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Environmental Sociology

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DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.91030-4

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 Environmental Sociology
Riley E Dunlap, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

Environmental sociology, the study of societal-environmental interactions, developed four decades ago in the USA and has
spread internationally and become institutionalized around the world. Key foci of the eld include examining the social
construction of environmental problems as well as analyzing the causes and impacts of, and solutions to, such problems.
Major advances in methods and data availability are yielding a rapid increase in our understanding of driving forces and
impacts, but there is great debate over potential solutions. The result is an intellectually vibrant eld of study.

Environmental sociology emerged in the USA in the 1970s,
sparked rst by sociological interest in the growth of environ-
mental awareness and activism and then by recognition of the
societal relevance of the energy crisis and a growing number of
ecological problems (Dunlap and Catton, 1979). It then spread
to Europe, where citizen antinuclear protests and Green politics
were major foci, and gradually throughout much of the rest of
the world. In four decades, it has evolved from a small,
marginal eld to an increasingly mainstream area. For example,
in the USA, many and perhaps a majority of sociology
departments in colleges and universities now offer a course in
the area, several graduate programs offer concentrations in it,
and a growing number of departments are hiring specialists in
environmental sociology. Concomitantly, various environ-
mental sociology handbooks (e.g., Redclift and Woodgate,
2010; Gross and Heinrichs, 2010) and numerous textbooks,
often in multiple editions (e.g., Bell, 2012; Gould and Lewis,
2014; Harper, 2012), are in print. Most importantly, environ-
mental sociologists are producing a ood of journal articles,
increasingly published in elite sociology journals (e.g.,
Jorgenson and Clark, 2012; Pais et al., 2014; Pellow and
Brehm, 2013; York et al., 2003) and research monographs.
Parallel trends are occurring in Europe, Asia, and to some
degree in Latin America.
The growth and institutionalization of environmental
sociology is also evident in terms of organizational develop-
ments. The American Sociological Associations Section on
Environmental Sociology, founded in 1976 (and now labeled
the Section on Environment and Technology), is thriving after
modest growth in its rst two decades (Dunlap and Catton,
1994), and similar research groups exist within the national
sociological associations of several other nations (e.g.,
Canada and the UK). There is also an environmental soci-
ology research network within the European Sociological
Association, while an autonomous Japanese Association for
Environmental Sociology has grown into the worlds largest
organizational body for the eld. Most signicantly, the
International Sociological Associations Research Committee
on Environment and Society (RC 24) has quickly grown into
one of the largest and most active research committees in the
ISA, and provides an excellent forum for the international
exchange of ideas and perspectives among practitioners. In
short, environmental sociology has become a widely recog-
nized and institutionalized area within the discipline of
sociology, and is ourishing not only within several nations
but internationally as well.
The institutional and organizational growth of environ-
mental sociology has been accompanied by its intellectual
growth and vitality. As the rest of this article will show, the
increasing availability of data on environmental problems and
ecological conditions has spurred rapid progress in the meth-
odological tools employed by environmental sociologists,
while theoretical debates have become more prominent as
well. Some of these developments reect regional differences in
methodological and theoretical approaches to environmental
sociology across the world, with American and European
perspectives being especially notable. I turn to these issues
while also conveying the broad contours of the evolution of
environmental sociology.
Early Emphases and Disciplinary Context
Modern sociological interest in the physical environment was
largely a response to widespread societal awareness of envi-
ronmental problems, and mobilization of support for envi-
ronmental protection symbolized by celebration of the 1970
Earth Day in the USA and then the 1972 UN Conference on
the Human Environment in Stockholm. Early sociological
research on environmental topics involved analyses of public
opinion toward environmental issues; environmental activism
at both the individual and organizational levels; governmental
agencies responsible for natural resource management and
environmental protection; the roles of activists, media, scien-
tists, and public ofcials in generating attention to environ-
mental problems; and Green parties and politics (Yearley,
1991). This research applied perspectives from established
sociological elds such as social psychology, social movements,
political sociology, and organizational sociology to environ-
mental topics, constituting a sociology of environmental
issues (Dunlap and Catton, 1979).
The 197374 energy crisis highlighting the dependence of
industrialized societies on fossil fuels, and increasing awareness
of the seriousness of air and water pollution throughout the
1970s, ushered in a new strand of sociological research
examining how societies affect their environments and,
in turn, are affected by changing environmental conditions
such as pollution and resource scarcity. This concern with

796 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.91030-4

societal-environmental relationships reected the emergence of
a true environmental sociology, and by the late 1970s, it was
a small but vigorous eld (Dunlap and Catton, 1979). Its focus
on the relationships between modern societies and their envi-
ronments represented a major departure from disciplinary
norms, however, giving environmental sociology a critical
stance relative to the larger discipline.
Sociology became a distinct discipline by emphasizing
the social as opposed to biological, geographical, and
psychological inuences on social behavior. It developed
during an era of general resource abundance, technological
progress, and economic growth. As a result, sociology took root
in a cultural worldview which assumed that sophisticated
social organization (e.g., complex division of labor) and
scientic and technological advances (e.g., nuclear energy) had
freed industrial societies from resource and other environ-
mental constraints. This assumption reinforced negative reac-
tions to earlier excesses of environmental determinism such as
geographers efforts to explain cultural differences via climatic
variation. The result was that mid-twentieth-century sociology
largely ignored the physical environment, and sociological
references to the environment typically meant the social
context of the phenomena being investigated. More funda-
mentally, mainstream sociology was premised on a taken-
for-granted human exemptionalism paradigm that assumed
modern, industrial societies had become exempt from
ecological constraints (Catton and Dunlap, 1980).
Sociological analyses of the societal impacts of energy
shortages and possibility of ecological limits to growth
constituted a signicant disciplinary development in the
1970s, and clearly challenged the notion of human exemp-
tionalism. This work was quickly supplemented by research
on the social impacts of toxic contamination and other forms
of pollution, as well as preliminary examinations of the
societal factors generating environmental degradation. A
particularly important topic in the USA was environmental
justice, with a growing number of studies examining the
inequitable distribution of environmental hazards across
racial and socioeconomic strata as well as the growth of
movements to combat the obvious injustices documented
(Mohai et al., 2009). By the early 1990s, many environmental
sociologists were ignoring disciplinary norms by analyzing
the societal causes and impacts of environmental problems,
albeit typically at a local or regional level, representing serious
inquiry into societal-environmental interactions (Fischer-
Kowalski and Haberl, 1993).
Major Trends and Emphases in the Field
As environmental sociology has evolved, its research emphases
have formed around central aspects of environmental (now
more typically termed ecological) problems: they are caused
by human actions, they are treated as problems because of their
negative impacts on humans and things that humans value
(e.g., other species), solving them requires collective action,
and all of the foregoing necessitate societal recognition that
various conditions do in fact represent ecological problems.
The result is that the bulk of environmental sociology can be
seen as focusing on the social construction of environmental
Environmental Sociology 797
problems or analyses of their causes, impacts, and potential
solutions.
The Social Construction of Environmental Problems
As noted earlier, sociological interest in the environment was
stimulated by societal attention to environmental problems,
and much of early sociological work focused on analyzing the
manner in which societal recognition developed and evolved.
Such work involved studies of environmentalism (both of
individual activists as well as environmental organizations),
public opinion, and governmental responses (Dunlap and
Catton, 1979). Eventually, attention was focused explicitly on
the social construction of environmental problems. Building
upon such basic observations as levels of airborne particulates
being ignored in one era and/or locale but seen as pollution
later on or in other places, a rich body of sociological literature
has claried how various environmental conditions become
dened as problems; the frequently contested nature of such
problems; and the implications of competing interpretations of
the sources, impacts, and solutions of the problems. Originally
relying heavily on perspectives from social problems and the
sociology of science (Yearley, 1991), over time such analyses
have drawn on social movement theory, discourse analysis,
and cultural sociology.
Numerous studies of claims, claims-makers and claims-
making activities have yielded crucial insights into the social
processes necessary to generate widespread acceptance of
conditions ranging from local toxic wastes to global climate
change as problematic. Originally, the emphasis was on
environmental activists as key claims-makers, but the impor-
tance of scientists has drawn increasing attention (Yearley,
2005). The vital role of the media both in publicizing and
interpreting claims has also received attention. Such analyses
have demonstrated that environmental problems do not
simply emerge from objective conditions, but that their
recognition is contingent upon issue entrepreneurs and advo-
cacy coalitions (activists, scientists, and policy-makers) being
successful in overcoming barriers to getting issues onto the
public agenda, and then gaining widespread societal accep-
tance of their denition of the situation and calls for amelio-
rative action (Hannigan, 2006).
Early environmental problems like air and water pollution
were readily perceptible, but newer problems such as toxic
wastes, ozone depletion, and climate change depend on
scientic measurements and interpretation for their discovery,
analysis, and possible amelioration. The resulting heavy
dependence of environmental advocates on scientic evidence
has received scrutiny from sociologists. Analysts such as Yearley
(2005) have emphasized that the environmental movements
reliance on science is a mixed blessing for several reasons: (1)
demands for scientic proof can be used to stall action,
particularly by unsympathetic politicians; (2) the probabilistic
and tentative nature of scientic evidence falls short of the
denitive answers laypeople and policy-makers seek; and (3)
reliance on scientic claims makes environmental advocates
vulnerable to counterclaims issued by skeptic scientists sup-
ported by industry. This has been particularly true of anthro-
pogenic climate change, where contrarian scientists often
backed by fossil fuels corporations and conservative think
798 Environmental Sociology
tanks have had considerable success in deproblematizing
global warming (McCright and Dunlap, 2010).
Constructivist approaches demonstrate that environmental
problems do not simply emerge from changes in objective
conditions, that scientic evidence is seldom sufcient for
establishing conditions as problematic, and that the manner in
which conditions are framed as problems requiring action is
crucial. These are major insights, and represent essential
sociological contributions. However, in the 1990s, some
constructivists followed postmodern fads and deconstructed
not only environmental problems and controversies, but the
environment (or, more typically, nature) itself. Proclamations
that . there is no singular nature as such, only a diversity of
contested natures .. (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998: 1) were
not uncommon, and posed a challenge to the predominant
realist orientation of most environmental sociologists who
took the reality of problematic environmental conditions as
given even while sensitive to the necessity of such conditions
being dened and recognized as problems.
Constructivist excesses provoked a reaction from environ-
mental sociologists of a realist bent, who argued that while one
can deconstruct the concept of nature, an obvious human (and
culturally bound) construction, this hardly challenges the
existence of the global ecosystem and by implication various
manifestations of ecosystem change (e.g., ozone depletion)
construed as problems. More specically, a growing chorus of
representatives of the realist camp argued that a strong
constructivist approach, which ignores the validity of
competing environmental claims, slips into relativism, has the
potential of undermining environmental scientists and playing
into the hands of their opponents, and precludes meaningful
examination of societal-environmental relations seen as
fundamental to environmental sociology and providing its
distinctive focus on the material world (Dunlap and Catton,
1994; Murphy, 2002).
In response to such criticism, many constructivists empha-
sized that they were not denying the material reality of envi-
ronmental problems, as their postmodern rhetoric sometimes
suggested, but were simply problematizing environmental
claims and knowledge. In eschewing relativism in favor of
mild or contextual constructivism, most constructivists have
moved toward more common ground with their realist
colleagues. The latter, in turn, have moved toward a critical
realist perspective that, although rmly grounded on accep-
tance of a reality independent of human understanding,
recognizes that scientic (and other) knowledge is imperfect
and evolving (Carolan, 2005). The result is that the realist
constructivist wars of the 1990s have subsided; however,
a remaining residue is visible in the stances adopted toward
utilizing scientic evidence on environmental problems.
From Constructivism versus Realism to Agnosticism
versus Pragmatism
The constructivist/realist divide in environmental sociology has
evolved into a related but broader pair of stances termed
agnosticism and pragmatism based on analysts treatment of produced by natural scientists, government agencies, and
environmental phenomena in their research (Dunlap, 2010).
Specically, those adopting an agnostic stance (especially
prevalent among but not conned to European scholars)
toward environmental problems are reluctant to employ
scientic indicators of these phenomena, preferring instead to
problematize, contextualize, and sometimes deconstruct
scientic evidence regarding issues such as anthropogenic
climate change. For example, their analyses offer valuable
insights into the complexities and contingencies of climate
science, but because they are hesitant about granting ontolog-
ical standing to the claims of climate scientists they avoid
examining the causes and likely impacts of rising greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions (Yearley, 2009).
In contrast, the pragmatic approach, which is popular with
(but not limited to) American scholars, employs the best
available scientic data on a wide range of environmental
conditions carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions,
deforestation, toxic wastes, and so on in empirical analyses
to investigate their relationships with an array of social
phenomena. While many of these analyses of societal-
environmental interactions involve rigorous statistical analyses
of large, quantitative data sets, pragmatists also perform more
qualitative, in-depth case studies that provide rich insights into
the evolution of such interactions over long periods of time
(Freudenburg et al., 2009).
The agnosticism about the state of environmental condi-
tions that has roots in the postmodernist turn of the larger
discipline, and the popularity of constructivist analyses within
environmental sociology so prevalent in the 1990s, continues
to have pervasive effects on sociological research and theo-
rizing about societal-environmental relations. This is particu-
larly true among European scholars, where there is far less
work on the material dimensions of environmental problems
(see Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 2007 for a notable excep-
tion). Instead, the agnostic camp tends to treat environmental
matters as symbolic/ideational/cultural phenomena, to be
analyzed via hermeneutic/interpretative approaches. Its efforts
to incorporate the material world into sociological analyses
are often limited to the discursive realm via talk about
hybrids, cyborgs, and such (Dunlap, 2010).
So strong is this agnostic stance in Europe that even theo-
rists holding a presumably more realist bent adopt agnostic
positions toward the utility of scientic data for the study of
environmental phenomena. For example, proponents of
ecological modernization theory (EMT) (discussed below)
tend to advocate skepticism toward rigorous empirical analyses
of environmental conditions in favor of methods that are more
qualitative and subjective. Leading ecological modernization
theorists Mol and Spaargaren (see Mol et al., 2009), for
example, express skepticism about the ability of empirical
research to settle theoretical debates and largely reject the use of
empirical methods and hypothesis testing in analyses of the
environmental consequences of modernization. They further
question the validity of using natural science empirical facts
and quantitative analyses to assess socially generated environ-
mental problems (see quotes in York et al., 2010: 80).
Such a stance (not unique to Mol and Spaargaren) is at odds
with the large and growing body of sociological research that
relies heavily on measures of environmental conditions
sometimes environmental activists to analyze empirically
diverse and often competing perspectives on the causes or
driving forces of environmental degradation (e.g., York et al.,

2003), the impacts of degradation (Pais et al., 2014), and
mechanisms of environmental reform (e.g., Roberts et al.,
2004). While empirically oriented pragmatists within envi-
ronmental sociology can benet from the cautions raised by
agnostics concerning the pitfalls of employing imperfect data
on environmental conditions, the gulf between the two camps
concerning the utility of empirical evidence for testing
theoretical perspectives and adjudicating debates between
competing perspectives clearly poses a challenge for the eld.
Causes or Driving Forces of Environmental Problems
From the outset, environmental sociologists have focused
attention on the societal factors that produce environmental
degradation (Dunlap and Catton, 1979: 252), although early
work was hampered by a paucity of data on environmental
conditions. Consequently, early work tended to examine
arguments being put forth by natural scientists, particularly
biological ecologists like Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner.
Most inuential in this regard was Schnaibergs (1980) analysis
of the weaknesses of emphasizing population growth, tech-
nological development, and materialistic consumption
patterns as the key drivers of degradation. In contrast, Schnai-
berg drew on political economy perspectives to develop
a sophisticated alternative that stresses the inherent need for
market-based rms to grow, to replace costly labor with
advanced technologies, and to increase their use of resources
and production of pollution in an ever-expanding production
process. He argued that a powerful coalition of capital, state,
and labor forms a growth coalition that promotes and defends
the resulting treadmill of production, which yields endless
growth (and escalating environmental degradation).
The treadmill model has been supplemented by a range of
more explicitly Marxist analyses, including OConnors (1991)
second contradiction of capitalism notion, which argues that
increasing the scale of production raises production costs and
levels of pollution, as more expensive and difcult-to-obtain
resources are continually substituted as those most accessible
are depleted (1997). Like the treadmill, the second contradic-
tion points to the unsustainability of endless economic growth.
In a complementary fashion, Fosters use of Marxs concept of
metabolic rift claries the manner in which production and
consumption in capitalist systems are inherently unecological
(Foster et al., 2011). All three perspectives converge to provide
a political economy model that suggests that Capitalist-driven
economic growth is the key factor producing environmental
degradation worldwide, and the global free-market economy is
the primary barrier to slowing such degradation and achieving
ecological sustainability.
The resulting model, focused originally on the USA, has
been extended to the international level with a marriage with
World Systems Theory and its derivatives such as ecologically
unequal exchange to create a global political economy model
now widely used within environmental sociology (Jorgenson
et al., 2014). With the growing availability of a wide range of
data on resource use, pollution production and overall
ecological impact at the level of nation-states, quantitatively
sophisticated cross-national research has provided consider-
able insight into the driving forces of deforestation, GHG
emissions, and ecological footprints (Jorgenson and Clark,
Environmental Sociology 799
2012). A critical insight has been the degree to which the
wealthy core nations are able to protect their own environ-
mental quality by using poorer, peripheral nations as both
sources of natural resources and as sinks for pollution
(Jorgenson and Clark, 2011). Such studies reinforce the pessi-
mistic implications of the political economy model at the
international level, suggesting that the global growth of
a Capitalist-driven free-market economy is ecologically unsus-
tainable as well as highly inequitable.
An alternative model of the driving forces of environmental
degradation has evolved directly from the work of biologists
such as Commoner and Ehrlich, particularly their famous
IPAT equation, which viewed (negative) environmental
impacts as a function of population, afuence, and technology.
Environmental sociologists have drawn on human ecology to
develop a stochastic STIRPAT model (technically, the
STochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Afuence and
Technology model) allowing for predictions of a variety of
environmental impacts, ranging from ecological footprints to
GHG emissions to fertilizer and pesticide use (York et al.,
2003). Such analyses reveal that population and afuence
both have strong, positive effects on the ecological impacts of
nations, and thus supplement rather than contradict ndings
from the political economy perspective by suggesting that
growth of all types (whether in population, afuence,
consumption) is incompatible with ecological sustainability.
As will be discussed below, both of the dominant strands of
research on the driving forces of environmental degradation
yield results that contrast with the more sanguine views offered
by proponents of EMT. EMT not only fails to view Capitalism as
inherently ecologically destructive, but suggests that a market
economy coupled with technological innovation offers the best
hope of solving environmental problems and moving toward
a more sustainable future (Mol et al., 2009). EMT is examined
in the section on solving environmental problems.
Impacts of Environmental Problems: Inequitable Distribution
and Environmental Justice
A key dimension of early work by environmental sociologists
was a concern with the social impacts of environmental and
resource problems, particularly the distributional aspects of
negative impacts. Inequality has long been a central focus of
the larger discipline, and it is thus no surprise that the ineq-
uitable impacts of energy shortages and the regressive impacts
of policies to deal with them were major concerns in the 1970s
(Dunlap and Catton, 1979: 263). With the discovery of toxic
contamination in Love Canal and other communities, the
distribution of exposure to environmental hazards became
a central focus of environmental sociology. Numerous studies
have documented the inequitable manner in which toxic
wastes and other environmental hazards are distributed across
racial and socioeconomic strata, with minorities and lower
socioeconomic levels being disproportionately exposed to
them (Mohai et al., 2009). Debates remain over whether race or
class is the crucial factor, and increasingly sophisticated studies
have helped clarify the complex interplay between these factors
as well as the role of historical trajectories in inuencing
contemporary patterns of inequitable exposure (Pais
et al., 2014).
800 Environmental Sociology
Work in the realm of what is now termed environmental
justice research has become methodologically rigorous, due to
sophisticated analytical techniques and improved data avail-
ability, especially the use of geographic information systems
(GIS) to overlay biophysical data with socioeconomic data
across geographical units ranging from neighborhoods to
census tracts. Such advances allow, for example, researchers to
clearly identify urban heat islands in which residents are
exposed to dangerously high temperatures during heat waves
and the socioeconomic characteristics of these neighborhoods
typically disproportionately populated with poor, racial
minorities, elderly and isolated individuals (Harlan et al.,
2013). Such technically strong work has advanced our knowl-
edge of environmental injustices immensely, and has been
complemented by advances in theorizing the origins of envi-
ronmental injustice and examinations of the emergence and
international diffusion of social movements pursuing the goal
environmental justice (Mohai et al., 2009).
At the other end of the geographical spectrum, a large and
growing body of research and theorizing focuses on inequities
in generating environmental degradation and experiencing the
effects of such degradation throughout the global system.
Intimately related to the previously noted work on driving
forces, this scholarship has consistently documented inequities
in the global economic system that benet wealthy nations at
the expense of poorer nations. Poor nations are pressured to
engage in ecologically unequal exchanges with wealthy
nations, providing their natural resources as inputs for use by
multinational corporations (sometimes for materials produced
in factories in their own nations, other times shipped abroad)
in efforts to improve their own economies but often with
little success. At the same time, resource extraction generates
environmental degradation as does the use of their territory as
sinks for international pollution, whether in the form of
housing polluting factories that ship goods abroad or as actual
dumping grounds for hazardous materials from wealthy
nations (Jorgenson et al., 2014). Rising awareness of such
processes is stimulating environmental justice campaigns
around the world.
Beyond an explicit focus on equity, sociological work has
documented the deleterious impacts of environmental prob-
lems created by human-created technological accidents and
hazards. Unlike natural disasters such as oods, earthquakes,
tornadoes, and hurricanes which have been found to produce
a therapeutic response in the affected communities, uniting
the populace in helping victims and repairing damage
technologically induced disasters like release of toxic wastes
tend to have a corrosive effect on community life. The frequent
ambiguities inherent in documenting the sources and serious-
ness of the contamination often generate conict among
different sectors, especially those economically dependent on
the perceived source and those most affected by the contami-
nation. In-depth qualitative studies have documented the long-
term erosion of community life and personal tolls on residents
(Freudenburg, 1997).
Solving Environmental Problems
In the USA, environmental sociologists have paid less attention
to possible solutions to environmental problems than to their
causes and impacts, and early work on energy policies
emphasized their regressive impacts rather than efcacy
(Dunlap and Catton, 1979). Currently, various strands of
relevant research, from a microlevel focus on developing
behavioral wedges to stimulate residential energy conserva-
tion (Dietz et al., 2009) to macrolevel analyses of the forces
promoting and hampering the adoption of international
environmental treaties (Roberts et al., 2004), are in progress.
However, attention to solutions took a quantum leap forward
when European environmental sociologists began analyzing
and generalizing from instances of signicant environmental
reforms in some Northern European nations. The result was the
emergence of EMT, a perspective that has enjoyed widespread
visibility in Europe and, increasingly, in the rest of the world
(Mol et al., 2009).
EMT called for a refocusing of the eld, from analyzing the
sources of environmental degradation to examining the sources
and mechanisms of environmental reform. Building on
industrial ecology models suggesting that production can grow
with declining input of materials and resulting pollution, EMT
quickly supplemented such claims of dematerializing the
economy via technological innovation with analyses of
complementary societal developments. New forms of collab-
oration between industry, government, and civil society were
seen as institutionalizing an ecological rationality driven by
science and technology that not only tempers environmentally
harmful decision making, but stimulates a green capitalism
that marries the power of the market with the pursuit of envi-
ronmental quality (Mol et al., 2009). EMT became popular in
both academic and policy circles, in part because it not only
sees Capitalism as friend rather than foe of environmental
progress a message that resonates well with powerful interests
in an era of hegemonic free-market ideology but embodies
optimistic projections directly counter to the pessimistic views
of both the political economy and human ecology perspectives.
Such tendencies have led to it being portrayed as a very
conservative approach to the possibility of achieving signicant
change in the current economic system (Foster, 2012).
Based on evidence from Northern European nations, EMT
appeared to offer a welcome alternative to dominant perspec-
tives in the eld. Not surprisingly, however, its optimistic
claims met with skepticism among American scholars, and
critics soon pointed to the limitations of case studies of success
stories (whether individual factories or nations) and the focus
on institutional outcomes (e.g., new laws and agencies) and
behaviors (from establishment of corporate environmental
ofcers to green consumerism). In contrast, a growing number
of empirical studies examining actual environmental condi-
tions such as GHG emissions and ecological footprints
consistently nd that economic growth produces higher levels
of environmental degradation, especially at the global level
(Jorgenson and Clark, 2011, 2012; York et al., 2003), and that
improvements in environmental quality within some wealthy
nations have come at the expense of their ecological loads
being shifted to poor nations and the global commons
(Jorgenson and Clark, 2011; York et al., 2010). Critics have
further argued that in nations such as the USA, where free-
market forces reign supreme, the sources of ecological
rationality environmental science, environmental pressure
groups, and environmental agencies are under constant

assault, threatening to create a process of ecological demoder-
nization. The result is that not only does unecological moderni-
zation (i.e., growth as usual) continue, but ecological
irrationality (like denial of anthropogenic climate change) is
increasingly institutionalized (McCright and Dunlap, 2010).
These empirical tests and empirically based criticisms have
produced something of an impasse, as leading proponents of
EMT tend to dismiss the mounting number of studies dis-
conrming their optimistic projections. While not postmodern
relativists, they have nonetheless adopted a very agnostic stance
toward the use of scientic measures of environmental indi-
cators and questioned the utility of empirical testing of theories
as noted earlier (and documented in York et al., 2010). Unlike
strong constructivists, who limit their analyses to the discursive
realm, EMT proponents tend to limit theirs to the institutional
and cultural realms and proclaim progress when regulations
are adopted or green consumerism becomes more popular
without carefully assessing whether these developments
produce discernible reductions in ecological impacts,
especially at the global level (which is the bottom line when
assessing the impacts of continued economic growth). Thus,
to American realists, EMT seems naively optimistic and
lacking in empirical support, with its refusal to acknowledge
troubling evidence of continuing ecological degradation
representing a new version of human exemptionalism
(Foster, 2012). Nonetheless, EMT may offer useful
suggestions for developing nations that seek to lower their
environmental impacts, such as China where it seems to be
making inroads (Hong et al., 2014).
Complementing EMT is world polity theory (WPT), which
posits the emergence of an evolving world culture that diffuses
international norms concerning the duties of nation-states,
including environmental protection. Emphasizing the role of
both governmental and nongovernmental agents (interna-
tional treaties, intergovernmental organizations, transnational
environmental organizations, etc.), proponents of WPT argue
that an international environmental regime has been estab-
lished that fosters environmental protection worldwide.
Several empirical studies have documented the global diffusion
of environmental protection mechanisms, including increased
levels of activism from civil society sectors (especially envi-
ronmental nongovernmental organizations) that put pressure
on governments in less-developed nations to strengthen
environmental protection efforts. The degree to which such
activities can counteract the ecologically harmful unequal
exchange relationships imposed on these nations by the
global economic system and yield actual improvements in
environmental quality still remains unclear (Jorgenson et al.,
2014; Knight and Messer, 2012).
In addition, nations that were once innovators in environ-
mental protection (especially the USA in the early 1970s), and
thus major sources of stimulation for the establishment of an
international environmental regime, are now reversing course
as their governments are taken over by antiregulatory, free-
market advocates. Watching the increasingly successful efforts
of the American Right to dismantle environmental protection
regulations and agencies in the USA (McCright and Dunlap,
2010), and the spread of similar efforts to other nations with
neoliberal regimes such as Canada and Australia, makes this
reversal a signicant possibility as witness the obstructive
Environmental Sociology 801
roles currently being played by these three nations in
international negotiations on climate change policy.
Clearly there is need for additional sociological work on
efforts to solve environmental degradation, especially to assess
the likelihood that increasing ecological deterioration at the
global level (e.g., rising GHG concentrations) can not only be
slowed but eventually halted, particularly with a global
economic system premised on endless growth. Thus far the
empirical evidence on global trends does not match the opti-
mistic projections of EMT and WPT (Jorgenson and Clark,
2011, 2012; Jorgenson et al., 2014; York et al., 2003, 2010).
Improved Data and Increasing Methodological
Sophistication: An Illustration
At the beginning and throughout this article, reference has been
made to the impact of the availability of improved data sets,
especially on environmental conditions, and increasingly
sophisticated methodological tools on the eld of environ-
mental sociology. For empirically inclined scholars, these
trends are revolutionizing the eld of environmental sociology
and promise to continue to do so. Their impact is especially
apparent in work on one of the oldest topics in the eld,
environmental attitudes and behaviors. Early work on public
opinion evolved into efforts to carefully conceptualize envi-
ronmental concern (Dunlap and Jones, 2000) and to develop
theoretical models to predict and explain both the attitudinal
and behavioral components of such concern. While European
scholars often employed rational choice theory in both surveys
and experimental studies of behaviors (Diekmann and
Schmidt, 1998), Americans developed models of pro-
environmental behavior building on theories of values and
norm activation (Stern et al., 1999), while both contributed to
clarifying key demographic predictors of environmental
concern such as age, education, and political orientation.
The emergence in the 1990s of multinational data sets on
citizens views of environmental issues led to cross-national
studies becoming popular. A debate evolved between
Europeans working from a rational choice perspective
viewing citizen concern as a result of afuence, and thus
more prevalent in wealthy nations (Franzen and Meyer,
2012), and Americans viewing such concern as stimulated by
awareness of environmental degradation, and thus widely
distributed across nations and often higher in poor nations
(Dunlap and York, 2008). The contrasting results are partially
attributable to differences in the measures employed, with
indicators of willingness to pay favored by proponents of the
afuence perspective and a wider range of indicators used by
proponents of the globalization perspective (Knight and
Messer, 2012).
Increasingly, multilevel models examining the relative
impact of national characteristics such as economic afuence
and environmental degradation and individual characteristics
such as values and income are being conducted. These studies
provide rich insights into the interplay of personal character-
istics and national contexts, showing, for example, that while
national afuence does not lead to higher levels of citizen
concern for the environment, within nations there may be
(depending on the measure used) positive relationships
802 Environmental Sociology
between postmaterial values and individual income and envi-
ronmental concern (Fairbrother, 2013). More work along these
lines, especially with improved data on environmental degra-
dation within nations, should clarify the factors that enhance
citizen support for environmental protection and how these
vary with national and regional contexts.
Concluding Observations and Future Projections
The foregoing review has been limited to major emphases and
controversies within the eld of environmental sociology,
particularly trends in research on the causes and impacts of
environmental degradation and controversies regarding socio-
logical work on potential solutions. It is worth highlighting
three important issues: First, the increasing methodological
sophistication of many practitioners and the ever-growing
bodies of data on ecological conditions is yielding
unprecedented advances in our understanding of the driving
forces and impacts of ecological problems. Second, while the
constructivistrealist divide has subsided, differing stances
toward the utility of employing indicators of ecological
conditions in empirical testing of theoretical perspectives are
readily apparent, and hamper productive debate between
agnostics and pragmatists. Third, and related to the second,
the current major theoretical cleavage within the eld is over
the ability or inability of ecological modernization processes
to halt environmental degradation, especially at the global
level.
There are other aspects of environmental sociology worth
noting, including the fact that over and above the just-noted
differences, there is great diversity in methodological and
theoretical approaches with strong bodies of work being
produced by both qualitative and quantitative researchers, at
the mirco- and macrolevel, and employing both constructivist
and realist approaches. This diversity is enhanced by the
geographical diffusion of the eld, especially beyond North
America and Europe (Dunlap, 2010). In Japan, for example,
one can nd scholars making heavy use of Western
perspectives (Hasegawa, 2004) as well as developing
indigenous ones (Torigoe, 2014). As environmental sociology
becomes an ever more international eld, one can expect this
intellectual diversity to grow and produce benecial effects.
There is also great variation in the degree to which envi-
ronmental sociologists adopt multidisciplinary perspectives and
engage in interdisciplinary projects. While some scholars focus
on testing sociological theories such as WPT and do not venture
outside of the discipline, others adopt research programs that
inherently cross disciplinary boundaries (Fischer-Kowalski and
Haberl, 2007). Given that the core focus of environmental
sociology on societal-environmental interactions is now shared
by a range of disciplines involved in coupled human and
natural systems research, and that many concerns of our eld
overlap with the growing area of sustainability science, it is not
surprising that environmental sociologists are actively engaged
in these broader efforts (Liu et al., 2007).
In short, it seems appropriate to conclude that the eld of
environmental sociology, now in its fourth decade, has estab-
lished itself as a respectable and intellectually vibrant eld of
study. The discovery of new ecological problems, and the
recalcitrant nature of current ones, ensures that the elds
subject matter will only grow in societal importance. One can
only hope that as the eld moves forward, it will be able to
make more signicant contributions to dealing with these
problems, raising its prole beyond academia.
See also: Environment and Development; Environmental
Attitudes and Behavior: Measurement; Environmental Justice in
the United States; Environmental Movements; Industrial
Ecology; Limits to Growth; Sustainability and Sustainability
Science.
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