Home / About / Our Faculty Fellows

Rachel Carson College Faculty Fellows

Sikina Jinnah

Sikina Jinnah is Rachel Carson College's new faculty chair!

The Chair of the Faculty is an Academic Senate member, other than the Provost, who is elected by the college Faculty to serve a two year term, and will serve as a member of the Executive Committee.

Dr. Jinnah is an Associate Professor in the Politics Department, an affiliated faculty member in the Environmental Studies Department, and a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Her research focuses on the shifting locations of power and influence in global environmental governance, and in particular the role of transnational actors in environmental decision-making. Her most recent projects examine how key norms in global climate politics shape power relations, the role of U.S. preferential trade agreements in shaping environmental policy in trading partner nations, and the politics of climate engineering governance. 

Andrew Szasz
  • Title
    • Professor
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Environmental Studies Department
  • Affiliations Sociology Department
  • Phone
    831-459-4662 (office), 831-459-2634 (ENVS department)
  • Email
  • Fax
    831-459-4015
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, 430
  • Mail Stop Environmental Studies
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 96064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise Environmental Studies, Environmental Policy, Environmental Justice, Climate Change, Sociology

Summary of Expertise

Environmental Sociology, Sociological Theory

Research Interests

Environmental Sociology: Environmental Movements, Regulation, Environmental Justice, Consumption, Politics and Sociology of Climate Change

Biography, Education and Training

B.A., Harvard University, 1969
M.A., University of Chicago, 1971
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982

Honors, Awards and Grants

2016  Martin M. Chemers Award for Outstanding Research, UCSC Social Science Division

2014 Teaching and Mentoring Award, Section on Environment & Technology, American Sociological Association

2011 recipient of the Frederick Buttel Distinguished Contribution Award of the Environment, Technology, and Society section of the American Sociological Association

2007  Awards for "Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves", University of Minnesota Press
- Finalist, 2008 C. Wright Mills Book Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
- Honorable Mention, 2008 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, Environmental Studies Section, International Studies Association

2007  UCSC Excellence in Teaching Award

2001  Golden Apple, UCSC Social Science Divisional Teaching Award

1994  Awards for "EcoPopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice". Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Winner, Association for Humanistic Sociology Book Award, 1994-1995
- Voted one of Top 10 Environmental Sociology Books/Articles in poll conducted by the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association

1991-1992 Teaching Award, UCSC Alumni Association




Selected Publications

  • How the World's Religions are Responding to Climate Change:  Social Scientific Investigations, Robin Globus Veldman, Andrew Szasz and Randolph Haluza-Delay, eds., Routledge, 2014.
  • Szasz, A., 2007. Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, University of Minnesota Press.
  • Szasz, A. 1994. EcoPopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  • Beth Shaefer Caniglia, Robert J. Brulle and Andrew Szasz, “Civil Society, Social Movements and Climate Change,” Chapter 8 in Riley E. Dunlap and Robert J. Brulle, eds., Society and Climate Change:  Sociological Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2015.

  • “Novel framings create new, unexpected allies for climate activism,” Chapter 10 in by Shannon O’Lear and Simon Dalby, eds., Reframing Climate Change: Constructing an Ecological Geopolitics, Routledge, 2015.

  • Bernard Zaleha and Andrew Szasz, “Why conservative Christians don’t believe in climate change,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 71(5; September/October): 19-30, 2015.

  • Bernard Zaleha and Andrew Szasz, “Keep Christianity Brown! Climate Denial on the Christian Right in the United States,” Chapter 14 in How the World’s Religions are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations, Veldman, Szasz and Haluza-DeLay, eds., Routledge, 2014.

  • Robin Globus Veldman, Andrew Szasz and Randolph Haluza-Delay, “Introduction:  Climate Change and Religion – A Review of Existing Literature,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 6(3):255-275, 2012.

  • “Is Green Consumption Part of the Solution?” pp. 594-608 in John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, & David Schlosberg, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society, Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • “Unintended, Inexorable: The Production of Environmental Inequalities in Santa Cruz County, California,” with Michael Meuser, American Behavioral Scientist, 43(4):602-632, 2000.
  • "Environmental Inequalities: Literature Review and Proposals for New Directions in Research and Theory," with Michael Meuser, Current Sociology, 45(3):99-120, 1997.
  • "Public Participation in the Cleanup of Contaminated Military Facilities: Democratization or Anticipatory Cooptation?" with Michael Meuser, International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 34(1):1-22, 1997.
  • "Progress through Mischief: The Social Movement Alternative to Secondary Associations," Politics & Society, 20(4):521-528, 1992.
  • "In Praise of Policy Luddism: Strategic Lessons from the Hazardous Waste Wars," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology, 2(1):17-43, 1991.
  • "Corporations, Organized Crime and the Disposal of Hazardous Waste: An Examination of the Making of a Criminogenic Regulatory Structure," Criminology, 24(1):1 27, 1986.
  • "The Process and Significance of Political Scandals: A Comparison of Watergate and the 'Sewergate' Episode at the Environmental Protection Agency," Social Problems, 33(3):202 217, 1986.
  • "The Reversal of Federal Policy Toward Worker Safety and Health: A Critical Examination of Alternative Explanations," Science and Society, 50(1):25 51, 1986.
  • "Accident Proneness: The Career of an Ideological Concept," Psychology and Social Theory, 1(4):25 35, 1984.
  • "Industrial Resistance Toward Occupational Safety and Health Legislation, 1971 1981," Social Problems, 32(2):103 116, 1984.

Teaching Interests

Environmental Justice/Environmental Inequality; Social Theory; Environmental Movements; Nuclear Power and Nuclear War; Introduction to Environmental Sociology