The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (16 page)

factors do not play the predominant role in shaping movement mobilization

(Hannigan, 1995). Second, as noted above, the relatively widespread expressions

of Third World environmentalism in recent years cast doubt on the notion that

environmentalism is primarily a phenomenon among rich countries and affluent

social classes (Martinez-Alier, 1995). Third, a comprehensive theory of envir-

onmentalism must also be able to explain anti-environmentalism, and account

for the fact that in this neoliberal era anti-environmentalism at times rivals

environmentalism as a political force (McCarthy, 1998). Fourth, there is a

need to theorize the enormous internal diversity of the movement; expressions

Emerging Trends in Environmental Sociology

51

of organized environmentalism exhibit tremendous diversity in their class align-

ments, claims, goals, and political ideologies, and the coexistence of these groups is often far more precarious than is recognized in academic treatments of them

(Gottlieb, 1994). By recognizing the internal diversity of the movement environ-

mental sociologists will recognize that there is no underlying coherence to

the movement (or that it is a congeries of movements rather than a single

movement).

Fifth, there is a need to recognize that environmentalism is in large part a

social product. For example, many contemporary expressions of environment-

alism (for example, indigenous resistance to rainforest destruction in the developing world) have existed for some time but were not defined as environmental

activism three decades ago. Sixth, there is a need to distinguish between public support for the movement (which tends to be broad, but shallow and somewhat

transitory) and movement participation (which is much less prevalent but more

stable, and which tends to be drawn from well educated and/or politically

efficacious strata of civil society). In sum, environmentalism and environmental movements are a heterogeneous set of phenomena which will likely need to be

explained through the use of multiple theoretical perspectives.

Thè`Cultural Turn,'' Social Constructivism,

Constructivism, and

Global Change

During the first fifteen or so years of North American environmental sociology,

until roughly 1990, there was an almost universal commitment of the environ-

mental sociology community to a realist epistemology and materialist ontology.

In fact, prior to the late 1980s a sizable share of the North American environ-

mental sociology community saw its mission as being to bring the ecological

sciences and their insights to the attention of the larger sociological community.

Some environmental sociologists had such strong commitments to the ecological

sciences that they felt it was appropriate to evaluate environmental-sociological literature in terms of whether it supported or undermined the persuasiveness of

ecological-scientific positions on global environmental change and related issues (Dunlap and Catton, 1994).

Since the mid-1980s there have been two social changes ± one in sociology and

the other in world society ± that have had contradictory implications for envir-

onmental sociology and that have led to some protracted controversies in the

field. The first change ± the growing interest in environmental matters within

mainstream sociology ± occurred primarily as a reflection of the cultural turn of the discipline in the Anglo-American world, and because of growing discipline-wide interest in ecology as an ideational phenomenon and as a focal point of

modern social movements. The second change was the growing national, and

especially international, attention to global environmental change in general and atmospheric warming in particular.

The principal pivot of controversy over the cultural sociology of environment

and the environmental sociology of global change was the emergence of a

52

Frederick H. Buttel and August Gijswijt

social-constructionist literature on global environmental change. Prior to the

1990s the social constructionism had been largely confined to the social prob-

lems and sociology of science literatures. Beginning around 1990, however,

social constructionism was increasingly employed to understand ``framing'' pro-

cesses within social movements. Also, sociologists of science were increasingly

extending the tools of constructionism to the environmental and ecological

sciences (for example, Yearley, 1991, 1996; Wynne, 1994). A number of envir-

onmental sociologists (for example, Taylor and Buttel, 1992; Hannigan, 1995)

proceeded to apply constructionist insights to the processes according to which

global environmental and climate change knowledge claims were being

``framed.''

The thrusts of the social-constructionist literature on global environmental

change were several-fold. It was argued that global change served simultan-

eously as a scientific concept and social movement ideology, and that social

movement claims and items of scientific knowledge were mutually constitutive.

A number of analyses suggested that the way that environmental movement

organizations appropriated knowledge from climate scientists was partial and

selective (for example, placing great stress on Third World sources of global

warming and biodiversity destruction, while saying very little about the like-

lihood that living standards in the affluent countries would need to be rolled

back in order to reduce substantially greenhouse gas emissions). The selective

appropriation of global change knowledge was suggested to be, at least partly, a strategy by environmental organizations to make the most attractive possible

case to the public and to political elites about why there needed to be a strong policy response to global change issues. Social constructionists also argued that the movement claim ± that the most significant environmental problems facing

human societies are global ones ± was as much a socio-cultural construct as a

demonstrated scientific fact. A number of social constructionists also observed

that there was a small but influential minority of climate scientists who were not in agreement with much or all of the stylized knowledge about the anthropo-genic causes of global climate change. At a minimum, these scientific disagree-

ments were predicted to provide the basis for many corporations, state officials, and interest groups whose interests were not well served by an agenda of

reducing greenhouse gas emissions to make a persuasive case that there is

`ùncertainty'' with regard to the validity of global circulation models of global warming that predict substantial atmospheric warming in the twenty-first century. `Ùncertainty arguments'' (see Hannigan, 1995) would indeed prove to be

crucial to anti-climate change interest groups (such as the corporate-sponsored

Climate Coalition in the USA) in making the case that the evidence about global

climate change is not sturdy enough to justify major costly policy changes. In

addition, the existence of differences of scientific perspective about global

warming might imply that there was premature closure ± by climate scientists,

environmentalists, and environmental sociologists ± on the consensus surround-

ing global environmental and climate change.

The social constructionist literature generated an immediate and very anim-

ated response from a number of environmental sociologists (Dunlap and Catton,

Emerging Trends in Environmental Sociology

53

1994; Martell, 1994; Murphy, 1994, 1997; Redclift and Woodgate, 1997). The

critics of constructionism, while conceding that there are social processes

involved in translating climate science findings into a policy program, have

nonetheless suggested that constructionism has served to distort the realities of how the climate science community perceives the global warming issues. It was

suggested that portraying global warming predictions as a merè`knowledge

claim'' underestimates the degree to which there is scientific consensus around

global warming. Relativizing knowledge about global warming can only serve to

diminish its credibility within sociology and society at large. The critics of social-constructionist accounts of global warming were not only concerned with how

these accounts might lead to distorted views about climate and environmental

sciences; there was the broader concern that social-constructionism deflects

attention from the material dimension of science and technology in general.

Social constructionism's critics have also suggested that this approach serves to reinforce thèèxemptionalism'' of mainstream sociology, and to legitimate

sociology's lack of attention to the biophysical environment. Finally, the critics have suggested that because social-constructionism is contradictory to the core

postulate of environmental sociology ± that the biosphysical and social worlds

are connected by webs of cause and effect ± the growth of constructionism could

serve to undermine the stature of environmental sociology.

As central as the debate over social constructionism was to the pulse of the

field during the early and mid-1990s, our prediction is that a decade or so hence this debate will not be seen as particularly meaningful. The social constructionists and their critics have tended to talk past each other to a considerable degree.

On one hand, the critics of social constructionism seem to have misperceived the degree to which constructionists are motivated by the goal of relativizing or

challenging the facticity of global warming and related knowledges. While there

are indeed some constructionists in the sociology of science and cultural studies who are so motivated, the constructionists in environmental sociology are

primarily interested in how scientific knowledges arè`represented,'' how envir-

onmental movements and environmental researchers interact in the representa-

tion of environmental knowledges, and how environmental issues arè`framed''

in the public sphere (see, for example, Capek, 1993; Hannigan, 1995). On the

other hand, social constructionists have a tendency to exaggerate the degree to

which this perspective is a coherent theory. In effect, social constructionism and related approaches (for example, discourse analysis; Hajer, 1995) are more a set of concepts and methodological conventions than they are a full-blown theory.

As an example, the geographers Braun and Castree (1998) have published a

highly influential anthology based on the notion that constructionism needs to

be joined to more fully formed theories such as neo-Marxism in order to provide

clear analytical leverage in understanding social processes that shape environ-

mental issues.

While the high-visibility debate between the social constructionists and their

critics was proceeding, a number of more empirically oriented environmental

sociologists began to initiate a set of research activities on global change in

association with official governmental and intergovernmental organizations,

54

Frederick H. Buttel and August Gijswijt

particularly within agencies such as the National Academy of Sciences in the

USA, and through the Global Change Initiative of the UK's Economic and Social

Research Council. The bulk of this research has focused on understanding the

contributions of social or socially related ``driving forces'' that influence global environmental and climate change. Driving forces are the proximate causal

factors that affect the global environment. Land use change and `ìndustrial

metabolism'' (the flows of materials/goods into and out of production processes) are the most common type of driving forces that are analyzed. Sociologists have

also contributed to research aiming to identify the socio-economic and socio-

political factors (for example, the capital intensity of technological changes,

social values, and globalization) that influence the driving forces underlying

climate change. Sociologists have typically worked on interdisciplinary teams

that include economists, geographers, and environmental scientists, as well as

climate scientists (see Rosa and Dietz, 1998; Commission on Behavioral and

Social Sciences Education and Policy Division, 1999).

Increasingly, the most influential type of interdisciplinary global change model of driving forces is that of the STIRPAT (STochastic Impacts by Regression on

Population, Affluence and Technology) model developed by Dietz and Rosa

(1997). Dietz and Rosa's application of this model to carbon dioxide emissions

has resulted in some novel findings. For example, they have found that there are environmental diseconomies of scale at the largest of national population sizes.

A few countries with very large populations have been found to contribute

disproportionately to carbon dioxide emissions. Related research by Roberts

and Grimes (1997) on world-systems processes, societal development, and thèènvironmental Kuznets curve'' (the notion that there is an inverted U-shaped relation between national affluence and environmental impact) has found that

over the past two decades the postulated inverted U-shaped relation between

income growth and carbon dioxide emissions has pertained only in the case of

the already industrialized countries. By contrast, the poorest world nations tend to be locked into a high and increasing level of environmental impact per unit of income or affluence.

STIRPAT and environmental Kuznets curve research has gotten off to a prom-