producers. We build on previous “disproportionality” research on industrial pollution, which shows that a scant minority of facilities is responsible for the majority of environmental harm within their sectors by investigating the distribution of pollution one politically and economically dominant industrial sector—coal-fired electric utilities. Then, we build on Bill Freudenburg’s concept of the “double diversion” of environmental inequality by looking at the political and ideological power that extreme polluters wield in order to maintain their privileged status.

Coal-fired power plants account for the majority of industrial emissions of CO2, nitrous oxides (NOx), and sulfur oxides (SOx) emissions in the US. Despite declines in coal production and consumption over the past two decades, coal-powered electricity generation remains the primary source of electric energy in the US, while producing as many as 67 different hazardous air pollutants and dangerous levels of particulate matter.  Despite federal requirements for the implementation of pollution-reduction technologies, coal-fired power plants continue to produce approximately two-thirds of SOx and one-third of NOx emissions in the US each year. Although recent regulations have targeted this persistent emissions problem—most notably the Obama Administration’s memorandum on CO2 and co-pollutant emissions and the EPA’s proposed “Clean Power Plan” —the efficacy of these policies is beholden to the broader political context in which they are debated and implemented, a context in which the coal industry holds significant influence.

We use a mixed-methods approach to show inequality in the generation of air toxics and greenhouse gas emissions among power plants and assess the contexts under which the worst facilities are able to persist as producers of extreme levels of pollution. By identifying disproportionate levels of emissions generation by a minority of power plants, this project demonstrates the effect of a small number of facilities on the environmental impact of an entire sector. Then, analysis of facility ownership and political contributions makes visible the foundation of political privilege upon which these environmental inequities are maintained. Finally, we will discuss plans for future case studies of the ideological mechanisms that support disproportionate patterns of pollution.

 
Anya Galli is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland—College Park, where she studies environmental sociology and social movements. Her research addresses environmental inequality and industrial pollution in the US, focusing on the socio-political determinants of disproportionate emissions in the coal-fired power industry. She is also a Fellow with the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland, where she researches environmental stewardship and civic participation. 

Mary Collins is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center.

This post is the second in our series highlighting PSE presentations at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago. A full schedule of PSE presentations is also available.

 “What Science Means: New Directions for Studying the Science-Policy Interface.”
Joseph Waggle
Friday, August 21, 2:15-3:45
Science, Knowledge, and Technology (SKAT) Section Conference, Paper Session: Confidence in Science

In a previous post here on the PSE Blog, I discussed the early stages of my dissertation research, a project that looks at the perceptions and motivations held by various political actors as they communicate with scientists and scientific research. In that post, I asked:

I confess that this reads as a pessimistic view of science-policy interface research. In truth, much of this work takes a critical look at the ways in which science and policy interact. Some of this work has even taken to task some of the assumptions alluded to above. Nevertheless, these critiques are ever fewer and farther between, and have themselves settled into rote repetition.

The manuscript I am presenting at the upcoming Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section Conference reviews this research, both within the sociology of science and technology and the more interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS). I point out weaknesses in the theoretical frameworks upon which this research is built. I also highlight the places where this research succeeds in moving beyond outmoded assumptions about science and politics, and I make suggestions for how science-policy interface research can build upon these successes to move toward greater nuance and dynamism. 

To that end, I propose a theoretical perspective of postmodern politics, in which scientific information is not engaged by political actors with an eye toward bettering their understanding of scientific problems. Rather, in this view, policy actors engage science strategically, to manipulate discourse and control perception in an effort to further political agendas. I propose research that engages the postmodern science-policy interface, using the contentious example of climate change politics in the United States to illustrate what is lacking when science-policy research ignores the postmodern political turn, and what is gained by this new perspective.

The primary research objectives of this research are to measure how effective the Watershed Stewards Academies (WSAs) of Maryland are at reaching out to and mobilizing members of their respective local communities and protecting the environment.  The WSAs are of interest because they are part of a national movement to train and educate volunteers from local communities as Master Watershed Stewards.  Stewards are given the training and support to act as leaders in their own communities to facilitate projects that improve storm water runoff and the overall health of the watershed, in addition to serving as an educator and source of information to their neighbors.  The WSAs operate within geographies composed of one or several counties, which allows each franchise to tailor their management and structure to their respective areas as leaders and organizers see fit.  The freedom of organization results in each WSA having the same mission, the training of Master Watershed Stewards, but differing civic and government partnerships, compositions of leadership, and communities of varying demographics and levels of urbanization.

The initial stage of this research project, accomplished within the last year, evaluates the first of the above research objectives, that is, how effective are the WSAs at reaching out to and mobilizing members of local communities to participate in the Master Watershed Steward training?  This was accomplished through an online survey, composed of questions focused on demographic characteristics, civic engagement, environmental restoration activities, how respondents heard about the WSAs, and with whom they attended WSA events and courses.

The American Sociological Association Annual Conference approaches, and we here at the PSE hope to see you there. All of us, from our executive board to our research fellows, will be discussing a range of topics related to the social, political, and human dimensions of the environment.

Below is a list of our scheduled appearances. If you have the time, please do stop by any or all of these sessions and contribute your thoughts to the discussion!

Friday, August 21

2:15-3:45
Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section Conference, Paper Session: Confidence in Science
What Science Means: New Directions for Studying the Science-Policy Interface, Joseph Waggle

Saturday, August 22

2:30-4:10
082- Open Refereed Roundtable Session I
Environmental Participation as a Gateway to Civic Engagement? The Case of the Watershed Stewards Academies, William Yagatich and Dana R. Fisher

Section on Mathematical Sociology Paper Session: Open Topics on Mathematical Sociology
A Network Approach to Social Learning: An Application to Decision-Making in a Socio-Environmental System, Lorien Jasny

 
4:30-6:10

119-Regular Session: Corporate Power, Politics and the Environment
Power Disproportionalities: Linking Emissions Extremes to Social Forces, Anya M. Galli and Mary B. Collins

 
4:30-6:10

124-Regular Session: Illness Experience and Health Care Delivery in Hospitals: Insights from Ethnographic Research
It’s Time She Stopped Torturing Herself: Structural Constraints to Decision-Making about Life-Sustaining Treatment by Medical Trainees, Tania M. Jenkins

 
Sunday, August 23

12:30-1:30

256- Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables
Professionalizing Body Art? Challenges to the Professionalization of Occupational Groups and Control Over Consumers, William Yagatich

2:30-4:10

289- Regular Session: Masculinities
Rashawn Ray, organizer

 
Monday, August 24

8:30-10:10

323- Regular Session: Globalization
Wealth and Pollution Inequalities of Global Trade: A Network and Input-Output Approach, Christina Prell, Kuishuang Feng, Laixiang Sun


10:30-12:10

376- Regular Session: Race and Ethnicity
The White Racial Frame in Twenty-first Century America: The Case of College Basketball, Steven Larrimore Foy and Rashawn Ray


12:30-2:10

222- Thematic Session: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in College
Rashawn Ray, panelist


4:30-5:30

463- Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable (Presider)
Toward a Theory of Social Movement Accretion, Dana R. Fisher and Anya M. Galli

 

Tuesday, August 25

10:30-12:10

524- Regular Session: Anti and Pro-Immigration Discourses and the Crisis of the European Project
Disunion in the Union: Right-Wing Nationalism in Today’s Europe, Ann Horwitz


541- Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session: Health, Medicine, and Sexualities
Diagnosing (Inter)Sex: A Case of Social Diagnosis, Tania M. Jenkins and Susan E. Short