An Invitation to Environmental Sociology

Environmental sociology is the study of community in the largest sense. When there are problems in the environment, there are problems in society-it is people who create environmental problems and people who must resolve them. The author takes readers on a series of field trips through the vast landscape of environmental sociology. The text analyzes the relevance of social theory with a social, community perspective for resolving the practical issues of our environmental problems, and explores three elements of environmental sociology: the material, the ideal, and the practical. In order to unite these three topics, it examines the interplay of material and ideal factors through the central concept of "ecological dialogue." The book also looks at the connection between the local and the global, the role of social inequality in environmental conflicts, and the power of the metaphor of community for understanding these social and ecological dynamics. It balances a social action emphasis with an analytical and theoretical approach to encourage development of critical thinking on environmental sociology. The chapter titled "Body and Health" includes case examples such as the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India and mercury pollution in Ontario. The chapter titled "The Rationality of Risk" discusses risk in the context of everyday life with examples such as mad cow disease and genetically modified organisms and reflects on whether there are greater risks in society today than in the past.