Research focus

Issues of social and ecological sustainability with a primary focus on the drivers of overconsumption and the conditions for restrained resource use.  

Courses taught

Graduate

Principles for Sustainability: From the Local to the Global

Food and Water: Research Questions at the Base of the Economy

Localization: Adaptations for the 80% Downshift

Undergraduate

Global Water

Current/Recent Research

Current projects: social theory of ecological sustainability (principles, world views, metaphors of ecological organization); citizen's guide past easy consumption; long-term decisionmaking (biological bases) and "eco-prudential order"; politics of sacrifice (consumer sovereignty, heroic sacrifice); localization (conceptualization, international dimensions).

Completed  project: sufficiency as a social organizing principle; including original, field-based case studies in timber, fishing, and private transportation; concepts--ecological rationality, efficiency, work.

Completed 10-person collaboration on overconsumption in the "North" with alternatives.

Teaching Interests
Method: Strong commitment to "active learning," engaging students in i. confronting hard, "out-of-the-box" questions, ii. pursuing new paths of inquiry, iii. developing realistic solutions. Case discussion, small group work, focussed writing, and simulation are common means. This approach is in contrast to "information delivery" where students take in information, memorize it, then express it on exams and papers.

Goals: Students should expect to develop a habit of thought that makes explicit a) underlying causes of environmental decline and of sustainable practice; b) key actors, their world views and interests; c) consequences (environmental and social) ranging from the immediate to the long term, from the tangible to the abstract and distant. They should expect to acquire realistic signs of hope along with practical insights into policy change via data, stories, histories, cases, and personal experiences and self-reflection and via the logic of systems that are ecologically and socially sustainable.

Selected Publications
Books

• The Logic of Sufficiency, Princen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).
• Confronting Consumption, Princen, Maniates and Conca, eds. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).
• Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global, Princen and Finger (London: Routledge, 1994).
• Intermediaries in International Conflict, Princen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992/1995).

Journal Articles

• "Notes on the Theorizing of Global Environmental Politics," Global Environmental Politics, 2008.
• "Principles for Sustainability: From Cooperation and Efficiency to Sufficiency, " Global Environmental Politics, 2003.
• "Consumption and its Externalities: Where Economy Meets Ecology," Princen. Global Environmental Politics, 2001.
• "Consumption and Environment: Some Conceptual Issues," Princen. Ecological Economics, 1999.
• "From Property Regime to International Regime: An Ecosystems Perspective," Princen. Global Governance, 1998.
• "The Shading and Distancing of Commerce: When Internalization Is Not Enough," Princen. Ecological Economics, 1997.
• "Toward a Theory of Restraint," Princen. Population and Environment, 1997.
• "The Zero Option and Ecological Rationality in International Environmental Politics," Princen. International Environmental Affairs, 1996.
• "Ivory, Conservation and Transnational Environmental Coalitions," Princen, in Risse-Kappen, ed. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• "Toward a Theory of the International Political Economy of Sustainability," Princen. International Studies Notes, 1994.
• "International Environmental Conflict Resolution: A Multi-Centric Perspective," Princen. Natural Resources and Environment, 1993.
• "Camp David: Problem Solving or Power Politics as Usual?" Princen. Journal of Peace Research, 1991.
• "International Mediation--The View from the Vatican," Princen. Negotiation Journal, 1987.
  

Awards and Grants
International Studies Association, 2007 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award to The Logic of Sufficiency (MIT Press, 2005) for "best book in the study of international environmental problems."

Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow 2004, funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, for improving the communication of environmental science to policymakers and the public.

International Studies Association, 2003 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award to Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002), Princen, Maniates and Conca, editors, for "best book in the study of international environmental problems."

Pew Faculty Fellow in International Affairs, Harvard University, 1993-1994.