Harold and Margaret E. Sprout Award Winners 2022

[Kate O'NEILL]

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce the outcome for the 2021 Harold and Margaret Sprout Prize for the Best Book in International Environmental Politics. As always, it was a tough decision but the committee decided upon these two books as winner and an honorary mention. Please join me in congratulating Kate, Henrik and Noelle! 

1. The Winner: Kate Neville, University of Toronto,  Fueling Resistance: The Contentious Political Economy of Biofuels and Fracking (Oxford UP)

A series of concurrent pressures in the early 2000s--climate change, financial system crashes, economic development in rural regions, and shifts in geopolitics--intensified interest in alternative energy production. At the same time, rising oil prices rendered alternative fuels a more economically viable option. Among these energy sources, liquid biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) and natural gas derived from hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") took center stage as promising commodities and technologies. But controversy quickly erupted in surprisingly similar ways around both renewable fuels. Global enthusiasm for these fuels--and the widespread projections for their production around the world--collided with local politics in debates over "food versus fuel" and concerns over "land grabs." What seemed, from a global perspective, like empty lands ripe for development were, to rural communities, vibrant and already contested spaces. As proposals for biofuels and fracking landed in specific communities and ecosystems, they reignited and reshaped old disputes over land, water, and decision-making authority. 

Fueling Resistance offers an account of how and why controversies over these different fuels unfolded in surprisingly similar ways in the global North and South. To explain these convergent dynamics of contention and resistance, Kate J. Neville argues that the emergence of grievances and the patterns of resistance to new fuel technologies depends less on the type of energy developed (renewable versus fossil fuel) than on intersecting elements of the political economy of energy: finance, ownership, and trade relations. As local commodities enter global supply chains and are integrated into existing corporate structures, opportunities arise to broker connections between otherwise disparate communities.

Neville looks at biofuels in Kenya and fracking in the Canadian Yukon and shows how organizers connect specific energy projects to broader issues of globalization, climate, food, water, and justice. Taken together, the intersecting elements of the political economy of energy shape the contentious politics of biofuels and fracking at both local and global scales, and help explain how and why particular mechanisms of contention emerge at different times and places.

[Theresa Selfa]

Call for Papers for Open Panel proposal, Altering Food, Animals and Environment: Comparing Competing Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Gene Editing for the 4S 2022 Meeting. 7-10 Dec., 2022 in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico 

Theresa Selfa, SUNY ESF Environmental Studies; Tomiko Yamaguchi, International Christian University

Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol

Current debates around “disruptive technologies,” such as the use of gene editing technologies for altering food and animals, and mitigating environmental problems, is a fertile entry point to explore important question about how to integrate technological innovation in the functioning and structure of contemporary society. Grounded in the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries that suggest that collective imaginaries have the power to influence the shaping of technology design, and the S&T policy decisions such as allocation of funding and resources. Imaginaries also consider the role of experts and publics in sociotechnical matters, as well as how the decisions for inclusion or exclusion of voices of citizens about future sociotechnical trajectories are justified (Jasanoff 2015).

Questions include but are not limited to:

1. Which actors create dominant and competing sociotechnical imaginaries for gene editing technologies?
2. How are symbolic, cultural, material resources and practices used to de/stabilize particular sociotechnical imaginaries within a specific national context?

The proposed panel seeks papers that identify and engage with key sociotechnical imaginaries as well as counter imaginaries related to gene editing across diverse (sub)national contexts, so as to shed light on contestations of competing sociotechnical imaginaries, and the symbolic, cultural and material forces that shape the trajectory of those debates based on the assumption that imaginaries are multiple, contested and commodified.

Contact: tse...@esf.edu, tyam...@icu.ac.jp

Keywords: sociotechnical imaginaries; disruptive technology; gene editing

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Theresa Selfa, 

Professor and Chair, 

Dept. of Environmental Studies 

Director, Randolph G. Pack Institute
SUNY-College of Environmental Science & Forestry 

212 Baker Lab

Syracuse, NY 13210

tse...@esf.edu/315-470-6636 

she/her pronouns

https://www.esf.edu/faculty/selfa/

 

---

From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kate O'NEILL <kmon...@berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 5:03 PM
To: gep...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Kate Neville; Henrik Selin; Noelle Eckley Selin
Subject: [gep-ed] Harold and Margaret E. Sprout Award Winners 2022

 

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2. Honorary Mention: Henrik Selin (Boston University) and Noelle Eckley Selin (MIT Press), Mercury Stories: Understanding Sustainability through a Volatile Element (MIT Press)

In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin examine sustainability through analyzing human interactions with mercury over thousands of years. They explore how people have made beneficial use of this volatile element, how they have been harmed by its toxic properties, and how they have tried to protect themselves and the environment from its damaging effects. Taking a systems approach, they develop and apply an analytical framework that can inform other efforts to evaluate and promote sustainability. 

After introducing the framework, which uses the lens of a human-technical environmental system and a matrix-based approach to analyze mercury use and exposure, the authors examine five topical mercury systems that each illustrate important issues in mercury science and governance: global cycling of mercury through the atmosphere, land, oceans, and societies; mercury's dangers to human health, including from occupational, medical, and dietary exposure; mercury emissions to the atmosphere from industrial sources; mercury in commercial products and production processes; and mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Finally, looking across the five mercury systems, they distill insights for sustainability analysis more broadly, and draw lessons for researchers, decision-makers, and concerned citizens.

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If you have a brand new book or one coming out (the frame is the last two years), look out for the announcement and request for nominations and/or check the Sprout Committee site on the ISA-ESS website.

All best, 

Kate

ISA-ESS Interim Chair (for another few hours)

***************************************

Kate O'Neill

Professor

Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management,

Associate Dean, Office of Instructional and Student Affairs at the Rausser College of Natural Resources
University of California at Berkeley

Unceded Chochenyo Ohlone Lands

 

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[Kate Neville]

Dear all,

Thanks, Kate, for sharing this message, and to the Sprout Committee for this incredible honour! And what wonderful scholarly company to keep, with Henrik and Noelle!

Now, an honour like this reminds me of how no academic endeavour -- especially a book -- is a solo one. Since I couldn't make it to Nashville this year for the ISA, I wasn't able to say my thanks in person to so many people who made this work possible -- I wrote a short note of thanks, which I think Kate might have read to those who were there in person at the reception, but since I know many of you also missed the ISA conference this year, I thought I'd send them along here, too.

I was stunned and delighted when Raul wrote to me of the Sprout Committee’s decision, and perhaps especially so since this book was an uncertain thing for so long. The fact that it is a book, and one that says something meaningful to scholars in environmental studies, is something for which I owe deep gratitude to the unflagging and overwhelming generosity of so many scholars and mentors and colleagues.

The book itself has 5 pages of acknowledgements, and even so is missing some, so I certainly can’t offer all my gratitude in a few words here. This is a project that spans my PhD and post-doctoral research, that ranges from coastal Kenya to northern Canada, that was made possible by being a scholar and also a writer in the world of international negotiations, that was written iteratively across three universities, that was read by so many people, in so many forms.

But some particular thanks to note here, in this environmental studies community:

• Peter Dauvergne and Erika Weinthal—my PhD and post-doc advisors—our collaborative work on biofuels and fracking and water and contentious politics shaped me as a scholar and a thinker and a writer. I aspire to be the kind of advisors and scholars you are.

• Pam Chasek and my Earth Negotiations Bulletin colleagues, especially Wanja Nyingi Moseti – my PhD was shaped and made possible by observing those negotiations in action, especially on food security and biofuels, and by Wanja’s invitation to join her research team in Kenya;

• Matt Hoffmann, for reading so many iterations of this work, and unflagging encouragement all the way through;

• Chris Paul, Kim Suiseeya, Shana Starobin, McKenzie Johnson: thanks for the best writing group I’ve ever had;

• Colleagues and advisors at the University of Toronto, UBC, Duke University, and beyond -- including Jennifer Clapp, from the earliest days of this work;

• Kate O’Neill and Stacy VanDeveer, especially in their roles as editors of Global Environmental Politics, for seeing the potential in the theoretical framework of contentious political economy, way before it was realized;

• Angela Chnapko: you believed in this book, even when you had every reason not to. Thank you for taking a leap from a book on biofuels to one on the most unlikely of energy and geographic pairings.

• And perhaps some of my anonymous reviewers are reading this: thank you for pushing me to make this work more coherent, clear, and meaningful.

This wouldn’t be a book without my partner, Kate Harris, and her intellectual and literary brilliance.

And so, though so much more gratitude is owed, I’ll end this with thanks to the Sprout Committee for such generous reading, and to so many scholars in this field whose work I’m learning from all the time, and to the communities—in the Tana delta, in the Yukon, all over the world—who are imagining and envisioning and organizing for environmental justice.

With thanks and best wishes,

Kate

-------

Dr. Kate J. Neville

Associate Professor

Department of Political Science and School of the Environment

University of Toronto

kate.n...@utoronto.ca

2. Honorary Mention: Henrik Selin (Boston University) and Noelle Eckley Selin (MIT Press), Mercury Stories: Understanding Sustainability through a Volatile Element (MIT Press)

In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin examine sustainability through analyzing human interactions with mercury over thousands of years. They explore how people have made beneficial use of this volatile element, how they have been harmed by its toxic properties, and how they have tried to protect themselves and the environment from its damaging effects. Taking a systems approach, they develop and apply an analytical framework that can inform other efforts to evaluate and promote sustainability. 

After introducing the framework, which uses the lens of a human-technical environmental system and a matrix-based approach to analyze mercury use and exposure, the authors examine five topical mercury systems that each illustrate important issues in mercury science and governance: global cycling of mercury through the atmosphere, land, oceans, and societies; mercury's dangers to human health, including from occupational, medical, and dietary exposure; mercury emissions to the atmosphere from industrial sources; mercury in commercial products and production processes; and mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Finally, looking across the five mercury systems, they distill insights for sustainability analysis more broadly, and draw lessons for researchers, decision-makers, and concerned citizens.