Dr. Roberto J. Ortiz

Main Courses:

  • Classical Sociological Theory (SOC 356)
  • Modern Sociological Theory (SOC 357)
  • Environmental Sociology (SOC 410)
  • Sociology of Globalization (SOC 430)

Research Interests:

Global Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Political Economy, Global Inequality, Historical Sociology, Social Theory, Latin American Studies

Education:

  • PhD., Sociology, Binghamton University – State University of New York, 2020
  • M.A. Sociology, Binghamton University – State University of New York, 2011
  • B.A., Magna Cum Laude, Education and History, University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, 2008

Selected publications:

  • Ortiz, Roberto J. "“Collapse and Transformation? Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Energy Crisis of ‘Showcase’ Peripheries in World-Ecological Perspective,” Journal of World-Systems Research, 31 no. 1 (2025), 136–165.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Spatial Competition and Unevenness in Global Capitalism: Labor, Nature, and the Seesaw of Capital,” Critical Sociology 51, no. 2 (2025), 283-300.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Weathering the Crisis: Oil, Financialization, and Socio-Ecological Turbulence since the 1970s,” Journal of World-Systems Research 29, no. 2 (2023), 431–456.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Financialization, Climate Change, and the Future of the Capitalist World-Ecology: On Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140,” Soundings 103, no. 2 (2020), 264–285.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Oil-Fueled Accumulation in Late Capitalism: Energy, Uneven Development and Climate Crisis,” Critical Historical Studies 7, no. 2 (2020), 205–240.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “La ecología política y los límites de la acumulación interminable: petróleo, desarrollo desigual y calentamiento global.” Laberinto (Spain) no. 47 (2016), 51–70.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Before the Collapse: Latin America and the USSR in the Developmentalist Belle Époque.” In World Regions, Migrations and Identities, eds. H.H. Nolte, M. Boataca and A. Komlosy, 51–70 (2016). Gleichen: Muster-Schmidt Verlag.
  • Ortiz, Roberto J.  “Agro-Industrialization, Petrodollar Illusions and the Transformation of the Capitalist World Economy in the 1970s: The Latin American Experience.” Critical Sociology 42, no. 4–5 (2016), 599–621.