Thirty Years of Scholarship and Science on Environment— Society Relationships

Abstract

By 2008, “environmental sociology” had become a well-established and well-recognized field of sociology, but exactly 30 years earlier, in 1978, it was essentially nonexistent. That was the year that saw the publication of the first two articles that, along with later work by Riley Dunlap and William Catton, began to make possible the subsequent development of the field. At the time, many of the leading figures in sociology—specifically including those who called themselves “human ecologists”—were actively hostile to the idea that sociological work would include attention to environmental variables. The hostility was particularly acute for work that focused on what an important book of the time called Limits to Growth. Fortunately, these pioneers moved forward, and in doing so, they helped to change the entire field of sociology. If the earlier degree of hostility toward work on environmental problems and variables is difficult to imagine today, a significant fraction of the credit needs to go to Drs. Catton and Dunlap.