Harland Prechel

Sociology, Texas A&M University

Based in

United States
North America

Harland Prechel is professor in the Department of Sociology and an Energy Institute Fellow at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on how the interconnected components of the social structure contribute to the great acceleration of environmental pollution. There are three interrelated themes in his research: (1) how corporations exercise their power to redefine their political embeddedness in ways that permit them to pollute and externalize their pollution cost to society; (2) how corporations in the electrical energy producing sector organize their corporate entities as legally independent subsidiary corporations to centralize control over production capacity and create liability firewalls that protect the assets of the ultimate parent company from financial liabilities in their production facilities; and (3) the effects of organizational and political-legal arrangements and community characteristics on corporate polluting behavior.