SSSP Section on Environment & Technology Summer 2022 Newsletter This issue’s featured content: Message from the Chair — 1 Annual Meeting Invitation — 2 E&T Sponsored Sessions - 4 Other Announcements — 9 Message from the Chair Clare Cannon University of California-Davis When I ran as Chair in 2019, the world was a different place. When I started as Chair of the division in the summer of 2020 little did, I know that the entirety of my time in this role would be spent during a global pandemic not seen in a century. And what a few years it has been.   Our membership has risen to extraordinary heights supporting our students, keeping our universities and organizations open and running, working to create a more just society. It has been an honor to lead this community, particularly during such difficult and uncertain times. I am proud of all that we have accomplished together. And I look forward to working with you in the coming years on our most pressing social and environmental problems. Our new chair, Dr. Lauren Eastwood, who will be taking over this summer, is poised for success. Join me in welcoming her to the chair role. I know she will do a fantastic job. I also very much look forward to seeing many of you in person – meeting some of you in real life for the first time and reconnecting with old friends - at the coming annual meetings. Finally, I want to thank each of you for your support as we navigated these troubled waters together and for your faith in me to lead our community. I honestly can’t wait to see what we will do next.   Cheers, Clare See you at our Annual Meeting! Noreen M. Sugrue SSSP President In 2001, Robert Perrucci articulated a vision of SSSP and its membership whereby both become consequential actors in public discussions and policy debates. Two decades later, the work and activism of SSSP and its members is needed more than ever. Our entry into a post-pandemic world provides us with an opportunity to recalibrate our priorities as scholars, policy analysts, teachers, and activists. We are being given an opportunity to embrace this period, with a clear sense of needed pathways toward change. Addressing and redressing today’s problems requires the full and central participation of SSSP members. SSSP scholars, be they in the academy, government, or the private sector, are uniquely qualified to play a formative role in defining, designing, and implementing the policies required for a new beginning, a new hope, and a new and fairer social order. In his widely acclaimed book Capitalism in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty contends that in order to address one of this century’s greatest threats - growing inequality – more than economists are required at the “solutions table”. This expanded solutions table is necessary if policy solutions to inequities, inequalities, and injustices are to be based on a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the social world in all its dimensions. And who better to provide such descriptions and prescriptive policy actions than sociologists, especially those of us in SSSP? However, we also must recognize that as sociologists we will not be spontaneously invited to the solutions table. In order to secure a seat at that table, we must deploy our research findings along salient avenues of public discussion and debate. We are called to translate our research findings into concrete prescriptions for change, and thereby infuse the public process with the results of our research. But sitting at the solutions table is one thing; we also must ensure that we have a suitable microphone in order to amplify our voice. Our unique voice can illuminate the issues and problems, as well as provide solutions aimed at both rectifying problems and guiding the reimagination of how a more equitable social order can be achieved. We seek our seat and our microphone not for our own careers but rather for the sake of the country and the world. In many ways, the 2022 meeting is a new beginning. COVID recently has dominated the social landscape, but we now hope to enter a post-pandemic world. It is a world in which a virus exacerbated and exposed the issues and problems that we all know need to be fixed. It is a world in which some communities are far more broken than before the pandemic, and where the endemic inequities and injustices have been laid bare for all to see. Recently, we have experienced moments that vividly illustrated the inequities and injustices we know all too well. The examples also are all too familiar: COVID, gun violence, attacks on the rights of women and LGBTQIA persons, anti-Semitism, structural racism, inhumane treatment of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, as well as inequitable access to health care, poverty, the killings of George Floyd, Adam Toledo, and countless other Blacks and Latinos at the hands of law enforcement, and climate change, in addition to the ever growing inter- and intra- country inequities. Our experiences with these moments and our entry into the post-pandemic world provide us with an opportunity to recalibrate our priorities as scholars, policy analysts, teachers, and activists. As we enter this period, there is a clear sense that this is the time for change. There is a willingness on the part of many, particularly younger people, to realign our priorities and social structures, re-prioritize how we spend resources, re-define what it means to identify a society as just, re-distribute goods and services with a commitment to equity, and re-evaluate our programs and policies through an intersectional lens. I invite each of you to join us in Los Angeles – the city of angels – in order to further a dialogue aimed at social change and action rooted in data and theory. The 2022 meeting also provides opportunities to define, energize, and commit to concrete social actions and policy work. It is the time to turn the multiple moments on our social landscape into momentum – momentum for social justice, momentum for change, momentum for SSSP scholars to move from analysis to action, and momentum to make SSSP not simply the Society for the Study of Social Problems, but also into a society that designs solutions. E&T Sponsored Sessions Session 003: Environmental Racism When: Friday, August 5, 8:30 a.m. Room: Governor’s Organizer, Presider, Discussant: Angus A. Nurse, Nottingham Trent University Description: …This panel explores different aspects of environmental racism including health inequality; food inequality and access to environmental justice. Papers: “Environmental Racism and Blood Lead Levels in Children,” Rasha Naseif, Independent Scholar “Race, Environmental injustice, and Environmental Racism: A UK Perspective,” Angus A. Nurse, Nottingham Trent University and Katerina Gachevska, Leeds Beckett University “Transit Food Access and Justice in Portland, Oregon,” Ned Tilbrook and Carly Hollabaugh, Portland State University “Wildfires, Health, and Wellbeing: A Systematic Review,” Amanda S. Fackler, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Session 026: Environmentally Just Futures: New Avenues of Justice to Consider When: Friday, August 5, 4:30 p.m. Room: Crocker Organizer: Alex McInturff, University of Washington Presider and Discussant: Lauren Eastwood, SUNY Plattsburgh Description: Amid rapid global changes in technology, economies, culture, and the natural environment new visions of environmentally just futures are crucial. This session will explore radically imaginative and well-established yet often unseen visions for the future of environmental justice. Papers: “Assessing Public Support for Pandemic Mitigating Policies and Policies to Support Animal Conservation and Welfare Organizers during Global Crises,” Cameron T. Whitley, Western Washington University “How We Talk About Earth Matters: Colonial Understandings of Earth,” Harmandeep Kaur, Wayne State University Session 057: Critical Dialogue: Social Infrastructure and Race in a Changing Climate When: Saturday, August 6, 12:30 p.m.
Room: Museum B Organizers: Clare E.B. Cannon, University of California Davis, and Greer Hamilton, Boston University Presider and Discussant: Greer Hamilton, Boston University Description: Social infrastructure is critically important for the advancement of equity and justice for communities across the U.S. and globally. Social infrastructure, broadly conceived, includes the social services and systems that underpin societies and the people, places, and power that support them. Social infrastructure has led to uneven development and holds the key for rectifying such wide-spread and disproportionate inequalities. Increasingly, researchers are investigating linkages across social infrastructure and race, especially within the context of the climate emergency, creating additional urgency for more just social infrastructure. Papers: “Camouflaging and Leveraging Race: How Entrepreneurs Deal with Racial Issues in Entrepreneurial Trajectories,” Carly Offidani-Bertrand, California State University San Marcos “Intergenerational Mobility of Third-generation Mexican Americans in Metropolitan Los Angeles,” Julybeth Murillo, University of California, Irvine “The ‘Asian Race’ in the COVID-19 Era,” Secil Ertorer, Canisius College “Wage Levels, Family Well-being, and Government Programs,” Peggy Wireman, Wireman & Associates Session 064: Technology and the Future of Work and Workers When: Saturday, August 6, 2:30 p.m. Room: Hershey Organizers: Alexis Econie, University of Wisconsin, and Todd Vachon, Rutgers University Presider and Discussant: Fitore Hyseni, Syracuse University Description: The rollout of sophisticated digital tools — including advanced robotics, data analytics, machine learning and the internet of things — threatens to disrupt the distribution, role, and nature of work in society. Raising the spectra of mass unemployment and social instability, researchers predict that technological progress will soon allow for the rapid automation of many tasks that are currently performed by humans. Concurrently, other trends such as climate change, financialization, and workplace fissuring threaten to accelerate the ongoing concentration of power across societies in the hands of the wealthy few, leaving workers with less bargaining power and greater uncertainty. Papers in this session will explore various aspects of the future of work and workers. Papers: “A (Possible) Labor Politics of Judgement?” Michael L. Siciliano, Tulane University “Be Your Own Boss: Seeking Passion Work and Avoiding ‘Bullshit Jobs’ in University Entrepreneurship Programs,” Victor Tan Chen and Jesse Goldstein, Virginia Commonwealth University “The Online Stigmatization of MLM Participants Using Reddit,” Jessica Pearce, University of Louisiana at Lafayette “Workplace Health Surveillance and COVID-19: Algorithmic Health Discrimination and the Rights of People with Disabilities,” Paul Harper, The University of Queensland, Fitore Hyseni and Peter D. Blanck, Syracuse University Session 072: Reimagining the Rural: Questions and Topics for the 21st Century When: Sunday, August 7 8:30 a.m. Room: Hershey Organizer: Clare E. B. Cannon, University of California Davis Presider and Discussant: Nels Paulson, University of Wisconsin-Stout Description: This session delves into what we mean when we talk about the “rural”. Though much has been said and written about the urban, less has been said recently about how we think about and what constitutes the rural. These are pressing issues as we enter the third full decade of the new century. This session seeks questions and topics related to the rural, broadly defined, to advance our understanding of the possibilities of the rural reimagined. Papers: “‘Getting Political’: Contextualizing Donald Trump’s Geopolitical Traction in Rural America,” Amy M. Magnus, California State University Chico, Frank A. Donohue, University of Maryland College Park, and Kristen Rai, University of California Irvine “Reimagining the Rural in 21st Century Health Care: Challenges in Expanding Telehealth,” Nels Paulson, University of Wisconsin-Stout and Margaret Paulson, Mayo Clinic “Spatial Reentry: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Areas,” Rafia Javaid Mallick, Georgia State University, Cynthia Baiqing Zhang, Evergreen Campus LLC, Loren Henderson, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Meredith Ille, University of Oklahoma Session 091: Institutional Complexities and Responses to Crises I When: Sunday, August 7, 12:30 p.m. Room: Watercourt A Organizer, Presider and Discussant: June Jeon, Chungnam National University Description: The moment of crisis requests sociological studies on complex institutional assemblage that causes, nurtures, maintains, and fails to impede the crisis. This session is composed of a series of papers that highlights institutional arrangements that alarms a variety of types of crises (or disasters). By combining institutional ethnography and other methods, papers show that the social ontology from the margin manifests the social problems of our time at various places. Social problems are not exclusively ‘social’ in a way that excludes non-human. Papers also give attention to ecological crises that are both causes and consequences of current social problems.
Papers: “Cognitive Dissonance in the Agriculture Industry during the Trump Era: Small-governmental Ideology and Subsidy-dependent Reality,” Nadya M. Vera and Sarah E. Castillo, University of Tennessee Knoxville “Flooded Afterlives: Examining ‘Disjunctures’ in Community Flood Narratives,” Jaime J. McCauley and Jennifer Mokos, Coastal Carolina University “For What It’s Worth: Interrogating Coordinated Access Mandates as a Response to Homelessness in Ontario, Canada,” Sara Cullingham, David Knezzevic and Naomi Nichols, Trent University “Institutionalizing Climate Equity: The Quest for Procedural Justice, Energy Democracy, and Innovative Climate Governance in Los Angeles,” Emma Mehlig French, University of California Los Angeles “The Business of Adaptation in Bangladesh,” Danielle Falzon, Brown University, Winner of the Environment and Technology Division’s Student Paper Competition Session 096: Institutional Complexities and Responses to Crises II When: Sunday, August 7, 2:30 p.m. Room: Watercourt A Organizer, Presider and Discussant: June Jeon, Chungnam National University Description: Same as above. Papers: “Persons of Self-rescue and the Institution of Canadian Private Sponsorship,” Hasmik Tovmasyan, University of Calgary “Regroup, Refocus, and Rebrand: Updating Community-based Research Practices during and after the Pandemic Isolation,” Jeffry A. Will, University of North Florida “Women’s Political Representation, Neoliberalism, and Sustainable Development: A Cross-National Panel Study, 2000-2015,” Belal Hossain, Oklahoma State University Announcements Join us for the E&T Business Meeting! When: Friday, August 5th 1030-1145 Where: Watercourt A The business meeting is an exciting opportunity to connect with other members, suggest ideas for sessions, field trips, and workshops. We look forward to seeing you there! Send Next Year's Session Ideas to the New Chair If you are unable to attend the business meeting in person, we could still use your help in organizing sessions for E&T for Philadelphia in 2023. Please consider sending session ideas (and/or willingness to serve as session organizers) to Lauren Eastwood (eastwole@plattsburgh.edu) by 1 August. These will then be considered along with the suggestions that are made at the business meeting in LA. Thanks so much! From the Editor I would love to spotlight graduate students doing awesome work on environment and technology! If you or your student would like to be featured in the next newsletter, please reach out to me at eeburke3@wisc.edu! Emily Burke University of Wisconsin