This edition of Research in Rural Sociology and Development is dedicated to Frederick H. Buttel, who edited the series from 2002 to 2005. Knowing that he was terminally ill, Fred…
Abstract
This edition of Research in Rural Sociology and Development is dedicated to Frederick H. Buttel, who edited the series from 2002 to 2005. Knowing that he was terminally ill, Fred asked me in the summer of 2003 to co-edit this particular volume. He died in January 2005, unable to see the project through to its completion. Nevertheless, the volume bears the stamp of Fred's clear vision. It grew out of a symposium Fred organized at the XI World Congress for Rural Sociology in Trondheim, July 2004. He named that symposium ‘New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development.’ Chapters in this volume include papers presented at that symposium, complemented by an additional selection of outstanding papers we commissioned. Together, these chapters constitute a fitting memorial to Fred's unparalleled breadth of contribution to the sociology of development.
In this chapter, I want to take some stock of the subdiscipline of environmental sociology. I believe that a productive approach to restoring some of the coherence of…
Abstract
In this chapter, I want to take some stock of the subdiscipline of environmental sociology. I believe that a productive approach to restoring some of the coherence of environmental sociology is to conceive of mainstream environmental sociology as reflecting several paradoxes. The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to a brief explication of environmental sociology's theoretical and empirical paradoxes. I will begin with three paradoxes that have played a major role in environmental sociology since the 1970s. However, many of the theoretical and empirical paradoxes of the subfield are relatively new ones – and some have not even been thought of as paradoxes. The thrust of the present chapter consists of something of a research agenda for environmental sociology for the next decade or so.
This paper presents the theory of the global environmental system to explain the different climate change regimes emerging from advanced industrialized nations. Using data…
Abstract
This paper presents the theory of the global environmental system to explain the different climate change regimes emerging from advanced industrialized nations. Using data collected regarding the formation of domestic climate change regimes in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands, the specifics of the theory are outlined. I begin by analyzing the expectations of some of the more prominent sociological theories about the society‐environment relationship in the advanced world finding that they do not explain the disparate responses to the regulation of greenhouse gases in these countries. The theory of the global environmental system is proposed as an alternative to the rather extreme expectations of the sociological literature on society/environment relationships. Through this proposed theory, we can better understand successful cases of global climate change regimes within the context of the interrelations among domestic and international actors.