Social science-environmental health (SS-EH) research takes many structural forms and contributes to a wide variety of topical areas. In this article we discuss the general nature of SS-EH contributions and offer a new typology of SS-EH practice that situates this type of research in a larger transdisciplinary sensibility: (1) environmental health science influenced by social science; (2) social science studies of environmental health; and (3) social science-environmental health collaborations. We describe examples from our own and others’ work and we discuss the central role that research centers, training programs, and conferences play in furthering SS-EH research. We argue that the third form of SS-EH research, SS-EH collaborations, offers the greatest potential for improving public and environmental health, though such collaborations come with important challenges and demand constant reflexivity on the part of researchers.
The lack of a strong national US strategy to respond to the threat of climate change places significant responsibility on urban areas to mitigate their risks through resilience planning. However, urban riskscapes include a complex and unequal layering of risks, with historically disadvantaged populations often bearing the brunt of many forms of cumulative risk while realising the fewest benefits from urban amenities. This article contributes to scholarship on resilience planning through an analysis of current development plans and resident perceptions in a neighbourhood in Southwest Washington, DC, by integrating insights on social inequality from the study of urban development, social capital and riskscapes.
Immediately after President Trump’s inauguration, US federal science agencies began deleting information about climate change from their websites, triggering alarm among scientists, environmental activists, and journalists about the administration’s attempt to suppress information about climate change and promulgate climate denialism. The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) was founded in late 2016 to build a multidisciplinary collaboration of scholars and volunteers who could monitor the Trump administration’s dismantling of environmental regulations and science deemed harmful to its industrial and ideological interests. One of EDGI’s main initiatives has been training activists and volunteers to monitor federal agency websites to identify how the climate-denialist ideology is affecting public debate and science policy. In this paper, we explain how EDGI’s web-monitoring protocols are being incorporated into college curricula and how, in this way, EDGI’s work aligns with STS work on “critical making” and “making and doing.” EDGI’s work shows how STS scholars can establish new modes of engagement with the state that demand a more transparent and trustworthy relationship with the public, creating spaces where the public can define and demand responsible knowledge practices and participate in the process of creating STS inspired forms of careful, collective, and public knowledge construction.
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