Browsing by Author "Elliott, James R"

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    A New Species of Environmental Injustice: Natural-technological Events and Social Marginalization in the United States
    (2024-04-11) Brown, Phylicia Xin Yi Lee; Elliott, James R
    Climate change's impact on exacerbating existing environmental injustices (EIs) has garnered significant attention. However, less explored are the implications of climate change-induced flooding on ongoing EIs within areas of industrial-technological concentration where socially marginalized populations reside and work. This dissertation seeks to illuminate this "new species of EI": the flooding of toxic industrial facilities, or natural-technological (natech) events, and their unequal distribution and burdens on socially marginalized populations across the contiguous United States (CONUS). Guided by political economy theories through an intersectional environmental framework, the subsequent quantitative and spatial analyses utilize federally-funded datasets to uncover the unequal distribution, production, and potential future pathways of natech events in socially marginalized neighborhoods across the CONUS. These findings underscore the importance of employing intersectional environmental frameworks to critically examine how interconnected systems of oppression contribute to the uneven distribution of intersecting environmental hazards for socially marginalized populations in a climate-changed world. This dissertation first illuminates the frequent occurrence and disproportionate clustering of natech events in neighborhoods characterized by socially marginalized Black and Hispanic populations across the CONUS. Longitudinal analysis reveals the unequal production of natech environmental injustices in socially marginalized neighborhoods, exacerbating negative socio-natural transformations. Additionally, it sheds light on the significant future natech risks for socially marginalized populations across the CONUS, underscoring the urgency for large-scale and cooperative structural interventions to address industrial-technological injustices. These findings advocate for an intersectional environmental framework, integrating various environmental-related sociological subfields to address the compounding environmental hazards and inequities exacerbated by the ongoing climate crisis. Ultimately, this research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of environmental injustices towards the development of more effective mitigation and resilience strategies in an era of climate crisis.
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    Measuring Neighborhood Effects: Re-examining the Conceptualization and Operationalization of Neighborhood Effects
    (2017-04-17) Howell, Junia; Elliott, James R
    Urban sociologists have long studied neighborhood inequality and its implications for residents’ life chances. Focusing on marginalized communities, qualitative scholars have illuminated how low educational expectations, destructive social norms and a lack of formal resources limit residents’ socioeconomic outcomes. Quantitative scholars then employ these observations to explain the correlations they find between neighborhoods and residents’ wellbeing. Yet, the most common measurements of neighborhood effects do not operationalize the multifaceted and nonlinear relationship between residential communities and residents’ socioeconomic outcomes. This dissertation is an in depth investigation into how neighborhood effects are measured and the theoretical and policy implications of these measurements. Organizationally, this dissertation is divided into three empirical studies. The first combines longitudinal geo-coded surveys from both the United States and Germany—the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel—with national censuses, governmental reports and information on local businesses and finds neighborhood socioeconomic status and institutional resources are not always correlated and operate differently across national contexts. Building off these findings, the second study examines the nonlinear relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic status and residents’ outcomes. Findings suggest neighborhood effects are strongest in advantaged communities. Finally, the third empirical piece in this dissertation examines the tipping points used to classify concentrated poverty. Results indicate the void of poverty—not its excess—drives the relationship between residential context and socioeconomic status. The dissertation concludes with a discussion about the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.
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    Toxic Industrial Air Pollution’s Links to Trust and Civic Engagement: A Nationwide Study of the Socioenvironmental Nature of Social Capital
    (2020-05-18) Brown, Phylicia Lee; Elliott, James R
    The present study conducts a nationwide study of the association of toxic industrial pollution and the facilities that produce it on trust and civic engagement. Data on pollution exposure come from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators Geographic Microdata (RSEI-GM) and Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) datasets for the years 1995 to 1999. Data on trust and civic engagement come from the 2000 restricted-access Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (SCCBS). Statistical analyses indicate that exposures to more toxic air pollution associate negatively with various measures of trust and that increased numbers of TRI facilities associate negatively with various measures of civic engagement. The implication is that exposures to toxic industrial air pollution and the facilities that produce it not only adversely affect the physical health of nearby communities but also their social wellbeing, including underlying capacities for collective action.
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    Under Construction: Race and Housing Markets in 21st-Century Urban America
    (2017-03-28) Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth; Elliott, James R
    Racial segregation continues to haunt U.S. cities. But, a full picture of why and how racial segregation persists at such high levels in contemporary urban America is less clear—in part because little is known about the contemporary, everyday operation of the housing market. To enrich understanding of the processes associated with the reproduction of segregation and other housing-related forms of racial inequality, I first conceptualize the housing market as an institution, or the intersection of several overlapping sets of stakeholders, the industries in which they work, and the federal forms and rules that affect their work. Then, I rely on a wide-and-deep methodological approach to collect data, conducting one year of ethnographic research and interviewing 102 housing market professionals and consumers across multiple housing market industries. I also conducted spatial analyses to triangulate across participant observation and respondent narratives. The findings that emerged from this dissertation data collection are organized in three chapters. In each chapter, I describe different aspects of how the contemporary Houston housing market operates and how operations reproduce racial meaning and various forms of racial inequality. Overall, my dissertation demonstrates that the cumulative effects of apparently ‘non-racial’ housing market operations, such as (racially-distinct) social networks, the lax regulatory context of housing development, and the loose arrangement of housing market industries, intersect with several institutional practices to reproduce racial meaning and inequality in everyday housing transactions. I conclude by highlighting the theoretical, methodological, and policy contributions of my work and by offering suggestions for future areas of research.
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    Under Pressure: Social Capital and Trust in Government After Natural Disasters
    (2021-06-03) Priest, Anthony Alexander; Elliott, James R
    In response to increasing threats from natural disasters, social scientists and disaster managers have conceptualized social capital, the social and physical resources inherent within social relationships, as a fundamental building block for community resilience. However, this line of research often overlooks the complex ways in which different forms of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) can operate during and after a disaster. Although bonding social ties to family, friends, and close neighbors can help households weather a natural disaster, these same connections can also extend a household’s indirect exposure. Utilizing two restricted access data sets gathered in Houston, Texas during the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, this study investigates the frequency with which households are exposed to the impacts of disaster not only directly but also indirectly, through their bonding social networks, and how that extended exposure can in turn influence trust in local, state, and federal government – key sources of linking capital during disaster recovery. Results show that households experience indirect impacts pervasively through their close social ties and that these indirect impacts correlate significantly with lower trust in government at all levels, net of direct impacts and other statistical controls. Implications for a more nuanced approach to social capital in disaster research and planning are discussed.