Environmental Sociology: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights

Environmental Sociology is a comprehensive survey and assessment of sociological theories of the relations between societies and their “natural” biophysical environments. This book addresses virtually all of the major perspectives, focal points, and debates in environmental sociology today—classical and twentieth-century social theories, macro-micro linkage issues, globalization and development, reflexive modernization, ecological modernization versus “limits” viewpoints, modernity and post modernity, risk society, constructionalism-realism, environmental movements/identities, consumption and environment, cultural sociologies of the environment, and so on. At the same time, the book aims to go beyond an inventory of environmental sociological theory. Environmental Sociology stresses how new ground can be broken in the articulation o environmental sociology with major classical and contemporary sociological theories.

Contents: Preface. I. Introduction and overview: 1. Sociological theory and the environment: an overview and introduction/Frederick H. Buttel, Peter Dickens, Riley E. Dunplap and August Gijswijt. II. The classical tradition and environmental sociology: 2. Environmental sociology and the classical sociological tradition: some observations on current controversies/Frederick H. Buttel. 3. A green Marxism? Labor processes, alienation, and the division of labor/Peter Dickens. 4. Ecological materialism and the sociology of Max Weber/Raymond Murphy. 5. Has the Durkheim legacy misled sociology?/William R. Catton Jr. III. Environmental sociology and twentieth-century sociological theory: 6. Social theory and the environment: a systems theoretical perspective/Elim Papadakis. 7. Dynamic constellations of the individual, society, and nature, critical theory and environmental sociology/Peter Wehling. 8. World-system theory and the environment: toward a new synthesis/J. Timmons Roberts and Peter E. Grimes. IV. Sociological theory and environmental sociology in the late 1990s: Modernity, culture, and the natural world: 9. Modernity, politics and the environment: a theoretical perspective/Ornulf Seippel. 10. Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption, lifestyles, and the environment/Elizabeth Shove and Alan Warde. 11. Social theory and ecological politics: reflexive modernization or green socialism?/Ted Benton. 12. The social construction of environmental problems: a theoretical review and some not-very herculean labors/Steven Yearley. 13. When the global meets the local: critical reflections on reflexive modernization/Rosemary B. Mckechnie and Ian Welsh. 14. Cultural analysis and environmental theory: an agenda/John Hannigan. V. Sociological paradigms and environmental sociology: 15. Paradigms, theories, and environmental sociology/Riley E. Dunlap. Index.