What is Environmental Sociology?
Environmental sociology is the study of the reciprocal interactions between the physical environment, social organization, and social behavior. Within this approach, environment encompasses all physical and material bases of life in a scale ranging from the most micro level to the biosphere. An important development of this subdiscipline was the shift from a “sociology of environment” to an “environmental sociology.” While the former refers to the study of environmental issues through the lens of traditional sociology, the latter encompasses the societal-environmental relations (Dunlap and Catton, 1979; Dunlap and Catton, 1994). A diversity of paradigms, themes, and levels of analysis have characterized environmental sociology. However, despite this diversity, a minimal identity of the subdiscipline has been established through significant empirical research and a theoretical contribution “self-consciously fashioned as a critique to ‘mainstream’ sociology” (Buttel, 1987:468). Two key c
