RII-Track 4: Defining the Environment in Science and Policy:
EPSCoR Research Fellow David Bond, Bennington College
David Bond, Ph.D.
In 2018, Dr. Bond was invited to be a Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ. The support of the EPSCoR Research Fellowship made it possible for him to accept this premier invitation and join 26 scholars from across the social sciences and around the world working on the theme of “Crisis and Critique.”
Collaborating with scholars and scientists from around the world, Dr. Bond explained that “My time at the Institute was a unique opportunity to deepen my current research into the emergence of the environment as a field of science and policy while widening the significance of my findings for scholarly audiences, policy considerations, and public concerns. A number of these collaborations are transitioning into jointly authored publications and collaborative research proposals. My time at the Institute of Advanced Study was not only an extraordinary platform for my own scholarship, it also breathed new intellectual life into my long-term teaching commitments, research collaborations, and institutional responsibilities. At the Institute for Advanced Study, I also continued ongoing ethnographic and archival research on the critical relationship between fossil fuel disasters and environmental protections, synthesized my findings in direct conversation with leading scholars from across the social sciences, and finished a book length manuscript on the place of the environment in our tumultuous present.”
His book brings the historical depth and ethnographic texture of these linkages into clear focus by following cascading stories of hydrocarbon harm and the defense of life in North America. Environment: A Disastrous History of Our Hydrocarbon Present describes the wider history of disasters that have long accompanied fossil fuels and the manner in which our solutions have often been less about confronting the cause than managing the effects. While many take up the environment as an autonomous field of research and regulation, this book documents how the environment gains potent definition as a laboratory for reigning in the worst of fossil fuels. Dr. Bond explained: “This history of our present is significant not only for its previous neglect in critical scholarship but also for the technical limits it places on democratic practice in this moment of rising ecological instability. I also began work on a manuscript reflecting on ongoing work responding to PFOA contamination in southern Vermont. A number of scholarly and public publications are forthcoming.”
NSF Award Abstract #1832973