The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (15 page)

ecosystems that have some degree of regenerative capacity). In addition, envir-

onmental sociologists have not done nearly as well as environmental geo-

graphers and other scholars in taking into account the fact that some habitats

and ecosystems are more fragile, vulnerable, and ecologically significant than

others (see, for example, Zimmerer, 1994).

In addition, the notion that the classical tradition has been problematic for

environmental sociology and sociology at large has been de-emphasized. If any-

thing, there has been a growing tendency in the 1990s for the appearance of

Emerging Trends in Environmental Sociology

47

contributions to environmental sociology that are explicitly labeled Marxist,

Weberian, or Durkheimian (for example, Foster, 1999b; Murphy, 1994; Prades,

1999, respectively) . Finally, a number of sociologists (for example, Buttel, 2000a) have suggested that a close reading of the texts of the classical theorists shows that they were much more aware of matters pertaining to resources and environment

than many contemporary environmental sociologists give them credit for. Foster

(1999a), for example, has written very forcefully to the effect that Marx's con-

siderable work on soil fertility and land destruction led him to develop a concept of ``metabolic rift'' which remains useful in environmental sociology.

Environmental Attitudes and Orientations

Orientations

While the first generation of environmental-sociological theoretical work was

being fashioned in the mid-to late 1970s, a new phase of environmental policy-

making had been in effect for nearly a decade, which was characterized by the

establishment of separate administrative bodies for environmental protection,

and by regulation and control of behavior by means of legislation. By the 1970s

governments were actively exploring how to develop environmental protection

based on affecting individual and collective behaviors through strategies such as education, attitude change, material incentives, and `ìnternalization of externalities.'' Governments began to utilize public information campaigns to get

people involved in environmental issues. Government-funded contract research

stimulated the development of the research tradition on environmental attitudes

and behavior (for a useful overview, see Tellegen and Wolsink, 1998, chapter

six).

This tradition of research in environmental attitudes and behaviors has pro-

duced an impressive body of knowledge. Three important generalized results

from studies in the tradition of the influential Fishbein±Ajzen (1975) model

suggest the contributions as well as the limits of this research. First, while

there is a direct causal relation between attitudes and behavioral intentions,

there is little association between attitudes and actual behaviors. Second, attitudes explain intentions only if intentions are disaggregated according to par-

ticular `àttitude-objects.'' There is very little connection between general

environmental attitudes and environmentally related behaviors. Third, whatever

environmental attitudes people have, at the individual level there are very strong links among affluence, consumer spending, and environmental impacts of consumption behaviors (Tellegen and Wolsink, 1998, pp. 127±38). Survey respond-

ents tend to underestimate the environmental effects of their own behavior. They also tend to see themselves as having greater motivation to conserve and protect the environment than do other people, to feel powerless in changing the behaviors of others, and to find themselves in what might be described as à`prison-

er's dilemma'': if they change their behaviors, others will not, and overall

environmental quality will fail to improve.

A second major focal point of research on environmental values and orienta-

tions has been the literature that tests the notion of postmaterialism. Developed 48

Frederick H. Buttel and August Gijswijt

initially by the political scientist Ronald Inglehart (1977), the notions of postmaterialism and postmaterial values were based on Maslowian reasoning about

the hierarchy of needs. Inglehart argued that as societies industrialized and

became more affluent, the immediate economic and survival needs of most

citizens would be adequately met, and that affluence would ultimately lead

citizens to move up the hierarchy of ``needs.'' Inglehart has suggested that

``postmaterialism'' characterizes the emergent value orientations of industrial-

country citizens who have few, if any, remaining concerns about the basic

material conditions of life. Respect for nature and interest in the quality of life rather than in the quantity of material goods are seen as the prototypical

postmaterial values. Among the emerging lifestyle orientations stressed by Inglehart is environmentalism (see Inglehart, 1995). Inglehart has thus posited that

growth in national income will be associated with growing support for environ-

mental protection and environmental movements.

It was fortuitously the case that at the same time that postmaterialism was

being advanced as a framework for understanding cross-national differences in

environmental orientations, environmental attitude data were being collected

from a number of developed and developing countries. Cross-national compar-

isons from these data were examined for consistency with the postmaterialism

hypothesis. A number of authors noted that, contrary to the postmaterialism

hypothesis, there is very little association between national income and envir-

onmentally related values (for example, support for pollution control, and

concern about global warming and global environmental change; see Brechin

and Kempton, 1994; Kidd and Lee, 1997). Thus, observers such as Dunlap

(1997; Dunlap and Mertig, 1996) have argued that the urgency of global

environmental problems of various sorts has essentially overridden whatever

linkage there existed among income growth, postmaterialism, and environmen-

tal values.

Martinez-Alier (1995) has taken this line of argument a step further by noting

that data of this sort suggest that there is no singular phenomenon of environ-

mentalism. Thus, in the North, environmentalism's referents include matters of

lifestyle and postmaterialism, while the level of environmental degradation or

immediate threats from environmental destruction do not play major roles in

shaping environmental orientations. In the South, on the other hand, environ-

mentalism tends to be based more on immediate threats of environmental

degradation to livelihood and personal well-being.

Environmental Sociology,

Sociology, Environmental

Environmental Movements,

Movements,

and Environmentalism

Environmentalism has become one of the most widely researched modern social

movements. However, most research on the environment movement during the

1970s through the mid-1980s was done by environmental sociologists, rather

than by social movement specialists. These early years of research on thè`modern'' (post-1968) environmental movement were dominated by survey Emerging Trends in Environmental Sociology

49

research on public environmental attitudes, mostly conducted with little guid-

ance from social theory. Also, this literature tended to have a partisan flavor, with much of the research being done by academics and non-academics who had

strong commitments in favor of ± and occasionally against ± it.

As noted above, the major general theories of environment and society have

tended to take the form of theorizing how it is that there are pervasive, if not inexorable, tendencies for capitalist-industrial development and modernization

to lead to environmental degradation. Environmentalism and the environmental

movement tend to be incorporated into these theories as the predominant social

response to degradation, and as one of the principal mechanisms by which

societies can escape the contradictions of growth and environmental destruction.

Over the past ten to fifteen years, however, environmental movement researchers

have been increasingly drawn from outside of environmental sociology, and their

research has aimed at a higher level of generality. Recent analyses of environ-

mentalism and ecological movements have been very strongly influenced by two

interrelated trends in the sociological discipline. First, there has been a general tendency over the past decade or so for neo-Marxism and related materialist-structuralist perspectives to decline in persuasiveness, and for various cultural, subjectivist, or hermeneutic sociologies to be in ascendance. Second, as is discussed at more length below, there has been a broad ``cultural turn'' in sociology at large, and as a result many (for example, Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1994; see

the reviews in Martell, 1994; Hannigan, 1995; Goldblatt, 1996) view environ-

mentalism as one of the defining social forces in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century societies. In particular, `ècology'' is now commonly regarded as the prototypical ``new social movement'' (see the summary of this tradition in Scott, 1990).

Given the increasingly widespread view that environmentalism is an ascendant

social force, the bulk of work in the field has been directly or indirectly aimed at understanding the factors in society and its environment that have contributed to this outcome. Three basic perspectives from the environmental sociology and

related literatures have been advanced. One influential tradition is that pio-

neered by Riley Dunlap and colleagues (Dunlap and Van Liere, 1984). They

argue that as industrial society developed over the past several centuries, this was historically propelled and accompanied by a set of beliefs and institutional

patterns that can be referred to as à`dominant Western worldview'' or ``domin-

ant social paradigm'' (DSP). The DSP denotes the belief that human progress

should be seen primarily in material (production and consumption) terms, which

in turn legitimates human domination of nature. The DSP has accompanied the

long-term development of industrial society across a variety of societal types

(ranging from capitalism to twentieth-century state socialism) and across a wide range of institutions within societies (for example, the polity and popular culture, as well as the economy). But while the social institutions of growth have led to material abundance, they have also created environmental destruction. Environmental problems and the growth of environmental knowledge are seen to be

engendering a growing questioning or rejection of the DSP among many social

groups. The DSP is now seen by many citizens of the advanced societies, and

50

Frederick H. Buttel and August Gijswijt

increasingly in the developing nations as well, to be environmentally problem-

atic, if not environmentally irresponsible. The result is that there is being

nurtured à`new ecological paradigm'' ± an ethic that involves more and more

social groups rejecting DSP assumptions and seeing themselves more as a part of

nature. Thus, environmentalism is ultimately a social response to the biophysical realities of and scientific knowledge about environmental destruction.

A second view, that by Inglehart (1977, 1995), was discussed in the preceding

section. Again, Inglehart's argument is that as industrial societies have devel-

oped, and as absolute scarcity has been conquered and most basic material needs

have been met, public concerns tend to rise up a definite hierarchy of ``needs'' to a point where there is an articulation of ``postmaterial,'' quality-of-life-oriented values such as environmentalism.

A third general orientation toward environmental mobilization locates the

growing force of ecology within the transition from the institutions of mid-

century Fordism and `ìndustrial society'' to the post-Fordist, postmodernist, or

``risk-society'' institutions of the late twentieth century (see the overviews in Scott, 1990; Martell, 1994). Beck's (1992) theory of the transition from industrial tò`risk society,'' and the corresponding reflexive-modernizationist pro-

cesses of subpolitics and new social movements, is another related form of this

``political vacuum'' approach to explaining the rise of ecology movements. The

institutional disarray associated with the disintegration of Fordism has under-

mined traditional reservoirs of social meaning, and weakened associational and

political-party vehicles of interest aggregation. These social vacuums have

increasingly been filled by movements such as ecology. For many citizens these

movements are more satisfactory vehicles than traditional political institutions (especially political parties) for enabling people to articulate post-industrial concerns (particularly concern about risks to health and about environmental

integrity).

Each of these master theories of environmentalism has strengths and weak-

nesses. Their strengths derive from the fact that they have identified important overarching features of institutional and environmental change that are related

to organized environmentalism. Their weaknesses are generally due to the fact

that in the quest for overarching explanations they focus on certain particular

forms or processes of environmentalism and downplay others. A comprehensive

theory of environmentalism must be able to deal with a number of pivotal

characteristics of ecology movements. First, the surges and declines of the movement since the late 1960s suggest that biophysical (or scientific-knowledge)