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Thesis advisor: Eve Spangler / The Department of Defense not only acknowledges the current ramifications of climate change but also recognizes the threat it poses to U.S. national security. The Department of Defense is a major domestic and international organization, and despite the Department’s impact in many areas, including the environment, the relationship between national security and environmental concern has not been studied nearly to the extent it could. Furthermore, no study using data from a large military organization exists that could help the Department of Defense progress toward the sustainability it desires. This dissertation addresses this problem by reviewing the U.S. Army’s greening directives and initiatives and providing a short history of these efforts at the United States Military Academy. It examines how and why attitudes, intentions, and behavior regarding the environment differ among military, both ROTC and West Point cadets, and civilian college students, and whether they view environmental problems to be a threat to our national security. This project has five broad findings of interest. First, the relationship between environmental attitudes and environmental behaviors and intentions remained as predicted and was always strongly significant. Second, ROTC cadets were never significantly different in their survey responses when compared with civilian students, and USMA cadets were rarely different. Third, civilian students’ political views were almost never significantly related to their environmental attitudes, behaviors, or intentions, while military cadets’ political views were always significantly related to lower scores on the environmental attitude scale. Fourth, being a U.S. Military Academy cadet, compared to civilian students, was significantly related to stronger agreement with the statement that the so-called ‘ecological crisis’ facing humankind is a threat to the United States’ national security. Fifth, women were more likely than men to report higher scores on the environmental attitude scale and make a special effort to recycle but also more likely than men to express weaker agreement with the statement that the ecological crisis is a threat to national security. This project has the potential to inform the military’s conservation policies and programs, while the military is uniquely positioned to be an agent of change in the efforts to combat climate change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The increasingly unsustainable relationship between society and the environment is drawing considerable attention across disciplines. In sociology this attention has focused largely on developing theoretical frameworks for explicating how various social processes negatively impact the environment, however what sociology has done less well is develop rich understandings of the other side of this relationship, how ecological change can create instability in social processes. To fill this gap I employ an extended case study of the interplay between the social and ecological processes related to the introduction of Asian carp, an invasive species that has set into motion considerable contestations across political, cultural, economic and scientific social processes in the greater Chicago area as well as the Great Lakes. Through this case study I demonstrate how ecological changes, such as the migration of Asian carp, can impact social processes. I then provide an historical analysis of the 1900 reversal of the Chicago River to show how social responses to the Asian carp invasion are structured through previous histories. My aim is to demonstrate that the Asian carp invasion is not, in itself, a single transformative process, but rather a cumulative development generated and constrained via several connected social and ecological histories. My overall aim is to demonstrate the benefit of examining how social histories and ecological histories combine over time, or the historicity of social and ecological interaction. / 10000-01-01

This dissertation examines how changing conceptions of risk responsibility relate to changing ideas of citizenship and the public sphere. Using the empirical case study of chemical body burdens, and drawing on focus groups and in-depth interviews, in addition to a twenty-year framing analysis of Canadian news media coverage of environmental contamination, this dissertation examines how risks are individualized through an ideology of “precautionary consumption.” Precautionary consumption encourages self-protection through consumer-based vigilance (e.g., by buying organic produce or “natural” cleaning products) and shifts the focus away from the state’s responsibility to regulate human and environmental exposure to contaminants. Three key findings emerge from this research. First, over twenty years of Canadian media coverage, precautionary consumption is increasingly prominent in shaping the problem frame around chemical contamination. As a media frame, the ideology of precautionary consumption reconceptualises chemical body burdens as an environmental problem affecting everyone equally to an individual problem that afflicts unaware consumers. Second, interview data suggests that the practice of mediating individual exposure to chemicals is overwhelmingly characterized as a caregiving responsibility requiring a mother’s vigilance. Interview respondents interpreted this responsibility through a dual ideological lens comprised of intensive mothering and precautionary consumption. Interviews with mothers from low-income households furthermore suggest that practices of chemical mediation vary by social class, and that access to protective commodities is highly uneven. Third, interview data also suggest that respondents viewed vigilant shopping practices as part of accepting greater personal responsibility for chemical pollution as a health threat and larger environmental problem. Respondents dismissed the transformative potential of the state in addressing body burdens; in contrast, they expressed confidence in their power as consumers and in the responsiveness of the market to protect them from chemical threats. The concluding chapter of the dissertation discusses how precautionary consumption draws our attention away from the universality of risk, and the responsibilities of the state for managing body burdens as a collective risk.

This dissertation examines how changing conceptions of risk responsibility relate to changing ideas of citizenship and the public sphere. Using the empirical case study of chemical body burdens, and drawing on focus groups and in-depth interviews, in addition to a twenty-year framing analysis of Canadian news media coverage of environmental contamination, this dissertation examines how risks are individualized through an ideology of “precautionary consumption.” Precautionary consumption encourages self-protection through consumer-based vigilance (e.g., by buying organic produce or “natural” cleaning products) and shifts the focus away from the state’s responsibility to regulate human and environmental exposure to contaminants. Three key findings emerge from this research. First, over twenty years of Canadian media coverage, precautionary consumption is increasingly prominent in shaping the problem frame around chemical contamination. As a media frame, the ideology of precautionary consumption reconceptualises chemical body burdens as an environmental problem affecting everyone equally to an individual problem that afflicts unaware consumers. Second, interview data suggests that the practice of mediating individual exposure to chemicals is overwhelmingly characterized as a caregiving responsibility requiring a mother’s vigilance. Interview respondents interpreted this responsibility through a dual ideological lens comprised of intensive mothering and precautionary consumption. Interviews with mothers from low-income households furthermore suggest that practices of chemical mediation vary by social class, and that access to protective commodities is highly uneven. Third, interview data also suggest that respondents viewed vigilant shopping practices as part of accepting greater personal responsibility for chemical pollution as a health threat and larger environmental problem. Respondents dismissed the transformative potential of the state in addressing body burdens; in contrast, they expressed confidence in their power as consumers and in the responsiveness of the market to protect them from chemical threats. The concluding chapter of the dissertation discusses how precautionary consumption draws our attention away from the universality of risk, and the responsibilities of the state for managing body burdens as a collective risk.

As the effects of global climate change become increasingly apparent, many concerned individuals are making efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. One simple and effective method of reducing one's personal carbon footprint is through energy conservation behavior. Studies have shown that occupant behavior can control as much as 50% of residential energy use and that energy use varies widely between residences with the same number of occupants depending on consumption behavior. In light of this, energy conservation behavior is a valuable method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and curbing the effects of climate change. Motivating people to conserve energy could have profound positive effects on the environment. The following study applies Icek Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behavior (1991) to energy conservation behavior among college students in the state of Florida. This research tests the hypothesis that pro-environmental attitudes, influence of peers, and a high level of perceived control over behavior have a significant impact on energy conservation behavior.

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In this study I examine the relationship between environmental attitudes and gender. First, I explore variations across previous studies to determine patterns regarding gender differences in levels of environmental concern. Second, I look at the mediating effects of gender and several socio-demographic characteristics (age, race, class, education, political orientation, residence, martial status, number of children, religious identification, and scientific knowledge) on a variety of measures of environmental concern to assess the extent to which gender operates through other variables as it predicts levels of environmental concern. Third, I look at the moderating effects of gender on the same list of socio-demographic characteristics to determine the extent to which gender intersects with other variables to shape environmental attitudes. I conduct a systematic review of literature using 22 peer reviewed journal articles, which include 128 measures of environmental concern, published between 1995 and 2010. I also test for mediating and moderating effects of gender and various socio-demographic characteristics on 14 measures of environmental concern using data from two sources: the General Social Survey Environment II: 2000 questionnaire and the American National Election Study 2008 Times Series Pre-election Survey. To test for mediating and moderating effects I employee several methodological techniques including principal component analysis, model building, linear regression techniques, and non-parametric regression methods. The results of this study show that, in general, women do express a greater concern for the environment than men. However, gender in conjunction with other socio-demographic characteristics has the potential to produce different effects than when gender is considered alone. This study supports the idea that the intersectionality of gender and other socio-demographic characteristics is of great importance and should not be ignored.

This dissertation examines the interactions between social movement organizations and a variety of state and municipal targets of movement activity during the construction of the Illinois Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act (HFRA). Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial method of oil and gas extraction which created an unusual amount of public interest and participation in policy construction. This dissertation provides an overview of the political environment in Illinois during the legislative negotiations for the HFRA, outlining the playing field of political negotiations, and the relative positioning of social movement actors competing for influence in that field. Additionally, I examine the causes and consequences of conflict between coalition partners opposed to fracking, focusing on the impact of differential resources, expertise, and institutional legitimacy. Using data from interviews with organization leaders from industry and environmental coalitions, key informants from government bureaus, and participant observation at public meetings, my research contributes to the political process literature by elaborating the heterogeneity of the state’s interests in political challenges and revealing cleavages within social movement coalitions.

This dissertation proposes an approach to energy that transcends the focus on energy as a mere technical economic or engineering problem, is connected to sociological theory as a whole, and takes issues of equality and ecology as theoretical starting points. In doing so, the work presented here puts ecological and environmental sociological theory, and the work of environmental justice scholars, feminist ecologists, and energy scholars, in a context in which they may complement one another to broaden the theoretical basis of the current sociology of energy. This theoretical integration provides an approach to energy focused on energy justice. Understanding energy and society in the terms outlined here makes visible energy injustice, or the interface between social inequalities and ecological depredations accumulating as the social and ecological debts of the modern energy regime. Systems ecology is brought into this framework as a means for understanding unequal exchange, energy injustice more generally, and the requirements for long-term social and ecological reproduction in ecological terms. Energy developments in Ecuador and Cuba are used here as case studies in order to further develop the idea of energy justice and the theory of unequal ecological exchange. The point is to broaden the framework of the contemporary critical sociology of energy, putting energy justice at its heart. This dissertation contains previously published and unpublished co-authored material.