react. These principles may or may not hold for communities at-risk for the impacts of climate change.
Connecting social movement studies to disaster literature could help inform how communities respond to climate-
related events.
Human health represents one dimension of the risks posed by climate change. Although not all of the
health impacts of climate change are detrimental (Haines et al. 2006), early estimates suggest negative health
effects for many individuals (IPCC 2001). Climate change contributes to 160,000 annual deaths globally due to
vector borne diseases, food insecurity, heat waves and other problems (Campbell-Lendrum et al. 2003). While
epidemiologists have begun to demonstrate the effect of geophysical changes, sociological tools are better adept
at articulating the social factors shaping outcomes. However, very little research has been done to identify what
those social factors are and how they interact with environmental ones. My interests are in the social, cultural,
economic and ecological mechanisms through which climate change is projected to increase disease risk and to
identify the characteristics of resilience and weakness across types of health crises. Climate change will both
exacerbate existing illnesses and create new ones. Research regarding the social construction of illness that shapes
illness experience (Pierret 2003), health inequalities (House 2002; Phelan et al. 2004), processes of diagnosis
(Stockl 2007; Madden and Sim 2006) and risk paradigms (Quah 2007; Smoyer 1998) inform how emergent
illnesses are dealt with. Questions still remain regarding how sociological factors interact with climatological
ones, how pre-existing social and health inequalities are exacerbated or alleviated, and how medical systems
attuned to chronic illnesses and an aging population can shift to accommodate these new illnesses.
Adaptive measures to protect human health can also mitigate the impacts of climate change. Many
examples demonstrate this, such as greater usage of mass transportation and walking that reduces automobile
greenhouse gas emissions and urban obesity and diabetes. Tree planting, installation of green roofs and
implementation of reflective surfaces in urban areas can both reduce heat-related illness due to the urban heat
island effect and also mitigate climate change. Research has only begun to note these instances and has yet to
explore the ways in which they can be achieved. Sociologists have a particular role in this topic due to their
expertise in understanding how humans act in groups, such as those in which many of these activities take place.
They also can inform questions of how institutional formations can shift to promote new behaviors.
Adaptation more broadly raises similar questions to those relate to addressing the health impacts of
climate change. Sociologists are adept at dealing with the critical issues of level or scale of analysis that is
particularly challenging to questions of adaptation. While the human contributions to climate change operate at
the transnational level, their impacts are felt acutely at the local level. These differences in scale that cross cause
and effect raise important questions about responsibility for adaptation and climate justice. Sociological theories
of claims-making and the public sphere informs how these discussions take place across stakeholders and how
power manifests itself in the actual outcomes of mitigation.
ReferencesBeamish, Thomas D. 2002. Silent Spill: the organization of an industrial crisis. MIT Press.
Boin, Arjen, Paul’t Hart, Eric Stern and Bengt Sundelius. 2005. The Politics of Crisis Management: Public
Leadership under Pressure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P., and E.J. Mikkelsen. 1990. No safe place: Toxic waste, leukemia, and community action. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Brown, Phil, Stephen Zavestoski , Sabrina McCormick, Brian Mayer, Rachel Morello-Frosch, and Rebecca
Gasior. 2007. Embodied Health Movements: Uncharted Territory in Social Movement Research. In
Perspectives in Medical Sociology, Phil Brown ed. Longrove, IL: Waveland Press.