Dear ONE-L Members,
Please see the attached call for papers for a special issue on Coal and the Environment in the journal Organization & Environment.
Please circulate widely!
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Call for Papers: Special Issue on Coal and the Environment Organization & Environment
Special Issue Editors:
Shannon Elizabeth Bell, University of Kentucky and Richard York, University of Oregon
Deadline: April 1, 2012
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the burning of coal accounted for 41.3% of the global carbon dioxide emissions generated from the consumption of fossil fuels in 2006. This trend is not forecast to end anytime soon; between 2005 and 2035, world carbon dioxide emissions from coal are projected to increase by 68.1%. The coal industry – along with the capitalist world system that depends on the cheap energy it provides – holds a large share of the responsibility for rising global temperatures and the resulting harm that has come to many geographically-vulnerable nations. In addition to its contributions to hastening climate change, the coal industry also causes great ecological and social harm in its other industry activities. Throughout the entire lifecycle of this fossil fuel – including the mining, processing, washing, and burning of coal – workers and nearby communities are endangered by industry practices.
Given the coal industry's tremendous and rapidly-increasing impacts on global climate, fragile ecosystems, communities, and public health, it is critical that scholarly analyses of this industry be highlighted and prioritized in the social-scientific literature.
In this special issue on Coal and the Environment, we will bring together social science scholars studying coal throughout its lifecycle and across regions, with the hope of contributing to larger scientific and public debates about the future of this powerful industry.
We are soliciting article contributions of approximately 8,000 words, with a particular focus on the following priority areas:
• Examinations of the relationships between coal and other energy sources, with a focus on how tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of various energy sources are contested and negotiated.
• Critical assessments of "clean coal" technology, including carbon capture and storage.
• Theorizations of the global political economy of coal and the strategies and alliances that maintain the coal industry's global power.
• Examinations of social movements resisting coal extraction and/or coal power plants, particularly in vital but understudied areas, such as China.
• Analyses of the challenges and possibilities of transitioning away from coal as an energy source.
• Case studies of communities, states, or nations that have attempted (successfully or unsuccessfully) to transition away from coal as an energy source.
• Theorizations of the ways in which various axes of social inequality (such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or nationality) intersect with destructive coal industry practices and/or affect social movement outcomes.
• Analyses of the social, economic, political, and/or environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining and other forms of coal extraction.
Please submit all contributions by April 1, 2012 at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/oe
Direct inquiries to Shannon Bell (shannon.eliz.bell@uky.edu) and Richard York (rfyork@uoregon.edu)
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Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
University of Kentucky
www.ShannonElizBell.com
www.WVPhotovoice.org