Conversations Across Borders: A Workshop in Transnational Studies

Date: 

Monday, December 5, 2016, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Room 1550

“Development, Inequality, and Disproportionality: Human Drivers of GHG Emissions and the Carbon Intensity of Human Well-Being"

Speaker:

Andrew Jorgenson, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies, Boston College.

Discussant:

Brianna Castro, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

Contact:

John Arroyo
arroyojc@mit.edu

Chairs:

Peggy Levitt, Associate. Chair; Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College.

Jocelyn Viterna, Faculty Associate. Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.

Abstract:

In this talk I begin with a summary of my recent collaborative research on the effects of development and income inequality on national-level anthropogenic carbon emissions, and how these relationships change through time. I highlight the implications of this research for longstanding theoretical debates in environmental sociology and our sister disciplines. Next, I provide an introduction to the emerging area of multidisciplinary research on nations’ carbon intensity of human well-being, where we assess the extent to which development and inequality partially shape such socioenvironmental relationships for nations in different structural and regional contexts. I conclude by describing current multimethod research where we investigate related empirical relationships, but at smaller scales, including the facility level and the US state level.