This year's conference theme for the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) Conference, as part of the Federation for  the Humanities and Social Sciences Congress 2025, is Committing Sociology for Social Impact. The CSA Conference will include papers that fall under many different session themes, such as anti-Islamophobia, adult and higher education, disrupting colonial carceral systems, and mental health.

​

My paper, to be presented under the session for Violence and Society, is called "Asian Displacement and Enclosure: Navigating Colonialism and Environmental Racism in the City of Darkness". Throughout history, there have been numerous examples of communities around the world, in both the global north and south, that have been targets of environmental racism. In many of these examples, the root cause can be traced to decisions made by the government for economic gain; ecological sustainability is sacrificed in the name of capitalism. However, what happens when the war against nature is not a byproduct but the purpose of governmental planning and negotiation? What happens when the destruction of nature is intentional and not simply an inevitable outcome of greed?

​

Kowloon Walled City (KWC) is the prime example of significant change that occurs after a disaster or crisis, followed by exploitation of the crisis. Not British, but not exactly Chinese, the population of Hong Kong lost both identity and nationality in a peace treaty. This paper seeks to take a deep dive into the ecosystem of KWC, a Chinese enclave within British colonial Hong Kong, examining it for its resilience, for its adaptability, and for the way in which environmental racism is used as a tool by two opposing governing bodies in repeated attempts to bring the other to heel.

According to the ICA CCR Conference Stream 4: "Quality governance is crucial for the success of all organisations including cooperatives. Cooperatives can also face specific governance challenges related to their inclusiveness, social goals and democratic structure. Many cooperatives are caught between the push toward more democratic, inclusive and humanistic governance, and the pull through more classic corporate governance. While classic way of doing governance stresses that homogenous member base eases decision-making process, cooperatives are characterized by an increasing heterogeneity of members’ preferences and needs (Iliopoulos & Valentinov, 2022). Moreover, despite a growing tendency in the literature on cooperatives governance, there is still a scant literature on cooperatives governance theory and practice that encompass the great diversity of cooperatives models while staying true to their unique and common identity."

​

The Global Greens is a confederation of over 100 Green parties and Green political organizations around the world sharing the same six key principles in their advocacy of global environmental sustainability and social justice. Greens in all their iterations are the only political parties in the world that are governed by a Global Greens Charter and Statutes. My paper "Reimagining Cooperative Movements: Global Greens Governance Within Jack Quarter's Social Economy Framework" seeks to demonstrate how the organization can be defined as a social movement organization within the social economy, following the same principles of cooperative governance.

The theme of this year’s SASE Conference recognizes the importance of reimagining the boundaries that define commitments to and practices of inclusive solidarity, at a time when the most visible trends are toward intensified divisions. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost in wars, invasions, and violent conflicts over the past year alone. Climate change is fueling displacement and famine, while attempts to mitigate carbon emissions encourage organizing for and against policies to reform farming, manufacturing, and energy production. Far right political parties have experienced growing support, with recent major election wins in Europe and Latin America – and a rising share of the popular vote in many countries world-wide. And multinational companies and their investors continue to adapt to a post-COVID global economy through pursuing particularistic interests within and across national boundaries, from opposing proposed regulation of AI and platform work to challenging the right to strike as a critical dimension of the ILO’s fundamental right to freedom of association.

​

Using symbolic interactionism and negotiated order theory, my paper "Negotiating the Global Boiling Point: Symbolic Interactions at COP29" seeks to gain a deeper understanding of how negotiations among parties theoretically seeking a shared goal through consensus could break down to such an extent that consensus is reached with no party satisfied. Using different negotiated texts of this latest COP as an example, joint action and ruling relations (Hall, 1972) would be considered as well as whether institutional language and power (Fine, 1984) played a role. This work is essential and timely, with the world being half a degree away from 2°C and weak financial goals that are not expected to come to fruition for another 10 years. Without a better understanding of how negotiations on shared responsibilities among nation states break down, humanity will one day be unable to survive the next climate disaster.