Network S: Environment and Climate Change
The “Environment and Climate Change” network at SASE invites submissions for the 2025 Annual Conference in Montreal, Canada. Network S is an interdisciplinary collective focused on understanding the social and institutional dimensions of planetary change, and specifying the possibilities, contentions, and tradeoffs in addressing such change. Being an interdisciplinary network, submissions from across the social sciences, including sociology, geography, anthropology, political science, economics, urban planning, and science and technology studies are encouraged.
Papers focused on the political, economic, and social aspects of environmental and climate governance are encouraged to apply. We are eager to gather research that squarely addresses empirical topics linked to decarbonization and energy transition efforts, processes of climate adaptation, work on biodiversity loss, abatement of air/soils/water pollution, as well as analysis of pathways forward, such as local and/or radical alternatives to current environmentally destructive socio-economic relations. We also welcome research providing theoretically or methodologically innovative approaches to the study of the above topics from different disciplinary perspectives. Submissions that speak to this year’s conference theme: “Inclusive Solidarities: Reimagining Boundaries in Divided Times” are doubly encouraged.
For questions about Network S, contact any of the organizers:
Stephanie Barral (stephanie.barral@inrae.fr)
Ritwick Ghosh (rghosh9@ncsu.edu)
Ian Gray (igray7@jh.edu)
Simone Pulver (pulver@ucsb.edu)
Vera Trappmann (V.Trappmann@leeds.ac.uk)
Network S has a Google Group!
Share calls for papers, job postings, publications, and collaborative projects with fellow SASE members.
To join the Network S Google Group, please send an email to stephanie.barral@inrae.fr with a short statement about your current work and your interest in the list.
Network S Organizers
Stéphanie Barral
Ritwick Ghosh
Ian Gray
Simone Pulver
Vera Trappmann
Network Description
This Network aspires to advance a broad, interdisciplinary, and critical dialogue on the interactions between the economy, society, and the environment. Major problems from climate change to ecosystem collapse prompt an urgent need to analyze the interdependence of economy and environment and to reimagine current models of economic prosperity and wellbeing. Among the core challenges are the need to limit carbon emissions, industrial pollution, and biodiversity decline, and to adapt our cities and rural spaces to unprecedented forms of environmental risks. Now more than ever, the social sciences need to investigate the environmental basis of economic activity and the social and economic structures that shape socio-environmental interactions, in order to assess the possibilities and tradeoffs for transforming our political, economic, and social institutions toward less ecologically destructive modes of living.
The “Environment and Climate Change” network is intended as an interdisciplinary collective, drawing on scholarship and expertise from sociology, economics, international relations, political science, STS, geography, and political ecology. We invite papers that examine both institutional change and persistence in response to multiple and simultaneously unfolding environmental crises. This includes work that focuses on national and international policy developments as well as innovative approaches that center on market coordination and private self-regulation. We seek to understand why institutional change has been so incremental and to identify instances where lasting transformations have been achieved and sustained. We are also particularly interested in understanding how proposed solutions affect those least responsible yet most vulnerable to these changes, both in the Global South and North. An overarching goal of this Network is to consider how the dominant political economic structure, call it capitalism, is positioned to address the socio-ecological crisis, and to identify plausible alternatives.