Environmental Risks and Environmental Justice,Or How Titanic Risks Are Not So Titanic After All*

Some of the best‐known social scientific theories of risks are those that have been elaborated by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. Although their arguments differ greatly, they agree in seeing the technologically induced risks of today’s “Risk Society” as global—so pervasive that they transcend all socioeconomic as well as geopolitical and national boundaries. Most empirical work, however, provides greater support for a theoretical tradition exemplified by Short and Erikson. In this paper, we argue that many of the technological mega‐risks described by Giddens and Beck as “transcending” social boundaries are better described as “Titanic risks,” referring not so much to their colossal impact as to the fact that—as was the case for the majority of the victims on the Titanic—actual risks are related to victims’ socioeconomic as well as sociogeographic locations. Previous research has shown this to be the case with high‐risk technologies, such as nuclear energy and weaponry, and also with localized ones, such as toxic waste disposal. This article illustrates that the same is true even for the most genuinely “global” risks of all, namely those associated with global climate disruption.     

Sociologists’ assessments of the state of sociology, 1969–1984

Articles in both the popular press and sociology journals have argued that between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s sociologists became more pessimistic about the intellectual vitality of their field. Data from the 1969, 1975, and 1984 Carnegie surveys of faculty at U.S. universities suggest that sociologists’ assessments of their field changed little over this period. In several respects the “sociology in the doldrums” thesis of the 1980s resembles the 1970s “blue collar blues” thesis; in both cases sociologists gave structural explanations for apparently nonexistent trends.     

INTERPRETING THE SOCIOLOGICAL CLASSICS: CAN THERE BE A “TRUE” MEANING OF MEAD?

Many sociologists have tried in vain to find the “true” meaning of the classic works in the discipline. An interactionist perspective suggests that this search is not a valid one for sociologists, especially symbolic interactionists. Although there can be no “true” meaning, some authors use conventions of writing that make their work more or less clear. Using Mead's Mind, Self and Society as an example, we discuss the dimensions of clarity. We then argue that the sociological classics should be read to (I) simulate new theories and research (pragmatic analysis), (2) determine how sociologists have used that classic to support or refute particular theories or perspectives (rhetorical analysis), and (3) provide information about the sociological concerns of the author and his/her contemporaries (historical analysis).     

U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

The 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq had profound consequences for the people living in that nation. In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the dramatic changes that transpired in Iraq due to the war. I then move on to highlight the contributions U.S. sociologists have made in studies regarding the conflict, based on a review of articles published from 2003–2016 in ten generalist U.S.‐based journals. My review shows that while U.S. sociology has made significant contributions to further collective knowledge about American aspects of the Iraq War, U.S. sociologists have paid very little attention to the actual impacts of the invasion and occupation on Iraqi social organizations, Iraqi culture, and on the lives of individual Iraqis. I make the case that these historically significant events deserve more scholarly attention than they have been given so far. I further argue that U.S. sociologists have a special responsibility to document, study, and explain the consequences of their government's behavior when it causes extensive harm to people living in another land.     

Remembering Lucky Dragon,re-membering Bikini: worlding the Anthropocene through transpacific nuclear modernity

This paper examines two recent Godzilla-themed cultural artefacts that highlight the entanglement between nuclear weaponry and nuclear energy: first, the 60th anniversary Godzilla exhibit at the Tokyo Metropolitan Daigo Fukuryū Maru Exhibition Hall; second, the 2014 American Godzilla directed by Gareth Edwards. This paper frames these two distinctive post-Fukushima cultural texts as memory work that mediates post-WWII genealogies of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power as constitutive elements of U.S. militarism and transpacific technological modernity. Specifically, this paper foregrounds how these two recent cultural texts, produced at different Pacific shores, bring the complexity of the often-absented Pacific back into focus. By enacting what Rob Wilson and Chris Connery call ‘worlding’ to make sense of divergent representations of the tragic Lucky Dragon/Bikini incident that decidedly informed the creation of the original Japanese Gojira [1954. Film. Directed by Honda Ishiro. Japan: Toho Co., Ltd.], this paper analyses geopolitical figurations of the Pacific and its peoples in both the specific context of this tragic incident and the broader formation of transpacific nuclear modernity. In so doing, this paper unravels the ways in which these divergent representations grapple with nuclear modernity’s reordering of necropolitics and biopolitics and its effects: specifically, the ways in which the renarration of death-making nuclear technology as a technology of good life conveniently erases the victims of nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout, and nuclear waste that the reproduction of U.S. nuclearism depends on and continues to produce.     

Copresence in Virtual Environments

Copresence, the sense of “being together” with others, is at the center of theories about social interaction. It is an intra‐individual sense that stems from and shapes the social context. Recent research on copresence in virtual environments (VEs), synthetic simulations of existing experiences (e.g., desktop computer environments, “virtual reality”), demonstrates the variability in which people experience copresence with others who are not sharing in the same time or space. At the same time, experimental researchers in sociology are using VEs as a methodological tool, yet remain unaware about the ramifications of varying levels of copresence for the social processes under investigation. The goal of this review is to introduce sociologists to the research on copresence, specifically highlighting findings and gaps important for those who use VEs in their research practice. An understanding of how copresence occurs in VEs can improve how well sociologists design experiments to advance theories about interpersonal behavior.     

Elements of a Sociological Contribution to Happiness Studies

A significant body of social‐science research on happiness has accrued in recent decades, produced mainly by economists and psychologists. Sociologists, however, have made more limited contributions to “happiness studies”. This paper provides an overview of concepts, methods and findings and suggests some questions about happiness that ought to be of substantial interest to sociology. Many sociologists are clearly interested in the well‐being of the people they study (sometimes suggesting “policy implications” emerging from their empirical findings); happiness is a presumptively important form of well‐being, and an engagement with happiness studies might constitute a way to develop more systematic connections between well‐being and academic research. Building on existing findings, sociologists would be well‐placed to consider the social context of happiness (as against an individualist orientation more common in other disciplines) as well as the unintended consequences of policy initiatives and happiness discourses.     

Organizational theory in political sociology

Organizational theory and research has been enormously generative for political sociologists, if not always as fully centered as it might be, relative to broader notions of political power, economic resources, culture, and their interplay. This review both calls attention to the ways that organizational theory continues to inform political sociology and sets an agenda for how this interchange can be productively extended in various ways in scholarship on states, political parties, advocacy organizations, and business influences in politics. I highlight the genealogy of the new institutionalism and its variants (World Polity and institutional logics), population ecology (and the growing interest in both categories and audiences, alongside studies of the “ecology of ideology”), and research that follows in the broad tradition of resource dependence theory (and the link to more management-oriented approaches such as “non-market strategy” and stakeholder theories of organizational political activities). I also emphasize how novel theories of social movements and fields have offered innovative insights that incorporate organizational and political processes. I conclude by elaborating an agenda for how political sociologists can go further in maintaining and extending their highly productive and rewarding engagements with organizational theory.     

Sociology’s Sacred Victims and the Politics of Knowledge: Moral Foundations Theory and Disciplinary Controversies

The field of sociology has long been subject to critique for alleged ideological bias and left-wing groupthink linked to its social justice mission. Critics contend that the construction of “sacred victims” by progressive intellectuals hinders their ability to objectively appraise the circumstances of such vulnerable groups. To address this criticism, we survey 479 sociologists in national universities and colleges in the U.S. regarding three sensitive controversies: urban poverty in the black community; gendered differences in occupational choices; and immigration. We find significant patterns in the data. Commitment to the field’s “moral mission,” preferred research paradigm, gender, and especially political orientation are all significant predictors of sociologists’ views. The results, we suggest, can be understood by conceptualizing the field of sociology as an “emotive community.” In doing so, we draw upon current social psychological research on moral foundations theory developed by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues.     

Beyond the Comtean Schema: The Sociology of Culture and Cognition Versus Cognitive Social Science

In this essay, I argue that the very form of the grammatical construction “a sociology of culture and cognition” (which is a specification of the more general schema “a sociology of [X]”) is symptomatic of a deeply entrenched form of “Primitive Classification” (which I will refer to as the “Comtean schema”) that governs the way in which sociologists conceive of their place in, and engage with other denizens of, the social science landscape. I will also argue that while this style of disciplinary engagement might have worked in the past when it came to dealing with the standard (nineteenth‐century) social science disciplines and even some late‐twentieth‐century upstarts, it will not work as a way to engage the now‐sprawling postdisciplinary field that I will refer to as “Cognitive Social Science” (CSS). The takeaway point is that if sociologists want to be part of CSS (and it is in their interest to be part of it because this constitutes the future of the behavioral sciences), then they will have to give up the Comtean‐schematic thought style.     

The Living Arrangements of Children in Immigrant Families in the United States1

Little is known about the living arrangements of first‐ and second‐generation immigrant children. Using data from the Current Population Survey and a multivariate approach, I compared living arrangements of immigrant children to U.S.‐born white children with U.S.‐born parents. Findings show, except for foreign‐born black and some Hispanic children, that foreign‐born children lived with married parents more frequently than did U.S.‐born white children with U.S.‐born parents. However, by the third generation, a pattern emerged showing a decline in living with married parents among some immigrant children and a rise in living with single parents. The noticeable “downward assimilation” amon some second and third‐generation immigrant children fits a theory of segmented assimilation and is concerning because single‐parent families confront more social problems and sociodemographic risks.     

Public Sociology and the Democratization of Technology: Drawing on User -led Research to Achieve Mutual Education

In an effort to further advance public sociology and its relationship with technology, this paper looks at a democratic model of collaboration within the technological sciences. We draw on the concept of user- led research to demonstrate how sociologists, scientists and various stakeholders within the public sphere can achieve reciprocal, meaningful and sustained knowledge translation. Furthermore, we argue that by acknowledging participants’ technological needs and reducing unnecessary complexity, the user -led method advances Burawoy’s “dialogue as mutual education” within public sociology.     

Environmental Degradation,Disproportionality, and the Double Diversion: Reaching Out,Reaching Ahead,and Reaching Beyond

Abstract Rather than seeking ivory‐tower isolation, members of the Rural Sociological Society have always been distinguished by a willingness to work with specialists from a broad range of disciplines, and to work on some of the world's most challenging problems. What is less commonly recognized is that the willingness to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries can contribute not just to the solution of real‐world problems, but also to the advancement of the discipline itself. This point is increasingly being illustrated in studies of environment‐society relationships. Most past discussions of humans' roles in environmental problems have focused on overall or average human impacts, but rural sociologists have played leading roles in identifying what I have come to call “the double diversion.” First, rather than being well‐represented by averages, environmental damages are often characterized by high levels of disproportionality, with much or most of the harm being created by the diversion of environmental rights and resources to a surprisingly small fraction of the relevant social actors. The dispropor‐tionality appears to be made possible in part through the second diversion, namely distraction—the diversion of attention, largely through the taken‐for‐granted but generally erroneous assumption that the environmental harm “must” be for the benefit of us all. There are good reasons why rural sociologists would have been among the first to notice both of these “diversions”— and why they will give even greater attention to both in the future.     

Reconfiguring Worker Subjectivity: Career Advice Literature and the “Branding” of the Worker's Self

Career advice literature, commonly used by many job seekers, has increasingly exhibited an emphasis on “personal branding,” an economic discourse that invites workers to conceive of themselves as profit‐generating enterprises. In this article, we examine the meanings that personal branding provokes in the minds of precariously employed white‐collar workers in Boston. We use interviews conducted with 62 white‐collar workers and job seekers to explore the utility of Foucauldian theories of governmentality, which have received little attention within American sociology. Results suggest that precariously employed workers do feel pressured to incorporate personal branding into their orientations toward both self and work, much as Foucauldian theory expects. Yet our findings also identify important exceptions to this pattern, with smaller proportions of workers engaging in outward accommodation of self‐branding discourse, or else explicit contestation of its terms. We conclude that Foucauldian theories of the “enterprising self” warrant more widespread consideration among American sociologists, hopefully opening up a stronger understanding of counterconduct, one of the theory's notable blind spots to date.     

#FamiliesBelongTogether: Facts and Fictions of Race and Family in U.S. Immigration Policy

Family reunification is widely seen as a relatively stable feature of the contemporary U.S. immigration regime protected by the nation’s liberal democratic institutions and humanitarian values. Drawing on critical scholarship that situates immigration policies in racial nation‐building projects, this article explores the development of U.S. family‐based admission policies from 1965 to the early 2000s. I bring attention to the role of racial family logics in the changing character and meaning of these policies. Racial family logics reflect the emergent and contested ways in which families are both idealized and institutionally organized in relation to the state, the economy, and other social institutions to support racial projects. A normative conception of “the family” as a white, heterosexual, male wage earner, nuclear household unit informed the 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and its emphasis on family‐based admissions. However, by the 1990s, the landscape of immigration, race, and family in the United States had shifted quite dramatically. The family‐based admissions system was now associated with immigrants from Asia and Latin America rather than Europe. The “browning” of the system was accompanied by its incorporation into racialized projects of state discipline, surveillance, and control over those deemed “undeserving” in relation to neoliberal values of self‐reliant and self‐regulating families.     

Can (and Should) We Construct an Evolutionary Psychological Theory of Institutions?

This article considers the question of whether, as a number of scholars have suggested, we can (or should) develop a theory of institutions from the perspective of evolutionary psychology (EP), construed broadly. To do so, the article reviews EP's core explanatory strategy and the main claims that have been made by proponents of an EP institutional theory, focusing on arguments about (1) welfare states and (2) “honor cultures” and the institutions associated with them. On the one hand, the article argues, there are both logical and empirical problems with current efforts to develop EP theories of these institutional domains. On the other hand, sociology's relative absence from the development of such theories contributes to these problems, and sociologists can learn from EP. Above all, insights drawn from EP may help us to construct better accounts of various institutions’ micro‐foundations. To this end, collaboration and exchange between EP scholars and sociologists is called for, and some suggestions are made about how this might be done most fruitfully.     

Restricted and Elaborated Modes in the Cultural Analysis of Politics1

The “cultural turn” that swept across the social sciences a generation ago ushered in renewed attention to the cultural analysis of politics. Yet despite this growing area of research, there remains a lack of integration between cultural and noncultural studies of political phenomena. Should this state of affairs be a source of concern for cultural sociologists? I believe it should be. In this essay, I outline reasons why this is the case and what might be done to address this issue. Drawing loosely on Basil Bernstein’s distinction between “restricted” and “elaborated” codes, I suggest that cultural analyses of politics need to be more “elaborated” in nature and I offer three guidelines that can orient this type of research program.     

Resource Dependence and Community Well‐Being in Rural Canada*

Abstract The well‐being of residents of resource dependent communities is a question of traditional interest to rural sociologists. The label “resource dependent” obscures how this relationship may vary between particular resource industries, regions, or indicators of well‐being. Few analyses have compared the relationship between well‐being and resource dependence across different industries, nor tested competing theories about the relationship between resource dependence and well‐being. Our paper presents an overview of the relationship between resource dependence—agriculture, fisheries, mining, energy, forestry—and human well‐being in Canada. Analysis of 1996 Statistics Canada data revealed a great deal of variation in the effect of “resource” dependence on indicators of well‐being (e.g., human capital, unemployment, income): some industries exhibit fairly positive outcomes (e.g., agriculture), others more negative outcomes (e.g., fishing). Consistent with analyses conducted in the United States, these relationships vary by region, suggesting the need for models that incorporate the particulars of place and industry.     

Environmental and Resource Sociology: Theoretical Issues and Opportunities for Synthesis1

Abstract Rural sociologists have been disproportionately represented among the major contributors to environmental sociology. In part, this is because several areas of longstanding rural sociological interest (e.g., sociology of resource management and outdoor recreation, studies of resource-dependent communities) essentially came to be redefined as environmental sociology during the 1970s. The most significant role of rural sociologists in building environmental sociology, however, has perhaps been the fact that the material and biophysical nature of the phenomena they have traditionally studied contributed to a general predisposition to recognize the “materiality” of social structure and social life. I assess the major strategies that have been developed for theorizing this materiality, and then indicate some of the most critical lines of debate and dissension. I argue that if these debates are examined in their specifics—rather than as incompatible perspectives or “paradigms”—some opportunities for synthesis become apparent. Some suggested avenues of synthesis are set forth.