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The theory of ecological modernization has received growing attention over the past decade, but in the process, it has been interpreted in conflicting and sometimes contradictory ways. In this article, we attempt to bring greater clarity to the discussion. Reviewing the works both by the theory's best-known proponents and by its most outspoken critics, we note that difficulties are created not just by the combining of theoretical predictions and policy prescriptions - a point that has already been noted in the literature - but also by the stark and highly significant differences in expectations between ecological modernization and most prevailing theories of society-environment relationships. Perhaps in part because of these differences, disagreements have often been expressed in stark, black-and-white terms. If the problems are to be resolved, there will be a need for greater theoretical precision, developed in conjunction with empirical research that is more focused, more finely differentiated, and more rigorous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human beings have a dualistic relationship with the environment, being subject to physical and biological limits and yet being unique in the capacity for culture and symbolic communication. Sociology reflects this context and adds another dualism, drawing heavily from the concepts and perspectives of biological ecology, but reacting almost violently against ‘reductionism’ of any sort, specifically including social Darwinism and environmental determinism. During much of the twentieth century, the predominant trend within sociology was for scholars to downplay or even ignore the importance of the environment, particularly in the United States. This trend was ultimately counterbalanced by sociological responses to the environmental movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and by the efforts of selected sociologists—particularly Riley Dunlap and William Cation—who helped bring together the field of ‘environmental sociology’ Given the finite nature of many natural resources and the ways in which human activities depend upon and affect the environment, the field of environmental sociology is likely to be an increasingly important one in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological efforts to understand environment-society relationships fall primarily into four conceptual categories. The first three, involving analytical separation, analytical primacy, and balanced dualism, all draw distinctions between biophysical and social aspects of human experience, with subsequent analyses being based on these a priori distinctions. The fourth or constructivist approach questions this naturalized dichotomy, calling attention instead to mutual contingency or conjoint constitution: What we take to be "physical facts" are likely to be strongly shaped by social construction processes, and at the same time, what we take to be "strictly social" will often have been shaped in part by taken-for-granted realities of the physical world. Technology offers important opportunities for tracing these interconnections, being an embodiment of both the physical and the social. The point is illustrated with a long-term historical analysis of a specific physiographic feature--a mountain--that has undergone little oven physical change over the centuries, but has undergone repeated changes in its social meanings and uses. Few of the changes would have been possible in the absence of the mountain's physiographic characteristics; similarly, few would have occurred in the absence of changing sociocultural definitions and possibilities. The challenge for sociology is not just to recognize the importance of bath the physical and the social factors, and certainly not to argue over the relative importance of the two, but to recognize the extent to which what we take to be "physical" and "social" factors can be conjointly constituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]