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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]

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]

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]