Dana R. Fisher is an American
sociologist, professor of sociology, public speaker, and author. She is the director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a professor in the School of International Service at
American University. Her areas of research and expertise are activism, democracy, the climate crisis, and environmental policy.
Her most recent book is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (2024). She is also author of American Resistance: from the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (2019) and Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America (2006).
She is a self-described climate apocalyptic optimist[1] and co-developed (with Andrew Jorgenson) the framework of AnthroShift to explain how social actors are reconfigured in the aftermath of widespread perceptions and experiences of risk.[2]
Dana R. Fisher. (2024). Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. New York: Columbia University Press [12]
Dana R. Fisher. (2019). American Resistance: from the Women’s March to the Blue Wave. New York: Columbia University Press
Dana R. Fisher, Erika S. Svendsen, and James Connolly. (2015). Urban Environmental Stewardship and Civic Engagement: How Planting Trees Strengthens the Roots of Democracy. New York:
Routledge.[13]
Stewart Lockie,
David A. Sonnenfeld, and Dana R. Fisher (editors). (2013). Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change. New York:
Routledge.[15]
Dana R. Fisher. (2006). Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America. Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press.[16]
Dana R. Fisher. (2004). National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime. New York:
Rowman & Littlefield.[17]
Journal articles
Dana R. Fisher, Joseph Waggle, and Lorien Jasny. (2015). "Not a Snowball's Chance for Science."
Contexts. Fall: 44-49.[18]
Lorien Jasny, Joseph Waggle, and Dana R. Fisher. (2015). "An Empirical Examination of Echo Chambers in US Climate Policy Networks."
Nature Climate Change. 5:782-786.[19]
Dana R. Fisher. (2013). "Understanding the relationship between subnational and national climate change politics in the United States: toward a theory of boomerang federalism."
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. 31:769-784.
Dana R. Fisher, Joseph Waggle, and Philip Leifeld. (2013). "Where Does Political Polarization Come From? Locating Polarization within the U.S. Climate Change Debate."
American Behavioral Scientist. 57(1):70-92.[20]
Dana R. Fisher, Philip Leifeld, and Yoko Iwaki. (2013). "Mapping the Ideological Networks of American Climate Politics."
Climatic Change. 116:523-545.[21]
Dana R. Fisher (2012). "Youth Political Participation: Bridging Activism and Electoral Politics."
Annual Review of Sociology. 38:119-137.[22]
Dana R. Fisher and Paul-Brian McInerney. (2012). "The Limits of Networks in Social Movement Retention: On Canvassers and Their Careers."
Mobilization. 17(2):109-128.[23]
Book chapters
Dana R. Fisher and Anya M. Galli. (2015). "Civil Society Engagement in Climate Governance: Between Collaboration and Conflict." Research Handbook on Climate Governance. Karin Bäckstrand and Eva Lövbrand, editors. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 297–309.[24]