I am currently working an a multivolume series that explores the intersections of social movements, industry, sustainability, and justice in the United States. My specific problem is to find points of entry where countervailing forces exist to the "brown" industries, that is, industries that actively attempt to delay the policy transition to a greener economy. The first two volumes were completed with support from the STS Program of the National Science Foundation.
In 2007 I published the first volume: Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry (MIT Press). One of the central arguments of the book is that social movements play a generative role in scientific and technological change, rather than merely a role of opposing some new forms of technology or demanding access to others. However, I also explored the limitations of social movements and the tendency for the movements for sustainability and/or justice in the United States to achieve partial victories. The book won the Robert K. Merton award from the American Sociological Association. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11182
In 2009 I published Localist Movements in a Global Economy: Sustainability, Justice, and Urban Development in the United States (MIT Press). The book examines the social and environmental aspects of the "localist movement" of advocacy for increased local ownership, such as in "buy local" campaigns. Here I examine the potential of the green small business sector as an additional counterweight to the political power of the anti-environmental industries. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11802
The third volume, currently underway, examines state and local government policies that are encouraging the development of clean tech and green businesses. The growing clean-tech sector also promises to provide a third-counterweight in favor of more rapid policy transitions to a greener economy.
Selected Publications and Papers
In Press “A Political Economy of Sustainability: Alternative Pathways and Industrial Innovation.” In Steven Moore (ed.), Pragmatic Sustainability: Theoretical and Practical Tools. MIT Press.
In Press “When Nanotechnology Meets Solar Energy: Environmental Social Theory and Problems of Policy.” In Kenneth Gould and Bob Torres (eds.), Nanotechnology, Social Change, and the Environment. Rowman and Littlefield.
In Press “Electricity Transformed: Neoliberalism and Local Energy in the United States.” Antipode.
In Press “The Environmental, Health, and Safety Implications of Nanotechnology: Environmental Organizations and Undone Science in the United States.” Science as Culture.
2009 "The Potentials and Limitations of Civil Society Research: Getting Undone Science Done." Sociological Inquiry 79(3): 306-327.
2008 "Localism and the Environment." Sociology Compass 2(2): 625-628. Article here.
2008 "Some Ways in to Research on Locally Owned, Independent Businesses." This is a bibliography for a talk that I gave at Capital District Local First. Here.
2007 Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. MIT Press.
2007 “Enhancing Justice and Sustainability at the Local Level: Affordable Policies for Urban Governments.” By David Hess and Langdon Winner. Local Environment 12(4): 1-17. Langdon Winner and I worked on an NSF-sponsored research project on sustainability, the politics of design, and localism. For more information on the research project, click here.
2007 “What is a Clean Bus? Object Conflicts in the Greening of Urban Transit.” Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 3(1): 45- 58. PDF file here.
2006 “The University and Sustainable Regional Industries.” In Christopher Nelson, The River-Farm Conversations, Virginia Tech Press.
2006 "Community Choice, Public Power, and Energy Conservation: Democracy, Sustainable Consumption, and the Problem of Scale." Paper presented at the RC-24 Conference on Sustainable Consumption. Available at www.michaelmbell.net/suscon-papers/hess-paper.doc.
2004 Editor of special issue of Science as Culture on "Health, the Environment, and Social Movements," published in December 2004 (13/4). Includes "Object Conflicts in a Health-Environmental Social Movement: The Movement for Organic Food and Agriculture in the U.S." Article here.
2004 Organized a conference on Science, Technology, and the Environment . Details here.
2001 Alternative Pathways in Globalization, Vol. 1. This was an electronic preprint of the first section of what became Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry.