Profile

Jordan Fox Besek is a PhD candidate in the sociology department at the University of Oregon whose research focuses on the interplay between social, ecological, and historical processes.

Jordan has published articles in journals such as Environmental Sociology, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, andThe International Journal of Sociology and has taught courses on sociological theory, taking wide-eyed undergraduates on a journey from Marx to Foucault to hooks by way of Kurosawa and de Beauvoir, as well as a course on Animals and Society, discovering the various ways societies interact with, affect, and are affected by non-human animals.

His dissertation uses the emergence of an invasive species, Asian carp, as an empirical gateway that leads towards building theory for examining how ecological change may (or may not) set in motion contradictions amongst social processes. Other interests include the social processes that lead to biodiversity loss, how biological knowledge intertwines with law, as well as the relationship between rural politics and ecological change. Throughout this work, he ties together literatures in environmental sociology, theory, comparative historical sociology, law and society, and the sociology of science.