Colin Jerolmack, environmental sociologist

twitter: @jerolmack

email: jerolmack@nyu.edu

I am a professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at New York University.  From 2017 to 2023, I was chair of the Dept. of Environmental Studies.

My latest book, Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town (Princeton University Press, April 2021), is an intimate, ethnographic account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet—whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the very land beneath our feet—is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public’s consent. Based on time I spent living in a rural Pennsylvania community, the book documents the dramatic confrontation between personal sovereignty and the public good that unfolds from the fact that landowners have the right to lease the subsurface of their property for oil and gas development. This "deeply reported" (Publisher's Weekly) community study reveals "the tradeoffs that follow from America's liberty-loving ways" (Sarah Smarsh [author of Heartland], the Atlantic). What's more, it serves as a lens through which to understand the cultural polarization that drives so much of contemporary American politics and stymies efforts to combat climate change.

Click here for a complete list of reviews, events, and media related to the book.

Click here to purchase the book.

Click here to download and read the introduction for free.

Click here to read an essay adapted from the book published in the New York Times, and here to read an essay published in the New Republic.

My first book, The Global Pigeon (2013, University of Chicago Press), examines how relationships with animals and nature shape social life in the city. Click here to read an essay I adapted from The Global Pigeon for the New York Times Sunday Review. More recent work returns to animal studies, examining whether animal ethology and microsociology can identify patterns of behavior and communication that are shared by humans and other animals (you can read one article that has resulted from this research here).

Click here to visit my twin brother's website.  He's a real scientist.