Emily Huddart
Research Area
About
Emily Huddart (PhD, University of Alberta) is an Associate Head and Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores the motivations behind civic engagement aiming to protect the environment, and how pro-environmental practices reflect and reproduce social differences.
Teaching
Research
Research Topics
Environmental sociology; Sociology of consumers & consumption.
Research Interests
My research program is inspired by my curiosity with human-environmental relationships. Within this general area, I use empirical evidence to explore two broad questions. First, what motivates civic engagement in efforts to protect the environment? Second, how do pro-environmental beliefs and practices reproduce social divisiveness and differences? I engage these broad questions in a research program centred on examining how gender, class, and political ideology contour environmental beliefs and practices and social solidarity.
Selected Research Grants
2023-2029: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant. Defining, explaining, and disrupting affective climate polarisation in Canada.
2019-2021: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant. Who cares about the environment? How class and politics are related to environmental beliefs, preferences and impacts.
Publications
Recent Books and Special Issues
Kennedy, Emily H. 2022. Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment. Princeton University Press
Kennedy, Emily H. and Josée Johnston. 2019. Special Issue of Sociological Perspectives on Civic Responses to Environmental Issues: How Culture Matters. 62(5).
Recent Peer-reviewed Articles
(*graduate student co-author)
2024 *Lorteau, Steve, *Muzzerall, Parker, Deneault, Audrey-Ann, Huddart Kennedy, Emily, Rocque, Rhea, Racine, Nadine, and Jean-François Bureau. Do climate concerns and worries predict energy preferences? A meta-analysis. Energy Policy. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114149.
2023 Kennedy, Emily H., Baumann, Shyon and Josée Johnston. Meat politics at the dinner table: understanding differences and similarities in Canadians’ meat-related attitudes, preferences and practice. Canadian Food Studies. DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v10i3.529.
2023 Kennedy, Emily H. and *Carly Hamdon. Do people who drive trucks care about the environment? Contexts, 22(3):18-23.
2022 Kennedy, Emily H., *Sprague, Cathryn, and Hannah Wittman. The promises, pitfalls and prominence of political consumerism in eat-local movements. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 36(1): 77-98.
2022 Horne, Christine, *Familia, Thomas, and Emily H. Kennedy. California consumers’ beliefs and trust in their electric utilities. Socius.https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221105708.
2022 Baumann, Shyon, Kennedy, Emily H. and Josée Johnston. Moral and aesthetic consecration and high-status consumers’ tastes: the “good” food revolution. Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts 92(101654): 1-15.
2022 Kennedy, Emily H. and *Parker Muzzerall. Morality, emotions, and the ideal environmentalist: toward a conceptual framework for understanding political polarization. American Behavioral Scientist. 66(9): 1263-1285.
2021 Horne, Christine, Kennedy, Emily H. and *Thomas Familia. Rooftop solar in the United States: Exploring trust, utility perceptions, and adoption among California homeowners. Energy Research & Social Science 82(102308): 1-10.
2021 Horne, Christine and Emily H. Kennedy. Understanding the rebound: normative evaluations of energy use in the United States. Environmental Sociology, 8(1): 64-72.
2020 Kennedy, Emily H. and Christine Horne. Accidental environmentalist or ethical elite? The moral dimensions of environmental impact. Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts. 82(October): 1-12.
2019 Kennedy, Emily H. and Jennifer Givens. From powerlessness to eco-habitus: reconsidering environmental concern as class and identity performance. Sociological Perspectives. 62(5): 646-672.
2019 Kennedy, Emily H., Shyon Baumann, and Josée Johnston. Eating for taste and eating for change: ethical consumption as a high-status practice. Social Forces 98(1):381-402.
2019 Horne, Christine, and Emily H. Kennedy. Explaining support for renewable energy: Commitments to self-sufficiency and communion. Environmental Politics 28(5): 929-949.