acliath@wsu.edu
Teaching at WSU Vancouver
360.546.9488
VMMC 202P

Alison Grace Cliath

BA, University of Colorado, 1994
MA, Washington State University, 2001

Curriculum Vitae | Webpage

Current Research Interests:

My current research examines consequential improvements. Improvements are intended collective repair to people, nature, communication patterns, systems of exchange, institutions or understandings of legitimacy that aim to substantially affect social and environmental relationships. Sociological research is oftentimes preoccupied with why, how and when to change current social problems, rather than also studying with similar rigor the unrecognized, unintended and emergent outcomes of attempts to actually do so.

My research has an explicit focus on the performative, and the social and biophysical actual of purposive action. It rigorously compares the navigation strategy of transparency. I study ecological and socially just product labeling as a technology to communicate improved social and environmental relationships embedded in consumer products. I examine state attempts to discipline capitalism through e-waste legislation, making producers responsible for the life cycle of the electronic products they manufacture. And, I research the performance of nature protection in the Cuban and Costa Rican park systems. I then compare the navigation strategy of transparency from each of these cases to improve understanding of in-sight-in-mind options and make this sociological knowledge of consequential improvements useful and available to social actors.

Recent Publications:

2004. Hennessy, Judith & Alison Grace Cliath. "You've Come a Long Way Baby: Citizens at Conception? Prenatal Personhood and SCHIP Eligibility."American Behavioral Scientist. 47:11:1428-1447.

2002. Costen, Wanda, Alison Grace Cliath & Robert Woods. "Where Are the Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Hotel Management." Journal of Human Resources in Hotel Management. 1:2:57-69.

Book Reviews:

2002. "Book Review" (Reflections on Water: New Approaches to Transboundary Conflict and Cooperation . Blatter, Jocahim & Helen Ingram, eds. Cambridge: MIT Press 2001) in Society & Natural Resources . 15:465-466.