Pub Date : 2022-07-02DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2094995
P. Gardner, Tiago Carvalho, Maria Valenstain
ABSTRACT This article offers an analysis of social movement transnationalisation, using Extinction Rebellion as its case study. In order to investigate the temporal and geographical dynamics of Extinction Rebellion’s transnational diffusion, and the interaction of these dynamics with protest events, we draw on two primary datasets: one describing where and when all 1265 of the movement’s local groups emerged globally, the other containing all major protest events with which it is associated. We contend that although Extinction Rebellion has been impressively international from its early stages, the highest density of local groups – or ‘chapters’ – is found in Western Europe and the Anglosphere. Drawing on della Porta’s theory of ‘eventful protest’, we argue that peaks in the creation of new local groups across the world followed major protest events. Hence, we argue that Extinction Rebellion protests were instrumental in the movement’s own transnational diffusion. The data also reveal that the period from early 2020 to June 2021 (the time of data collection) represented a nadir in new chapter creation, indicating a possible COVID-19 effect in the movement’s diffusion.
{"title":"Spreading rebellion?: The rise of extinction rebellion chapters across the world","authors":"P. Gardner, Tiago Carvalho, Maria Valenstain","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2094995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2094995","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article offers an analysis of social movement transnationalisation, using Extinction Rebellion as its case study. In order to investigate the temporal and geographical dynamics of Extinction Rebellion’s transnational diffusion, and the interaction of these dynamics with protest events, we draw on two primary datasets: one describing where and when all 1265 of the movement’s local groups emerged globally, the other containing all major protest events with which it is associated. We contend that although Extinction Rebellion has been impressively international from its early stages, the highest density of local groups – or ‘chapters’ – is found in Western Europe and the Anglosphere. Drawing on della Porta’s theory of ‘eventful protest’, we argue that peaks in the creation of new local groups across the world followed major protest events. Hence, we argue that Extinction Rebellion protests were instrumental in the movement’s own transnational diffusion. The data also reveal that the period from early 2020 to June 2021 (the time of data collection) represented a nadir in new chapter creation, indicating a possible COVID-19 effect in the movement’s diffusion.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41819757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-14DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2069216
N. Godden, Doreen Wijekoon, Kylie Wrigley
ABSTRACT Climate change is a social justice issue, and people who experience disadvantage and marginalisation are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In 2019–2020, the government of the state of Western Australia (WA) held the world’s first inquiry into climate change and health. The Inquiry report, submissions, and hearing transcripts make an important contribution to a small but growing body of evidence that climate change exacerbates and reinforces existing social inequalities in WA in areas such as health, economics, gender relations, and access and inclusion. However, in late-2020, the WA government released its 38-page Climate Policy, with very limited reference to social justice and only one use of the word ‘people’. Our critical intersectional feminist analysis finds a prevailing dissonance between climate evidence and climate policy in WA. Climate governance in WA is ill prepared, if not unwilling, to support people who experience disadvantage and are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. There is an urgent need for policies and actions to address multiple dimensions of inequality under climate change, across the fields of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster response.
{"title":"Social (In)justice, climate change and climate policy in Western Australia","authors":"N. Godden, Doreen Wijekoon, Kylie Wrigley","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2069216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2069216","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Climate change is a social justice issue, and people who experience disadvantage and marginalisation are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In 2019–2020, the government of the state of Western Australia (WA) held the world’s first inquiry into climate change and health. The Inquiry report, submissions, and hearing transcripts make an important contribution to a small but growing body of evidence that climate change exacerbates and reinforces existing social inequalities in WA in areas such as health, economics, gender relations, and access and inclusion. However, in late-2020, the WA government released its 38-page Climate Policy, with very limited reference to social justice and only one use of the word ‘people’. Our critical intersectional feminist analysis finds a prevailing dissonance between climate evidence and climate policy in WA. Climate governance in WA is ill prepared, if not unwilling, to support people who experience disadvantage and are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. There is an urgent need for policies and actions to address multiple dimensions of inequality under climate change, across the fields of climate change mitigation, adaptation, and disaster response.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43969979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-07DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2073626
S. Shostak
ABSTRACT Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of urban agriculture in Massachusetts, this paper investigates the multiple meanings of soil for contemporary urban farmers and gardeners. I first consider how urban farmers speak for and with the soil in their neighborhoods to call attention to historical and ongoing environmental racism. These narratives highlight how racialized social processes – including redlining, blockbusting, white flight and disinvestment – have harmed the health of both people and the environment in urban communities of color. I then describe how urban farmers and gardeners articulate the importance of soil for health and well-being, especially for people whose relationships with the earth have been disrupted by capitalism, colonialism and racism. These narratives draw on both scientific and spiritual frameworks to highlight the healing potential of re-establishing direct relationships with nature, reclaiming ancestral knowledge about the healing properties of plants, and reconnecting with the ancestors themselves. Analysis of these interlinked narratives contributes to an emerging cross-disciplinary scholarship on the situatedness of ways of conceptualizing and interacting with soils, calling attention especially to the role of racialized inequities in the creation of harmful soil materialities and the possibilities of socioecological repair.
{"title":"‘When you heal the soil…’: Environmental racism and socioecological repair in contemporary urban agriculture","authors":"S. Shostak","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2073626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2073626","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of urban agriculture in Massachusetts, this paper investigates the multiple meanings of soil for contemporary urban farmers and gardeners. I first consider how urban farmers speak for and with the soil in their neighborhoods to call attention to historical and ongoing environmental racism. These narratives highlight how racialized social processes – including redlining, blockbusting, white flight and disinvestment – have harmed the health of both people and the environment in urban communities of color. I then describe how urban farmers and gardeners articulate the importance of soil for health and well-being, especially for people whose relationships with the earth have been disrupted by capitalism, colonialism and racism. These narratives draw on both scientific and spiritual frameworks to highlight the healing potential of re-establishing direct relationships with nature, reclaiming ancestral knowledge about the healing properties of plants, and reconnecting with the ancestors themselves. Analysis of these interlinked narratives contributes to an emerging cross-disciplinary scholarship on the situatedness of ways of conceptualizing and interacting with soils, calling attention especially to the role of racialized inequities in the creation of harmful soil materialities and the possibilities of socioecological repair.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41956406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-05DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2073803
Rebecca Ewert
ABSTRACT Rumors spread during disasters as community members seek information and attempt to make sense of unexpected, 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 narrative content itself. Drawing on interviews with wildfire survivors in one rural Northern California county, this study shows that rumor narrative creation reflects existing cultural values and power arrangements. In a contested post-disaster landscape, rumors are used to frame new information to maintain coherence with existing cultural beliefs while reinforcing prevailing ideas about safety, deservingness, and class. In this case, rumors are created to reflect cultural schemas such as beliefs about the government and environmental protection, and normative power arrangements instantiated through symbols of spatial stigma. The data presented in this article extends research on stigma, culture, and disaster by arguing existing dominant cultural values shape the content of rumors by dictating which pieces of information are seen as reasonable and reliable, providing residents with opportunities to frame information to explain and justify unequal disaster outcomes. In disaster situations where the transmission of reliable information is especially important, local culture enables and restricts which narratives are produced, shared, and believed.
{"title":"Like wildfire: creating rumor content in the face of disaster","authors":"Rebecca Ewert","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2073803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2073803","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Rumors spread during disasters as community members seek information and attempt to make sense of unexpected, 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 narrative content itself. Drawing on interviews with wildfire survivors in one rural Northern California county, this study shows that rumor narrative creation reflects existing cultural values and power arrangements. In a contested post-disaster landscape, rumors are used to frame new information to maintain coherence with existing cultural beliefs while reinforcing prevailing ideas about safety, deservingness, and class. In this case, rumors are created to reflect cultural schemas such as beliefs about the government and environmental protection, and normative power arrangements instantiated through symbols of spatial stigma. The data presented in this article extends research on stigma, culture, and disaster by arguing existing dominant cultural values shape the content of rumors by dictating which pieces of information are seen as reasonable and reliable, providing residents with opportunities to frame information to explain and justify unequal disaster outcomes. In disaster situations where the transmission of reliable information is especially important, local culture enables and restricts which narratives are produced, shared, and believed.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49472430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-27DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2070904
Landen Longest, Alison E. Adams, Thomas E. Shriver
ABSTRACT Extant research emphasizes the resonance of gendered collective identities in mobilizing women’s environmental activism, particularly around motherhood and caregiving. Gaps remain, though, in our understanding of the specific barriers that can obstruct the formation of collective identity among groups of women who share environmental concerns. To interrogate this issue, we explore the case of two cancer clusters in North Carolina that many residents suspect are related to coal ash contamination. We use qualitative interviews with women affected by the clusters (n = 36) to identify factors that have inhibited the formation of a mobilizing collective identity. Our results suggest that the reciprocal relationship between disempowerment and isolation, as well as the compounding burdens of emotional and care labor associated with managing environmental illness, prevented the formation of a collective identity in this case. These findings highlight how factors particular to cases of environmental illness can forestall, rather than drive, women’s environmental activism.
{"title":"Barriers to women’s collective identity formation in contaminated communities","authors":"Landen Longest, Alison E. Adams, Thomas E. Shriver","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2070904","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2070904","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Extant research emphasizes the resonance of gendered collective identities in mobilizing women’s environmental activism, particularly around motherhood and caregiving. Gaps remain, though, in our understanding of the specific barriers that can obstruct the formation of collective identity among groups of women who share environmental concerns. To interrogate this issue, we explore the case of two cancer clusters in North Carolina that many residents suspect are related to coal ash contamination. We use qualitative interviews with women affected by the clusters (n = 36) to identify factors that have inhibited the formation of a mobilizing collective identity. Our results suggest that the reciprocal relationship between disempowerment and isolation, as well as the compounding burdens of emotional and care labor associated with managing environmental illness, prevented the formation of a collective identity in this case. These findings highlight how factors particular to cases of environmental illness can forestall, rather than drive, women’s environmental activism.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49013834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-23DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2068224
Amanda Bertana, Brett Clark, T. Benney, Cameron Quackenbush
ABSTRACT Around the world adaptation projects are being implemented, with the hope of essentially climate proofing communities. While there is an abundance of failed adaptation schemes in developing and developed countries alike, there has been little scholarship on this problem. Through interviews with twenty-two climate change adaptation practitioners, we identify four structural challenges that contribute to maladaptation: the focus on technological fixes versus holistic approaches; the difficultly of distinguishing between adaptation and development; the problem of quantifying non-quantifiable variables; and the existence of competing problems given that failure to mainstream climate change adaptation. Addressing these maladaptation dynamics is necessary to enhance successful adaptation processes.
{"title":"Beyond maladaptation: structural barriers to successful adaptation","authors":"Amanda Bertana, Brett Clark, T. Benney, Cameron Quackenbush","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2068224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2068224","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Around the world adaptation projects are being implemented, with the hope of essentially climate proofing communities. While there is an abundance of failed adaptation schemes in developing and developed countries alike, there has been little scholarship on this problem. Through interviews with twenty-two climate change adaptation practitioners, we identify four structural challenges that contribute to maladaptation: the focus on technological fixes versus holistic approaches; the difficultly of distinguishing between adaptation and development; the problem of quantifying non-quantifiable variables; and the existence of competing problems given that failure to mainstream climate change adaptation. Addressing these maladaptation dynamics is necessary to enhance successful adaptation processes.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41406501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-19DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2065428
Andrew Hargrove, J. Sommer
ABSTRACT Gender mainstreaming is the push in international governance and development to use women’s empowerment, inclusion and labor to be more inclusive and help solve development issues. Research has found that when women are involved in projects, environmental outcomes are more likely to succeed. Over the past 30 years, environmental bilateral development aid has been increasing. Extant research has theorized the relationship between environmental aid, women’s empowerment and forest loss. However, results have been mixed, with some finding that female-focused environmental aid reduces forest loss, while others find that it increases forest loss. To add to this debate, we argue that bilateral aid may be moderated by quality of the receiving nation’s governance. Using high-quality satellite forest loss data, we use ordinary least-squares regression with robust standard errors for a sample of 85 low- and middle-income nations from 2000 to assess if nations with high levels of governance facilitate bilateral aid effectiveness that focuses simultaneously on gender equality and environmental protection. We find that in nations with high levels of governance, bilateral environmental gender aid is significantly associated with reduced levels of forest loss.
{"title":"Gender-mainstreaming, governance, and the environment: an analysis of forest loss","authors":"Andrew Hargrove, J. Sommer","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2065428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2065428","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Gender mainstreaming is the push in international governance and development to use women’s empowerment, inclusion and labor to be more inclusive and help solve development issues. Research has found that when women are involved in projects, environmental outcomes are more likely to succeed. Over the past 30 years, environmental bilateral development aid has been increasing. Extant research has theorized the relationship between environmental aid, women’s empowerment and forest loss. However, results have been mixed, with some finding that female-focused environmental aid reduces forest loss, while others find that it increases forest loss. To add to this debate, we argue that bilateral aid may be moderated by quality of the receiving nation’s governance. Using high-quality satellite forest loss data, we use ordinary least-squares regression with robust standard errors for a sample of 85 low- and middle-income nations from 2000 to assess if nations with high levels of governance facilitate bilateral aid effectiveness that focuses simultaneously on gender equality and environmental protection. We find that in nations with high levels of governance, bilateral environmental gender aid is significantly associated with reduced levels of forest loss.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47901614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-12DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2064207
Angelina Letourneau, D. Davidson
ABSTRACT The need for institutional change posed by anthropogenic global warming is now well-recognized, and this is particularly the case for agri-food systems, which are both significant contributors to climate change, and highly vulnerable to its impacts. The importance of identity to institutional change is well-recognized in various areas of scholarship, although in the study of institutional responses to climate change this key driver is less often discussed. In this study, we seek to create space for doing so, by focusing on the identity work of a sample of farmers in Alberta, Canada, as they navigate this moment of sector uncertainty. We show how farmer identities are becoming destabilized as producers attempt to accommodate growing environmental and climatological concerns, with many productivist farmers seeking to deflect sources of identity disconfirmation, while post-productivist farmers engage in active community-building and information seeking to support the formation of a new identity.
{"title":"Farmer identities: facilitating stability and change in agricultural system transitions","authors":"Angelina Letourneau, D. Davidson","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2064207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2064207","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The need for institutional change posed by anthropogenic global warming is now well-recognized, and this is particularly the case for agri-food systems, which are both significant contributors to climate change, and highly vulnerable to its impacts. The importance of identity to institutional change is well-recognized in various areas of scholarship, although in the study of institutional responses to climate change this key driver is less often discussed. In this study, we seek to create space for doing so, by focusing on the identity work of a sample of farmers in Alberta, Canada, as they navigate this moment of sector uncertainty. We show how farmer identities are becoming destabilized as producers attempt to accommodate growing environmental and climatological concerns, with many productivist farmers seeking to deflect sources of identity disconfirmation, while post-productivist farmers engage in active community-building and information seeking to support the formation of a new identity.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41448250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2057649
Eunyque Sykes
ABSTRACT Black Americans have historically reported aversive attitudes towards the outdoors. First, cultural meanings of the natural world are shaped by historical legacies of racial violence and racialized slavery. Second, public policies after slavery continued to reproduce the separation of Black Americans from green spaces. Thus, Black Americans have developed preferences for more cultivated green spaces as an adaptation to these structural exclusions. This study explored how Black women participating in outdoor activities in Franklin Park experienced the outdoors. The Black women interviewed reported managing facial and bodily expressions, when they are participating in outdoor activities outside of Franklin Park, in order to negotiate the contradictions of racialized outdoor spaces. To explain this, I developed the concept of racialized emotional labor which is: (1) mediation of structural and/or individual racism: required to participate in dynamics where they are systematically racially objectified, (2) hyperawareness of Blackness: required to participate in the minimization of their racial objectification. This study argues that Black women engage in racialized emotional labor in uncultivated green spaces and rural areas because the areas aren't welcoming towards Black people and do not foster a sense of comfortability and belonging, compared to urban parks with diverse crowds like Franklin Park.
{"title":"Environmental justice beyond physical access: rethinking Black American utilization of urban public green spaces","authors":"Eunyque Sykes","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2057649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2057649","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Black Americans have historically reported aversive attitudes towards the outdoors. First, cultural meanings of the natural world are shaped by historical legacies of racial violence and racialized slavery. Second, public policies after slavery continued to reproduce the separation of Black Americans from green spaces. Thus, Black Americans have developed preferences for more cultivated green spaces as an adaptation to these structural exclusions. This study explored how Black women participating in outdoor activities in Franklin Park experienced the outdoors. The Black women interviewed reported managing facial and bodily expressions, when they are participating in outdoor activities outside of Franklin Park, in order to negotiate the contradictions of racialized outdoor spaces. To explain this, I developed the concept of racialized emotional labor which is: (1) mediation of structural and/or individual racism: required to participate in dynamics where they are systematically racially objectified, (2) hyperawareness of Blackness: required to participate in the minimization of their racial objectification. This study argues that Black women engage in racialized emotional labor in uncultivated green spaces and rural areas because the areas aren't welcoming towards Black people and do not foster a sense of comfortability and belonging, compared to urban parks with diverse crowds like Franklin Park.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46784259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-23DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2053273
Adam Mayer
ABSTRACT The U.S. energy sector has undergone significant changes in the last few decades with three converging trends – the implosion of the coal industry, the marked increase in domestically produced oil and gas, and the increasing viability of renewables. The implosion of coal has proven to be a contentious political issue, with conservative discourse placing the blame for the industry’s poor fortunes on the administration of former President Obama and federal environmental regulations. Coal occupies a unique space in the cultural imaginaries of the Rural U.S., with significant nostalgia for the industry despite its deleterious legacy. Our study is informed by the concept of community economic identity and recent research on right-wing populism. Using survey data from western Colorado collected in 2019, we evaluate how partisanship and nostalgia are associated with mischaracterizations of the causes of the coal industry’s decline. Republicans are more likely to state that former President Obama and federal environmental regulations are the primary cause of coal’s decline and less likely to state that alternative fuels are the cause. Nostalgia is also associated with naming President Obama and federal environmental regulations. Our results imply that the causes of coal’s collapse may not be well understood.
{"title":"Who is to blame? Nostalgia, Partisanship, and the death of coal","authors":"Adam Mayer","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2053273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2053273","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The U.S. energy sector has undergone significant changes in the last few decades with three converging trends – the implosion of the coal industry, the marked increase in domestically produced oil and gas, and the increasing viability of renewables. The implosion of coal has proven to be a contentious political issue, with conservative discourse placing the blame for the industry’s poor fortunes on the administration of former President Obama and federal environmental regulations. Coal occupies a unique space in the cultural imaginaries of the Rural U.S., with significant nostalgia for the industry despite its deleterious legacy. Our study is informed by the concept of community economic identity and recent research on right-wing populism. Using survey data from western Colorado collected in 2019, we evaluate how partisanship and nostalgia are associated with mischaracterizations of the causes of the coal industry’s decline. Republicans are more likely to state that former President Obama and federal environmental regulations are the primary cause of coal’s decline and less likely to state that alternative fuels are the cause. Nostalgia is also associated with naming President Obama and federal environmental regulations. Our results imply that the causes of coal’s collapse may not be well understood.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49241463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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