The Section on Environmental Sociology’s Outstanding Publication Award
In 2023, the award name was changed from the Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award to the Outstanding Publication Award.
2024: Daniel Jaffee, Portland State University, Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice. University of California Press. 2023.
2024 Honorable Mention: Erik Kojola, Texas Christian University, Mining the Heartland: Nature, Place, and Populism on the Iron Range, New York University Press. 2023.
2024 Honorable Mention: Summer Gray, University of California, Santa Barbara, In the Shadow of the Seawall: Coastal Injustice and the Dilemma of Placekeeping. University of California Press. 2023.
2023: Christof Brandtner, Emlyon Business School, “Green American City: Civic Capacity and the Distributed Adoption of Urban Innovations.”
2023: Caleb Scoville, Tufts University, “Constructing Environmental Compliance: Law, Science, and Endangered Species Conservation in California’s Delta.”
2022: Amalia Leguizamón, Tulane University, Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina. Duke University Press. 2020.
2022 Honorable Mention: Colin Jerolmack, New York University, Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town. Princeton University Press. 2021.
2021: Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Cara Daggett and Christine Labuski, “Toward Feminist Energy Systems: Why Adding Women and Solar Panels is Not Enough.” Energy Research & Social Science 68:101557. 2020.
2020: Norah MacKendrick, Better Safe than Sorry: How Consumers Navigate Exposure to Everyday Toxics, University of California Press. 2018.
2020 Honorable Mention: Jill Lindsey Harrison, From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies, MIT Press. 2019.
2019: Rebecca Elliott, “The Sociology of Climate Change as a Sociology of Loss” European Journal of Sociology 59(3):301-337. 2018.
2019 Honorable Mention: Junia Howell and James R. Elliott, “Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States,” Social Problems 2018.
2018: Alissa Cordner, Whitman College, Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversities, and Environmental Health. Columbia University Press. 2016.
2018 Honorable Mention: Justin Farrell, Yale University, The Battle for Yellowstone: Morality and the Sacred Roots of Environmental Conflict. Princeton University Press. 2015.
2017: Jill Harrison, “Coopted Environmental Justice? Activists’ Roles in Shaping EJ Policy Implementation,” Environmental Sociology 1(4):241-255. 2015.
2016: Liam Downey, Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment. New York University Press. 2015.
2016: Riley Dunlap and Robert Brulle, Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press. 2015.
2015: Andrew K. Jorgenson and Brett Clark, “Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960–2005,” American Journal of Sociology 118(1):1-44. 2012.
2014: Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David N. Pellow, University of Minnesota, The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden. New York University Press. 2011.
2013: John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon, and Hannah Holleman, Amherst College, “Weber and the Environment: Classical Foundations for a Post-exemptionalist Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 117(6):1625-1673. 2012
2012: William Freudenburg, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Robert Gramling, University of Louisiana, Blowout in the Gulf. MIT Press. 2010.
2011: Sherry Cable, University of Tennessee, Tamara Mix, Oklahoma State University, and Thomas Shriver, Oklahoma State University, “Risk Society and Contested Illness: The Case of Nuclear Weapons Workers,” American Sociological Review 73(3):380-401. 2008.
2010: Dorceta Taylor, University of Michigan, The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600s-1900s: Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change. Duke University Press. 2009.
2009: Liam Downey. This year the committee considered series of thematically-related articles published between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2008:
“The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit,” Social Forces 83(3):971-1008. 2005.
“Using Geographic Information Systems to Reconceptualize Spatial Relationships and Ecological Context,” American Journal of Sociology 112(2):567-612. 2006.
“Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit,” Social Forces 85(2):771-796. 2006.
“US Metropolitan-area Variation in Environmental Inequality Outcomes,” Urban Studies 44(5-6):953-977. 2007.
2008: Thomas Rudel, Tropical Forests: Paths of Destruction and Regeneration. Columbia University Press. 2005.
2007: Brett Clark and Richard York, University of Oregon:
“Carbon Metabolism: Global Capitalism, Climate Change, and the Biospheric Rift,” Theory and Society 34(4):391-428. 2005.
“Dialectical Materialism and Nature: An Alternative to Economism and Deep Ecology,” Organization & Environment 18(3):318-337. 2005.
“Marxism, Positivism, and Scientific Sociology: Social Gravity and Historicity,” The Sociological Quarterly 47(3):425-450. 2006.
2006: Peter Dickens, University of Cambridge, Society and Nature: Changing Our Environment, Changing Ourselves. Polity Press. 2004.
2005: Dara O’Rourke, University of California, Berkeley, Community-Driven Regulation: Balancing Development and the Environment in Vietnam. MIT Press. 2004.
2005 Honorable Mention: Scott Frickel, Tulane University, Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology. Rutgers University Press. 2004.
2004: Richard York, Oregon University, Eugene A. Rosa, Washington State University, and Thomas Dietz, Michigan State University:
“Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity,” American Sociological Review 68(2):279-300. 2003.
“STIRPAT, IPAT, and ImPACT: Analytic Tools for Unpacking the Driving Forces of Environmental Impacts,” Ecological Economics 46(3):351-365. 2003.
“Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory: Institutional Efficacy, Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency,” Organization & Environment 16(3):273-288. 2003.
“Bridging Environmental Science with Environmental Policy: Plasticity of Population, Affluence, and Technology,” Social Science Quarterly 83(1):18-34. 2002.
2003: Award not given
2002: Carlo Jaeger, Ortwin Renn, Eugene A. Rosa, and Thomas Webler, Washington State University, Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action. Earthscan. 2001.
2001: Award not given
2000: Jeffrey Broadbent, University of Minnesota, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest. Cambridge University Press. 1998.
The Section on Environmental Sociology’s Distinguished Contribution Award
This award was established in 1983. In 2023, the award name was changed from the Fred Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award to the Distinguished Contribution Award.
2024: Brett Clark, University of Utah
2023: Tammy Lewis, City University of New York, Brooklyn College
2022: David Pellow, University of California, Santa Barbara
2021: Lori Peek
2020: Andrew Jorgenson, Boston College
2019: Kari Marie Norgaard, University of Oregon
2018: Kenneth A. Gould, City University of New York, Brooklyn College
2017: Richard York, University of Oregon
2016: Robert J. Brulle, Drexel University
2015: Dorceta Taylor, University of Michigan
2012: Kathleen Tierney, University of Colorado, Boulder
2011: Andrew Szasz, University of California, Santa Cruz
2010: Arthur Mol, Wageningen University, Netherlands.
2009: Harvey Molotch, New York University
2008: J. Timmons Roberts, College of William and Mary
2007: Robert Gramling, University of Louisiana
2007: Penelope Canan, University of Central Florida
2006: Phil Brown, Brown University
2005: Lee Clarke, Rutgers University
2004: Steve Kroll-Smith, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
2003: Craig Humphrey, Pennsylvania State University
2002: John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon
2001: Steven Picou, University of South Alabama
2000: Shirley Laska, University of New Orleans
1999: Eugene A. Rosa, Washington State University
1998: Robert Bullard, Clark Atlanta University
1997: Tom Dietz, George Mason University
1996: William R. Freudenburg, University of Wisconsin
1995: Thomas Rudel, Rutgers University
1994: Frederick Buttel, University of Wisconsin
1993: Marvin E. Olsen
1992: David Sills, Social Science Research Council
1991: Kai T. Erikson, Yale University
1990: James F. Short, Jr., Washington State University
1989: Denton E. Morrison, University of Minnesota
1988: Adeline Levine, State University of New York, Buffalo
1987: William Michelson, University of Toronto
1986: William R. Catton, Jr. and Riley E. Dunlap, Washington State University
1985: No award given
1984: Allan Schnaiberg, Northwestern University
1983: C.P. Wolf
The Section on Environmental Sociology’s Mentorship and Teaching Award
2022: Kristen Shorette, State University of New York at Stony Brook
2020: Sandy Marquart-Pyatt, Michigan State University
2018: Michael Bell, University of Wisconsin
2016: John Foran, University of California, Santa Barbara
2014: Andrew Szasz, Univeristy of California, Santa Cruz
2012: Tom Shriver, Oklahoma State University
2011: Richard York, University of Oregon
The Section on Environmental Sociology’s Student Paper Award
The section made its first Graduate Student Paper Award in 1991. In 1993, the award name was changed from the Outstanding Student Paper Award to the Olsen Student Paper Award. However, in 2023, the award name was changed from the Marvin E. Olsen Student Paper Award to the Student Paper Award.
2024: Ankit Bhardwaj, New York University, “The Soils of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Theories of Environmental Racialization,” Sociological Theory 41(2), 105-128. 2023.
2024 Honorable Mention: Jonathan Tollefson, Brown University, “Racial environmental inequality in US cities, 1880-1930.”
2023: Adrienne Brown, University of New Hampshire, “’Driving Down a Road and Not Knowing Where You’re At’: Navigating the Loss of Physical and Social Infrastructure After the Camp Fire.”
2023 Honorable Mention: Mila Listrovaya, University of Oregon. “`Here’ versus `There’: Perceptions of Deforestation and Ecological Scapegoating Among Loggers in Northwestern Russia.”
2022: Kristen Vinyeta, University of Oregon, “Under the Guise of Science: How the US Forest Service Deployed Settler Colonial and Racist Logics to Advance an Unsubstantiated Fire Suppression Agenda.”
2022: Daniel Driscoll, University of California, San Diego, “Populism and Carbon Tax Justice: The Yellow Vest Movement in France.”
2021: Angela Serrano Zapata, “Materializing Inequality: The Production of Environmental Risks for Small-Scale Farmers in the Palm Oil Industry.”
2021: Malcolm Araos, “Democracy Underwater: Public Participation, Technical Expertise, and Climate Infrastructure Planning in New York City.”
2020: Andrew McCumber, “Killing for Life: Species Eradication and the Ecology of Meaning in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands”
2020 Honorable Mention: Danielle Falzon, “Legitimately Paralyzed: How Fairness and Flexibility Have Doomed the UN Climate Negotiations from the Start”
2019: Caleb Scoville, “Constructing Environmental Compliance: Law, Science, and the Morality of Endangered Species Conservation in California’s Delta”
2019 Honorable Mention: Maricarmen Hernández, “To Build a Home: Everyday Placemaking in a Toxic Neighborhood”
2018: Erik Kojola, University of Minnesota, “Who Speaks for the Place? Identity and Nostalgia in Conflicts over Resource Extraction and Conversation”
2018 Honorable Mention: Camila H. Alvarez and Kathryn G. Norton-Smith, University of Oregon, “Environmental Inequality in Latino Destinations: Estimated Cancer Risk from Air Toxics in Latino Traditional and Emerging Destinations”
2017: Amanda McMillan Lequieu, “We Made the Choice to Stick it Out’: Negotiating a Stable Home in the Rural, American Rust Belt,” Journal of Rural Studies 53:202-213. 2017.
2016: Kevin T. Smiley, “Race and Air Quality in Urban America: How Metropolitan Contexts Condition Environmental Risk”
2015: Rebecca Elliott, “Calculative Ambivalence: Climate Change and the Mapping and Pricing of Flood Risk in New York City”
2014: Asad L. Asad, Harvard University, “Context of Reception, Post-Disaster Migration, and Socioeconomic Mobility,” Population and Environment 36(3):279-310. 2015.
2013: Matthew Clement, University of Oregon, “Urbanization of the Countryside: A Sociological Study of Cropland Lost to Development in the United States, 2001-2006”
2012: Justin Farrell, University of Notre Dame, “Moral Outpouring: The BP Oil Spill and Americans’ Responses to Large-Scale Disasters,” Social Problems 61(3):482-506. 2014.
2011: Maria Akchurin, University of Chicago, “Constructing the Rights of Nature: Environmentalism, Indigenous Politics, and Legal Mobilization in Ecuador, 1970-2008,” Law & Social Inquiry 40(4):937-968. 2015.
2011: Cristina Lucier, Boston College, “Obstacles to Precaution and Equity in Global Environmental Governance: Applications to the Basel Convention”
2010: KuoRay Mao, University of Kansas, “The Neoliberal Conundrum: The Western Development Policies, Migration, and Environmental Degradation in Northwestern China”
2009: Stefano Longo, University of Oregon, “Mediterranean Rift: The Metabolic Rift in the Sicilian Bluefin Tuna Fishery,” Critical Sociology 38(3):417-436. 2012.
2008: Eric Bonds, “The Knowledge-Shaping Process: Elite Mobilization and Environmental Policy,” Critical Sociology 37(4):429-446. 2011.
2007: Norah Mackendrick, , University of Toronto, “Contaminants, the Human Body and the Framing of Risk: A Study of Canadian News Coverage, 1986-2006”
2006: Jessica Crowe, Washington State University, “Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital,” Rural Sociology 71(4):573-596. 2006.
2005: No award given
2004: Rebecca Gasior Altman, Brown University
2003: Kari Norgaard, University of Oregon
2002: Andrew Jorgenson, University of California, Riverside, “The Effects of Trade Dependence, Consumption, and Organic Water Pollution on Infant Mortality: A World Systems Approach”
2001: Michael Mascarenhas, Michigan State University
2000: Allison shore, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Risk, Regulation, and Indoor Air Pollution: Environmental Inequalities Inside”
1999: Reid Helford, Loyola University, Chicago, “Constructing Nature, Constructing Science: Expertise, Activist Science and Lay Complaints in the Chicago Wilderness,” Pp. 119-142 in Restoring nature: perspectives from the social sciences and humanities. Island Press. 2000.
1998: Michael Handel, Harvard University, “Computers and Wage Structure,” Pp. 157-198 in Aspects of Worker Well-Being (Research in Labor Economics, Volume 26). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 2007.
1997: Zsuzsa Gille, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Cognitive Cartography in a European Wasteland,” Pp. 240-267 in Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. University of California Press. 2000.
1996: Elizabeth Schaefer Caniglia, University of Notre Dame, “Classifying Proenvironmental Behaviors and Revisiting their Link with Ecological Concern”
1995: Karen O’Neil, University of California, Los Angeles, “One Model for Elite-State Relations? The Special Case of Land Owners”
1994: Glynis Daniels, Pennsylvania State University, “The Forest-Related Content of Children’s Textbooks, 1950-1991,” Sociological Inquiry 66(1):84-99. 1996.
1993: Adam S. Weinberg, Northwestern University, “Sociological Narratives: A Case for a Pragmatic Based Study of Environmental Movements”
1992: Hal Aronson, University of California, Santa Cruz, “Becoming an Environmental Activist: The Process of Transformation from Everyday Life to Making History in the Hazardous Waste Movement”
1991: Adam S. Weinberg, Northwestern University, “Community Right to Know & the Environment: Reconceptualizing the Law”
Environmental Sociology Practice and Outreach Award
2023: Michael Mendéz, University of California, Irvine
2021: Corrie Grosse
2021: Jennifer S. Carrera
2019: Leontina Hormel, University of Idaho
2017: David Naguib Pellow, University of California-Santa Barbara
2015: Phil Brown, Northeastern University
2013: Shannon E. Bell, University of Kentucky
2010: Daniel Faber, Northeastern University
The Section on Environmental Sociology’s Robert Boguslaw Award for Technology and Humanism
2023: Vitor Martins Dias, Indiana University
2021: Lourdes Annette Vera
2019: Matt Comi, University of Kansas, “’The Right Hybrid for Every Acre’: Assembling the Social Worlds of Corn and Soy Seed-Selling in Conventional Agricultural Techniques,” Sociologia Ruralis 59(1):159-176. 2019.
2017: Amalia Leguizamon, Tulane University
2013: Shannon E. Bell, University of Kentucky, “Feminist Ethnography as Activism: Exposing the Environmental Injustices of Neoliberalism through Photo Voice”
2010: Govind Gopakumar, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2005: William James Smith, Jr., “Filling a Gap in International Water Development Discourse: Challenges to Capacity Building at the Rural, Remote and Least-wealthy Small Island Scale in Chuuk, Micronesia”
2001: David Pellow, University of Colorado
1999: Christopher Wellin, Northwestern University, “Liberation Technology?: Workers’ Knowledge and the Micro-Politics of Adopting Computer-Automation in Industry”
1997: Valerie Kuletz, University of California, Santa Cruz
1995: Thomas Webler, Clark University, Right Discourse in Citizen Participation: An Evaluative Yardstick
