(ENV1c) Environmental Sociology III

This session invited papers applying sociological perspectives to the study of environmental issues, and environmental sociological analyses of societal issues. In the midst of a global social movement cohering around the climate crisis, political and socio-economic debates over extractive industries, and related policy discussions, there exists opportunities for sociologists to contribute to understandings of the environment as a social construct, a political entity, a physical place/space, a component of social structure, and more. Tags: Environment

Organizer: Ken Caine, University of Alberta; Chair: Ken Caine, University of Alberta

Presentations

Felix Morrow, Memorial University

Charting a Course: The case for an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation for marine sociology

The world’s oceans, once thought to be an infinite pool of resources, are collapsing with 87 percent of global fisheries estimated, in 2012, to either be fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. This rapid decline lacks historical precedence being a fundamentally modern and capitalist phenomena. Understanding the social roots and implications of global oceanic decline is important for sociology because fisheries, and marine ecosystems broadly, have wide-ranging socio-ecological implications including the decline of the Earth’s largest carbon sink, and impacts on employment and food production. Despite this, environmental sociology has tended to focus on terrestrial topics often treating marine environments like a societyless void and/or an extension of terrestrial-spaces. In light of this gap, sociologists have recently called for the development of marine sociology, a sociology of the ocean, or an oceanic sociology as a distinct subfield of environmental sociology, focused on marine environmental and social problems. As part of this push for a new subfield, Hannigan has called for a theoretical elaboration of prior work that will inform sociological research on marine topics. This paper starts that theoretical elaboration. In this paper, I argue that sociologists endeavoring to research marine topics should look both inside and outside of sociology for their theoretical foundations. To demonstrate this, I reviewed theoretical work in three broad categories: first, the political economy of marine resources; second, the power relations and social dynamics of fisheries governance, management, and science; and third, theorizations of the social construction, and the implications of, ocean-space itself. The largest body of theoretical work by sociologists in the political economy of fisheries is the tragedy of the commodity framework which emphasizes how the logic of commodification drives fishery collapse. Building on the tragedy of the commodity, research has argued for the incorporation of a distinct theorization of the state into the framework. Beyond the tragedy of the commodity, Campling and Colás have drawn on Moore’s concept of commodity frontiers to understand the political economy of marine resources. In this latter framework, unlike the tragedy of the commodity, the state assumes a central and distinct role. The political economic frameworks discussed fall broadly within the bounds of sociology and provide powerful theoretical tools for conceptualizing the macro-level dynamics behind global oceanic decline. In the area of fisheries governance and science, two distinct frameworks emerge: Telesca’s Foucauldian analysis and Bavington’s political ecological analysis. Both frameworks place an emphasis on the implications of the ideological conversion of ‘fish’ to ‘stocks’ through quantifications, and how this conversion underpins, and rationalizes, the industrial fishing activities driving oceanic decline. Further, Telesca’s work examines how the logic of management is utilized to produce, and maintain, imperial and colonial power relations. Both of these frameworks provide a starting point for conceptualizing the micro-level operationalizations of fisheries management and how they affect broader social forces and institutions. Lastly, theorizations of ocean-space itself provide both macro- and micro-level frameworks. On the macro-level, Steinberg has provided a long-run historical analysis of how ocean-space has been continually (re)structured and (re)territorialized in relation to the interests and capacities of dominant actors, ideologies, and technological changes. On the micro-level, the physical differences between terrestrial- and ocean-space have been theorized with a focus on how the physical properties of oceans structure social action. Further, recent sociological work has emphasized how coastal communities build cultural relationships, meanings, and knowledge through interactions with marine environments. These theorizations of ocean-space offer critical methodological insights to sociological research on marine topics as understanding the role ocean-space itself plays in structuring social relations and how social relations structure ocean-space will enable sociologists to avoid the methodological mistake of treating oceans as a mere surface in the background of social relations.

Mahed Choudhury, University of Calgary

Beyond outsiders' gaze: Unveiling community resilience 'from below' in post-2013 floods Southern Alberta

National and international initiatives aimed at fortifying community resilience have frequently fallen short of achieving desired outcomes. This shortfall is primarily attributed to the dependence on the technical expertise and knowledge of external (non-local) scientific and policy experts who, more often than not, lack a comprehensive understanding of local realities, including beliefs, values, and practices. Consequently, communities are paradoxically rendered more vulnerable than resilient. As such, there is an urgent need to document resilient communities from an emic (insiders) perspective, capturing the nuanced ways resilience is lived and experienced by community members—what we term as resilience "from below.", often-overlooked and invisible to outsiders and remains undervalued in current literature. It is argued that external interventions to build resilience and empower communities can be oppressive, unsustainable, and perpetuate social inequality if interventions are not locally and culturally appropriate. The study, focusing on post-2013 floods in Southern Alberta, Canada, investigates the aftermath of a devastating event causing billions in losses. Since then, millions of dollars have been spent to strength community resilience. It is claimed that Calgary is now more resilient to floods than it was in 2013. Drawing insights from critical social sciences scholarship on community resilience, the goal is to document communities’ own version of resilience. This study adopts an affirmative critical approach to resilience, arguing that resilience is progressive, transformative, and political as it envisions people as active agents who have control over their own destiny, rather than as passive subjects and victims. Recognizing the plurality of approaches to knowledge, this research aims to explore diverse meanings and understandings of resilience from communities’ own perspectives and experiences. This study adopts a Qualitative Transformative Interpretive Framework (QTIF), relying on communities’ own perspectives as the source of knowledge. This framework posits that knowledge produced in society is not value-neutral, but rather is shaped by power relationships. The goal of knowledge production is to change the lives of people and the institutions they live in., Communities’ meaningful engagement in knowledge production, and due recognition of their experience, learning, and knowledge are critical. This process is likely to facilitate a transformative change in the lives of people. Similar to resilience thinking, this approach also recognizes the value of the “inner strength” that resides within a community rather than its weaknesses or deficiencies. Following QTIF, this research answers questions including: what do flood-affected communities think of their resilience after 10 years? What are the communities’ own perspectives on their resilience trajectories? Is community resilience to floods better than it was in 2013? What might still be needed to enhance community resilience? Preliminary research findings and implications will be discussed in the presentation. We assert that findings will inform people-centered policy formulation and building a viable and sustainable community to climatic-induced disaster risks (i.e., floods). We propose this presentation is relevant to the session (ENV1) on Environmental Sociology at CSA conference and aligns with Congress 2024 theme: Sustaining shared futures, with the focus on risks emanating from dynamic interaction among social, economic, environmental, and technological variables.

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Non-presenting authors: Julie Drolet, University of Calgary; Andrea Murphy, University of Calgary

Terran Giacomini, Independent Scholar

Relational Intrinsic Value in Women's Grassroots Activism for Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice

This paper explores key elements of the politics and practice of specific women and non-binary farmers and peasants in La Via Campesina – a global movement of small-and-medium scale food providers fighting for food sovereignty and agroecology, which they identify as solutions to the extreme social and ecological crises we face. I draw from my PhD research based on participant observation and interview methods as well as nearly two decades of deep engagement in this movement’s activism at multiple scales. Between 2016 and 2021, I interviewed nineteen women and one non-binary activist from thirteen countries, carrying out the research at four international meetings and conferences. I selected participants who share a politics that is critical of relations of exploitation and oppression and based on far-reaching life-affirming alternatives. The research aims to throw light on the importance of women’s contributions to movements seeking deep transformations in systemic power relations. Drawing on literatures from feminist, ecological, Marxist, anti-colonial and anti-racist scholars, I show that some of the most visionary and transformative politics for social and environmental justice is focused on building relationships with one another and the non-human world. Relationships are at the heart of the participants’ practice in all areas of their lives – with their families, their communities, on the land and in their movements. This deep and defining focus on relationships is a manifestation of a politics grounded in intrinsic value. Following Kovel (2007) I understand intrinsic value as the value we assign to nature, ourselves and others, including nonhumans, that honours the web of life and the interdependence that sustains us. In their rich and varied emphasis on relationship the participants in my study implicitly expressed a politics based on relational intrinsic value – the value underpinning our abilities to create, defend and delight in the connections we always already have and build new ones with one another and nature. This paper sheds significant new light on both transformative politics and intrinsic value. Transformative politics grounded in relational intrinsic value not only requires resistance to markets and commodification but the defense and affirmation of ancient and Indigenous cosmovisions and feminist care economies that prioritize cooperation and solidarity. In this time of crisis, when the commodification of everything is deepening power divisions and significantly undermining the existence of humanity and many other species, this relational politics is showing what changes are important and necessary to healing our world.

Jen Kostuchuk, University of Victoria

Can't Stand the Heat? Get Out of the Kitchen: How Extreme Weather Impacts Food Service Workers in British Columbia

British Columbia (B.C.) has experienced record-breaking temperatures, destructive flooding, and devastating wildfire activity. In my recent community-engaged research with a non-profit worker advocacy group, food industry workers described these conditions as “abusive”, “dehumanizing”, and “purgatory”. Food service work is highly gendered, racialized, and largely unprotected meaning that workers experience job insecurity through low unionization rates, poor wages, and fear of retaliation for speaking up against labour violations. Between cooking in front of hot grills during heatwaves, serving on outdoor patios during wildfires, and cycling to deliver takeout orders during floods, food service workers are hit hard by climate change. During last year’s deathly heat dome, WorkSafeBC received a 180 per cent increase in worker claims; over one-third of these were related to the dangers of high temperatures experienced by workers indoors (WorkSafeBC, 2022). Existing research underscores the significant impact of extreme weather on outdoor workers. But less is understood about the impact of events such as extreme heat on indoor workers. The guiding research questions for this project included: how do extreme weather events impact those in food service work and what are the key changes needed to secure the heath and safety of low-wage, precarious workers? Data was collected from 31 food service workers across B.C. through a survey and in-depth, semi-structured interviews. These workers fulfilled barista, cook, dishwasher, hostess, server, and fast-food positions. The findings suggest that employment conditions and working conditions worsen during extreme weather events but building worker solidarity is essential to living through the climate crisis. Participants have identified nine specific policy recommendations ranging from maximum working temperature to climate-paid leave as critical solutions to ensuring health and safety during extreme weather. In this presentation, I will reflect on the current prospects for food service workers and the labour movement at large to engage in the kind of collective action required to push governments to adopt these kinds of policies.