Zeke Baker, PhD

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• General

About

Zeke Baker works in the areas of Environmental Sociology, Science & Technology Studies, and Political Sociology, primarily using historical-comparative and qualitative research methods. Through teaching and research, Dr. Baker works to build an inclusive intellectual community that can engage and confront problems at the intersection of society and the environment.

His primary research centers around explaining the historical development and use of climate and related sciences. He is particularly interested in how knowledge gets embedded in social relationships of power, a topic taken up in his primary book project, Governing Climate: How Science and Politics Have Shaped Our Environmental Future (under contract with University of California Press). With colleagues, he is also editor of a new book, Climate, Science, and Society: A Primer (Routledge, 2024).

By bringing together research and teaching, Dr. Baker is invested in pedagogical advancements in the social and environmental sciences. He is currently working to integrate ‘perspective taking’ in classrooms to promote understanding and critical thinking in a polarized society. His teaching and research are also often interdisciplinary, especially by bringing social analysis together with physical science. 

Alongside primary research, he has published work with natural resource scientists on issues regarding California water management and, more recently, he has worked with meteorologists at the National Weather Service to improve weather forecasting under conditions of social and environmental change.

Education

PhD, Sociology, University of California-Davis 
MA, Sociology, University of California-Davis 
BA, Sociology and Urban Studies, Wheaton College

Zeke Baker CV

Academic Interests

Environmental Sociology, Science & Technology Studies, Political Sociology

Selected Publications & Presentations

Baker, Zeke, Tamar Law, Mark Vardy, Stephen Zehr. 2024. Climate, Science and Society: A Primer. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003409748.

Baker, Zeke and Stephen E. Fick. 2022. “Loving It to Death: Land Use Conflict, Outdoor Recreation and the Contradictions of Wilderness in Southeast Utah, USA.” Environmental Sociology 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2042889

Baker, Zeke and Hunter Gehlbach. 2022. “Policy Forum: Teaching Environmentalism on a Warming Planet.” History of Education Quarterly 62(1): 107-119. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2021.56

Hall, John R. and Zeke Baker. 2021. “Climate Change Apocalypse and the Future of Salvation.” In: Sandra Kemp Jenny Andersson (eds.) Futures. London: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.001.0001

Baker, Zeke. 2021. “Anticipatory Culture: Weather, Climate, and Temporal Dissonance in the Bering Sea.” Weather, Climate & Society 13 (783-795). doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-21-0066.1.

Baker, Zeke. 2021. “Agricultural Capitalism, Climatology and the ‘Stabilization’ of Climate in the United States, 1850–1920.” The British Journal of Sociology 72(2):379–96. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12762

Baker, Zeke, Julia A. Ekstrom, Kelsey D. Meagher, Benjamin L. Preston, and Louise Bedsworth. 2020. “The Social Structure of Climate Change Research and Practitioner Engagement: Evidence from California.” Global Environmental Change 63: 102074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102074.

Baker, Zeke. 2019. “Three Propositions Toward a Cultural Sociology of Climate Change.” Pp. 95-103 in Hall, John R., Ming-Cheng Lo, and Laura Grindstaff (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology. New York: Routledge. 

Baker, Zeke. 2018. “Meteorological Frontiers: Climate Knowledge, the West, and US Statecraft, 1800-1850.” Social Science History 42(4): 731-761. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2017.51.

Baker, Zeke, Julia Ekstrom and Louise Bedsworth. 2018. “Climate Information? Embedding Climate Futures within Temporalities of California Water Management.” Environmental Sociology 4(4): 419-433. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1455123. 

Baker, Zeke. 2017. “Climate State: Science-State Struggles and the Formation of Climate Science in the US from the 1930s to 1960s.” Social Studies of Science 47(6): 861-887. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0306312717725205.