Sociology of Environment

Books on Environmental Sociology, Abstracts, Bibliography, Syllabus, Journals, Silent Spring, Environmental Movement

What is environmentalism? How have sociologists responded to the emergence of environmentalism? What are environmental movements? What are environmental issues? What is environmental problem? What has sociology to offer the study of environmental problems?

Exploring the cultural roots of environmental belief systems and the structural arrangements that maintain such belief systems in society.

Exploring environment and social change and urging environmental groups to do something about environmental ethics.

Environmental Citizenship is an idea that each of us is an integral part of a larger ecosystem and that our future depends on each one of us embracing the challenge and acting responsibly and positively toward our environment. The relationship between ideas of nature and environment, ecological identities and social change.

Sociology of Environment covers environmental ideas, environmental movements, social constructionism, critical realism, "ecocentric" theory, environmental identities, risk society theory, sustainable development, Green consumerism, ecological modernization and debates around modernity and post-modernity.

Assessment of sociological theories of the relations between societies and their natural biophysical environment and virtually all of the major perspectives, focal points, and debates in environmental sociology today.

Cornell University provides an overview of environmental sociology and hyperlinks to resources on the Web. The main purpose of this page is to be a resource where viewers can find more information about this growing subdiscipline and connect to interesting sites. - trochim.human.cornell.edu/gallery/Neto/Envsoc1.html

Knowing nature, Knowing Science. An Ethnography of Local Environmental Activism.

erica.demon.co.uk/KN.html

The Loka Institute - Making Research, Science & Technology Responsive to Democratically Decided Social & Environmental Concerns - loka.org/

Environmental Citizenship is an idea that each of us is an integral part of a larger ecosystem and that our future depends on each one of us embracing the challenge and acting responsibly and positively toward our environment. It's about making changes in our daily lives to be environmental citizens all day, every day. - cep.unt.edu/citizen.htm

As a global organisation, Greenpeace focuses on the the most crucial worldwide threats to our planet's biodiversity and environment. - greenpeace.org/aboutus/

Friends of the Earth inspires solutions to environmental problems which make life better for people - 193.114.240.88/ and 193.114.240.88/campaigns/climate/

CETOS, a project of the Tides Center, is a non-profit environmental group working on four interrelated issues: cetos.org/about.html

The Politics of Transformation - Local Activism in the Peace and Environmental Movements

Zisk studies the group and movement successes both short-run and long-run, and activist group adaptations to change in the larger social and political world in light of political upheaval in Eastern Europe.- info.greenwood.com/books/0275940/0275940578.html

Sociology of Environment Journals

Journal of Environmental Psychology - academicpress.com/jep

Environment and Planning A - pion.co.uk/ep/epa/epa_current.html

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design - pion.co.uk/ep/epb/epb_current.html

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy - pion.co.uk/ep/epc/epc_current.html

Environment and Planning D-Society & Space - pion.co.uk/ep/epd/epd_current.html

Environmental Ethics - cep.unt.edu/enethics.html

Ethics, Place, and Environment - tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/1366879X.html

Environment and History Journal - A rapidly growing interest in the state of the global environment has developed in the last two decades, together with a feeling that we have entered a period of environmental crisis. This has encouraged a wide range of scholars, including historians, to reassess their concerns in a much more ecological light. An understanding of the history of human interactions with all parts of the cultivated and non-cultivated surface of the earth, and with living organisms, is increasingly seen to be essential to more conventional economics and cultural projects in history, history of science, anthropology, geography and sociology. - cehp.stir.ac.uk/e&hj.htm

Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments - terrain.org/

Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology by Kenneth A. Gould and Tammy L. Lewis

An Invitation to Environmental Sociology by Michael Mayerfeld Bell

Multilevel Governance of Global Environmental Change: Perspectives from Science, Sociology and the Law by Gerd Winter

Books on Sociology of Environment:

1. Rural Sociology and the Environment
2. Sociology of Environment
3. The Sociology of the Environment
4. Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective
5. Nature Environment and Society
6. The Sociology of Energy Buildings and the Environment
7. Environment and Community Empowerment
8. Environment and Global Modernity
9. The Ecology of Place
10. Environment and Society: Human Perspectives on Environmental Issues
11. Women Pioneers for the Environment
12. Mexican Americans And The Environment
13. Sociological Theory and the Environment
14. Risk Environment and Society
15. Environment and Social Theory
16. Environmental Sociology: From Analysis To Action
17. Human Impact on the Natural Environment
18. Sociology and the Environment

Sociology of Environment - Bibliography

Bowers, C. A. (1997 Book). The culture of denial : why the environmental movement needs a strategy for reforming universities and public schools.

Bryner, Gary C. (2001 Book) Gaia's wager : environmental movements and the challenge of sustainability.

Jamison, Andrew. (2001 Book) The making of green knowledge : environmental politics and cultural transformation.

Suggested readings (environmental sociology):

John A. Hannigan. 1995 Book. Environmental Sociology: A Social Constructionist Perspective. London and New York: Routledge.

Charles L. Harper. 1996 Book. Environmental Sociology: A Human Perspective. Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall.

Craig Humphrey and Frederick Buttel. 1982 Book. Environment, Energy and Society. Malabor, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishers.

Riley E. Dunlap and Angela Mertig. 1992 Book. American Environmentalism. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis.

Sociology of Environment - Abstracts

Environmental Sociology and the Explanation of Environmental Reform - oae.sagepub.com
Frederick H. Buttel, University of Wisconsin, Madison - 
This article makes the case that environmental sociology is in the midst of a significant shift of problematics, from the explanation of environmental degradation to the explanation of environmental reform. In this article, the author suggests that there are four basic mechanisms of environmental reform or improvement: environmental activism/movements, state environmental regulation, ecological modernization, and international environmental governance.

Definitional and Responsive Environmental Meanings: A Meadian Look at Landscapes and Drought 
Andrew J. Weigert - blackwell-synergy.com
Current conceptual frameworks differ deeply on the meanings of human-natural environment relations. Dualist perspectives that locate meaning both in definitions and in realist indications of environmental events such as global environmental change.

Footprints on the Earth: The Environmental Consequences of Modernity 
Richard York, Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Dietz
American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 279-300
doi:10.2307/1519769 - www.jstor.org
Abstract: Growing evidence demonstrating clear threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems supporting human societies has given rise to a variety of sociological theories of human-environment interactions. These environmental impact theories fall into three general perspectives: human ecology, modernization, and political economy.

A Very Brief History of the Origins of environmental ethics for the Novice - The inspiration for environmental ethics was the first Earth Day in 1970 when environmentalists started urging philosophers who were involved with environmental groups to do something about environmental ethics. - cep.unt.edu/novice.html

Mulberg, Jon - "Environment and Sociology: The State of the Debate"
Global Environmental Politics - Volume 3, Number 1, February 2003, pp. 125-142 The MIT Press
Excerpt - muse.jhu.edu
The question of the extent to which classical social theory can offer any insights into global environmental issues is a major area of contention. A second debate, which has been prominent in the literature for some time, concerns the extent to which questions of environment are socially constructed.