XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

460

Critical Environmental Sociologies of the Just Transition

RC24 Environment and Society (host committee)

Language: English

A critical but practical environmental sociology of a just and viable transition to a post-carbon economy remains under-developed. We hope to see interventions that can draw together or analyze points of tension in transition thinking as well as possible points of synthesis and engagement between emerging critical approaches to transitions influenced by political ecology, political economy, feminist, post structuralist, indigenous & post-colonial perspectives, environmental and labor justice, critical design studies and redirective practice with more mainstream approaches to transition emerging out of social practice theory, actor-network theory, innovation theory, evolutionary economics, technology innovation management theory and STS, ecological modernization, green social democracy, the environmental war economy, and so on. Where are such approaches in tension? What can they learn from each other? We welcome pieces on labor/environmental/feminist/indigenous justice coalition-building, “the green collar economy,” ecosocialist futures, the Blue-Green/Apollo Alliance, regional transition efforts, feminist and post-colonial visions of transition. We seek to open up this discussion of transition studies in sociology, contrasting northern European approaches with those in liberal democracies like the US and Australia where the regulatory state is being actively dismantled, to approaches in China, Japan, India, Latin America and Africa. Empirical studies that develop lessons from case studies, theoretical contributions, comparative historical approaches, and approaches influenced by future studies all welcome. We seek to advance an environmental sociology that combines the best of these to inform radical but practical ways forward in troubled times.

Co-organizers: Timmons Roberts, Damian White, David Ciplet