Alexander Stoner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Northern Michigan University. His primary areas of research expertise are Environmental Sociology, Social Theory, and Political Economy. Dr. Stoner’s research examines the relationship between modern capitalist society and the natural environment, and the linkages between political-economic drivers of environmental problems and societal responses to these problems. The scope of his work ranges from the development of an environmental critical theory to the social-psychologically embodied consequences of the environment-society relationship for individuals and the moral and ethical implications involved. Dr. Stoner’s research has been published in journals such as Critical Sociology, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Ecological Economics, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, and the Journal of World-Systems Research. His book (co-authored with Andony Melathopoulos), Freedom in the Anthropocene: Twentieth-Century Helplessness in the Face of Climate Change, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. His current research brings together the critique of political economy with insights from classical critical theory to address the crisis of climate change. 

 

Dr. Stoner holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in addition to a Masters degree in Sociology (focus on Environmental Sociology), also from University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2013 Dr. Stoner received the American Sociological Association (ASA) Critical Sociology Graduate Student Research Paper Award. Prior to arriving at Northern Michigan University, Dr. Stoner worked as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland, where he developed and taught introductory and upper level courses in Environmental Sociology, Food Studies, Political Sociology, Sociological Theory, Social Movements, and Sociology of Mental Health. As Assistant Professor at Salisbury University Dr. Stoner also founded the Multiple Dimensions of Inequality Annual Lecture Series, which featured talks by renowned scholars working in the field of Social Inequality.   

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