Repair, Resistance, Renewal: Sociological Solutions to Wicked Problems

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

While sociology excels at diagnosis, it often stops short of solutions. This call for papers challenges scholars to center innovations—policy, community-led, or technological—that directly address wicked problems at the intersection of health, environment, and justice. We welcome work on strategies for social good, participatory science communication, and institutional reforms that counter entrenched inequalities, including models of mutual aid that embody relational governance and collective care. Drawing inspiration from Indigenous and environmental justice traditions, we invite analyses of how reciprocal forms of support—whether through local networks, cooperative economies, or shared stewardship—can strengthen resilience and equity. How can sociologists help design and evaluate interventions that genuinely improve lives? We seek bold, interdisciplinary contributions that demonstrate sociology’s potential not only to critique but to repair and reimagine systems under strain.

Sub Unit

• Environmental Sociology Section / Repair, Resistance, Renewal: Sociological Solutions to Wicked Problems

Presider

• Stephen Philip Gasteyer, Michigan State University

Individual Presentations

• Community Resilience in the Face of Institutional Failure: Race, Community Support, and Perceived Risk of Flooding - Kathryn Freeman Anderson, University of Houston; Gabrielle Grant, University of Houston; Nicole Hart, University of Chicago; Hanadi Rifai, University of Houston; Francisco Haces-Garcia, University of Houston

• Fourth Nature: A New Perspective for an Entangled World - Taimur Ahmad, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Michael M. Bell, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Land as Community: Nature, Integralism, and Finding Common Ground in the Eastern Sierra Nevada - Taimur Ahmad, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Solving the Wicked Problem of US Rural Water Insecurity: The Role of Community Capitals - Autumn Bland, Michigan State University; Stephen Philip Gasteyer, Michigan State University

• The Scent of Resistance: Sensory Grievances, Strategic Attribution, and the Global Rise of Petroprotests - Saber Khani, Boston College

Session Organizer

• Kerry Ard, Ohio State University