Research Themes
Animals and the Environment
A major thrust of my research program, including my book Bad Nature, has been examining the roles of nonhuman animals in human social and cultural relationships with the environment. Animals are lightning rods for symbolic meaning and they often come to serve as living embodiments of all the messy, contradictory, and deeply moralized ways make sense of the natural world and our place in it. In Bad Nature and other publications, I examine how, through our interactions with animals, we negotiate the acceptable boundaries between society and nature and determine what our responsibilities are to nonhuman others.
Representative Publications:
“’You Can’t Ignore the Rat’: Nonhuman Animals in Boundary Work”
“The Indoors/Outdoors Divide: Homelessness, rat infestation, and spatial management in Downtown Los Angeles”
“The Wild in Fire: Human Aid to Wildlife in the Disasters of the Anthropocene”
“The Bestiary in the Candy Aisle: A Framework for Nature in Unexpected Places”
The Consumption of Nature
Nature, as a place or as an idea, is often thought of as offering intrinsic, life-giving benefits. Whether through a weekend camping trip, an urban park carved into the concrete jungle, or food labels like “organic,” “free-range,” and “grass-fed,” Americans seek out these benefits of nature in many walks of life. A theme in my work has been investigating how cultural ideas of nature enter into different modes of consumption. These have included food systems, recreation, housing, and tourism.
Representative Publications:
“A Symbolic Hierarchy of Places: Global Inequalities in Tourism Narratives of the New York Times Travel Section”
“Building ‘Natural’ Beauty: Drought and the Shifting Aesthetics of Nature in Santa Barbara, California”
“Are Lakes a Public Good or Exclusive Resource? Towards Value-Based Management for Aquatic Invasive Species”
“Producing the natural: Mobilities and the managed Aesthetics of Nature”
“#Nature: Postmodern Narrative, Place, and Nature in Santa Barbara, CA”
“The Bestiary in the Candy Aisle: A Framework for Nature in Unexpected Places”
The Social Experience of Climate Change
Another theme of my past, present, and future work is investigating the wide-reaching impacts of the climate crisis on diverse arenas of social life. While climate change continues to physically ravage us and upend the material landscape through hurricanes, fires, drought, and more, it also becomes increasingly prominent in cultural life. I examine how climate change is lived and felt in a variety of contexts, ranging from aesthetic preferences in tourism, to real estate markets, to ethical quandaries regarding our responsibilities to nature.
Representative Publications:
“Elite Environmental Aesthetics: Placing Nature in a Changing Climate”
“Climate Silence in Sociology? How Elite American Sociology, Environmental Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies Treat Climate Change”
“The Wild in Fire: Human Aid to Wildlife in the Disasters of the Anthropocene”
Culture, Nature, and Polarization
While nature may have nearly universally positive associations, the environment has become an arena of intense political polarization in the United States. While the divide on environmental issues has become a common-sense aspect of the broader pattern of polarized political identification in America, this has not always been the case. In an ongoing research program with my collaborator Caleb Scoville, we aim to bring the tools and theory of cultural sociology to bear on this problem and in doing so develop a clearer understanding of the extent and origins of environmental polarization.
Representative Publications:
“Are Lakes a Public Good or Exclusive Resource? Towards Value-Based Management for Aquatic Invasive Species”
“Mask Refusal Backlash: The Politicization of Face Masks in the American Public Sphere During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 pandemic”