1997 Environment and Technology Section Awards
The Boguslaw Award honors Robert Boguslaw by recognizing a scholar whose work reflects the interests of ordinary people in developing innovative approaches for addressing emerging societal issues about technology, values, and social concerns.
This year's Award was given to Valerie Kuletz, for her dissertation work at the University of California-Santa Cruz, under the direction of Andy Szasz. The letter nominating Kuletz explains her work: it "describes the transformation of the American desert southwest into a nuclear landscape and the current struggles of Native American groups to reassert both their culture and 'their' cultural geography of the same 'objective' places. The great merit of the work is that it combines more traditional political economic approaches with contemporary emphases akin to cultural studies approaches. This hybrid methodology is made necessary by the nature of the political conflict, itself, since it combines real transformation of land (into mines, test sites, waste depositories) and struggles over land that are also struggles over how land is 'represented' by both the nuclear establishment and indigenous peoples. Beautifully, compellingly written; a substantively important story; innovative methodology that combines political economy, social geography, and culturally-organized representations in conflict. This is really top quality work." Moreover, the author herself grew up in China Lake, one of these nuclear communities--so that it is reflective of her own biography and social history. The thesis is forthcoming from Routledge in Spring 1998.
Valerie Kuletz
Thomas Dietz was honored this year for his Distinguished Contribution to the Sociology of the Environment and Technology. This Award recognizes outstanding service, innovation, or publication. Dietz is distinguished in all three areas. He has served the Section, as well as sociology and human ecology more generally, in many capacities. His work, as described in the nomination letter, "has been innovative in theoretical, substantive, and methodological ways. His innovative linking of the work of Habermas to the social impact literature has theoretically enriched that specialty and his integration of evolutionary theory with sociological systems theory has broadened the intellectual frame for conducting theoretical work in environmental sociology. His book on the risk professionals (with Bob Rycroft), by actually collecting data on real live risk professionals in their vocational environments, advanced our thinking considerably about the science/ideology/politics balance played by major stakeholders in the risk game. And finally, he has successfully introduced sociologists to some of the most advanced statistical techniques such as bootstrap sampling procedures for making parameter estimates and computer-intensive regression techniques, such as additive regression." Dietz continues to work in new areas, including social psychological studies of environmental attitudes and behavior with Stern and Guagnano, and, with Rosa, development and empirical testing of a stochastic version of the IPAT model.
The Marvin E. Olsen Graduate Student Paper Award is named to honor the memory of our distinguished colleague. The purpose of the award is to recognize an outstanding paper presented by a graduate student at the annual American Sociological Association Meetings.
Four papers were submitted for the Olsen Award this year. The Award was given to Zsuzsa Gille, Sociology Board, University of California, Santa Cruz, for her paper, "Cognitive Cartography in a European Wasteland." According to Ken Gould, Chair of the Marvin E. Olsen Graduate Student Paper Award Committee, "The Gille paper was selected based on the quality of the writing, the innovative theoretical framework presented, the quality of the data, and the dialogue between theory and evidence sustained throughout the piece." Gille's paper was presented at the "Emergent Global and Regional Identities II" session in Toronto.
Zsuzsa Gille