David J. Hess

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Vanderbilt University

As governments have implemented climate mitigation policy, the construction of utility-scale renewable energy has led to increased opposition. Some governments have responded by preempting local authority over siting decisions, whereas others have opted to strengthen it. In the US, the state of Ohio is the leading example of the latter. Its enablin...

Sustainability transitions can be understood as the transformation of socio-technical systems towards the sustainable provision of societal functions. Socio-technical systems are held together by formal and informal rules, also called institutions. For sustainability transitions to materialize, the formal and informal rules of socio-technical syste...

Sustainability transitions can be understood as the transformation of socio-technical systems towards the sustainable provision of societal functions. Socio-technical systems are held together by formal and informal rules, also called institutions. For sustainability transitions to materialize, the formal and informal rules of socio-technical syste...

Although scientific research is often crucial for efforts to achieve improved environmental regulation for industrial products and processes, scientists who document or publicize research on possible risks can face suppression or censorship by industry, government, and other actors. This study contributes to the sociology of science by examining th...

The continuing build-out of fossil-fuel infrastructure creates technological and financial lock-in that can slow the transition away from fossil-fuel dependence, and it also causes the destruction of local landscapes, communities, and economies, which can lead to opposition. To date, researchers have demonstrated that opposition coalitions are some...

This study advances theory in the politics of sustainability transitions by 1) developing a type of sociotechnical perspective that follows politics into the details of regulatory conflict over system design, 2) analyzing transition politics as a multi-coalition policy field beyond an intra-industry challenger-incumbent relationship, and 3) showing...

A longitudinal analysis of small-scale solar energy generation in the United States is used to demonstrate how transition studies can explain nonlinearity in multidecade changes of consumption-production systems. Nonlinearity involves uneven development of sustainability innovations with episodes of rapid growth but also periods of slow growth, sta...

As automation increases qualitatively and quantitatively in safety-critical human cyber-physical systems, it is becoming more and more challenging to increase the probability or ensure that human operators still perceive key artefacts and comprehend their roles in the system. In the companion paper, we proposed an abstract reference architecture ca...

The design and analysis of multi-agent human cyber-physical systems in safety-critical or industry-critical domains calls for an adequate semantic foundation capable of exhaustively and rigorously describing all emergent effects in the joint dynamic behavior of the agents that are relevant to their safety and well-behavior. We present such a semant...

We propose a reference architecture of safety-critical or industry-critical human cyber-physical systems (CPSs) capable of expressing essential classes of system-level interactions between CPS and humans relevant for the societal acceptance of such systems. To reach this quality gate, the expressivity of the model must go beyond classical viewpoint...

Research on ridesourcing has grown exponentially in recent years. This study details the results of a systematic review of 161 publications on ridesourcing that explore environmental sustainability and equity in North American cities. We identify five main areas of research. First, ridesourcing is associated with two modal shifts: a decline of the...

Based on a unique data set of research reports that appear in media coverage of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline conflict in the United States, the study brings together perspectives in social movement theory and the sociology of science and technology by (1) developing an understanding of the epistemic dimension of framing through the analysis of the s...

A salient problem faced by governments and industry alike is how to accelerate energy transitions to enhance affordability, accessibility, and greenhouse-gas reduction. Bringing together acceleration processes and spatial scale dynamics, this study highlights the potential for electricity distribution to play a keystone role in the energy transitio...

With the growth of commercial and recreational use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), there is increasing attention to the need for regulation. A systematic review is conducted using a multiple comparative perspective: across three political jurisdictions (the United States, the European Union, and Japan) and across two areas of societa...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore, develop, and evaluate a new sustainable development goals (SDG) index that quantifies corporate social responsibility (CSR). By providing a granular perspective with clear justification for methods, this index is more applicable to academic research in comparison with the CSR indices published by pri...

One dimension of the emerging politics of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) is the development of public concerns over their societal implications and associated policy issues. This study uses original survey data from the United States to contribute to the anticipation of future policy and political issues for CAVs. Several studies have surv...

Given the growing frequency, severity, and salience of social mobilization and community action on energy and climate issues, in this study we systematically explore the configurations of types of infrastructure, actors, tactics, and outcomes of recent opposition to energy transitions across seven carbon-intensive regions in Asia, Europe, and North...

In a commentary essay, Westman and Castán Broto claim that some choices of analytic strategy are inappropriate for research in urban environmental studies (“Transcending Existing Paradigms: The Quest for Justice in Urban Climate Change Planning.” Local Environment, 26(5), 536–541). In contrast, this commentary argues that there can be benefits from...

Many U.S. states have taken significant action on climate change in recent years, demonstrating their commitment despite federal policy gridlock and rollbacks. Yet, there is still much we do not know about the agents, discourses, and strategies of those seeking to delay or obstruct state-level climate action. We first ask, what are the obstacles to...

Many U.S. states have taken significant action on climate change in recent years, demonstrating their commitment despite federal policy gridlock and rollbacks. Yet, there is still much we do not know about the agents, discourses, and strategies of those seeking to delay or obstruct state-level climate action. We first ask, what are the obstacles to...

This study contributes to the analysis of civil society and knowledge by examining mobilizations by civil society organizations and grassroots networks in opposition to wireless smart meters in the United States. Three types of mobilizations are reviewed: grassroots anti-smart-meter networks, privacy organizations, and organizations that advocate f...

Ridesourcing advocates and companies promise many benefits to cities, such as increased accessibility, a solution to the last-mile transit problem, and even reduced need for automobiles. However, an important body of research has indicated that ridesourcing is more heavily used by more privileged consumers and in more affluent and whiter neighborho...

Much of the work on technology transitions and electricity has concentrated on sustainability from the perspective of centralized generation and transmission companies. For example, there is a substantial literature in energy social science on the role that the smart grid plays in the sustainable energy transition, and much of that research assumes...

This study develops a comparative, sociotechnical design perspective for interdisciplinary teams of social scientists and computer scientists. Sociotechnical design refers to identifying both technical and governance challenges and to understanding the ways in which the two types of problems affect and define each other. Approaching design as an op...

This study draws on environmental and energy justice research to develop the analysis of energy infrastructure opposition from a justice perspective. A comprehensive data set of 70 cases of opposition to socioenvironmental effects of proposed electricity power lines in North America was developed. The analysis of strategic frames used by opposition...

Building on privacy principles of the Fair Information Practice Principles and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, the study compares national policies and programs in Europe and North America and identifies prevailing practices for implementing privacy goals for residential energy customers: customer opt-out policies, sampling...

Whereas research to date has focused on the role of governments and unions in leading just transition initiatives, this study explores the role of a broad range of civil society actors. It focuses on the central Appalachian region in the U.S. (Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia), which has significant fossil-fuel resources. Based on an analysis...

An almost inexhaustible number of conceptual approaches has arisen in the past few decades to seek to explain the interlinked phenomena of energy transitions, low-carbon transitions, or sociotechnical change. With an eye for theoretical synthesis, this study asks: What do three particular epistemic communities—those concerning innovation, practices...

With the growing attention to political dimensions of sustainability transitions (STs), researchers have shown interest in theoretical frameworks from policy studies and sociology. A framework that has growing popularity is the theory of strategic action fields (SAF) as developed by Fligstein and McAdam (2011; 2012). This review shows 1) how the in...

Government plans and initiatives for the 50 largest U.S. cities were examined for connections between social equity and sustainability. Six sectors that are associated with sustainability (defined as the sector’s potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions) were included: buildings, electricity, food, greenspace, pollution and air quality, and tra...

This study examines the results of field experiments of transactive energy systems (TESs) in order to identify challenges that occur with the integration of TESs with existing software, hardware, appliances, and customer practices. Three types of challenges, and potential responses and solutions, are identified for the implementation phase of TESs:...

The field of science and technology studies (STS) has introduced and developed a “sociotechnical” perspective that has been taken up by many disciplines and areas of inquiry. The aims and objectives of this study are threefold: to interrogate which sociotechnical concepts or tools from STS are useful at better understanding energy-related social sc...

Theoretical frameworks associated with science and technology studies (STS) are becoming increasingly prominent in social science energy research, but what do they offer? This review provides a brief history of relevant STS concepts and frameworks and a structured analysis of how STS perspectives are appearing in energy social science research and...

Although there is great media attention to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and strong public interest in the technology, it is still under development. Their deployment to the broader public will require new regulations and road traffic rules that are also under development, and there is not yet a globally harmonized approach. This paper re...

This study reviews the development of shared (community) solar and community choice aggregation in the U.S. states of California and New York. Both states are leaders in energy-transition policy in the U.S., but they have different trajectories for the two forms of energy decentralization. Shared solar is more advanced in New York, but community ch...

The study examines the relationship between energy policy and values that appears in social movement mobilizations with respect to energy in the United States. As the social movement mobilizations include persons and groups located in disadvantaged or subordinate positions of the social structure, the analysis of social movements and values can bri...

This essay is written in response to Fujimura and Holmes’s piece “Staying the Course,” published in the December 2019 special issue of Sociological Forum—Resistance in the Twenty‐First Century.

Available open access at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162519300563. The transition to connected and autonomous (or automated) vehicles (CAVs) in the United States is used to explore the role of civil society in the acceleration and deceleration of sociotechnical transitions. This is an “incumbent-led transition,” which oc...

Recycling of effluent water from urban water-supply systems is often a more sustainable water source than increased use of surface sources, groundwater sources, and desalination. However, water-supply organizations (WSOs) often do not take full advantage of recycled water. Although recycling water for direct potable use is efficient, public concern...

[Available open access at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629619301896.] The lack of progress on greenhouse-gas reduction at the global level has drawn attention to the need to strengthen support for energy-transition policies. One crucial component of such support is a better understanding of the political strategy of coalit...

Sustainability transitions often involve policy conflicts, especially when incumbents perceive threats to their business models, and conflicts involve framing of competing positions in the public sphere. Using the case of the growth of distributed solar energy in the U.S. electricity sector, this study shows how the concepts of industry and politic...

Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power...

[Available open access at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629618307667.] A significant topic of research in the analysis of the politics of sustainability transitions is the role of coalitions. This study builds on previous research that utilizes discourse coalition and framing theories to develop a method for analyzing coali...

This study reviews conservative political party policy positions in six European countries with high greenhouse-gas emissions (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the U.K.). Using party platform statements from recent election campaigns, the positions of moderate conservative parties are compared with those of far-right political p...

Educational attainment is generally a strong predictor of belief in climate change, but prior research indicates that for political conservatives a college education is not always associated with increased belief. Conservatives in several countries, especially those in populist parties, have shown skepticism toward climate-mitigation policies and i...

[Available at https://aquadoc.typepad.com/files/gunda-et-al-2019-water-security-in-practice-quant-qual-soc-nexus.pdf.] The study of water resources has evolved from a focus on physical availability to also include social factors such as governance. Increased understanding of diversephysical and social influences has led to a more comprehensive noti...

[Available open access at https://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644016.2019.1565679.] The environmental justice (EJ) literature can benefit from comparative analysis that helps to identify conditions for more and less successful outcomes. A data set of 50 EJ cases in the U.S. was developed with high and low remediation as the outcome. Causa...

Interviews and a survey were conducted with civil society advocates and government officials in U.S. cities and counties that have made a commitment to 100% clean, renewable, community-wide electricity. Survey questions indicated that the characteristics of the cities are consistent with the broader literature on policy adoption for urban sustainab...

Research on the anti-dam movement in Brazil provides an opportunity to explore social theory at the intersections of social movement studies (SMS) and science and technology studies (STS) and to develop a Latin American perspective on the relationship. The review essay begins with an analysis from an SMS perspective of structural conditions, such a...

An important but sometimes overlooked dimension of the study of energy, democracy, and governance is the role of social movements. Industrial transition movements (ITMs) emerge when there is resistance from incumbent organizations, such as large utility companies in the electricity industry, to grassroots efforts to change the industry. A classific...

Prepublication version available via this link https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VrAK3QCo9NFxB. Pervasive misinformation about climate change might be reduced if colleges were to include the topic within general education curriculum. This paper analyzes the general education (or “core”) curriculum in the top 100 universities and liberal-arts colleges...

Urban water supply systems in the United States are increasingly stressed as economic and population growth confront limited water resources. Demand management, through conservation and improved efficiency, has long been promoted as a practical alternative to building Promethean energy-intensive water supply infrastructure. Some cities are making g...

This study develops research on social movements, political coalitions, and sustainability transitions with a multi-coalition perspective. The perspective begins with a typology of coalitions based on two pairs of goals—general societal change versus the sociotechnical transition of an industry or technological system, and sunrising versus sunsetti...

Available open access here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2016.1227417. Abstract: This study contributes to the analysis of the politics of sustainability transitions by developing a focus on regime actor conflicts and a processual model for how these conflicts develop and are resolved. In a comparison of water-supply system...

Prepublication version available at http://davidjhess.net/all-research.html. Research on the politics of sustainability transitions can benefit from more attention to the political opportunity structure and its variation at different levels of spatial scale. The study focuses on policy conflicts in the U.S. as represented in the media during the Ob...

The present study contributes to the environmental justice (EJ) literature by quantitatively examining spatial location within a city through an intersectional lens. Specifically, we develop the literature on longstanding conflicts over the location of bus depots and urban environmental inequality to study how patterns of racial, ethnic, and class...

The development of a vibrant clean technology (or ‘cleantech’) sector has numerous advantages for a regional economy, among them economic development and job creation. But how do governments go about developing this sector? General demand policies and environmental regulations are clearly important, but this review of regional cleantech policies fo...

Prepublication proofs available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306312717709363. What theories or concepts are most useful at explaining socio technical change? How can - or cannot - these be integrated? To provide an answer, this study presents the results from 35 semi-structured research interviews with social science experts w...

Final draft version is available at www.davidjhess.net at http://www.davidjhess.net/uploads/3/4/8/1/34811322/waterpolicy.2017.finaldraft.pdf. Policies that increase the reliance of a water-supply organization (WSO) on water conservation have economic and environmental benefits, but some cities and WSOs have been reluctant to pursue such policies to...

This article (1) discusses existing efforts to measure water conservation policies (WCPs) in the United States (U.S.); (2) suggests general methodological guidelines for creating robust water conservation indices (WCIs); (3) presents a comprehensive template for coding WCPs; (4) introduces a summary index, the Vanderbilt Water Conservation Index (V...

This chapter reviews the different streams of STS research that investigate the relationship among science, technology, and structural inequalities. We consider some of the ways these different pathways converge and diverge, and we focus on a growing body of recent research distinguished by its integration of political sociological theory and relat...

The concept of the political opportunity structure from social movement studies has undergone various expansions, including the development of a theory of the industry opportunity structure in social movement studies and of the intellectual opportunity structure in science and technology studies. The chapter then discusses how the theory of the pol...

The chapter discusses the problem of developing a historical sociological perspective on science, technology, and social movements during the period of the 1980s through 2015. It argues in favor of a historical dynamic based on liberalization and reflexive modernization that is similar to Polanyi’s double movement. The dynamic is formulated specifi...

The study of science, technology, and social movements could develop as a syncretism of concepts from the fields of SMS and STS, but I have argued that the research field requires its own conceptual toolkit that builds on and modifies the frameworks of the existing fields. To this end, I have suggested various bridges that synthesize the empirical...

The chapter reviews literature in social movement studies on resource mobilization, mobilizing structures, and organizations, then it examines a parallel literature in science and technology studies on networks. It suggests a way to build on these literatures by analyzing the organizational dimension of counterpublic knowledge, and it argues that t...

The chapter reviews the literature on frame analysis and narratives in social movement studies and the parallel literature in science and technology studies on technological frames, boundary objects, and other cultural dimensions of science and expertise. It suggests the value of materializing the analysis of cultural meaning in the study of social...

The chapter focuses on the processes of industrial change in relationship to social movements. It builds on two literatures, one on institutional logics and the other on industrial transitions, and shows similarities and differences between the two literatures. It then examines the problem of resistance from industrial regime organizations or incum...

This book examines research at the intersection of two literatures—social movement studies and science and technology studies—and it argues that it is now possible to develop a theoretical synthesis of core concepts. The diversification of social movement studies toward non-state targets and institutionalized repertoires of action coincides with th...

This chapter builds on two literatures: repression and backfire in social movement studies, and ignorance and suppression in science and technology studies. The chapter then introduces the concepts of undone science and industrial transition movements. Industrial transition movements are mobilized counterpublics of activists, advocates, entrepreneu...

Available open access at the publisher web site: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2016.1227417. Environmental politics in advanced industrialized countries have been characterized as a dynamic interaction of two opposing movements: an original movement of progressive environmentalism and a countermovement of conservative opposit...

The effort to transition energy sources away from dependence on fossil fuels has become highly divided along partisan lines in some countries, but the social-science literature has not yet caught up with this important problem. Policy-adoption studies do not address the specific problem of polarization and gridlock, and the literature on gridlock d...

This is now available open access at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210422415300174. In the U.S. utilities have attempted to slow the growth of distributed generation (DG) solar by reversing policy support, and they have greater financial and political resources than the solar industry. Empirical analysis of all major cases of n...

Final prepublication available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1573-7861/earlyview Although there are multiple causes of the water scarcity crisis in the American Southwest, it can be used as a model of the long-term problem freshwater shortages that climate change will exacerbate. We examine the water-supply crisis for 22...

The European Union encourages and institutionalizes participation by environmental, consumer, and labor organizations in the governance of nanotechnology. Interviews with leaders of the civil society organizations (CSOs) show that they identified multiple problems with nanotechnology policy but had only limited success in gaining the changes that t...

Available open-access at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961530030X. We develop a novel, mixed methods approach to examine the relationship between political ideology and support for renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE) policies. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with state-government legislators in the U.S...

This is now available open access at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961530030X. We develop a novel, mixed methods approach to examine the relationship between political ideology and support for renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE) policies. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with state-government legislator...

A Commentary on Taylor Dotson’s “Technological Determinism and Permissionless Innovation as Technocratic Governing Mentalities: Psychocultural Barriers to the Democratization of Technology”

Cities across the world have had to diversify and expand their water-supply systems in response to demand growth, groundwater depletion and pollution, and instability and inadequacy of regional surface freshwater sources. In the U.S., these problems plague not only the arid Western cities but increasingly cities in the Eastern portions of the count...

Now available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644016.2014.973222. Research building on political economy and ecological modernization theories has paid increasing attention to the conditions that affect the prospects for environmental reform. Much work focuses on variation among political units in support of a single type of energy...

Available open-access at http://sspp.proquest.com/static_content/vol11iss1/1404-006.hess.pdf. Because elected officials and voting publics in the United States have disagreed with policies to decrease greenhouse-gas emissions and increase renewable energy, research is needed to help guide practitioners toward policy initiatives that are less likely...

When government and industry elites respond to or anticipate public acceptance issues having to do with industrial innovation, they construct models of the public that have variously been described as imaginaries, discourses, and frames. Because publics are sometimes mobilized in opposition to new technologies, opportunities emerge for bridging sci...

Prepublication version available at www.davidjhess.net. Health advocacy organizations can be conceptualized on a continuum from an interest group pole, which generally does not challenge mainstream assumptions about etiology and treatment, to a social movement pole, which often challenges the dominant epidemiological paradigm and calls attention to...

Final prepublication version available at www.davidjhess.net. The epistemic modernization of the scientific field, as a countervailing process to its industrialization and neoliberalization, involves recognition of a specific type of ignorance. The term “undone science” refers to a situation of unequal power that involves a conflict between reforme...

Prepublication version available at www.davidjhess.net. A qualitative comparative analysis was undertaken of 18 Asian countries to determine factors that influence the pace of their sustainability transitions toward increased renewable energy for electricity. We develop a policy index based on renewable electricity targets, feed-in tariffs, and emi...

Introduction to special issue edited by Scott Frickel and David Hess. This introduction gives a historical and theoretical overview of this volume on Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age which showcases original research in political sociology of science targeting the changes in scientific and technological polic...