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Quantitative sociologists conducting environmental research often use temporally lagged variables to estimate the social drivers of ecological change. To highlight the relevance of temporal lags for this scholarship, we specifically look at the longitudinal relationship between demographic and economic change and two different environmental outcomes: land development and carbon emissions. For land development, we run longitudinal spatial regression models to assess whether increasing the lag time changes the slope estimates for in‐migration and out‐migration at the county level across the contiguous United States (n = 3,026). For carbon emissions, we use cross‐national data in Prais–Winsten models to assess changes in the lagged estimates for GDP, urbanization, and age structure (n = 146). Results from these analyses indicate that the slope estimates continue to be statistically significant, but the magnitudes of these coefficients change with increased lag time. We propose that scholars use a more systematic approach when assessing the temporal duration of socio‐ecological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the governance regimes of the United States and many other nations have increasingly devolved authority from central federal governments to substantially weaker state and local governments and even private industry. This trend produces uneven results for affected spaces and modes of governance. At the same time, industries have been re‐regulated under neoliberalization to maximize corporate profitability. Conterminous to the trend of neoliberal deregulation is the global energy transition. The U.S. energy system has shifted away from coal toward natural gas and has become the world's top producer of hydrocarbons due to the widespread deployment of drilling techniques that allow access to unconventional resources. We evaluate the ways that neoliberal governance structures can create uneven socio‐economic impacts from oil and gas development across U.S. states using a multi‐level modeling framework with random slopes and cross‐level interactions. We utilize a multi‐level state and county data set that covers 2000–2016 to examine different outcomes across scales and places. We find evidence that state political economies—reflected in the ideological composition of state legislatures as well as the political spending of the energy sector—condition the effects of oil and gas development on well‐being. These findings are discussed in reference to theories of neoliberalism, growth machine politics, energy boomtowns, and natural resource‐dependent communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The durability of racism in the United States continues to inspire critical scholarship about the mechanisms that drive persisting inequalities. Drawing on theories of colorblindness and white ignorance, growing work examines how White people actively deny, revise, or mystify white supremacy, illuminating cultural mechanisms that (re)produce racialized structures. Largely absent from this body of work, however, is the potential role of religion—specifically Christianity—as a cultural system that can inform and legitimize ways of knowing (or not knowing) about racism. Here, we draw on 85 interviews with White Christians (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical Protestant) to analyze how they talk about racism and produce racial knowledge. We show how some White Christians draw on colorblind religious frames and religious frames of diversity and inclusion to inform and legitimize overlapping, sometimes contradictory racial logics that can be deployed across social contexts to produce ignorance about systemic racism. Findings reveal the production of colorblindness as a dynamic process that, under certain conditions, White Christians actively negotiate by using religious frames, producing what we describe as divinized colorblindness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing manufacturing economy has received scant attention in research on environmental inequalities, even though manufacturing work in the United States has dropped precipitously since the mid‐20th century. I integrate manufacturing decline in metropolitan areas into the study of environmental inequality by using data on industrial air pollution in 1990, 2000, and 2010. I test to see if an indicator of change in the number of manufacturing workers in a metropolitan area from 1970 to each of the three study years is associated with more or less industrially produced toxic emissions. Findings show, somewhat counterintuitively, that metropolitan areas that have had a larger drop in manufacturing work are linked to greater industrial air pollution and that these findings hold in all U.S. regions except the West. Implications focus on how the indelible imprint of manufacturing history may condition contemporary pollution levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrant farmworkers in the United States are a vulnerable population who often face uncertain legal standing, fewer financial and health‐related resources, and higher exposure to work hazards. This article focuses on the loneliness—the subjective experience of social isolation—of immigrant farmworker communities, analyzes the social patterning of loneliness in this population, and estimates its association with self‐rated health. Data come from interviews with immigrant farmworkers (N = 260) at two sites in the rural Southeast. Immigrant farmworkers report substantially high levels of loneliness and appear to be lonelier than the levels found in a diverse range of other published studies of adults. Older women immigrant farmworkers, those with no formal schooling, and farmworkers experiencing food insecurity are especially lonely, and they stand to benefit most from social service outreach. However, the association between loneliness and self‐rated health is relatively weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript lays the groundwork for considering racial threat as a collective emotion. Although sociologists regularly study racial threat, a disconnect exists between Blumer's theoretical framework (1958) and modern empirical measurement. Research has largely measured racial threat as perceptions of competition or increases in racism. Neither, however, squarely fits the symbolic interactionist framework that Blumer championed. This manuscript frames racial threat as an affective group response that is generated through sustained interaction with social groups and group representations. After showing how Blumer's threat conceptualization fits the parameters of a collective emotion, I demonstrate how quantitative measurement and experimental research design can be used to capture threat as Blumer outlines it. Then, using factor analyses and regression, I illustrate that collective threat is distinct from other collective emotions and operates according to Blumer's theoretical predictions. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of how ongoing attempts to measure collective threat and the evolution of racism in the United States highlight the continued relevance of Blumer's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]