(Harrison, Jill Lindsey - 2017) -- ACLS Fellows (ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowships and ACLS/New York Public Library Fellowships)
Overview
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As an acute investigator of social injustice, Jill Harrison has developed a reputation for incisive observations about why and how environmental and workplace inequalities persist in the United States today. Her book Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice (2011) studies the political conflicts concerning the movement of pesticides beyond their intended target zones in the state of California. From that focused study she identifies related problems of urgent concern throughout the United States and offers potential solutions. Harrison noticed that despite a massive state regulatory apparatus devoted to preserving public health, pesticide pollution and the human illnesses associated with it still disproportionately afflict poor residential areas in California. She argues that this discrepancy arises from the fact that the agricultural industry, environmental regulators, and activists hold different and conflicting views about how to define “justice” in this case. In 2012 Pesticide Drift was honored with awards from two scholarly societies, the Rural Sociological Society and the Association of Humanist Sociology. Professor Harrison’s scholarly vocation, seen in her many publications, also includes public outreach, and her research into recent immigration enforcement escalations in rural Wisconsin well prepared her to serve as a member of the Wisconsin Governor’s Council on Migrant Labor (2009–11) and a board member for the Wisconsin Migrant Coalition (2008–11). Her newest research project considers how government agencies go about institutionalizing the principles of environmental justice, what is lost in that transition and what, potentially, is gained.
