Publications
These are some of the most recent solo and jointed authored publications that are updated regularly.
The Climate Change Counter Movement: How the Fossil Fuel industry sought to delay climate action. Palgrave Macmillan.
May 2023
This book provides an historical account of the emergence and spread of the climate change counter movement across the globe. Drawing on an extensive database developed by the author, the book recounts the development of an international network, taking the reader on a journey through the history of the movement before looking closely at a series of comparative case studies examining movement organisations in different countries.
Pet Insurance Discrimination and Domestic Violence: Double Jeopardy in the UK.
May 2023
Prompted by Signal et al.’s study, this research examines UK “Pet Insurance” policies to see if and how experiencing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in interspecies households is excluded under insurance policies terms. Situating our findings within the existing literature on human and companion animal victims of DVA, we discuss the implications for improving cross-reporting and multi-agency action to protect and prevent harm to humans and companion animal victims of DVA. In turn we identify a series of recommendations to combat discrimination in insurance, set out in our conclusion
Climate obstruction and Facebook advertising: how a sample of climate obstruction organizations use social media to disseminate discourses of delay
February 2023
In this article, we present the results of a content analysis of a sample of fossil fuel corporations, industry associations, and advocacy groups’ ads using Facebook ad services during the election year from January 2020 to January 2021. Creating a messaging typology, we analyzed 30,100 ads on Facebook and found that different organizations used these messages to reinforce pre-existing beliefs on the importance of fossil fuels. In doing so, these organizations can use Facebook to reassert their interests in the public voice and support standards of behavior that rely on fossil fuels, protecting their industries. Additionally, we found differences between the types of messaging and ads targeted to particular users by age, gender, and state. These ads represent the evolving misinformation playbook from climate obstruction organizations that require further attention and consideration, particularly via social media platforms that may have limited or unclear regulations.
Feminist Animal Studies: Theories, practices, politics.
December 2022
This book explores human–animal relations and species- based domination at the intersection of feminism with critique of our domination and exploitation of nonhuman animals, in conversation with power dynamics around coloniality and race, class, sexuality and embodiment.
The collection demonstrates the continued vital importance of feminism – conceptually and theoretically, methodologically and politically – to the development of animal studies. Feminism has made an incisive critique of the ways in which gender and other intersecting differences and inequalities are constitutive of our destructive, exploitative and often violent relationships with nonhuman worlds. An international group of scholars and activists showcase new work, revisiting and extending established debates while negotiating new paths. Amongst the issues addressed in this collection will be questions of animal being and animal rights, caring relations, the relationships between activism and theory, interspecies sexual violence, tension in the animal defence movement around body politics, gender politics and professionalisation, different spaces of gender and animal relations from social media to sexology, safe spaces and sanctuaries, spaces of home – both in times of ‘business-as-usual’ and in times of lockdown.
This multidisciplinary volume will be essential reading to students and academics working in the fields of cultural studies, criminology, geography, history, law, philosophy, politics and sociology, with interest in gender, environmentalism and animal studies.
The editors work in the School of Applied Social Sciences at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, and share interests in gender and species violence, environmental harms, social justice matters and intersected inequalities.
An Environmental Harm Perspective to examine our understanding of UK Nuclear Energy Expansion
October 2019
Uranium makes up 95% of the compounds used in the nuclear energy industry in the United Kingdom (UK). In 2018, the UK had 15 nuclear reactors which generate up to 21% of the UK’s electricity, however, the UK government plans to retire half of these reactors by 2025. Nonetheless, in 2017, the UK government announced they plan to invest up to £100 million in small nuclear power generation stations. This they contend will ‘provide a competitive edge to technology and a new source of clean power’ (GOV, 2017). This article aims to evaluate the outcomes of the proposed expansion of the nuclear energy industry in the UK.
This study outlines what are the ecological and social considerations that must be considered when developing policy if the UK is to expand its nuclear energy industry. Using theoretical perspectives from the green criminological literature, it considers the strengths and weaknesses of the industry. In doing so, it highlights the interrelations between (nuclear) energy production, global economic market structures, and notions of social and environmental harm. Lastly, we utilize our theorization to posit a series of recommendations surrounding the intensification and expansion of nuclear energy production in the UK.
Climate denial: Donald Trump mimics criminal behaviour when justifying his stance
July 30th 2019
My conversation piece on Donald Trump, Climate Change Denial and Criminality
"Climate Change Counter Movement Neutralization Techniques: A Typology to Examine the Climate Change Counter Movement"
June 2018
The Climate Change Counter Movement has been a topic of interest for social scientists and environmentalists for the past 25 years (McCright and Dunlap, 2015). This research uses the sociology of crime and deviance to analyze the numerous arguments used by climate change counter movement organizations. Content analysis of 805 statements made by climate change counter movement organizations reveals that the theory Techniques of Neutralization (Sykes and Matza, 1957) can help us better understand the arguments adopted by these organizations. Taking two observations from two time points, I examine not only the composition of the messaging adopted by CCCM organization, but how these messages have changed overtime. In all, there were 1435 examples of CCCM neutralisation techniques adopted by CCCM organizations across these two points in time. This examination of the movement provides valuable insight into the CCCM and the subsequent environmental harm that is partly facilitated by their actions.
2018
Green criminology and the prevention of ecological destruction
January 2017
Book Chapter
2016
Studies of environmental injustice have been intensely scrutinized by social science researchers since the publication of the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice report entitled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States in 1987. Importantly, there has been an emphasis on analysing longitudinal data to answer the question 'which came first, people or pollution?' In addition, determining where environmental hazards are located and how demographics around those hazards are estimated has become central to any empirical enquiry on the topic. This new letter by Mohai and Saha (2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 115008) adds to our emerging understanding of environmental justice by analysing the distribution of Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facilities across the United States to determine why they are concentrated in non-white and low income neighbourhoods. The researchers clearly demonstrate how longitudinal analysis and advances in geographic information system methodology can help address meaningful social questions about environmental inequality that are central to environmental policy and practice.
2015
The international voluntary carbon market allows economic actors to profit financially by selling carbon reduction projects (as carbon credits) in the marketplace. The objective of this work is to examine the ideology of that market and its implications for crime and climate change. More specifically, we compare advertising messages for two sets of actors in the voluntary carbon market: criminal and non-criminal organizations. To carry out this analysis we draw upon a grounded theory approach to analyze marketing websites for a sample of organizations that sell credits. We discover that overall, organizations draw upon ecological modernization ideology to provide opportunities to gain access to investors and victims by emphasizing (1) sustainability; (2) ethical behaviour; (3) economic development; and, (4) technological innovation. Importantly, statistical analyses failed to differentiate between the forms of modernization ideology employed by legal and illegal actors. Everyone who participates in or studies the carbon offset market know that it is a haven for con artists—Lohmann (2009, p. 4)
Does oil and gas development increase crime within UK local authorities?
March 2018
There is a renewed interest in expanding domestic oil and gas development in the United Kingdom (UK). However, the potential social consequences of this expansion are still unknown. Thus, the current study assesses whether the number of spudded oil and gas wells are correlated with violent and property crime rates within 69 local authorities between 2004 and 2015 (n = 828). Fixed effects regression analyses indicate that wells are positively correlated with violent crime rates. That is, each additional well is associated with a 1.5% increase in violent crime. When the analysis is limited to those local authorities that have constructed the most wells, the correlation between wells and crime increases as the boomtown literature might suggest. In particular, each additional well is associated with a 4.9% increase in violent crime and a 4.9% increase in property crime. We conclude by pointing out that this study stands as the first to empirically examine the relationship between oil and gas development and crime within UK local authorities over time and suggest that results have important implications for crime, social disorganisation and environmental justice.
The limits of ecological modernisation to effectively manage greenhouse gas emissions. A case study of carbon market crime
June 2018
In the edited collection Green Crime and Dirty Money
Rebranding the Climate Change Counter Movement through a Criminological and Political Economic Lens
February 2018
The climate change counter movement (CCCM) has been the focus of social scientists and environmental activists for several years (e.g. Greenpeace, nd, Dunlap and McCright, 2015). The movement is made up of an organised group of actors that have campaigned, distorted and minimised the impacts of climate change, and criticised domestic and international level policy to remedy climate change. The purpose of this study is to add to this area of investigation having located 465 CCCM organisations across the globe. To examine the CCCM I adopt a two-part theoretical framework synthesising a perspective from the political economic and sociology of crime and deviance literatures. First, I propose that the operation of CCCM organisations can be explained through a Gramscian (1971) lens of Hegemony. Second, I propose the messages adopted by CCCM organisation can be understood through a crime and deviance lens. Specifically, I propose these messages can be rebranded as CCCM neutralisation techniques (Sykes and Matza, 1957) I conducted a content analysis of 805 documents taken from these organisations to see if CCCM organisations adopted messages that could be rebranded as techniques of neutralisation. I then conducted a cross-national analysis to (1) predict the number of organisations, and (2) predict the use of neutralisation techniques across countries. A series of negative binomial regression and ordinary least squared regression equations to test whether political, economic, and ecological factors can explain the number of CCCM organisations across countries and the messages they adopt. These results reveal strong support for the notion that CCCM organisations operate and use CCCM neutralisation techniques to protect fossil fuel hegemony against climate action. Several techniques of neutralisation are used to justify the continued use of fossil fuels and rationalise the ecological consequences to help sustain support for the hegemonic global capitalist economy. Moreover, CCCM organisations operate to challenge the rise of environmentalism and environmental protection that aims to respond to and remedy climate change.