News and Announcements

Department alumnus Valerie Gunter (phd 1992) has published a book entitled "Volatile Places: A Sociology of Communities and Environmental Controversies" with Steve Kroll-Smith at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Val is currently at the University of New Orleans, but some of you may have been aware that she and her husband Tom Andersen (Ph.D. 1997) were here in the department last fall and the previous spring as refugees from Katrina.

The Sage advert says: Volatile Places: A Sociology of Communities and Environmental Controversies is a thoughtful guide to the spirited public controversies that inevitably occur when environments and human communities collide. The movie An Inconvenient Truth based on the environmental activism of Al Gore and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina are specifically highlighted. Authors Valerie Gunter and Steve Kroll-Smith begin with a simple observation and offer a provocative case study approach to the investigation of community and environmental controversies.

Department alumnus Tomiko Yamaguchi (Ph.D. 2004) has published an article based on the fieldwork she conducted for her dissertation "Controversy Over Genetically Modified Crops in India: Discursive Strategies and Social Identities of Farmers" in Discourse Studies (2007; 9[1]:87-107)

Andrew P. Davidson, alumnus of MSU's Sociology Department (Ph.D. 1992), has published an article entitled "Participation, Education, and Pluralism: Towards a New Extension Ethic" in Development in Practice (17[1]:39-50) . . . the abstract of the article is available at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a771212765?jumptype=alert&alerttype=new_issue_alert,email . Andrew is on the faculty at the School of Sociology and Anthropology, University of New South Wales, Sidney, NSW, 2052, Australia.

Department alumnus Ivan Ivanov (Ph.D. 2004) has been put in charge of the World Health Organization’s effort to develop an action plan for the global public health efforts concerning asbestos.  Interested persons can see an example of Ivan’s efforts, “Draft WHO policy paper on elimination of asbestos-related diseases” at http://www.who.int/occupational_health/publications/asbestos_policy/en/.  In Ivan’s words, “The primary purpose of this document is to integrate the conclusions of the risk assessments of asbestos carried out under the auspices of WHO, to outline the magnitude of the problem of asbestos-related diseases and to provide general recommendations for their elimination through regulatory, engineering and medical interventions”.

Elizabeth Ransom (Ph.D. '04) and Tomiko Yamaguchi (Ph.D. '05) have both been elected to the Executive Council of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 40 on the sociology of food and agriculture.