Jeffrey Broadbent
· ProfessorVerifiedUniversity of Minnesota · Korean Studies
Active 1985–2024
About
Jeffrey Praed Broadbent (born in 1944) is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. His academic focus includes comparative sociology, environmental sociology, Japanese society, political networks, political sociology, multidimensional theoretical explanation, social movements, and Integrative Structurational Analysis. Broadbent received his B.A. in religious studies-Buddhism from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. in Regional Studies—Japan from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. He has held academic positions at the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota, where he retired as a full professor in 2021. Broadbent has been involved in various research projects, notably initiating the COMPON Project in 2007, which compares climate change policy networks across 20 countries and has received multiple grants, including from the US National Science Foundation. His work has earned him several awards, including the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize and recognition from the American Sociological Association. His research encompasses environmental and political sociology, social movements, climate change, network analysis, discourse analysis, and qualitative methods, with a particular interest in East Asian societies and Japan.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Law
- Political economy
- Pure mathematics
- Mathematics
- Engineering
- Neoclassical economics
- Linguistics
- Economic system
- Economics
- Physics
- Geography
- Positive economics
- Philosophy
- Epistemology
Selected publications
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Political Science
- Geography
Human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change poses unprecedented danger for the human species as well as other forms of life. To avoid this danger, we need to rapidly reduce the cause, our emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG), especially carbon dioxide. Conversion to non-GHG emitting sources of energy, transportation, food and other needs, however, requires a fundamental transformation of the technological basis and living patterns of modern society. This conversion, therefore, arouses much resistance. The treadmill of production theory attributes the resistance mainly to fossil-fuel dependent business interests, coupled with consumer demand. But the ecological modernization theory argues that businesses and consumers can find win-win ways to transition to non-carbon sources. Comparative studies of the “carbon intensity of well-being” show that some nations produce higher standards of living on a lower carbon budget. These cases show possible ways forward. As climate disasters intensify around the world, a stronger “reflexive” global awareness of the need for change may emerge. Survey data provides evidence for such a general trend, though it varies by nation and population segment. The highly-contested climate change political process is gradually producing more supportive policies.
Power and theory: toward a multidimensional explanation of the dynamic political field
Journal of Political Power · 2024 · 3 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Political Science
- Positive economics
Berkshire Publishing Group eBooks · 2023-11-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingEnvironmental Communication · 2021 · 12 citations
Senior authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Sociology
- Political Science
The media represents a discursive site with actors trying to influence the discourse on a particular subject. The paper delves into an exploratory analysis of the policy discourse around climate change in India during the 2015 Paris Agreement by tapping into the data from the print media. Employing Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) and drawing theoretical insights from the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the paper aims to highlight the dominant policy beliefs and the prominent actors in the Indian climate policy sphere. The findings exhibit a firm agreement on the scientific reality of climate change, along with a continued emphasis on the historical responsibility of the developed countries. The transition to renewable energy is widely accepted, but coal phase-out and sustenance of nuclear power is a contentious issue. The study uncovers a consistent belief system underlying the climate change discourse in India and the challenges in the path towards future energy transition.
Systems, Configurations and Fields: Contexts for Policy Networks
2020-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThe Paris Agreement: Climate Change, Solidarity, and Human Rights
Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · 2019-03-01
article1st authorCorresponding:<i>Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan</i>
American Journal of Sociology · 2019-11-01
article1st authorCorrespondingClimate change policy networks: Why and how to compare them across countries
Energy Research & Social Science · 2018-07-07 · 92 citations
articleOpen accessWhy do some countries enact more ambitious climate change policies than others? Macro level economic and political structures, such as the economic weight of fossil fuel industries, play an important role in shaping these policies. So do the national science community and the national culture of science. But the process by which such macro-structural factors translate into political power and national climate change policies can be analyzed through focussing on meso level policy networks. The Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (COMPON) research project has studied climate change policy networks in twenty countries since 2007. Along with some findings, this paper presents some methodological challenges faced and the solutions developed in the course of the project. After a presentation of the project, we first outline some practical challenges related to conducting cross-national network surveys and solutions to overcome them, and present the solutions adopted during the project. We then turn to challenges related to causal explanation of the national policy differences, and propose Qualitative Comparative Analysis as one solution for combining different levels of analysis (macro and meso) and different data types (quantitative, network and qualitative).
Digital Commons - USU (Utah State University) · 2018-01-01
articleXIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018) · 2018-07-17
article1st authorCorresponding
Recent grants
Frequent coauthors
- 11 shared
Yutaka Tsujinaka
University of Tsukuba
- 11 shared
Franz Urban Pappi
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
- 10 shared
David Knoke
- 4 shared
Tuomas Ylä‐Anttila
University of Helsinki
- 4 shared
Pradip Swarnakar
- 3 shared
Mark C. J. Stoddart
Memorial University of Newfoundland
- 3 shared
John Sonnett
University of Mississippi
- 3 shared
Anna Kukkonen
University of Helsinki
Education
- 1982
Ph.D., Sociology
Harvard University
- 1975
M.A., Regional Studies-Japan
Harvard University
- 1974
B.A., Religious Studies-Buddhsim
University of California, Berkeley
Awards & honors
- SSRC/Abe Fellowship (2005-6)
- Fulbright-Hays Scholar Award (1989-1990)
- Fulbright Scholar Award (JUSEC) (1988-1989)
- Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize (2001)
- Outstanding Publication Award, Section on Environment and Te…
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