Decarbonization by Deliberation

Democracies face the urgent challenge of responding to climate change. Yet, of late, deliberative institutions have suffered from protracted controversy and diminishing trust. Calls for justice have also loudened. How will democracies respond to climate change? And will the responses be just?

My dissertation, Decarbonizing by Deliberation: Dilemmas of Democracy, Justice, and Expertise in Climate Changing New York, is an account of four groups deliberating plans to achieve one of the most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction mandates and achieve climate justice from 2020 to 2024: 1) a state planning council, 2) a council of private energy utilities, 3) a climate justice advisory board, and 4) an anti-market movement calling for public ownership of energy. 

Using a range of qualitative methods – immersive ethnographic observations of a social movement, micro-interactional observations of regulatory meetings, in-depth interviews, and archival work –I leverage variation across groups and time, to address two questions.

First, how do democratic norms shape decision-making to reduce emissions? This line of inquiry contributes to debates on the role of micro-interactions in cultural meaning-making and the relationship between democracy and expertise. I focus on how groups interact to resolve cultural dilemmas of decarbonization by following regulatory debates on plans to reduce emissions. One is the dilemma of distance, where groups make sense of how many benefits of decarbonization often accrue in far places, and in the far future. Another is the dilemma of reconciliation, where people seek common ground with other’s conflicting perspectives when no one group can dominate deliberation. 

Second, how does climate change alter the classification of people at risk? Here, I focus on how environmental change influences racial classification, with insight into the relationship between movements demanding climate justice and changes in welfare state governance in the 21st century. Following the construction of a novel category of "climate disadvantaged," I detail a dilemma of targeting place-based harms of environmental racism or universal, planetary harm of climate change.

Together, the research indicates that how people construct imaginations of cost-benefits, futures, and communities influences actions to reduce emissions. Such a constructionist account offers a uniquely sociological understanding of how culture, and not just economic costs, political institutions, or climate obstruction, shapes climate action. 

The case also indicates a revival in state planning and evolution of demands of climate justice as faith in capitalist markets to build renewable energy wanes.

Expertise on the Future

My dissertation builds on my award-winning and published research. 

In one, I researched the influential epistemic community of modelers that advises energy policy with quantitative projections of the future. Based on interviews and observations, I surprisingly found that the modelers called upon audiences to doubt their numbers and theorized an interactional explanation. My solo-authored paper titled "Doubtful Calculation: How Experts Build Trust in Uncertain Energy Futures" contributes to sociological debates on trust in expertise, calculation, and futures, and won the Best Student Paper award from ASA’s Culture Section. 

I am also collaborating on an interdisciplinary, and problem-solving project with civil engineers and sociologists at New York University (Gianpaolo Baiocchi), Columbia University (Josh Whitford, Bianca Howard) and Kean University (H. Jacob Carlson). We are researching how building models can inform the decarbonization of New York's vast, expensive, ageing, and polluting housing stock, while deepening equity.

W.E.B. Du Bois's Theories and Environmental Racism

I also have a strong interest in sociological theories, especially on questions of the environment. 

My article on W.E.B. Du Bois’s environmental theories, “The Soils of Black Folk,” was published in Sociological Theory, and won an award from ASA’s Environmental Sociology section, and an Honorable Mention from the Theory Section. I argue Du Bois is one of sociology’s earliest environmental theorists, uniquely illuminating how environment-society relations shape racism.

I am developing a follow-up project that puts Du Bois in conversation with B.R. Ambedkar, with whom he shares pragmatist training, commitment to racial and caste equality, and engagement with environmental themes. The project explores their novel brand of "radical ecological pragmatism."

The Sociology of Climate Change

I also have an interest in how sociology can contribute to the study and solving of climate change. In a series of articles with other sociologists of climate change, I am developing a research agenda on "The Social Life of Climate Projects." The first article co-authored with Malcolm Araos and Eric Klinenberg, is published in Sociological Forum. 

India's Climate Governance

Before joining NYU, I co-authored a series of novel, peer-reviewed articles on how the world’s largest democracy, India, was confronting climate change. 

In one substantive research program, I detailed how India's urban future will be shaped by climate change. With Radhika Khosla, I wrote an agenda-setting review article on India's urbanization in the age of climate change, in WIREs Climate Change. I led novel research into how India street-level bureaucrats were pursuing climate action. In one, I make the case for attention to the "styles" in which people related to one another to reduce emissions, published in Environmental Politics. In another published in Environment & Planning E, I outline a mechanism by which bureaucrats "superimposed" climate action onto existing development schemes. 

A second line of research focused on India's energy and emissions transition in light of its development needs. With Navroz K. Dubash, Radhika, and Narasimha Rao, I co-authored an award-winning article based on a novel interpretive analysis of scenarios of India's energy and climate future published in Environmental Research Letters. And in an article titled "More priorities, more problems?", co-authored with Madhura Joshi, Navroz, and Radhika, I developed a framework to support decision-makers balancing multiple energy, development, and climate objectives. I also drew out the transition's implications for the possibilities of climate justice in a just transition for Indian workers, energy consumption of low-income households, and socio-technical transitions.