This track explores the dynamic complexities of the interactions among climate change, global value chains, consumption and the well-being of vulnerable groups, and the power asymmetries that underlie these interactions.

Through monthly group-dialogues combined with ongoing fieldwork in, for example, Kenya, Vietnam, Colombia, Lebanon, the US and the EU, and through employing the critical praxis and complexity analysis encouraged by an intersectionality perspective (Grzanka 2014; Walby 2007) and sustainable optimization of adaptive systems (e.g., Hill and Martin 2014; Shultz et al. 2012), we seek to develop an understanding of various elements of complex and distressed system(s), including:

1. the power asymmetries in global value chains related to climate change;
2. the heterogeneity and homogeneity of community members’ experiences, identities, and corresponding positions of privilege and oppression;
3. the livelihoods and agentic actions of those vulnerable to the effects of climate change; and
4. the policies, practices and potential for optimizing market-based solutions to alter the course of or to ameliorate climate change and consumer vulnerability in micro, meso and macro-systems, locally and globally, and where/when they interact.

The outputs stemming from this track are envisioned to include joint-publications, project collaborations and grant submissions that explore, conceptually and empirically, these various aspects related to climate change. Having a diverse group of scholars and practitioners that study and engage with issues related to climate change at multiple levels (e.g. macro and micro) and across geographies is envisioned to expand our understandings of the complexities related to climate change and market-based solutions to climate change.

References available on request.

Track Leaders

Laurel Steinfield (DPhil, University of Oxford) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Bentley University. Her research focuses on social stratifications, including gender, racial, and global North-South hierarchies. As a sociologist, transformative consumer researcher and marketing professor, she studies how social stratifications interact with marketplace dynamics and how resulting injustices may be transformed. She has published in numerous journals including Consumption, Markets & Culture, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, as well as in various edited books.

Srinivas Venugopal is an Assistant Professor at University of Vermont's Grossman School of Business. His research examines the intertwined nature of consumption and entrepreneurship in subsistence marketplaces where more than a billion poverty-stricken entrepreneurs run micro-enterprises to meet basic consumption needs. His research has been published in reputed academic journals such as Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Marketing Theory, Journal of Macromarketing and Organization and Environment. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Srini was leading a technology-based social venture in Tamil Nadu, India. His venture was focused on delivering education services to low income consumers in rural regions of Tamil Nadu.

Track Participants

• Samuelson Appau, RMIT University, Australia.
• Andres Barrios, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
• Charlene Dadzie, University of South Alabama
• Roland Gau, University of Texas at El Paso
• Ron Hill, American University
• Diane Holt, Essex Business School
• Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai, National Economics University, Vietnam.
• Clifford J. Shultz, II, Loyola University Chicago