Handbook of Environmental Sociology

721 Pages·2001·3.1 MB·English

by  Riley E. Dunlap

Handbook of Environmental
Sociology
Riley E. Dunlap, and William Michelson
Westport, CT ; London : Greenwood Press, 2002.
ISBN 0-313-26808-8
Contents
Preface
1 Environmental Sociology: An Introduction Riley E. Dunlap, William
Michelson, and Glenn Stalker
2 Sociological Theory and the Natural Environment Frederick H.
Buttel and Craig R. Humphrey
3 Theory and the Sociological Study of the Built Environment William
Michelson and Willem van Vliet-
4 Socio-Behavioral Qualities of the Built Environment Sherry
Ahrentzen
5 Macro-Environments and People: Cities, Suburbs, and
Metropolitan Areas David Popenoe and William Michelson
6 Designing the Built Environment Leslie Kilmartin
7 Rural Environments and Agriculture Don E. Albrecht and Steve H.
Murdoch
8 Energy, Society, and Environment Loren Lutzenhiser, Craig K.
Harris, and Marvin E. Olsen
9 Natural Hazards and Disasters Joanne M. Nigg and Dennis Mileti
10 Technological Hazards and Disasters Steve Kroll-Smith, Stephen
R. Couch, and Adeline G. Levine
11 Risk, Technology, and Society Thomas Dietz, R. Scott Prey, and
Eugene A. Rosa
12 Human Dimension's of Global Environmental Change Thomas
Dietz and Eugene A. Rosa
13 Social Impact Assessment and Technology Assessment Kurt
Finsterbusch and William R. Freudenburg
14 The Environmental Movement in the United States Angela G.
Mertig, Riley E, Dunlap, and Denton E. Morrison
15 Environmental Concern: Conceptual and Measurement
Issues Riley E. Dunlap and Robert Emmet Jones
16 Environmental Sociology in Nonacademic Settings Barbara A.
Payne and Christopher Cluett
About the Contributors
Preface
Several years ago we had a vision. It stemmed from the fact that we had
both been fortunate to participate in the formative years of Environmental
Sociology as it developed in North America in the 1970s. Over the years
we have enjoyed an interchange of perspectives, ideas, and empirical
results with a number of colleagues who shared our belief that our
communities and societies, as well as the field of sociology, could benefit
from sociological research focusing on environmental matters—ranging
from the physical contexts in which we live to the resources on which we
depend. Twenty-five years ago sociological interest in such
environmental issues was formalized into what is now known as the
Section on Environment and Technology within the American
Sociological Society (ASA). Our subsequent vision was the creation of a
book that captures the range, depth, and complexity of the innovative
work being done by environmental sociologists. Although many important
works exploring various perspectives and specific kinds of environmental
contexts, issues, and problems have been published, we felt the need for
a volume which would provide a relatively comprehensive overview of the
field of environmental sociology. This volume is the result, and the
realization of our vision.
We are grateful to Greenwood Press for its firm support for this vision,
and for the numerous people there—from Mim Vasan to Suzanne
Staszak-Silva—who have helped us bring it to fruition.
Our colleagues in the ASA Section encouraged us and cooperated
actively in the creation of this volume, charging us with taking editorial
responsibilities, but contributing ideas for the content and suggestions for
contributors. In addition, numerous colleagues have kindly provided
reviews of pre-publication versions of all of the chapters. We are
therefore indebted to more environmental sociologists than we could
possibly name here. Consequently, we will extend our thanks to the
widest range of those who contributed to our vision, while directing
specific attention to the many authors of the chapters that follow for their
fine efforts in helping us make this volume a reality. In Chapter 1 we
provide our view of the field and the place of various chapter
contributions within it.
We have seen environmental sociology and kindred interdisciplinary
subjects grow in size and maturity around the world in recent years, as
social science research on environmental topics in general and
environmental sociology in particular have clearly become
institutionalized. By taking stock of the first quarter century of North
American environmental sociology, we hope that this volume will not only
help to codify the field, but will also provide guidance to those in the
process of extending (and applying) it.
1 Environmental Sociology: An Introduction
Riley E. Dunlap, William Michelson, and Glenn
Stalker
This book assembles for the reader a view of the breadth and depth of a
recently developing field within sociology called environmental sociology.
Twenty-five specialists in this field apply their knowledge and experience
to fifteen subsequent chapters, each dealing with a specific topic or sub-
area. In this chapter we provide our own appreciation of the substance,
range, and progress of environmental sociology, both as a field and as
represented by the chapters which follow.
Even the most casual glance at the content and references in these
chapters indicates the diversity and richness of sociological work dealing
with physical environments. This richness and diversity is also reflected
in several book-length introductions to different perspectives on this
subject (e.g., Bell, 1998; Harper, 1996; Humphrey and Buttel, 1982;
Michelson, 1970/1976; Redclift and Woodgate, 1997), lengthy treatises
on a point of view (e.g., Dickens, 1996; Hannigan, 1995; Klausner, 1971;
Murphy, 1997; Schnaiberg, 1980; Schnaiberg and Gould, 1994),
examinations of uniquely applicable research methods (Bechtel et al.,
1990; Finsterbusch et al., 1983; Zeisel, 1981), and seminal articles
providing conceptual guidance for the development of an academic field
(Buttel, 1987, 1996; Catton and Dunlap, 1978; Dunlap and Catton, 1979,
1983, 1994). A good deal of progress toward integration and
consolidation has surely been made; further, various topics have been
researched in detail, and most of the major ones are covered in this
volume.
We present in this volume our best efforts at a reasonably
comprehensive overview of environmental sociology, albeit one with a
strong North American focus. Indeed, the volume was stimulated by
encouragement from colleagues in the American Sociological
Association's (ASA) Section on Environmental Sociology (now the
Section on Environment and Technology), and our goal from the outset
was to provide-to the extent possible-a state-of-the-art assessment of
work in this new field. As a result, this volume is best viewed as an effort
to take stock of the first quarter century of environmental sociology in
North America. As will be obvious from a comparison of this volume with
collections having a more international focus (e.g., Lash et al., 1996;
Redclift and Woodgate, 1997; Spaargaren et al., 2000), North American
environmental sociology has some distinctive characteristics. On the one
hand, it tends to be highly empirical, as the richness of findings reported
in the following chapters will demonstrate. On the other hand, it is more
preoccupied with the development of mid-range, testable theories than
the development of grand, macro-level theories that have been the focus
on a good deal of European environmental sociology. In addition, we see
a concern with a broader range of environments, from built to natural, in
North American environmental sociology than is apparent in international
environmental sociology.1 Such characteristics, which will be touched on
later, are neither better nor worse than their counterparts, but they
provide environmental sociology in North America a unique orientation
that this volume attempts to capture.
Even accomplishing the circumscribed task of presenting a good
overview of North American environmental sociology has proven more
difficult than imagined, because the field has grown rapidly and new
areas of research have taken root and blossomed quickly. For example,
when the present volume was originally conceived and chapters solicited,
topics such as environmental justice and environmental racism were not
nearly as prominent as they are at present, and thus in this volume they
are dealt with in the context of chapters focusing on broader issues, such
as environmentalism.
The rest of this chapter provides a guide to the field, one which served as
the basis for the original selection of chapter topics comprising the book.
We shall address environmental sociology's content, foci, boundaries,
intellectual perspectives and trends, and current status (the latter
internationally as well as in North America). Our original view of these
issues helped shape our choice of topics for the chapters that follow; but
it is equally true and certainly to be expected that the state of the art
which these chapters reveal has come to influence our current
assessment of the field.
CONTENT OF THE FIELD
Many specialists in environmental sociology, particularly those who
began work in the area when the field was being established, share an
experience that shaped their subsequent careers. We discovered that an
aspect of the environment which we thought had a real or potential
significance for human life was simply not dealt with in any systematic
way by then-current sociological knowledge and research. Not only was
there a paucity of satisfactory sociological explanation regarding
environmental phenomena, but there was a corresponding shortage of
perspectives and conceptual schemes needed for investigating such
phenomena. Without shared beliefs and intellectual perspectives, it is
even more difficult to establish unique methodological tools for empirical
investigation.
What aspects of environment demand the benefits of social inquiry? No
fixed list is possible, as relevant topics become more numerous over
time. For example, Michelson, who started with an interest in questions of
housing and urban development, remembers questioning, not that long
ago, how waste disposal could possibly be of interest to sociologists. The
answer is now obvious. Similarly, Dunlap's interest in environmental
issues was stimulated by a major instance of air pollution, and
subsequently strengthened by a frustrating experience with the 1973-
1974 “energy crisis,” but for years he gave little thought to the linkages
between either pollution or energy and the built environment. However,
when thinking about aspects of the environment that sociologists may
examine, we can start by distinguishing between “built” and “natural”
environments (recognizing that in reality there is a continuum ranging
from totally built to totally natural environments that is of potential interest
to environmental sociologists).
The Built Environment
The built environment consists of those tangible settings which people
create for repeated use. These are settings with a shape and form which
were not in place until someone decided to create them for a human
purpose. Buildings are certainly a clear example of the built environment.
purpose. Buildings are certainly a clear example of the built environment.
Very few people now find shelter from wetness and cold (and from each
other) in naturally existing edifices such as caves. Most people in
industrialized nations work indoors as well, and they often travel to and
from work in containers of some sort. If beings from other planets or
galaxies observed Earth from afar, one of the puzzles they would face
would come from the sighting of the huge agglomerations of built
environments in which people live, work, and travel-namely, our cities.
Earth is marked not only by its natural features (oceans, mountains,
forests, deserts, etc.) but by huge numbers of built environments which
also vary in size, shape, and function nearly as much as do natural
environments and their flora and fauna.
Buildings, however, are but one example of built environments. People
create environmental entities which fall within building units. Furniture is
of potential human significance, whether as providing comfort and/or rest,
indicating social status, giving opportunity for specific activities, or
suggesting the relationship among people entering negotiations. Rooms,
by their size, shape, color, materials, lighting, energy and resource
supplies, and linkages to other rooms, impart their own degree of
significance. By the same token, furniture and rooms are found in many
settings other than in housing, including offices, factories, schools,
hospitals, churches, and bars. Even at the level of the individual building,
there are many variations and components with potential significance to
people; and the social significance of built environments like furniture,
rooms, and buildings goes much further than their potential impacts on
people. Built environments are created by certain people for themselves
or for other people. How and why this creative process takes the path it
does is a social process. Understanding how environments get built; what
objectives are chosen; how products and artifacts are distributed; and
who benefits, who loses and in what way; are all matters of major
importance that call for sociological analysis.
Nonsociological specialists in built environments have predominantly
focused on the purviews of their own professions: on design, on
distribution, on materials, or on the products created in occupational
settings. Conversely, most sociologists have kept busy in pursuit of