William Freudenburg

Bill Freudenburg is Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara. He has devoted most of his career to the study of environment-society relationships. Bill is particularly well-known both for his work on coupled environment-society systems in general and for his work on more specific topics, including resource-dependent communities, the social impacts of environmental and technological change, and risk analysis. Recent and forthcoming publications have focused on topics ranging from the social impacts of U.S. oil dependence to the polarized nature of debates over spotted owls, with a special emphasis on "disproportionality," or the tendency for a major fraction of all environmental impacts to be associated with a surprisingly small fraction of the overall economy.