SSSP Environment & Technology
Winter 2020 Newsletter


MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Dear E&T,

What a year it has been. There have been many adjectives – unprecedented, extraordinary, difficult, lonely, once in a century, exasperating (I could go on) – to describe this past year. Through all the many and compounding trials and tribulations, our membership has persevered through the countless tragedies and losses, great and small. Hope is on the horizon with promising vaccines and an incoming administration whose stated intent is to use science to inform policy, practices, and procedures to address not only the ongoing pandemic but also the vast racial inequities and injustices that have been perpetuated for far too long and to lead with climate first policies and goals throughout the many domains overseen by the Executive branch of the federal government. But these are not the only sources of hope. 
Through the incredible work you all have done and continue to do through difficult circumstances, you have made a difference and I take profound hope from your hard work. Whether it is pushing our institutions to take action on racial injustices, through our research into environmental and technological causes and consequences, or through teaching the next generation of community leaders, your work has been a wellspring of hope, a continued and comforting light in these dark days. And in this season of glad tidings, I want to thank each and every one of you for your hard and dedicated work and commitment to making the world a better place. I hope you all may have a restorative and joyful December break and can find some comfort in knowing that your work makes a difference.  
The world is certainly going to change again next year and I cannot help but wonder which adjectives we will use to describe it. No matter the words, we will be here, together, working to make the world a little bit brighter, class by class, study by study, committee meeting by committee meeting. 

Wishing you a safe and as-happy-as-can-be holiday season,

Clare Cannon


NEW SSSP RESOURCES AVAILABLE ONLINE

Please visit the SSSP website to preview some of the recently updated web content. We encourage you to take advantage of all available resources. New information concerning conferences and meetings, calls for papers, awards, fellowships, and scholarships, as well as job opportunities, are being added regularly. There have been many recent additions to several SSSP webpages.

Additionally, the Administrative Office would like to encourage SSSP members to share news of recently published books, articles and papers, award nominations and other items of interest with us. If you wish to have an announcement posted, send an e-mail to Zaina Shams,


2021 Virtual Meeting
The Society for the Study of Social Problems
August 6-8, 2021
Online submission deadline is 11:59p.m. (Eastern Time) on January 15, 2021


SSSP PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Corey Dolgon, SSSP President 
Stonehill College

The way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth on them.
  --Ida B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)

Wouldn’t a better use of our labor be to create a system of justice based on healing, redemption and real accountability, a system that empowers us to stand up and put things right?
  --Rosado, et. al., Larger Than Life (2018)

IF WE THINK of reparations as part of a broad strategy to radically transform society — redistributing wealth, creating a democratic and caring public culture, exposing the ways capitalism and slavery produced massive inequality — then the ongoing struggle for reparations holds enormous promise for revitalizing movements for social justice.
  --Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams (2002)

Can social science still be the brash, young, vital, productive, unsettling, even revolutionary pursuit it has been in its most valuable periods?
  --Al McClung Lee, Social Problems (1954)

We build on the past--stand on the broad shoulders of giants--but our vision and our actions are shaped by the ideological frameworks and institutional structures that constitute what Cooley called the “social mind.” Of course, sociologists such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Jane Addams had already developed a much more sophisticated and dialectical theory of identity, social consciousness and social forces well before Cooley’s published work. The tragedies of Du Bois, Addams, and others’ exclusion from the field was not just the overt racism and patriarchy that lay behind it--although such acts were purposeful and reprehensible. A similarly troubling result from the triumph of white male professionalized (or corporate) sociology was its repression of the discipline’s most radical and engaged efforts at being a revolutionary force for global justice.

As our most recent presidents have stated, the Society for the Study of Social Problems [SSSP] was born out of the struggle to rescue and revitalize a relevant sociology for “the people” and use social science as a weapon for a just world. In 2015, Marlese Durr argued that our work must actively “pursue a just society [if we] may alter the most pressing problems carried across centuries.” In 2018, Luis Fernandez encouraged us to be bold in not only studying social problems, but in developing ways to abolish them, “eliminate [ing] systems of subjugation” and “reimagining social justice.” When Heather Dalmage claimed last year that “resistance alone [would] not create a new world with new possibilities,” she called on us to build pathways, solidarity, political engagement and pedagogies of liberation to “create the structural changes that bend toward justice.” She asked, “Where does our scholar activism, as we live it through SSSP, fit into our dreams of transformation, toward building new worlds?”

Unfortunately, SSSP itself has too often fallen short in meeting the radical aspirations of its members and leaders.  From the late 1960s onward, presidents complained about the organization’s conservative tendencies and the ways in which fighting for professional status and scientific legitimacy too often limited the revolutionary imagination and political interventions of the organization. By its 25th Anniversary, founders suggested that SSSP had become a “mini ASA” losing both its analytical focus on power and structure and its political focus on policy applications and movement activism. By its 50th Anniversary in 2001, many wondered whether the organization then suffered from its own institutionalized and rigid orthodoxies. That year, Ellen Reese (2001) issued SSSP a Call to Action for a more politically engaged professional organization. Twenty years later we echo that call with even greater immediacy and purpose. SSSP can be a stronger, more active and transformative body that supports social movement work in our communities, in our nations, and around the world. But we must make it so.

The 2021 Program Committee invites you to join us to envision a more effective future for the forces of radical and revolutionary sociology. We must be bold and persistent, not in dogma, but in passion, commitment and action towards global justice. We call for papers that ask--and try to answer--the questions posed so many years ago: “sociology for what?” (Lynd, 1936) and the “sociology for whom?” (Lee, 1951). We invite scholars looking to reach out to, and work with, community groups and social movement organizations—whom we hope will have a strong presence at meeting sessions and at conference events throughout the city. We hope to inspire innovative, interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts at what Nancy Naples (2007) called “research that matters.” While we cannot predict now what next summer’s social and political context will be, we know that pandemics and racist police murders are symptoms of the already existing structures of oppression and violence that SSSP members (and the organization itself) must work to end.

Finally, in part as a response to possible pandemics but also as a strategy to increase our global vision and inclusivity, we will have a virtual component to this year’s conference. While attendance will be open to all members, virtual sessions are specifically targeted to those who could not otherwise attend in person.  We believe this mechanism and strategy will help us increase the participation of international and low-income professionals, graduate students, and young scholars who might otherwise not be able to participate in person. As we answer former President David Smith’s (2016) call to increase our global presence and analysis, we also understand that the forces of inequality and patriarchy, white supremacy and violence, have always been global in nature. The formation of a revolutionary sociology focused on both a new abolitionism and a new vision of radical democracy and redistribution must also be international. We look forward to having these conversations, dialogues, debates, and celebrations next year. Please join us.


RECENT MEMBER PUBLICATIONS

Deb, Nikhil. 2020. “Law and Corporate Malfeasance in Neoliberal India.” Critical
Sociology 46(7-8): 1157-1171. doi: 10.1177/0896920520907122.

Deb, Nikhil. 2020. “Corporate Capitalism, Environmental Damage, and the Rule of Law:
The Magurchara Gas Explosion in Bangladesh.” In the Routledge International Handbook of
Green Criminology, edited by Nigel South and Avi Brisman. London: Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315207094

Deb, Nikhil and Maya Rao. 2020. “The Pandemic and the Invisible Poor of the Global South: Slum Dwellers in Mumbai, India, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.” In Social Problems in the Age of COVID-19: Volume 2 – Global Perspectives, edited by Muschert, Glenn, Budd,vKristen Christian, Michelle, Lane,David, Perrucci, Robert and Jason Smith. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

Deb, Nikhil. 2020. Review of Dispossession without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India by Michael Levien. Oxford University Press, 2018. London School of Economics Review
of Books. June 23, 2020.

Deb, Nikhil. 2020. “Elia Apostolopoulou and Jose A. Cortes-Vazquez (Eds): The Right to Nature: Social Movements, Environmental Justice and Neoliberal Natures.” Critical Criminology
1-4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09484-2

Halpin, Michael. In-press. “The Brain and Causality: How the Brain Becomes an Individual-level Cause of Illness.” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa030 
 
Halpin, Michael. In-press. “Into the Prodrome: Diagnosis, Disadvantage, and Biomedical Ambiguity.” Society and Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869320912456 

Perez, Victor. 2020. “Environmental Justice." Pp. 291-310 in The Delaware Naturalist Handbook, edited by McKay Jenkins and Susan Barton. University of Delaware Press.

Vachon, Todd E. 2020. “Pandemic May be a Preview of our Climate Future.” Star Ledger, July 1. 

Vachon, Todd E., Saket Soni, Judith LeBlanc, and Gerry Hudson. 2020. “Bargaining for Climate Justice.” The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice, April 1. 

Lamb, Zachary B., and Todd E. Vachon. 2020. “Working for Just Adaptation: The Green New Deal, Labor, and Planning for Climate Change.” POWER: Infrastructure in America. 

Agenda for Social Justice
Editorial Search – Call for Applications
The Editorial and Publications Committee of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) solicits applications for two positions on the Editorial Team of the volume, Agenda for Social Justice.
The Editor’s four-year term will start in February 2021, and the new editor will be responsible for editing and promoting volumes to be published in 2022 and 2024. An editor may be reappointed, or have their term extended, with the approval of the SSSP Editorial and Publications Committee and the SSSP Board of Directors. Applicants must be members or become members of the SSSP by the time of the application deadline and maintain membership during their tenure as editor.
The primary activity required is the cultivation, editing, and production of the Agenda for Social Justice, a volume of public sociology published by Policy Press at the University of Bristol. While chapters in the volumes are grounded in rigorous social science, they are presented in a way that is accessible to a generally educated public. The editorial team is responsible for producing a volume every other year, alternating between US-focused volumes and global-focused volumes. Volumes of the Agenda for Social Justice are available open access, and are distributed to SSSP members.
The committee seeks a diverse pool of candidates with good scholarly records, preferable academic editorial experience (e.g., service as journal editor or associate editor, editor of scholarly editions), strong organizational skills, and the ability to work and communicate well with others, including with scholars in academic and non-academic settings. Familiarity with the Agenda for Social Justice volumes and a commitment to the SSSP are essential. A new member should have a genuine commitment to working in the field of social justice, with an interest in the wide range of themes that the study of social problems encompasses. We encourage applications from scholars from all career stages, and applications by members of all underrepresented groups are encouraged.
Please direct inquiries and applications by email to each of the following persons. In the subject line, specify, “Application to Join Agenda for Social Justice Editorial Group.”
Glenn Muschert: glennmuschert@gmail.com Kristen M. Budd: buddkm@miamioh.edu David C. Lane: dclane1@ilstu.edu
Jason A. Smith: jasonsm55@gmail.com
Deadline for applications is January 15, 2021.
For more information:
Open access copy of the most recent Agenda for Social Justice, the US-focus volume:
https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/771/locationSectionId/0/Agenda_for_Social_Justice
Open access copy of the most recent Global Agenda for Social Justice, the global-focus volume: https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/323/locationSectionId/0/Global_Agenda_for_Social_Justice
Information about the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP):
https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/453/locationSectionId/0/Who_We_Are