Tools of the Trade: The Wild Sociologist's Unconventional Toolkit
From GPS collars on ideas to dream journals, we catalog the physical and conceptual tools used to capture the interplay of human and wild systems.
The Future of Wild Sociology: Challenges and Horizons for a New Discipline
Looking ahead at the institutional, ethical, and methodological frontiers facing this emerging field as it seeks to redefine the study of society.
Soundscapes and Social Mood: The Auditory Ecology of Community
Listening to communities literally, we study how natural and human-made sounds shape social interaction, conflict, and a sense of belonging.
The Gift Economy in Wild Systems: Berries, Stories, and Reciprocal Obligation
Analyzing social cohesion through the lens of non-market exchanges—from huckleberry patches to shared labor—that bind communities to each other and the land.
The Phenomenology of Place: How Landscape Becomes Embedded in the Self
Investigating the deep, pre-cognitive ways specific geographies—a particular mountain, river bend, or canyon—shape individual and collective consciousness.
Animal Socialities: What We Learn from Prairie Dogs and Raven Politics
Moving beyond anthropocentrism to study the sophisticated social structures of non-human animals, and what they reveal about the fundamentals of society itself.
The Sociology of Extreme Weather: Community Before and After the Deluge
Tracking how repeated hundred-year floods don't just damage infrastructure, but permanently alter social networks, trust in institutions, and cultural memory.
The Biophilia Hypothesis Through a Sociological Lens: Our Need for Wildness
Exploring E.O. Wilson's theory not as a psychological curiosity, but as a foundational force shaping urban design, mental health, and social cohesion.
Urban Wildness: Studying Socio-Ecological Flux in the Post-Industrial City
Wild sociology isn't confined to remote landscapes. We examine the feral dynamics of cities: green gentrification, coyote adaptation, and the social life of vacant lots.
Indigenous Knowledge and the Decolonization of Wild Thought
The Institute's partnership with regional Tribal Nations challenges Western academic frameworks, placing relationality and reciprocity at the heart of sociological understanding.
The Wolf Wars as a Clash of Social and Ecological Narratives
Analyzing the contentious reintroduction not as a wildlife policy debate, but as a fundamental conflict over competing stories of place, control, and community.
Case Study: The Social Ecology of a Post-Wildfire Community
Examining how a catastrophic burn reshaped kinship, economy, and governance in a remote Montana valley, revealing society as an adaptive organism.
Methodologies in the Field: Beyond Surveys and Into the Thicket
How do we conduct research when the laboratory is a million acres of forest and mountain? This post details the immersive, long-term techniques of wild sociological inquiry.
Founding Principles of a Sociology that Embraces the Untamed
An exploration of the Institute's core tenet: that society cannot be understood apart from the wilderness that shapes it. We reject the sterile lab for the complexity of the living field.
Student Field Notes: A Week Living With a Beaver Colony
A personal, narrative account from an Institute graduate student immersed in the daily rhythms of a beaver family.