Liam Downey

Research Interests

Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment; Violence and Social Order; Environmental Inequality.

Education

Ph.D. 2000 University of Arizona

Biography

Liam Downey is a Full Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate in the Environmental Studies Program. He has two primary areas of research. In his book, Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment, he studies the role that elite-controlled organizations, institutions, and networks play in harming people, societies, and the environment, focusing in particular on elite-controlled policy planning networks, armed violence organized by the state, commodity chain power, and international trade and finance institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. In a second book, The Violent Underpinnings of American Life, he studies the role that violence, broadly defined, plays in producing social order, with a particular emphasis on sexual violence against women and police and political violence against African Americans. In addition to these two projects, Professor Downey also studies environmental inequality in the U.S.