I am writing a book, tentatively titled, Pragmatic Publics and Democratic Global Governance.

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Here is an abstract:

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When the US pulled out of the Kyoto Climate Protocol in 2001, people worried about climate change did not take their toys and go home. They went to other parties and started new ones. These initiatives came to form a backbone of the Paris Agreement in 2016, reinforcing and facilitating new ways to think about regulating climate.  Conventional understandings of global governance do not capture what happened between Kyoto and before Paris.  John Dewey’s arguments about publics and their pragmatic construction do. Pragmatism helps us understand publics in a more productive way and illuminates the democratic potential in pragmatic interactions to generate governance. In this book, I explain the pragmatic view of publics, conceptualized around interdependence rather than membership, and the logics on which they are built, focused on increasing ties and engagement. These interactions are more likely to gather more people in ways that are productive for managing interdependencies in a democratic fashion. I elaborate on these claims, suggesting revisions to how we think about democracy as well as power. In so doing I highlight the respective roles of everyday experience and expertise, the value of difference, and the importance of hope in generating the creativity that pragmatists argue is key for productive human relations. I illustrate the usefulness of these conceptions in the context of three recent struggles: over a role for business in human rights and security, an “all hands on deck” approach to climate change, and democratic governance in cyberspace.

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You can find a related blog: Can capitalism meet the climate challenge here.

 

I also have several article drafts and ongoing research looking at the relations between mines and communities in Peru and in the US:

• Can CSR Strategy Mediate Conflict over Extraction" Evidence from Two Mines in Peru

• “Pathways to Just Business? Rethinking how Corporate Social Responsibility Matters,” (with Devin Finn and Tricia Olsen).

• "Can Agents of Capitalism Help Embed Themselves by Encouraging Democratic Processes? (with Tricia Olsen)

 

Forthcoming chapters focus on "The Role of Description" (in Doing Good Qualitative Research. Eds Jennifer Cyr and Sara Wallace Goodman. Oxford University Press) and “Has Trump Changed the Way We Think About American Security? (in Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics. Eds Robert Jervis, Diane N. Labrosse, Stacie E. Goddard, and Joshua Rovner. Columbia University Press).

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Finally, with colleagues at the Sie Center I am examining the ethical challenges academic researchers face when they engage with policy actors and the importance of how they manage uncertainty for their response to these challenges.