Search

Environmental harms involve a "double diversion" -- two forms of privilege that deserve greater attention. The first involves disproportionality, or the privileged diversion of rights/resources: Contrary to common assumptions, much environmental damage is not economically "necessary" -- instead, it represents privileged access to the environment. It is made possible in part by the second diversion -- the diversion of attention, or distraction -- largely through taken-for-granted or privileged accounts, which are rarely questioned, even in leftist critiques. Data show that, rather than producing advanced materials, major polluters tend to be inefficient producers of low-value commodities, and rather than being major employers, they can have emissions-to-jobs ratios a thousand times worse than the economy as a whole. Instead of simply focusing on overall/average levels of environmental problems, sociologists also need to examine disproportionalities, analyzing the socially structured nature of environmental and discursive privileges. Doing so can offer important opportunities for insights, not just about nature, but also about the nature of power, and about the power of the naturalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing sociological analyses express differing expectations about state control over economic actors and the political feasibility of environmental regulation. Recent literature on the environmental state sees environmental protection as becoming a basic responsibility of postindustrial states, with economic actors no longer having the autonomy they once enjoyed. In contrast, much of the work in environmental sociology expects commitments to environmental state responsibilities to be largely symbolic. Scholars working from this perspective tend to see environmental damage as proportionate to economic prosperity. To assess the differing expectations, we analyze actual environmental performance among the most prosperous nation-states focusing on national-level emissions of carbon dioxide. The strongest predictors of emissions are found to be measures of ecological efficiency, which tend to be associated with potentially less symbolic policy decisions. For the future, there is a need to move beyond broad assertions, devoting greater attention to the conditions under which states are more or less likely to impose constraints on economic actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In comparison with urbanites, rural residents live in environments that are less heavily modified by human activity. They also depend more directly on the extraction or use of natural resources and are more likely to suffer the kinds of economic weaknesses that could lead them to favor economic development even at the expense of environmental protection. Yet while some studies have found rural residents to express lower levels of environmental concern than do urbanites, other studies have found that low levels of rural environmental concern may actually reflect lower concerns among farmers in particular. These varied results may be affected by methodologies, including the degree of focus on local environmental concern and the need to separate living in polluted areas from working for polluting industries. Drawing on rural areas with significant employment both in agriculture and in mining, this paper presents data on more specific local concerns about the environment and technological development. The findings show persons in agriculture express higher levels of concern than do other rural persons in the same communities. The results suggest that widespread support for environmental protection may make it difficult to isolate groups having low levels of environmental concern unless greater attention is devoted to the specific environmental issues having the greatest local salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on sex differences on the attitude towards environmentalism. Feminist literature on gender socialization; Features of research on environmental and technological controversies that has addressed the issue of gender differences in attitudes; Findings on sex and attitudes toward technological/environmental risks.

This paper briefly outlines the origins and contributions of environ- mental sociology to date, going on to propose ways in which the existing research can be used as a foundation for a new generation of research into the 21st century. It argues that environmental sociologists need to avoid the omphaloskepsis that sometimes afflicts other fields of sociology, but that there is a real opportunity to do so. Three options appear particularly promising: (a) broadening the now-established base of sociological research that deals systematically with environmental variables; (b) devoting greater attention to the ways in which socially constructed "definitions of the situation" may contribute to (and not simply permit the evading of) the environmental problems that societies face; and (c) beginning more fine-grained analyses of the connections between specific human activities (particularly economic activities) and specific components of the physical environment. Contributions to date have clearly established the fact that such connections exist; the work of a much broader range of sociologists will be needed, however, to help develop an improved understanding of the nature, causes, and extent of those connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]