Social Stratification, Welfare, and Social Policy Seminar, at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI)
Jason Beckfield, Harvard University presents "The Social Side of Energy Transition on the US Gulf Coast".
This is an in-person only event.

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Abstract

From the earliest studies examining the impacts of the coal-powered Industrial Revolution, the field of sociology has shared an intimate, if often implicit, interest in the interconnectedness of fossil fuels and modernity. With the looming climate crisis, the world must rapidly wean itself from these resources in favor of those which emit little to no greenhouse gasses. And while this energy transition will likely have profound social implications, it’s only recently begun to receive sustained attention from sociologists across subfields. Consequently, although debates have emphasized the technological and market dimensions of this shift, its relational dimensions and human aspects have remained relatively marginal. In this article, we review research on the social impacts of fossil fuel production and transitions to renewables. Such work is critical and urgent, since the main barriers to combating the climate crisis are neither technological, nor economic; they are instead deeply social. In this presentation, Jason Beckfield presents an overview of the sociology of energy transitions, and illustrates several of its dimensions with a case study of the Gulf Coast, an energy-rich and climate-vulnerable region of the United States that extends from Corpus Christi, Texas, to New Orleans, Louisiana.

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