Reshaping the Study of Sociology
 
Category: <span>Committee on Racial Equity</span>

Statement in Solidarity and Support of Black Lives

Founded in 2013 following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, the Black Lives Matter movement challenges the pervasive, institutionalized violence against Black communities in and beyond the United States. Evidence about and protests against the persistence of anti-Black racism in the United States reinforce the relevance and urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement and the broader movement against white supremacy and other forms of oppression with which it intersects. Evidence of the urgency is punctuated by the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and white vigilantes, and by the racial disparities in COVID-19 illnesses and deaths. – “ASA Section on Environmental Sociology Stands in Solidarity with and Support of Black Lives” Read the rest of the ASA Section on Environmental Sociology Statement in Solidarity with and Support of Black Lives online here (link) or it is available for download (PDF).  

Diversifying the Canon Project

As part of efforts to advance diversity and inclusion in the Section on Environmental Sociology there is an organized reorientation of how we present our subdiscipline to the public and each other. In this new resource, available both online (link) and as a downloadable file (PDF), you will find bodies of literature that help to broaden the “canon” of environmental sociology by elevating questions of race, gender, sexuality, indigeneity, ability, and other underrepresented bodies of literature. This is a work in progress, and we encourage people to contact the Webmaster with additions.

Racial Exclusion and Equity in Environmental Sociology

The Section on Environmental Sociology (SES) is a comparatively new section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The section was officially formed in 1976 as an outgrowth of the U.S. environmental movement and the need to strengthen sociologists’ ability to contribute to environmental impact assessments, which had recently been mandated by national legislation (Caldwell 1988). Over the past four decades, membership in the SES has steadily grown. However, while there have been some gains in diversity in the discipline of sociology as a whole, these gains have not been achieved in the SES (Mascarenhas et al. 2017). – “Confronting White Space and White Ignorance: A Summary of the Committee on Racial Equity’s Mission and Work (2016-2019)” (Mascarenhas et al. 2019) Read this and other reports from the Section on Environmental Sociology’s (SES) Committee on Racial Equity (CRE) here (link).