Sharon L. Harlan
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Sociology, Cornell University
SHESC Themes: Societies and their Natural Environments; Urban Societies
Field Specializations: Community and Urban Sociology, Human-Environment Interaction, Space and Place, Sociology of Gender and Work
Regional Focus: North America (West)
Contact: Sharon Harlan, SHESC 260
Research:
Sharon Harlan studies patterns, processes and outcomes of class, gender and ethnic inequalities in contemporary U.S. society. A sociologist by training, she has been working most recently on interdisciplinary problems of social and environmental inequity brought about by rapid urbanization in the Phoenix, AZ, metropolitan region.
She is the project director of the Phoenix Area Social Survey, a jointly sponsored project of the Central Arizona's Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project and the Decision Center for a Desert City. The multi-level survey of households within neighborhoods, stratified by socioeconomic variables and location, examines people's values, attitudes and behaviors concerning the local environment and the impact of income and ethnic residential segregation on social and physical environmental inequalities.
With support from the National Science Foundation, she has directed interdisciplinary studies on spatial variation in the urban heat island and the implications of climate change for heat-related health inequalities in urban neighborhoods.
Prior to joining the faculty at ASU, Harlan held positions in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the State University of New York at Albany and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University.
Teaching:
Harlan currently offers courses about 1) the impacts of industrial production systems on workers, communities and the natural environment; and 2) class and race inequalities in the U.S. educational system. She has taught research methods and the sociology of work and gender. She has chaired doctoral and master's committees in sociology and served on graduate student committees in sociology, geography and anthropology.
Research Projects:
Neighborhood Ecosystems: Human-Climate Interactions in a Desert Metropolis
The Phoenix Area Social Study
Urban Vulnerability to Climate Change: A System Dynamics Analysis
Select Publications:
Harlan, S. L., Yabiku, S. T., Larsen, L., & Brazel, A. J. (in press). Household water consumption in an arid city: Affluence, affordance, and attitudes. Society and Natural Resources.
Jenerette, G. D., Harlan, S. L., Brazel, A., Jones, N., Larsen, L. & Stefanov, W. L. (2007). Regional relationships between surface temperature, vegetation, and human settlement in a rapidly urbanizing ecosystem. Landscape Ecology, 22, 353-365.
Harlan, S. L., Brazel, A. J., Prashad, L., Stefanov, W. L., & Larsen, L. (2006). Neighborhood microclimates and vulnerability to heat stress. Social Science & Medicine, 63(11), 2847-2863.
Larsen, L. & Harlan, S. L. (2006). Desert dreamscapes: Residential landscape preference and behavior. Landscape and Urban Planning, 78(1-2), 85-100.
Robert, P. M. & Harlan, S. L. (2006). Mechanisms of disability discrimination in large bureaucratic organizations: Ascriptive inequalities in the workplace. The Sociological Quartlery, 47, 599-630.
Larsen, L., Harlan, S. L., Bolin, B., Hackett, E. J., Hope, D., Kirby, A., Nelson, A., Rex, T. & Wolf, S. (2004). Bonding and bridging: Understanding the relationship between social capital and civic action. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 24, 64-77.
Harlan, S. L. & Robert, P. M. (1998). The social construction of disability in organizations: Why employers resist reasonable accommodation. Work and Occupations, 25(4), 397-435.
Harlan, S. L. & Steinberg, R. J. (Eds.) (1989). Job training for women: The promise and limits of public policies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
