SSSP Division of Environment & Technology Spring Newsletter 2015 p.1 Newsletter Contents Message from the Chair 1 Publication Spotlight 2 Remembrances 3 Graduate Student Corner 6 SSSP Annual Meeting 8 E&T Annual Meeting Sessions 9 Other Conferences 11 SSSP Deadlines 13 Co-Editors’ Notes 13 Message from the Chair Greetings! I hope that spring is coming quickly to you. Here in New England, as I write, the last of the snow seems to be melting. That of course means that summer is approaching and many of us will be traveling to Chicago for the 2015 Annual Meeting; some important dates to remember: • Online registration is available until midnight (EDT) on July 15. • Preliminary program will be available on May 15. • All program participants must register by June 1 While our next newsletter will arrive in time to detail all of E/T’s sessions and highlight some environmentally sustainable/responsible things to do in Chicago, please start to think about joining us at our Division’s events and meetings. There will be many relevant paper sessions and our Divisional meeting where we will plan next year’s sessions. I would also like to take the opportunity to reach out to anyone who has good recommendations or ideas for fellow members headed to Chicago and who might like to contribute to the next newsletter. Also, if you are working as an activist or with community partners, please consider writing something for our next newsletter. I would also make a plea to you to ask your colleagues to join or rejoin the Division. Finally, feel free to send us announcements of your recent publications. We would love to recognize the work of our members. Many thanks to Clare Cannon (Tulane University) for her hard work on this newsletter. If you have ideas for the Summer newsletter, please send them to Kayla Stover (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) at etsssp@gmail.com. Please visit us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ssspet As always, feel free to email us with ideas, questions, or comments at: etsssp@gmail.com p.2 Publication Spotlight The latest issue of Human Ecology Review (21(1)) is full of exceptional articles covering a wide-range of environment and technology topics and methods. From a focus on social movements around land use decisions to environmental injustices revealed through photovoice, HER’s latest offers deep insights into cutting edge research of our field. We encourage you to take a look at the whole issue; for this publication spotlight, we focus on the article, “A Human Ecology Approach to Environmental Inequality: A County-Level Analysis of Natural Disasters and the Distribution of Landfills in the Southeastern United States,” by Laura McKinney, Ed Kick, and Clare Cannon, for its unique investigation into relationships between so-called natural disasters and communities that process waste. Using Duncan’s POET (population, organization, environment, technology) model with environmental justice approaches that frame power relations, McKinney, Kick, and Cannon conduct an OLS regression analysis across counties in the Southeastern U.S. to investigate relationships between disasters and the distribution of waste. They find that communities that process waste shoulder additional, indirect impacts from disasters, which points to the breadth of communities affected both directly and indirectly by natural disasters. For more in-depth analysis and for all the great articles in this issue, you can read HER online for free here, http://societyforhumanecology.org/ SSSP Environment & Technology Division is on social media! Connect with us! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ssspet Twitter: https://twitter.com/ETsssp p.3 Remembrances Robert Gramling (1943-2014) (Obituary provided by Dr. JoAnne DeRouen, University of Louisiana at Lafayette) Robert “Bob” Gramling, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette whose work took up the critical issues of sociology through the prism of environment, disaster and technology, died on November 7, 2014. He was 71. A Florida native, Bob received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Florida State University but made his career in Louisiana. He often referred to Louisiana as a natural laboratory and his research demonstrated how the diverse spheres of land-use, resources, technology and disaster uniquely provided for the ongoing study of the social organization of risk. Bob’s work was analytically rich contributing significantly to the methodological development of Social Impact Assessment. His role in interdisciplinary investigations into the complexity of the working coast of south Louisiana added greatly to his advocacy for policy development that justly accounted for coastal communities, commercial and recreational fisheries, and natural resources. A significant portion of Bob’s work was in close collaboration with Bill Freudenburg, UC Santa Barbara, who preceded him in death. Bob was a much-loved colleague in the UL Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He spent his career working as a collaborator who emphasized critical thought with an eye toward social justice. He had a sharp wit and an infectious laugh that filled the corridors of Mouton Hall. Former students and junior colleagues remember him for his dedicated mentoring, thoughtful critiques and supportive guidance. He is greatly missed and will long be remembered for the tremendous contributions he made to the field of sociology and betterment of the lives of those who had the privilege to work with him. p.4 William Catton (1926-2015) (Obituary written by Rev. Michael Dowd; originally printed in the Huffington Post) William R. Catton, Jr. -- one of the most significant and influential ecological thinkers of the past century -- died last month, just shy of his 89th birthday. Catton was an inspiration to a host of climate change, peak oil, and sustainability-oriented leaders, including many of those who participated in "The Future Is Calling Us to Greatness". As overstated as this may sound, it's nonetheless true: I have yet to meet anyone who has read Catton's masterful slim volume, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change and not said that it was one of the most important books they'd ever read. I certainly feel that way. John Michael Greer posted a tribute to William Catton, titled, "As Night Closes In", which I recommend as a wonderful overview of Catton's thinking and why his work is so paradigm shattering. Richard Heinberg also wrote a sweet tribute, titled, simply, "Thanks, Bill." Below are a couple more tribute quotes: "William Catton was a pioneering world leader in dealing with environmental issues. He was one of the few sociologists who recognized the existential nature of the crisis now facing civilization. We're all going to miss him." ~ Paul R. Ehrlich "William Catton's Overshoot was the most important book of its time, and one of the most important of all times, in pointing out the biological fact that humans have a carrying capacity similar to other animal species, and that exceeding this carrying capacity - as we did long ago - has grave consequences for humanity and for nature. Unfortunately, we have still not heeded Catton's advice." ~ Reed F. Noss "William Catton's Overshoot was one of the most important books of the 20th century. I wish that everyone would read that book. As well as being a brilliant and articulate advocate for sanity in a culture gone completely insane, Catton was a good and gentle person." ~ Derrick Jensen p.5 Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) (Obituary written by Alison Smale; originally printed in the NY Times) Ulrich Beck, a sociologist who became one of Germany’s most prominent public intellectuals by exploring the ways technology had created a new, riskier society, died on Thursday. He was 70. The cause was a heart attack, family members told the German news media. Mr. Beck shot to national and international fame in 1986 after the publication of his book “Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity,” which argued that one of humanity’s proudest achievements, technology, had also created new risks in spheres ranging from ecology to finance. Technology, he said, created a new form of modernity that inherently involved more risk, or uncertainty, than the more rational Industrial Age. The book coincided with the world’s worst nuclear accident, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, lending it a currency that eventually led to the work’s being translated into 35 languages. Still, Mr. Beck maintained a generally upbeat view as he tackled other contemporary topics. “What Is Globalization?” in 1997 and “Cosmopolitan Vision” in 2004 laid out what he viewed as the increasingly global nature of society, which he saw breeding a cosmopolitanism that could replace old thinking around national sovereignty. An enthusiastic proponent of a more united Europe, he took the expansion of the European Union in 2004, when eight former Soviet bloc nations were admitted, as a sign that nationalism was outdated. His last book, “German Europe,” published in 2013, accused the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, of being too hesitant in the euro crisis while also insisting that German help for profligate European neighbors should come on German terms. “Her frequent delays in taking action lead him to dub her ‘Merkiavelli,’ but he allows that, although narrow-minded, she is well-intentioned,” the political scientist Roger Morgan wrote in a review in The Times (of London) Higher Education supplement. Mr. Beck’s pro-European views drew him to like-minded activists and intellectuals across the continent. “For Ulrich Beck, the construction of Europe was important as a stage toward the kind of tempered globalization he advocated,” the French daily Le Monde wrote in a weekend obituary. Mr. Beck was born on May 15, 1944, in what was then Stolp, in Pomerania, and is today the Polish city of Slupsk. His family fled west with the end of World War II, and he grew up in Hanover. After working at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in the 1970s, he was a professor in Münster and Bamberg before returning to Munich in 1992. Abroad, he taught in Cardiff, at the London School of Economics and in Paris. Last July, he was awarded one of the first lifetime achievement awards given by the International Sociological Association for most distinguished contributions to futures research. Mr. Beck is survived by his wife, Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, also a sociologist. The couple, who had no children, wrote two books well received in Germany about modern love and life: “The Normal Chaos of Love,” published in 1990, and, in 2011, “Distant Love.” p.6 Graduate Student Corner Keeping the Momentum Going Beyond the Dissertation: Advice for Graduate Students With Dr. Kevin Gotham Let’s be honest. Research and writing is hard work. Developing a dissertation topic, gathering the data, writing the dissertation, and then defending the dissertation is not for the weak and feeble. Rather, a large part of whether a person develops a successful dissertation is based on how well they discipline and manage themselves through skills of time management, information management, organizing their lives, and coping with adversity. A recent article by Theresa MacPhail in the Chronicle of Higher Education noted that there is a simple no-fail secret to writing a dissertation: that is, “sit your butt down in a chair” and write! (https://chroniclevitae.com/news/370-the-no-fail-secret-to-writing-a-dissertation). Most students are exhausted by the end of the dissertation and there are many who express relief once the final defense is over. Yet the dissertation is not necessarily the end but the beginning of a career and a graduate student should view their finished dissertation as work-in-progress. Here I want to suggest several strategies for developing a long-term research agenda for graduate student to keep the momentum going beyond the dissertation. 1. Be Enthusiastic about Your Research Topic. There is nothing worse than spending time, energy, and effort on something that you do not care about or like. Develop a research agenda focused on a topic or problem that you care about and are enthusiastic about. You will spend years working on the dissertation and then developing it into a book or series of articles. Therefore, identify a topic that you are curious about and one that motivates you to learn more about it. Choose a research topic that is socially relevant and holds your personal interest. 2. Be an Expert and Specialist: Know Your Research and Field. If you are enthusiastic about your research agenda, you will eventually become a specialist, an expert, a go-to person who knows a lot about his/her research topic. While there are some exceptions, most departments are looking for scholars who can teach specific courses in specific fields. Becoming a specialist means developing specific skills including creativity, curiosity, independence, and drive. p.7 3. View the Dissertation as a Work in Progress. In many academic departments, a new professor must develop the dissertation into a book or publish articles from it in order to make tenure. As a graduate student, you should develop both short-term and long-term goals for the dissertation. Also identify strategies and a timetable for realizing these goals. View sections of your dissertation as future papers that you will submit for review and possible publication in peer-reviewed journals. Also consider developing a plan for cultivating the dissertation into a book. Write conference papers and give talks about your research. Develop your conference papers and presentations into publishable manuscripts that you will submit to journals. 4. Get Busy Writing. Find out who are the most prolific writers in your departments and ask them what they do to be successful writers. Prolific writers are highly motivated, disciplined, tenacious, persistent, and resilient. Explore different writing guides and identify the writing strategies that prolific writers use. Experiment and find out what works for you as a writer. Writing is a learned skill. Writing does not come easy and almost all writers struggle with it and get frustrated. Get into the habit of writing every day with the goal of producing publications, including books and articles. A routine of daily writing will lead to a prolific and successful career. p.8 Register for the 2015 SSSP Annual Meeting To register for the annual meeting, visit the SSSP Annual Meeting portal here: http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/605/2015_Annual_Meeting/ p.9 E&T Annual Meeting Sessions Division Sponsored Sessions 1. Race, Class, Gender and Environmental Justice (Critical Dialogue) (Thematic) Shawn Trivette, trivette@latech.edu Building on the 2015 conference theme of Race, Class, and Gender in the 21st Century, this critical dialogue will explore the intersections of race, class, and gender in environmental issues. We know that environmental problems do not impact all groups equally. What are some of the current contours and cleavages of these differential impacts (and perhaps differential involvement)? What does environmental (in)justice look like in the 21st century? For this session we welcome papers that interrogate these questions from a variety of angles. As the purpose of a critical dialogue is to have presenters and the audience engage in a constructive conversation, presenters will have 5-10 minutes to present their papers. 2. Climate Change and Natural Resources Erin Robinson, robinso5@canisius.edu This session will focus on research where authors are connecting the determinants of natural resources and the socio-physical environment to the impacts of climate change. Papers that connect these issues and discuss the role of environmental sociology in mitigating, questioning, engaging these relationships will be welcomed. 3. Place, Space, and Environmental Justice Andrew Prelog, ajp024@shsu.edu and Clare Cannon, ccannon3@tulane.edu This panel seeks submissions utilizing interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of environmental justice. Submissions may conceive of place, space, and environmental justice in diverse ways including, but not limited to, the social construction of social place and space in environmental justice movements and research, spatial analyses of environmental injustice, and the role of space and place in the study of environmental inequality. Co-Sponsored Sessions 4. Globalization and Environment Julie Andrzejewski, jrandrzejewski@stcloudstate.edu Co-Sponsored with the Global Division Globalization has had an obvious impact on the environment, but also in the way we think about the environment. Environmental problems no longer remain over there nor are they simply local; pressing environmental issues are now a matter of international concern; the tragedy of the commons affects us all. This session seeks papers that analyze the effects of globalization on the environment, that focus on comparative environmental issues or environmental disputes between states, that promote changes in the ways we think about globalization and/or the environment, or that present global solutions to environmental issues. p.10 5. Environmental Racism Daina Cheyenne Harvey, dharvey@holycross.edu Co-sponsored with the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Division Racial and ethnic minority status still map closely to environmental pollution, place vulnerability, and jobs with high degrees of environmental risk. Furthermore, being white is highly correlated with access to environmental goods. This session explores the connection between the environment and racial and ethnic status. We welcome papers that focus on chronic instances of environmental racism, such as the sitting of toxic waste sites or the legacy of living or working or attending school in places with degraded environments. We also welcome papers that deal with events that reveal the ongoing legacies of environmental racism, such as disasters like Hurricane Katrina or climate change. 6. Matters of Concern: Environmental Problems & Debates Monique Ouimette, ouimette@bc.edu Co-Sponsored with the Social Problems Theory Division Humans are surrounded by and dependent upon the environment, which means that environmental problems are some of the most important social problems that we must address. This session welcomes papers that make theoretical and/or empirical contributions to knowledge on identifying, defining, challenging, and resolving environmental issues. Potential topical areas include, but are not limited to: toxics, pollution, climate change, energy, environmental health, environmental justice, and social-environmental systems. 7. Communities and Environmental Justice Mark Salvaggio, salvagg5@unlv.nevada.edu Co-Sponsored with the Conflict, Social Action, and Change Division This session explores topics on environmental justice, which pertains to understanding and changing the inequitable distribution of environmental consequences in disadvantaged communities based on race, ethnicity, gender, and class. I invite papers from students, scholars, practitioners, and activists that focus on the social and community impacts of environmental changes and the ongoing efforts to recognize diversity among individuals and groups and their socio-environmental experiences within their respective communities. Paper topics may include broad areas of interests in environmental justice, such as understanding and addressing sustainable development, environmental degradation and environmental activism, human rights and environmental democracy, urbanization and community problems, climate change impacts upon communities, environmental racism, sexism, and classism, access to food, clean water, and shelter, and environmental hazards and health effects. 8. Teaching With Technology (Critical Dialogue) Daina Cheyenne Harvey, dharvey@holycross.edu Co-Sponsored with the Teaching Social Problem Division Teaching with technology has long been a controversial subject within the literature on pedagogy and in informal discussions of best practices in the classroom. While not coming down on one side or the other, this session, in part, seeks to address the ongoing theoretical and empirical gap on teaching with technology by identifying the conditions under which outcomes would be more likely to facilitate learning; in other words, when/where is the right/wrong way to use technology in the classroom. This is a critical dialogues session which means each presenter has 5-10 minutes to present their paper and that we expect the majority of the session to consist of interaction with other panelists and the audience. p.11 Other Conferences of Interest KNOWING RURAL: SITUATING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF RURALITY IN DEFINITIONS OF RURAL THE 78TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE RURAL SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY August 6-9, 2015 Madison, WI Madison Concourse Hotel & Governor’s Club Online Registration Begins: January 15, 2015 Annual Meeting Website: www.ruralsociology.us Our annual meeting will take place August 6-9 in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Madison Concourse Hotel. If you have any questions or ideas for special panels and events at the Annual Meeting, please feel free to contact us via email at lauramc@tulane.edu or jessica.crowe@siu.edu. We look forward to seeing you in Madison! p.12 ISSRM 2015 The 21st International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM) will be held in Charleston, South Carolina – selected this year for the fourth consecutive time by Condé Nast Traveler readers as the #1 destination city in the U.S. Celebrated for its history and culture, Charleston is also widely known for its outstanding public spaces, outdoor recreation, award-winning cuisine, and centuries of live theater, music, and fine arts. As the official host institution, the College of Charleston is located in the heart of downtown, nestled between spectacular historic buildings and grand oaks and the inner workings of a cosmopolitan coastal city. The 2015 ISSRM will be the first held in the southeastern U.S. and will offer excellent opportunities to engage a diverse community of scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers and experience “lowcountry” heritage firsthand. The theme for the 2015 ISSRM is “Understanding and Adapting to Change,” with four focus areas representing a broad range of topics and issues relative to... • Tradition at the Edge: Changing Cultural and Historic Conditions • Society at the Edge: Changing Ecological Conditions • Cities at the Edge: Changing Urban Conditions • Governance at the Edge: Changing Managerial Conditions We expect a diverse and stimulating program with traditional and novel topics from around the globe. Along with the typical complement of activities – e.g., student forum, quiz bowl, poster and organized sessions – the 2015 ISSRM will foster creativity and disciplinary integration through a number of thought-provoking plenaries, media presentations, social events, field excursions, and innovative information exchange formats. Conference registration will open around the 1st of February 2015. Visit the 2015 ISSRM website for additional information. We look forward to your participation. Contact the conference organizers for assistance or questions, as necessary. Best regards, Dr. Thomas E. Fish Chair, 2015 ISSRM Executive Committee National Coordinator, CESU Network & College of Charleston, Master of Environmental Studies Program ISSRM2015@gmail.com p.13 SSSP Reminders The 2015 Annual Meeting Preliminary Program will be available May 15th, 2015 SSSP Conference participants must register by June 1st, 2015 SSSP Online registration until midnight July 15th, 2015 Co-Editors’ Notes We hope everyone is enjoying their spring semesters! A few notes on submission to the E&T newsletter: • If you are a graduate student or recent graduate on the market and would like to be featured in the E&T newsletter, please contact us! • If you have any content that you would like to share with members (new publications, a short article/interview, a teaching note on E&T topics), send along! We can be reached at: etsssp@gmail.com. We look forward to working with E&T division members throughout the year. Clare, Kayla, and Lisa 2014-2015 E&T Newsletter Co-Editors Special thanks to Kevin Gotham and JoAnne DeRouen for their contributions to this newsletter!