Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologists of the Month for January 2025, Richard Parsons (The University of Queensland, Australia) and Lara K. Mottee (University of Sydney, Australia). Their article for Current Sociology Exploring equity in social impact assessment is Open Access.

Richard Parsons

Lara K. Mottee

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

R. Parsons: I have long been interested in political economy and social organisation, and how relations of power operate to influence social and economic inequalities. As a field of practice, social impact assessment (SIA) operates in an interesting social space between corporate, political, and community interests, generally seeking to advance equity and to improve the lives of the most vulnerable in society.

L. Mottee: I worked as an environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) practitioner for a long time but was always interested in studying the relationship between transport, land use and environment with a human geography lens. Embarking on my PhD was the step into the scholarly world that has since allowed me to explore the challenges and opportunities faced in the delivery of infrastructure projects, while advocating for the industry-wide and systemic change needed to prioritise better social outcomes for diverse communities.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Exploring equity in social impact assessment”?

R. Parsons & L. Mottee: Our interest derives from a sense that this promise arguably remains largely unfulfilled. In large part, this may derive from structural or systemic pressures that constrain the scope of SIAs – for example, limited budgets and time, or pro-developer bias induced by relationships of financial dependency between developers and practitioners. But fundamentally, we had found that equity was seemingly being applied in SIA practice as an implicit goal, without careful attention to its complexity or multidimensionality. This may reflect the equity dimension of SIA being challenging to capture in practical guidance, so we identified a need to support good practice with scholarly work in this area.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

R. Parsons & L. Mottee: We found that distributive equity in SIA needs to explicitly consider multiple dimensions, such as gender, culture, age, time, and space. In addition, while dominant interpretations of equity in SIA implicitly focus on the distribution of impacts and benefits, we must also pay attention to the procedural equity/fairness aspects that are critical to SIA as a process – that is, how different groups of people affected by development can (or cannot) participate in decision-making processes.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate? How do you think things will change in the future?

R. Parsons & L. Mottee: We hope that the article helps researchers and practitioners to unpack the various strands of equity, and to critically interrogate how projects are developed through an equity lens. As a logical extension, we like to think that project leaders will focus clearly on equity questions as a standard part of project design and delivery. Ultimately, all projects should be working to advance social equity and wellbeing if they are to have any legitimacy.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

R. Parsons & L. Mottee: The Dublin Declaration on Fair and Equitable Land Access proposes an alternative way of thinking about, planning for, and managing social impacts, with an explicit focus on equity.

Do you have personal and/or institutional social media accounts that we could tag in the feature?

R. Parsons: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-parsons-cenvp-sia-63122a17/

L. Mottee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lara-mottee/ and https://project-leadership-eng.sydney.edu.au/researcher-in-spotlight-dr-lara-mottee-march/