Environmental Social Sciences Research Articles

Moran, E.F. 2010, Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Moran, E.F. 2010, Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union

Review: Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union Julian Agyeman and Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger (Eds.) Reviewed by Peter C. Little Orgeon State University, USA Agyeman, Julian and Ogneva-Himmelberger, Yelena (Eds.). Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. 320pp. ISBN 9780262512336. US$25, paper. The central questions grounding Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union are 1) To what extent are increased popular environmental awareness and associated activism driving public policy and planning in the former Soviet republics, and 2) Are there emergent, separate brown (environmental justice) and green (environmentally sustainable development) agendas or are these joining together in a single just sustainability or human security agenda (p.4). This is one of the first books addressing these questions to make sense of environmental justice and sustainability struggles unfolding in countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU), which is now a post-Soviet geopolitical landscape made up of fifteen republics. The book unpacks the laws, politics, and economics germane to this region of the world that in turn exacerbate struggles for “just sustainability,” a term Agyeman helped coin in an earlier publication (Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans (Eds), Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). It begins with an introduction that provides a brief history of the environmental movement in Russia, the diversity of the movement and tactics of civic engagement, the rise of non-governmental organizations supporting movement agendas, and the common interest among activists to connect sustainability, public health, and environmental justice. The majority of the contributing authors to the book contend there “is the emergence of at least a justice-informed environmental discourse in the former Soviet Union, if not a full-fledged environmental justice or a just sustainability/human security agenda” (p.9). The remaining chapters explore a diversity topics and issues germane to civic struggles in countries of the FSU. Brian Donahoe explores the critical role of the contemporary and unstable Russian legal system and therefore the regulatory system for understanding environmental protection and indigenous peoples’ rights. Donahoe exposes the fact that the enforcement of laws are weak and ineffective largely because, as he puts it “these laws are only very general framework laws. The actual details of their implementation are supposed to be hammered out at the regional level. As a result, they are inconsistently interpreted and unevenly enforced” (p.25). He does a good job of also explaining the chronic uneasiness with democracy in Russia, noting that the Putin-Medvedev administration has made at least some judicial reforms that dovetail with the goals of environmental activists. Other chapters look at the ways in which sustainable development has been incorporated into Russia’s nation-building program as a response to economic crisis and because of strategic pressure from actors engaged in the Russian environmental movement (2); indigenous protest on Sakhalin Island (3) and in subarctic Russia (8) to protect natural resources, culture, and identity (3); petro-capital resistance in Azerbaijan (4) and Kazakhstan (7), and pipeline resistance in Russia’s Tanka National Park (5); the meshing of culture and nationalism to inform environmental action in Latvia (6); and environmental justice and sustainability activism in Estonia (9) and Tajikistan (10). The book concludes with the thought that environmental justice and sustainability movements in the former Soviet Union vary “according to the complex of sociocultural, socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and nationalistic factors that currently define, and are reshaping, the republics” (p.280). This book does an excellent job of exposing this variation, as well as the boundary-crossing human security interests that bring diverse activists and stakeholders together in their shared struggle for a better life. The book will excite scholars and activist interested in environmental justice, sustainability, environmental social science, and post-Soviet studies. Peter C. Little , PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 30, Spring 2010, ISSN:1076-7975

Revisiting … The Governance of Sustainable Development: Taking Stock and Looking Forwards

When my co-Managing Editor Andres Rodr|guez-Pose and I originally launched this particular feature of the journal in 2008 (Jordan and Rodr|guez-Pose, 2008), little did we know that I would be writing the second of these retrospective analyses of `the most downloaded papers'. Clearly, my 2008 paper on the governance of sustainable development (Jordan, 2008) has struck a chord with a large number of readers, which of course is a source of great pleasure for me but also, I think, bodes well for the journal's efforts to be recognised as an influential disseminator of popular contemporary environmental social science analysis. It is both an honour and a privilege to have this opportunity to reflect on my original reasons for writing that paper, to summarise the reactions it has generated, and to explain how my own work has evolved since I finished writing it in December 2007.

Ecological modernization as a paradigm of corporate sustainability

AbstractEcological modernization as a social theory is gaining more and more attention in environmental social science in general and environmental management studies in particular. Ecological modernization carries a positive message of the current institutional order being able to accommodate the challenge of ecological sustainability. This paper, by applying a critical organization studies perspective, highlights some of the theoretical shortcomings of the theory of ecological modernization assessed at the micro level of business firms. A case study of a Hungarian chemical firm is presented in order to point to the practical limits of ecological modernization as an uncontested, conflict‐free way towards sustainability. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Review: Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control by Karen M. O'Neil

Review: Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control By Karen M. O’Neil Reviewed by Peter C. Little Oregon State University, USA O’Neil, Karen M. Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 278 pp. ISBN: 0-8223-3773-8. US$22.95, paper. Since the social and economic restructuring of the Progressive Era and the rise of the New Deal in the United States, “[e]fforts to alter the course of rivers have changed social and political structures in expected and unexpected ways” (p. xiv). Rivers by Design sets out to make sense of and critically analyze the relationship between the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the first federal agency to actively manage land and resource development decisions, and the outlying territories, states, and publics impacted by federal flood control policy. Following the Flood Control Act of 1936, an act stemming from federal attempts at flood control in the 1880s, the Corps focused almost entirely on controlling flooding along the Sacramento and Mississippi rivers and weakened the power of centralized government authority leading to a renewed Corps of Engineers that found itself in a precarious position whereby the agency “unofficially engaged in local, state, and national politics” (p. 22). O’Neil navigates the winding road between federally mandated flood control and local, state, and landowner-based resource planning and management. Rivers, as the book makes clear, represent more than water flowing from one place to another; rivers are political, economic, and social. In this way, rivers bring state and society together, which in turn brings the tensions between state and federal politics to the surface of public debate. As a social history of the United State’s flood control program, Rivers by Design aims “to explain why the program was designed to link the (central) government with local and subnational state government institutions, including landowner-run levee districts. This involves asking who pressed for this program and why the pattern of articulation emerged” (p. xii). O’Neil tells not only a social history of U.S. flood control; the book is as much about river politics as it is about the political economy and ecology of nation building itself. Her analysis of the Mississippi River Commission and its popular critiques, including Gifford Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, elucidates the tensions that build between landowners and the State, or between civil engineers and the State, when the national economic interests of the Progressive Movement are challenged by the development of a nationwide program for flood control. Rivers by Design will be critical reading for specialists in water policy, environmental studies, environmental social science, political ecology, and history. This is an exciting and readable book. Peter C. Little , PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 27, Fall 2008, ISSN: 1076-7975

The Governance of Sustainable Development: Taking Stock and Looking Forwards

The number of books and papers bearing the terms ‘sustainable development’ and ‘governance’ in their titles has grown exponentially in the last decade or so. The main purpose of this paper is to explore what meanings have been attached to these two essentially contested terms and to assess the extent to which the material on them constitutes an important, coherent, and cumulative body of scholarship. The first half explores the existing literatures on the two terms, and draws out some of the main similarities and differences. Drawing on papers that have been published in this journal over the last decade or so, the second half focuses on the attempts that have been made to build empirical and/or theoretical bridges between the two terms. The concluding section identifies a number of key themes and explores future research needs in what is evidently a vibrant and highly policy-relevant area of environmental social science research.

The interpretation of ecological modernisation in China

Today, ecological modernisation is a widely used concept, field of inquiry, and topic of debate in the environmental social sciences across the globe. Originating from a small number of European co...

Ecogender: Locating Gender in Environmental Social Science

Ecofeminism contends that there are important interconnections between the domination of women and the domination of the environment, a perspective that might be expected to attract the interest of environmental social scientists. However, environmental social scientists have largely ignored ecofeminism, despite feminism's increasing incorporation in general social science. This may be attributed to the common contention that ecofeminism suffers from a tendency to become more an ideological construct than an academic perspective. But despite a recent surge in cross-disciplinary research, especially in critical geography, political ecology, and poststructuralism, questions of gender remain rarely addressed within mainstream environmental social sciences. Given this neglect, we present an alternative conception, what we term “ecogender studies.” “Ecogender studies” draws on those strands of ecofeminism that embrace a relational and dialogic conception of gender and its intersection with other inequalities, and departs from those ecofeminist strands that sacralize an essentialist “nature” and romanticize non-Western traditions.

Ecological Modernization and the “Gene Revolution”: The Case Study of Bt Cotton in India***

In recent years ecological modernization has emerged as one of the dominant perspectives in the field of environmental social sciences.1 A central premise of Ecological Modernization Perspective2 (...

Environmental Governance in the Information Age: The Emergence of Informational Governance

Castells's influential work on the Information Age has hardly impacted on the environmental social sciences; and where it has, it has been mainly in terms of intrusions of global flows and networks in fragile environments. This paper explores to what extent and how environmental governance is changing under the conditions of the Information Age. On the waves of information and communication technologies and globalisation processes, a new informational mode of environmental governance—or informational governance—is emerging, in which environmental information gains transformative powers. Information generation, processing, transmission, and use become fundamental (re)sources of power and transformation in environmental reform. As illustrated by several examples, the conventional powers of (state) authority in environmental protection are partly replaced by informational resources, flows, and processes in new governance arrangements and networks. These new modes of informational governance not only point at innovative means of environmental reform, but also pose a series of more critical questions related to new power constellations, (information) access and democracy, and structural uncertainties following multiple knowledges. Hence, a new research agenda emerges for the environmental social sciences.

Denial or diversity? creating new spaces for sustainable development

This paper assesses the current position of environmental social science from a perspective which locates it within an increasingly contested set of conditions. These are associated with the politics and economics of denial, on the one hand, but the increasing legitimacy of environmental vulnerabilities and resource depletion on the other. In this context it is important to assess how elements of ecological modernization—as diverse alternatives and more spatially embedded, resource-based frameworks—can be established and developed in different regions. The paper argues that environmental social science sits in the juxtaposition of increasing environmental and social vulnerability and the economics and politics of its denial. This context needs to encourage more critical treatment of alternatives to the conventional ‘treadmill of production’ model while situating these in their contested and competitive relationships with it. This could contribute to a more effective and normative ‘sustainability science’. More specifically, it is argued that it is in the ‘newly-industrializing’ regions—such as the agri-food regions of China and Brazil—that the ‘battleground’ between the ‘treadmill of production’ and carbon-intensive models and the alternative sustainable development models are particularly intense. This argument suggests a re-interpretation of environmental uneven development in ways which assess both conventional and alternative resource frameworks at the same time and in parallel scales and spaces.

Sustainable development (1987-2005): an oxymoron comes of age

The essay began by arguing that 'sustainable development' had for some time been a property of different discourses. The term 'sustainable development' was an oxymoron, which prompted a number of discursive interpretations of the weight to attached to both 'development' and 'sustainability'. Only by exposing the assumptions, and conclusions, of these discourses could we hope to clarify the choices, and trade-offs, which beset environmental policy, and the environmental social sciences. Today 'sustainable development' needs to be linked to new material realities, the product of our science and technology, and associated shifts in consciousness.

“The Death of Environmentalism”

The American environmental movement has been struggling for more than a year to digest the strong critique offered by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in their widely disseminated treatise “The Death of Environmentalism.” Their essay accuses organized environmentalism of framing key issues in overly narrow terms, of failing to connect with everyday public concerns, and of inadequately responding to the challenges of conservative political interests. This article briefly summarizes the essay's key arguments, retraces some relevant history pertaining to the past decade of environmental policy making, and highlights some of the areas in which this work touches on topical issues within the environmental social sciences. The article ends with a brief overview of the other contributions that make up this symposium.

From Additions and Withdrawals to Environmental Flows

Sociology is known for its academic debates. These debates are vehicles to accumulate understanding and interpretation of a constantly changing modern order. In the environmental social sciences, one of the axes of debate recently centered between Treadmill of Production ideas and Ecological Modernization perspectives. This article reviews the nature of that debate and aims to move beyond it. In using the sociology of networks and flows, the future research agenda for the environmental social sciences is reframed and reformulated.

Unmasking Foreign Aid in the Classroom: To Promote Environmentally Sustainable Development

The goal of this article is to analyze American foreign aid and whether it promotes environmental sustainability. A review of the significant literature was undertaken and some suggestions have been provided to make our foreign aid more effective. Our development agencies, mainly the United States Agency for International Development, while well-intentioned, are inefficient, and subject to interference by Congress and the Executive Branch. Some suggestions have been made to improve overseas development assistance (ODA) delivery, efficiency, and sustainability. This article stresses the need for environmental science, geography, and social science educators to incorporate foreign aid as a part of holistic, interdisciplinary curriculum. ODA should be only a small part of a larger focus, including debt and fair trade, to help developing countries become economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. The United States is obliged to pay its fair share for use of the global environmental commons. Some options have been presented to redress America's use of the global commons including a proposal to triple ODA to .3% of GNP. [overseas development assistance (ODA), environmental sustainability, Foreign Assistance Act, U.S. Agency for International Development, United Nations, bilateral aid, environmental sustainability index, gross national income]

Environmental social science and the distinction between resource use and industrial pollution: reflections on an international comparative study

This article aims to discuss the definition of environmental issues and the validity of differentiating between industrial pollution problems and the use of natural resources. A comparative case study including countries of different political systems and socio-economic conditions provided us with data to reflect on this question.

The Quest for Ecological Modernisation: Re‐Spacing Rural Development and Agri‐Food Studies

To what extent are we witnessing the application of a more ecologically modernising development process in advanced economies? This paper suggests that we are, and begins to assess what this means for rural development processes and their realities. Such a process requires, it is argued, more theoretically engaged rural and environmental social science which attempts to reconstruct conceptual frameworks to 'progress' as well as to 'critically interpret' the new modernisation process it confronts. The paper outlines six key conceptual starting points: environmental and territorial justice, community and association, exclusion and empowerment, consumption and production relations, corporate responsibility and accountability; and regulation and bureaucratic professionalisation. Significant potentialities now exist to further deepen the theoretical and conceptual engagement between environmental social theory and rural sociology, not least to strengthen what might be new pathways for rural development.

Sustainable Consumption: A Theoretical and Environmental Policy Perspective

Within environmental social sciences, the authors believe that the analysis of sustainable production should be complemented by bringing in issues of sustainable consumption and lifestyles. It is possible to place a stronger emphasis on consumption issues without lapsing into the socio-psychological models that were used for so long in the analyses of environmental (un)friendly behaviors of citizen-consumers. The article argues that the social practices model, derived from structuration theory, offers a feasible alternative in this respect, because the model makes possible a sociological, "contextual" approach to consumption behaviors and lifestyles. The kind of questions the social practices model generates for empirical research are illustrated using the example of domestic consumption of utility products and services. By discussing a number of pilot studies within Dutch environmental policymaking, the future agenda of the politics of sustainable consumption is explored and commented upon.

Negotiating Environmental Change: New Perspectives from Social Science

Shifting perspectives in environmental social science, Frans Berkhout, Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones risk, uncertainty and precaution - some instrumental implications from the social sciences, Andy Stirling economics and sustainable development - what have we learnt, and what do we still need to learn?, Nick Hanley, Giles Atkinson deliberative democracy and environmental decision making, Richard Munton governance and the environment, John Vogler, Andrew Jordan after Seattle - what next for trade and environment?, Paul Ekins governing natural resources - institutional adaptation and resistance, W. Neil Adger sustainable business organizations?, Anja Schaefer, Andrea Coulson, Ken Green, Steve New, Jim Skea inducing, shaping, modulating - perspectives on technology and environmental policy, Frans Berkhout, Andy Gouldson.

Regional Comparisons of Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Migration in the 1970s and 1980s: Age and Place Implications*

Over the last thirty years, nonmetropolitan regions across the United States have experienced volatile population shifts ranging from rapid growth to persistent decline. Several authors have suggested that the age structure of the population may contribute to these population trends. In the 1970s, the older baby boomers were entering labor and housing markets, while the younger boomers were enrolling in nonmetropolitan colleges and universities. By the 1980s, this large cohort was aging into a different stage in the life course. This article examines metropolitan and nonmetropolitan population shifts during the 1970s and 1980s within an age-cohort framework. Using Public Use Microsample data from 1980 and 1990, the analysis explores relationships between housing market, labor market, place characteristics, and the migration flows of different age cohorts. The analysis focuses on cohort-specific in-migration to two regions: New England and the Four Corners states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The results are consistent with a life-course understanding of migration behavior, especially during the late 1970s, with older cohort shifts directed towards nonmetropolitan destinations and younger cohort shifts more influenced by labor and housing-market variables. The results further demonstrate a large potential for future nonmetropolitan population growth, yet these growth experiences are likely to be regionally differentiated. These results have important policy implications for nonmetropolitan regions. *The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Mellon Foundation and the comments of Dr. John Cromartie of the Economic Research Service and those of two anonymous reviewers. This work is supported by a Mellon Foundation Grant for undergraduate education in environmental studies and social sciences. This “status report” presents the results of a pilot project exploring age-cohort perspectives on metropolitan and nonmetropolitan migration streams. The results are preliminary, and the authors are grateful for the insightful comments of the anonymous reviewers. Their comments have been highly influential in the continued development of this project.