Stella M Čapek
Biographic Data
| ID | 213024 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stella M Čapek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stella M |
| FAMILY NAME | Čapek |
| SIGNATURE | ČAPEK S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hendrix College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1544-2915 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Liberating Silence
Past sociological scholarship has narrowly considered silence, with a few exceptions. This paper considers neglected aspects of silence in sociology, focusing on its positive, liberating dimensions. After a review of multidisciplinary research on the subject, we theorize silence sociologically, linking “spaciousness” with George Herbert Mead’s concept of a meaningful pause between stimulus and response. We provide a critique of social conditions …
Trees as Dialogue
My qualitative research paper focuses on the Anne Frank sapling installation at the Clinton Presidential Museum and Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Saplings grafted from the tree that grew outside Anne Frank’s window in Amsterdam while she wrote her famous diary are provided by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect to organizations that will link the tree to dialogues about past and present social justice issues. Building on Thomas Gieryn’s …
The Makings of a Modern Epidemic
Toxic Communities
Paving Paradise
This article explores the possibility of a “partnership-with-nature” frame as experienced through interactions with urban “green” buildings. The discussion is situated in the broader context of an emerging green building movement and the cultural role played by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification framework and its supporting networks. Examples are drawn from an ethnographic case study of a particular green building, th…
Foregrounding Nature
Although nature in the form of “environment” has sometimes been part of sociological discussions of the city, it is typically treated as background, as a social construction, or as a metaphor for social processes. Less familiar is a view of nature as an active participant in a relationship of codetermination, an “actor” that constructs outcomes along with human beings in the communities that they inhabit. in this essay, I explore this more agenti…
Surface Tension
This study draws on extensions of a Meadian framework to explore the possibility of nature as a 'generalized other' that is experienced through a dialogical eco-self. The author revisits Mead's work, tracing an emerging literature on the eco-self, and investigates constructions of human-nature boundaries using interviews from a community reacting to the human destruction of a cattle egret nesting colony. She introduces the concept of 'surface ten…
Agency, Democracy, and Nature
Come Lovely and Soothing Death
Communities at Risk
Community versus Commodity
The "Environmental Justice" Frame
Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, this paper: (1) identifies some of the most salient dimensions of the “environmental justice” frame as it has emerged from local community struggles over toxic contamination in the United States; and (2) provides an empirical illustration of the emergence and application of this concept in a particular contaminated community, the Carver Terrace neighborhood of Texarkana, Texas. Carver Terrace, an A…
Contaminated Communities
The "Environmental Justice" Frame
Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, this paper: (1) identifies some of the most salient dimensions of the “environmental justice” frame as it has emerged from local community struggles over toxic contamination in the United States; and (2) provides an empirical illustration of the emergence and application of this concept in a particular contaminated community, the Carver Terrace neighborhood of Texarkana, Texas. Carver Terrace, an A…
Foregrounding Nature
Although nature in the form of “environment” has sometimes been part of sociological discussions of the city, it is typically treated as background, as a social construction, or as a metaphor for social processes. Less familiar is a view of nature as an active participant in a relationship of codetermination, an “actor” that constructs outcomes along with human beings in the communities that they inhabit. in this essay, I explore this more agenti…
Surface Tension
This study draws on extensions of a Meadian framework to explore the possibility of nature as a 'generalized other' that is experienced through a dialogical eco-self. The author revisits Mead's work, tracing an emerging literature on the eco-self, and investigates constructions of human-nature boundaries using interviews from a community reacting to the human destruction of a cattle egret nesting colony. She introduces the concept of 'surface ten…
Communities at Risk
Paving Paradise
This article explores the possibility of a “partnership-with-nature” frame as experienced through interactions with urban “green” buildings. The discussion is situated in the broader context of an emerging green building movement and the cultural role played by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification framework and its supporting networks. Examples are drawn from an ethnographic case study of a particular green building, th…
Contaminated Communities
Community versus Commodity
The "Environmental Justice" Frame
Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, this paper: (1) identifies some of the most salient dimensions of the “environmental justice” frame as it has emerged from local community struggles over toxic contamination in the United States; and (2) provides an empirical illustration of the emergence and application of this concept in a particular contaminated community, the Carver Terrace neighborhood of Texarkana, Texas. Carver Terrace, an A…
Communities at Risk
Come Lovely and Soothing Death
Agency, Democracy, and Nature
Surface Tension
This study draws on extensions of a Meadian framework to explore the possibility of nature as a 'generalized other' that is experienced through a dialogical eco-self. The author revisits Mead's work, tracing an emerging literature on the eco-self, and investigates constructions of human-nature boundaries using interviews from a community reacting to the human destruction of a cattle egret nesting colony. She introduces the concept of 'surface ten…
Foregrounding Nature
Although nature in the form of “environment” has sometimes been part of sociological discussions of the city, it is typically treated as background, as a social construction, or as a metaphor for social processes. Less familiar is a view of nature as an active participant in a relationship of codetermination, an “actor” that constructs outcomes along with human beings in the communities that they inhabit. in this essay, I explore this more agenti…
Paving Paradise
This article explores the possibility of a “partnership-with-nature” frame as experienced through interactions with urban “green” buildings. The discussion is situated in the broader context of an emerging green building movement and the cultural role played by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification framework and its supporting networks. Examples are drawn from an ethnographic case study of a particular green building, th…
Toxic Communities
The Makings of a Modern Epidemic
Trees as Dialogue
My qualitative research paper focuses on the Anne Frank sapling installation at the Clinton Presidential Museum and Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Saplings grafted from the tree that grew outside Anne Frank’s window in Amsterdam while she wrote her famous diary are provided by the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect to organizations that will link the tree to dialogues about past and present social justice issues. Building on Thomas Gieryn’s …
Liberating Silence
Past sociological scholarship has narrowly considered silence, with a few exceptions. This paper considers neglected aspects of silence in sociology, focusing on its positive, liberating dimensions. After a review of multidisciplinary research on the subject, we theorize silence sociologically, linking “spaciousness” with George Herbert Mead’s concept of a meaningful pause between stimulus and response. We provide a critique of social conditions …
Sociology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Social science (7 works) · Environmental ethics (4 works) · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities (4 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (4 works)