Search

Rather than seeking ivory-tower isolation, members of the Rural Sociological Society have always been distinguished by a willingness to work with specialists from a broad range of disciplines, and to work on some of the world's most challenging problems. What is less commonly recognized is that the willingness to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries can contribute not just to the solution of real-world problems, but also to the advancement of the discipline itself. This point is increasingly being illustrated in studies of environment-society relationships. Most past discussions of humans' roles in environmental problems have focused on overall or average human impacts, but rural sociologists have played leading roles in identifying what I have come to call ''the double diversion.'' First, rather than being well-represented by averages, environmental damages are often characterized by high levels of disproportionality, with much or most of the harm being created by the diversion of environmental rights and resources to a surprisingly small fraction of the relevant social actors. The disproportionality appears to be made possible in part through the second diversion, namely distraction—the diversion of attention, largely through the taken-for-granted but generally erroneous assumption that the environmental harm ''must'' be for the benefit of us all. There are good reasons why rural sociologists would have been among the first to notice both of these ''diversions''—and why they will give even greater attention to both in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) is the law that created the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The law also led to a legal anomaly. While federal agencies are given broad discretion over the use of information contained in EISs, the EISs are explicitly required to make "integrated use" of social science expertise. Yet most EISs to date have contained little or no evidence of social science input. This article begins with a brief introduction to the legal requirements for the use of social science expertise in EISs. Next, synthesizing the existing literature, we identify six major factors that appear to account for the major part of the discrepancy. Third, we explore possibilities for dealing with the situation. Three propositions drawn from the theories and insights of political sociology suggest that what appears to be problems "of the field" may actually result from the specific structural situations in which social scientists have found themselves to date. Thus, improvements may be dependent on social scientists' willingness to explore new roles-roles that entail important risks as well as important opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]