Abstract
In this textbook, King and Auriffeille deliver an edited anthology surveying the subfield of environmental sociology. To emphasize the sociological underpinnings of the field, the chapters are organized into groups of sociological concepts rather than environmental topics. So, when a chapter on global trade gives way to a chapter on overfishing, students will ideally find the connections in sociological notions, like relations of power, inequality, and collective action. Ultimately this structure is consistent with, and helps to teach, a key lesson we learn from studying environmental concerns through a sociological perspective: that environmental problems are inherently social problems. Most of the chapters are relatively recent empirical studies presented in an edited and abbreviated form. Each begins with an introductory paragraph by the editors summarizing the piece, offering remarks for students to understand the broader theoretical debates to which the work speaks, and highlights methodological approach where appropriate. For instance, chapter 4 features “The Tragedy of the Commodity: The Overexploitation of the Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna Fishery” by Longo and Clausen and begins with an explanation of Hardin’s tragedy-of-the-commons thesis to provide essential context for students to understand the tragedy of the commodity. Chapter 18 features Pellow’s “Politics by Other Greens: The Importance of Transnational Environmental Justice Movement Networks.” The editors introduce this work by explaining that the link between unsustainable ecologies and social inequalities is a central theme in environmental sociology and ask, “Would wealthy and powerful people really produce hazardous toxins of mountains of garbage if they had to live next door to these?” (p. 272). This context sets the stage for students to understand the importance of Pellow’s work, which shows how social movement activists in Mozambique prevented a Danish development agency from polluting areas in southern Mozambique.
The editors present a concise and well-written introduction in which they demonstrate that environmental problems are social problems by discussing how social organizations and social processes contributed to case studies that can be understood as environmental issues. These include Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Fukushima nuclear disaster, air pollution in the United States, and global climate change. In this introduction, King and Auriffeille also explain briefly that the sociological perspective helps overcome limitations of individualist-based approaches to environmentalism, which are dominant in mainstream discourse. Considering that the undergraduate audience for this text is likely to be bombarded regularly by messaging to green its consumer habits for the benefit of the environment, teachers using this text might want to highlight this fundamental sociological insight for students: Most environmental problems stem from structural, systematic problems much more so than the decisions of individuals. The introduction also provides an effective overview of the primary theoretical perspectives in environmental sociology, including the treadmill of production, metabolic rift, ecologically unequal exchange, ecological modernization, and risk society. The remainder of the introduction summarizes the following chapters and emphasizes that understanding the social dimensions of environmental problems can contribute to positive change in the name of social justice and environmental sustainability.
With 10 new chapters in the fourth edition, for a total of 22 chapters, the strength of this book is that it offers a coherent collection of readings that will render the subfield much more approachable to newcomers than it would be without this sort of guide. The new chapters present research on issues including race and intersectionality, environmental injustices related to U.S. wars, and disaster response in New Orleans, among others. Four of the new chapters compose a section titled “Changes in Progress,” focusing on prospects for creating more socially just and ecologically sustainable futures. Additionally, the selections introduce students to authors who have made lasting contributions to the subfield of environmental sociology, including John Bellamy Foster, Kari Marie Norgaard, and Thomas Dietz. Hopefully, this text can help students situate the specifics of particular studies within their proper theoretical debates and the broader discussions to which they contribute. I believe this will help students retain an understanding of the general contours that are keystones of environmental sociology, like the importance of accounting for social construction of “the environment” in varying contexts, the highly relevant nature of political economic critiques to explain environmental injustices, and the role of collective action in making our futures more sustainable.
One of the highlights of this text is one of the newly added chapters, chapter 7: “The Du Bois Nexus: Intersectionality, Political Economy, and Environmental Injustice in the Peruvian Guano Trade in the 1800s” by Clark, Auerbach, and Zhang. This chapter effectively integrates seemingly disparate research traditions, exploring complex relationships between race, gender, global political economy, and the natural environment. Additionally, this chapter presents students with an alarming case study of social injustice and environmental exploitation that is likely to stir discussion on a range of concerns. This case study of guano mining in Peru in the 1800s, and many others in this text, presents a seemingly obscure topic and provides the opportunity for students to think deeply about drawing generalizable lessons from specific instances. In other words, students should consider “What is this a case of?” (Ragin and Becker 1992) and come to see not only the rich empirical detail but also that this is a case of the racialized and gendered global capitalist system enacting brutality upon marginalized people and destruction upon the natural environment.
As edited versions of previously published research, the chapters are significantly shorter than a typical research paper. This may be a great feature, as it allows the instructor to assign reading on more topics than might be possible otherwise; however, it might risk glossing over or omitting important aspects of the research and its findings. I appreciate that each chapter contains an endnote that directs the reader to the source material. As a proponent of “jigsaw” active learning projects (see Newton [2015] for an example of a jigsaw activity)—a small group lesson in which students focus intently on one piece of material and then teach it to a group of students who all focused on other pieces—I can imagine leveraging this book for this purpose. A teacher could assign students to different chapters, require them to use their library research skills to look up the original articles, read them at home to go deeper into the reading, prepare an outline summarizing/critiquing/discussing the work, and share their work and insights in small groups later in class.
As the title suggests, this book is appropriate for an environmental sociology course. Considering the brevity of the research articles, it is fitting for an undergraduate class looking to survey the subfield. I would not recommend this for graduate seminars unless it was only to offer a starting point from which graduate students would seek out full-length research articles. This book might also be useful to provide supplemental material on environmental topics for an Introduction to Sociology course. For instance, some of the chapters from the “Political Economy” section might be particularly relevant for students who were recently introduced to Karl Marx and conflict theory ideas. Ultimately, King and Auriffeille’s edited volume would be an effective resource for demonstrating to students how sociologists tend to think about and analyze environmental issues. It is a textbook grounded in current research on relevant and timely topics with an eye ever focused on vital questions of social inequality, political power and oppression, and environmental sustainability.