School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Lecture Series - Allison Ford (Sociology)

Join us for the first School of Social Sciences Brown Bag lecture of the spring semester on  Monday, January 31st at 12pm with Alison Ford, Professor of Sociology, discussing her recent research, Scientists and ranchers navigating trust in a contentious environmental field.

Summary:

What are the social costs and benefits of engaging private landowners in conservation of agricultural lands? How do scientists and ranchers navigate political and cultural differences to develop trust in institutions and each other? This ethnographic study of private land conservation follows participants of a California-based collaborative conservation initiative that brings together stakeholders with a history of conflict: environmentally minded scientists, government officials, and private landowners. This offers an opportunity to study social dynamics that facilitate or impede the adoption of sustainable land use. Currently, practitioners exclusively consider ecological metrics of program success (e.g. biodiversity or soil health). We aim to identify social indicators of the success of collaborations, as well as analyze the relationships between scientists and ranchers in the context of a polarized political environment which includes widespread distrust in government and science. Lastly, I place the analysis of private-land conservation in the context of the racial and gendered politics of exclusion that marks land-management in California and the United States, and consider how that shapes program outcomes and effects.

Dr. Ford is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology department. Her research focuses on the environment, politics, culture, and emotions to explore how people from different social groups respond to conditions of environmental risk.

The School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Series is always free, open to faculty, staff, students, and the public, and provides a congenial interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of recent research by School of Social Sciences faculty. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022-2023 Brown Bag Series will take place mostly via Zoom. See attached flyer for upcoming brown bag talks.

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