SSSP Section on Envionment & Technology Summer 2020 Newsletter Message from the Chair Dear Environment & Technology Division Members, Meme makers are in their element right now. I saw one the other day that gave a month by month summary of events unfolding in 2020. In October, right before the U.S. elections, alien invasion happens…before even worse things transpire. It sure seems difficult right now. COVID 19 shut much of the world down, and those most at risk for getting this virus, among other hazards, were made even more vulnerable. Police violence persists in the face of massive protests, and it still targets minorities disproportionately. Silently, in the background, U.S. President Trump further dismantles our environmental protections, including an executive order instructing agencies to waive long-standing environmental laws to speed up federal approval for new mines, highways, pipelines, and other projects. And we cannot even meet in August to coordinate and present our research on social, political, and economic forces driving these patterns! [I will miss seeing everyone this August. We even had a food justice special project that would have been really cool to rally around, too.] More than anything, I am disgusted by the video of George Floyd, and how this is 28 years since Rodney King and six years since Ferguson and Michael Brown, and how far we need to come. I am regretful at how much I have NOT DONE for racial justice. My white privilege has benefited me in infinite ways for more than 40 years (frankly, more than 400 years). We all owe, and we can never repay. But we can try. We can fight and strive. This is what gives me hope. Never in my life have I seen so many come together in the protest for racial justice. Never in my life have I seen so many friends start intentionally learning about systemic racism, white privilege, and racial injustice. Merely an hour from my home a man was choked to death by a police officer two weeks ago. However, at that same place this last week the city council announced they will dismantle the entire Minneapolis City Police. This is the moment for social movements to matter. This is the time to take back and seriously reform our social institutions, fight for the Green New Deal (in the best version possible), fight for overhaul of police forces and the militarization of everyday life, fight for true racial equity, and fight for the ethical use of science in public policy. Technology is more integrated into our lives than ever before with COVID 19, and we need to continue evaluating what that does, can, and should mean. In other words, this world needs organizations like the SSSP Environment & Technology Division! It needs us to be active with our scholarship and our teaching, and for that to be consequential. We need to be listening to and documenting the stories of racial minorities and other vulnerable and marginalized peoples, and we need to fight for and with them. I am eager to see what happens next for us all. I am honored to be working alongside all of you. We will see each other in Chicago 2021. I leave this position in the more than able hands of Dr. Clare Cannon, and she will help shepherd in those meetings. I must also again give praise to the work of Alexis Econie, doctoral student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, for her wonderful work as editor on the newsletter (which she had to revise in light of the annual meeting cancelation!). Please stay safe and healthy. And inspired. In Solidarity, Nels Virtual Meeting Announcement - August 2020 The 2020 SSSP Annual Meeting in San Franscisco has been canceled. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 SSSP Annual Meeting in San Francisco has been cancelled.  Our primary concern is the health and safety of our members. We appreciate the feedback and support that we have received from several members and our Board of Directors. We sincerely appreciate the hard work and dedication of our Program Committee, under the leadership of Co-chairs Tsedale M. Melaku and Barbara Katz Rothman; our Division Chairs; our session organizers; and the Administrative Office staff. They have worked tirelessly to plan the program schedule. Meanwhile, the Board has been meeting regularly via Zoom during this difficult period to ensure the safety of our members. We’re excited to announce a ½-day virtual annual meeting on Friday, August 7 from 12:00pm–5:00pm (EDT). The schedule of events will include: SSSP Business Meeting: 12:00pm-1:00pm; Presidential Address: 1:15pm-2:15pm; Awards Recognition: 2:30pm-3:15pm; Plenary Pandemic Focused Session: 3:30pm-5:00pm This program is offered as a complimentary benefit to current SSSP members. A special thanks to the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice at Roosevelt University and Oxford University Press for their financial contributions to our virtual program activities.Please mark your calendar for this important conference. We hope to see you there. If you have not renewed your membership or joined SSSP, please consider doing so today. We recognize that not having a 2020 Annual Meeting is a real loss to our members. We apologize for any inconvenience and look forward to seeing you in Chicago in 2021. If you have any questions, please contact Michele Koontz, Administrative Officer & Meeting Manager at mkoontz3@utk.edu. We hope all is well with you and your family. HEATHER M. DALMAGE, PH.D. SSSP President, 2019-2020 Roosevelt University HÉCTOR L. DELGADO, PH.D. Executive Officer, SSSP Professor Emeritus, University of La Verne INTRODUCING CLARE CANNON - Incoming Environment & Technology Chair I am truly honored to be selected to chair the Environment & Technology division of the SSSP and express my deep appreciation to all who participated in the election. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis. My research focuses on social and environmental justice, broadly defined, and employs an intersectional feminist approach to socio-environmental inequality. Some of my current projects include using a community-based participatory action framework to investigate sources of environmental pollution and health impacts for a rural, farmworker community in California’s San Joaquin Valley; a sub-national environmental justice study of landfill location and distribution across the U.S.; and, cross-national research into relationships among overshoot, gender, and development. I have been a member of SSSP and conference participant at annual meetings for the past seven consecutive years. I am incredibly enthusiastic about taking on a leadership role within SSSP given its firm commitment to social justice—a value we all share in our own work. I want to thank our current and previous leaders for the outstanding work they have done developing a robust membership and fostering participation within the division. I am excited to continue this work to grow and diversify our E&T community. I aim to extend our efforts in strengthening graduate students’, particularly students of color, presence in the organization and participation at annual meetings. I am committed to furthering our efforts to support and foster our early career scholars and encourage scholarship in meaningful ways. Our commitment to social justice and wide-ranging expertise related to the environment and technology is just as urgent as ever as we face multiple catastrophes—police violence, white supremacy, global pandemic, economic crisis, and the climate emergency. Through the combined strengths of our community, we will work to address these social injustices and to advance equity and diversity in our communities, including the E&T division and SSSP. Thanks to all members for your continued commitment to the division. Please contact me with any questions, comments, or suggestions. This is an important time for our division, and I am excited about our possibilities for the future. Because of pandemic-related disruptions to the annual meeting this year, I will look forward to meeting everyone next year in Chicago! ~Clare Cannon MEMBER MILESTONES - Book Releases and Awards WILDLIFE CRIMINOLOGY Angus Nurse, Middlesex University Tanya Wyatt, Northumbria University “As awareness of the harmful consequences of human activities on the Earth becomes increasingly urgent, Wildlife Criminology offers an original and timely reflection on a complex, and too often overlooked, topic.” Anita Lavorgna, University of Southampton This illuminating study explores crimes against, and involving, wildlife and the resultant social harms. The authors go well beyond basic conceptions of animal-related crime, such as illicit trade, for a deeper exploration of wildlife criminology, using a novel approach that combines philosophical, legal and criminological perspectives. They shed light on both legal and illegal harms, including blood sports, wildlife as food and abuse in zoos, and consider the potential connections with inter-human crimes. This is a unique treatment of wildlife as victims of crime and a consideration of their rights as sentient beings that sets new horizons for the concept of wildlife criminology. Available with 20% discount at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ wildlifecriminology BRETT K. MARSHALL AWARD REBECCA EWERT - UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO REBECCA EWERT'S PAPER, LIKE WILDFIRE: CREATING RUMOR CONTENT IN THE FACE OF DISASTER IS THE WINNER OF THE 2020 BRETT K. MARSHALL AWARD. Rumors spread during disasters as community members seek information and attempt to make sense of unexpected and anxiety-producing events. While considerable sociological research has examined the transmission and spread of rumors, less attention has been given to the creation of rumor content. Drawing on interviews with wildfire survivors in one Northern California county, this study shows that rumor creation reflects existing cultural values and power arrangements. Rumors are used to reframe new information to maintain coherence with existing beliefs about government actors and local groups. Furthermore, rumors reinforce existing ideas about safety, deservingness, and class. In this case, rumors are created to reflect two existing schemas: cultural beliefs about the government and environmental protection, and power arrangements instantiated through spatial stigma. Rumor narratives provide residents with opportunities to reframe information to explain and justify unequal disaster outcomes. REFLECTIONS ON 2020 I have recently seen on Twitter—that 21st century technological bastion of news, public organizing, acute social commentary, and vile cesspool of misinformation and hate—a joke about how 2020 is doing its best to imitate the years, 1918, 1929, and 1967 all at the same time. For in this election year, the 6th US Presidential election this century, we are experiencing a global pandemic, dangerously, ineptly handled by the U.S. federal government, and not seen in a century (1918), an economic recession cratering on depression (1929), and a social uprising demanding racial justice (1967) and the end to police terrorism, violence and state-sanctioned murder of Black people. And, we know from our own work that these events have cascading and multiplying effects that have, are, and will disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and poor people—from the radical health disparities experienced by BIPOC, both generally and specifically due to COVID-19, to the increased likelihood of job loss or underemployment in the coming economic crisis to continued state-sanctioned anti-Black violence and murder. These effects on real people in their daily lives evidences our white supremacist and racist society that has always and continues to devalue Black life. Our own work in the Environment & Technology (E&T) division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) has made some of these connections with environmental harms, with the climate emergency, with the criminal justice system, with the intersectional effects of gender and sexuality, and so much more great work that has sought to interrogate racial injustice across social, environmental, and technological forms of life. We must continue and extend our work, across research, teaching, service, public outreach, and advocacy efforts with renewed urgency and purpose to end racial injustice, to reduce disparities and work towards greater equity. We must always be intentional about uplifting Black lives and Black people through all our work. I, as chair of E&T, will be working with other division chairs and SSSP leadership, as well as the chair of Environmental Sociology section of the American Sociological Association, on what we can do as an organization to foster racial justice and end white supremacy in our communities. I invite you to read SSSP’s End Racism Statement. When I look at 2020, I look with hope; hope, finally, for a reckoning with white supremacy, an opportunity to mobilize and dismantle it, and to work towards building an equitable society that values BIPOC lives, LGBTQ2IA lives, and women’s lives. We must do the work because Black lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Black women’s lives matter. CLARE CANNON - UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE RACE, THE COUNTRYSIDE AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A UK PERSPECTIVE Dr Angus Nurse Associate Professor, Environmental Justice Middlesex University Both the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests and the Covid-19 pandemic have thrust the subject of race and the environment into the spotlight in the UK. Both issues identify environmental justice concerns which Schlosberg identifies as ‘used to cover at least two overlapping parts of the grassroots environmental movement; the antitoxics movement and the movement against environmental racism’ (2007: 46). Environmental Justice and Racism The concept of environmental racism is now established within criminology, sociology and political science. The term denotes the manner in which ethnic minority groups and indigenous people disproportionately suffer from lack of access to environmental resources. Ethnic minority groups are also disproportionately affected by the location of toxic factories, pollution and waste sites in their neighbourhoods and the degradation of their environment. Environmental racism contends that negative environmental consequences of business impacts communities of colour more than Caucasians. Kale (2020) also identifies that while people of colour are likely to suffer the effects of climate change than their white counterparts, they are sometimes erased from debates about environmental issues. Anecdotally, it appears that few Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) professionals are visibly in position as senior staff in the UK’s major environmental organisations. This arguably lessens the voice of BAME communities in discussions on the environment. Rural Racism The UK has previously debated inequality in access to the countryside and has questioned whether racial discrimination exists in this area. Ben Bowling (in Chakraborti and Garland (2004: x) suggested that ‘rural racism is one of the reasons that more people of colour do not choose to live outside of the cities’ also challenging the idea that there cannot be racism in rural Britain because relatively few people of colour reside there. The notion of rural racism in the UK was also proposed in 2004 by Trevor Phillips then head of the UK’s Commission for Racial Equality (now the Equality and Human Rights Commission) who suggested that there was ‘passive apartheid’ in the countryside (Smith, 2004). Liverpool University Professor Ann Jacoby (2005) also suggested that rural communities were responsible for ‘harbouring discrimination and hostility’. The premise of the original contentions on rural racism were that relatively few people of colour lived in the countryside and that a certain amount of othering occurred when they did so with BAME citizens being met with something approaching hostility when they visited rural areas. Potentially a vicious circle existed where the lack of diversity in rural areas meant that BAME citizens would stand out more in these areas and so would be less inclined to visit them. While the English countryside may not bear the same historical connotations as parts of the Confederate South, it is arguably very much conservative with a capital ‘C’. England’s historically complex class and feudal system also meant that relatively few people of colour would have settled in some countryside areas and so villages still exist that have relatively few BAME residents. While the analysis in the various research outlined above is now more than 10 years old, Burdsey (2013) examined inter-ethnic relations at the English seaside an area routinely portrayed as a ‘white’ environment in the popular imagination, and where racialized bodies are frequently marked as ‘out of place’. However, Burdsey (2013) identified a more complex picture where feelings of affection and belonging sat alongside those of structural and spatial marginalization and, significantly, experiences of racism for some residents. Thus, while there may be growing multicultural communities in some coastal and countryside UK settings, experiences of racism may still occur reflecting the reality that underlying race issues that have been identified in the UK are not solely concentrated in the inner cities. The notion of ‘othering’ is also prevalent in the UK’s ‘Brexit’ debate of 2016 that identified the extent to which ideas of ‘otherness’ and a suspicion of those who appear to be different is arguably still an aspect of the British psyche. Virdee and McGeever (2017) suggested that ‘Brexit’, the British campaign to leave the European Union (EU) succeeded partly by bringing together two contradictory but seemingly inter-locking ideas. First, a longing to restore the notion of Britain as an imperial power, albeit one that prevents the country from coming to terms with a legacy of colonial conquest and racist subjugation. The second is the idea of retreating from a globalizing world and retreating from anything not acknowledged as ‘British’. The risk is that ‘non-British’ becomes a synonym for ‘non White’ and thus a post-Brexit British countryside becomes one that does not entirely embrace multiculturalism. Environmental Justice and Racial Justice Much like the debate in the US, the UK has also recently engaged with the idea that the coronavirus disproportionately affects its BAME citizens. Official UK data released in June 2020 found that the highest age standardised diagnosis rates of COVID-19 per 100,000 population were in people of Black ethnic groups (486 in females and 649 in males) and the lowest were in people of White ethnic groups (220 in females and 224 in males). The data also went on to state that citizens of ‘other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British’. The data also showed that ‘death rates from COVID-19 were higher for Black and Asian ethnic groups when compared to White ethnic groups. This is the opposite of what is seen in previous years, when the all-cause mortality rates are lower in Asian and Black ethnic groups’ (Public Health England 2020, 4). In addition, the data shows that more than 90% of doctors who have died during Covid-19 pandemic were from BAME backgrounds. The debate in the UK has now turned towards considering the extent to which racial injustice is a factor in environmental and health inequalities linked to poor Covid-19 outcomes. The UK Government initially appeared to resist calls for an inquiry into the impact of Covid-19 on BAME communities despite evidence from the data suggesting that BAME communities suffered worst. Yet the reality is that disproportionate rates of infection, hospitalisation and deaths among BAME communities continued to raise questions such that Public Health England conducted the analysis outlined above. BAME citizens are considered more likely to work in those occupations that are unable to work from home and are considered key/essential workers. BAME citizens are also more likely to either live in high-pollution environments (the inner cities) and are susceptible to a range of pre-existing health conditions that impact on Covid-19 survival. As the UK now finds itself considering the extent to which the concerns of Black Lives Matter are also reflected in its own policing and criminal justice practices problems the debate has also shifted to consider other issues where racism and inequality are a factor. The issue of race and the environment are now back on the agenda. References Burdsey, D. (2013) ‘The foreignness is still quite visible in this town’: multiculture, marginality and prejudice at the English seaside, Patterns of Prejudice, 47:2, 95-116, DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2013.773134 Chakraborti, N., and Garland, J. (2004) Rural Racism, Abingdon: Routledge Kale, S. (2020) ‘‘We need to be heard’: the BAME climate activists who won’t be ignored’, The Guardian, Online at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/09/we-need-to-be-heard-the-bame-climate-activists-who-wont-be-ignored Public Health England (2020) Beyond the data: Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on BAME groups, London: Public Health England Schlosberg, D. (2007) Defining Environmental Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press Smith N. (2004) ‘Villagers bristle at accusation of rural prejudice’, The Guardian. Online at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/09/raceintheuk.ruralaffairs Virdee, S. and McGeever, B. 2018) ‘Racism, Crisis, Brexit’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41:10, 1802-1819, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2017.1361544 JOIN US FOR THE ENVIRONMENT & TECHNOLOGY VIRTUAL DIVISIONAL MEETING Topic: SSSP Environment & Technology Division Time: Jul 28, 2020 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada) Meeting ID: 892 0394 4148 Password: 233285 ACADEMIC RESOURCES ON ANTI-RACISM, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION BOOKS How to Be an Antiracist ​ /Ibram X. Kendi/2019 ● White Fragility ​ /Robin J. Diangelo/June 26, 2018 ● Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race ​ /Beverley Daniel Tatum/2017 ● White Rage ​ /Carol Anderson/2017 ● Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race ​ /Renni Eddo-Lodge/2017 ● Between the World and Me ​ /Ta-Nehisi Coates/2015 ● The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness ​ /Michelle Alexander/2010 ● The World That Made New Orleans ​ /Ned Sublette/2008 ● Black Feminist Thought ​ /Patricia Hill Collins/2000 ● Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower ​ /Brittney Cooper/2018 ● Heavy: An American Memoir ​ /Kiese Laymon/2018 ● I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ​ /Maya Angelou/1969 ● Just Mercy ​ /Bryan Stevenson/2014 ● Me and White Supremacy ​ /Layla F. Saad/2020 ● Raising our Hands ​ /Jenna Arnold/2020 ● Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More ​ /Janet Mock/2014 ● Sister Outsider ​ /Audrey Lord/1984 ● So You Want to Talk About Race ​ /Ijeoma Oluo/2018 ● The Bluest Eye ​ /Toni Morrison/1970 PODCASTS/SPECIFIC PODCAST EPISODES ● Revisionist History Season 2 Episode 3, “Miss Buchanon’s Period of Adjustment”/Malcolm Gladwell ● Code Switch ​ /​NPR ● Intersectionality Matters ​ /African American Policy Fund and Kimberle Krenshaw ● Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast ​ /Race Forward ● Rants & Randomness with Luvvie Ajayi ​ Episode 9, “Become the Right Thing with Glennon Doyle” ● Fare of the Free Child ​ /Akilah S. Richards ● 1619 ​ /​The New York Times ● Pod For The Cause ​ /The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights ● Pod Save the People ​ /Deray Mckesson ● Seeing White ​ /​Scene on Radio 10 THINGS ACADEMICS CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO SUPPORT BIPOC COLLEAGUES AND STUDENTS ● Read,​ ​White Academia Do Better ○ Co-sponsor events with students of color, student groups of color in order to amplify their voices and recognition on campus, as well as to build out their CVs ○ Mentor and hire students from underrepresented backgrounds ○ Audit course syllabi to see if at least 50% of the assigned works are Black / Indigenous / POC scholars or other authors. ○ Familiarize ourselves with Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, Postcolonial perspectives, Indigenous resurgence theories, Ecofeminist perspectives, and other theories and teach them in our classes or commit to learning them ○ Cite Black Women​ ​(in-text!) ○ Co-author with BIPOC folxs, Queer folxs, and other underrepresented people in publishing ○ Invite antiracist practitioners, BIPOC folks, and other underrepresented to guest lecture a class, where appropriate, and provide compensation for this if possible ○ Include community benefits honoraria in our budgets and other ways of ensuring resources are moved from dominant culture organizations into communities where we collect data ○ Volunteer to help organize faculty development opportunities that address antiracist and other social justice oriented pedagogy and praxes WEBSITES IBRAM X. KENDI​Ibram X. Kendi  THEGRIO​theGrio - Breaking News, Latest News, Opinion, Analysis and Video  THE ROOT​The Root | The Blacker the Content the Sweeter the Truth  RACE FORWARD​Race Forward  RACHEL-CARGLE​Home | rachel-cargle  GOOD BLACK NEWS​GOOD BLACK NEWS  LAYLA F. SAAD​LAYLA F. SAAD  PYRAMIDPROJECT​Home | The Pyramid Project  NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE​Talking  About Race  DRWORKSBOOK​dRworksBook  ORGANIZATIONS ● Color of Change ● Campaign Zero ● Anti-Racism Project ● NAACP ● UnidosUs ● ACLU MOVIES & DOCUMENTARIES ● 13th ​ /Ava Duvernay/2016 - Netflix ● American Son ​ /Kenny Leon/2019 - Netflix ● Sorry To Bother You ​ /Boots Riley/2018 - Hulu ● Get Out ​ /Jordan Peele/2017 ● Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 ​ /Göran Olsson/2011 ● Clemency ​ /Chinonye Chukwu/2019 ● Fruitvale Station ​ /Ryan Coogler/2013 ● I Am Not Your Negro ​ /Raoul Peck/2017 ● If Beale Street Could Talk ​ /Barry Jenkins/2018 - Hulu ● Just Mercy ​ /Destin Daniel Cretton/2019 ● King In The Wilderness ​ /Peter Kunhardt/2018 - HBO ● See You Yesterday ​ /Stefon Bristol/2019 - Netflix ● Blackkklansman ​ /Spike Lee/2018 ● Selma ​ /Ava Duvernay/2014 ● The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution ​ /Stanley Nelson Jr./2015 ● The Hate U Give ​ /George Tillman Jr./2018 - Hulu ● When They See Us ​ /Ava Duvernay/2019 Note: This list, donated by Clare Cannon, is a compilation of resources from colleagues, listervs, emails, etc. It is not a comprehensive list. NEWSLETTER EDITOR ALEXIS ECONIE - UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON