
Contact Information
111 Garland Hall
615-343-0224
Email
Website
WF 1-2pm and by appt
Research Interests
- Environmental Sociology
- Environmental Justice
- Sustainability
Education
PhD, University of Oregon 2018
Curriculum Vitae
Patrick Trent Greiner
Assistant Professor of Sociology
How does social inequality change the way that we interact with our environment?
My research program explores how various forms of inequality emerging from social, political, and economic structures pattern socio-environmental outcomes in ways that are often detrimental to environmental systems and harmful to marginalized social groups. Put differently, my research speaks to the ways in which inequality facilitates, and even necessitates, environmental degradations at the international and national level in the contemporary socio-economic system. In order to get at this broader question, my research examines how societies attempt to mitigate environmental concerns; how inequality constrains or facilitates social groups’ ability to address such concerns; and how various measures of inequality shape our understandings of the source and extent of environmental problems.
Guided by such questions, I have taken my current work in a number of interrelated directions. For example, much of my present work is concerned with how historically constituted international inequalities act to shape contemporary socio-environmental relationships. To this end I am interested in further developing our understandings of how processes of colonization and imperialism moderate the relationship between national level economic and demographic structures, and ecological impacts. Relatedly, I am currently engaged in exploring the ways in which national level inequalities- such as gender, income and racial disparities- serve to limit how effectively populations are able to protect environmental spaces, and convert natural resources to social goods. In the most general sense, the findings of such works suggest that the institution of democratic and egalitarian principles and processes lead social systems to function more sustainably.
Selected Publications
Greiner, Patrick Trent; and McGee, Julius Alexander. 2020. “The Asymmetry of Economic Growth and the Carbon Intensity of Well-being”. Environmental Sociology, 6(1): 95-106. DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2019.1675567
Greiner, Patrick Trent; Daniel A. Shtob; and Jordan Fox Besek. 2020. “Is Urbanization Good for the Climate? A Cross-County Analysis of Impervious Surface, Affluence, and the Carbon Intensity of Well-Being”. Socius, 6: 1-16. DOI: 10.1177/2378023119896896
Greiner, Patrick Trent. 2020. “Community Water System Privatization and The Water Access Crisis” Sociology Compass, 4(5): 1-13, DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12785
McGee, Julius Alexander; and Patrick Trent Greiner. 2019. “Renewable Energy Injustice: The Socio-environmental Implications of Renewable Energy Consumption”, Energy Research and Social Science, 56. DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2019.05.024