The original chapter titles and headings are used, while the body of the text is summarized. The ratio of summary : original text is about 1:10. My final course grade with this summary was a 9. Average grade for my first year: 8.2
Inhoud
Chapter 1 – Environmental Problems and Society..................................................................................3
Chapter 2 – Consumption and Materialism............................................................................................6
The Material Basis of the Human Condition.......................................................................................6
Ecological Dialogue.........................................................................................................................6
The Hierarchy of Needs..................................................................................................................6
The Original Affluent Society..........................................................................................................6
Consumption, Modern Style...............................................................................................................6
The Leisure Class.............................................................................................................................6
Positional Goods.............................................................................................................................6
Goods and Sentiments........................................................................................................................7
The Reality of Sentiments...............................................................................................................7
Hau : The Spirit of Goods................................................................................................................7
Sentiments and Advertising............................................................................................................7
Environmental Advertising.............................................................................................................7
Consumption as Environmental Action...........................................................................................7
Goods and Community.......................................................................................................................7
The Time Crunch.............................................................................................................................7
Consumption and the Building of Community................................................................................7
The Treadmill of Consumption...........................................................................................................8
Chapter 3 – Money and Markets............................................................................................................8
The Constructed Market.....................................................................................................................9
The Treadmills Within...................................................................................................................10
Unnecessary Sacrifice...................................................................................................................10
Chapter 4 – Technology and Science....................................................................................................11
The Monologues of Technology and Science....................................................................................11
Technology as a Dialogue.................................................................................................................11
Technology as a Social Structure..................................................................................................11
The Social Organization of Convenience.......................................................................................11
The Constraints of Convenience...................................................................................................11
Technological Somnambulism..........................................................................................................11
Phenomenology............................................................................................................................11
Culture..........................................................................................................................................11
Politics..........................................................................................................................................11
Science as Dialogue..........................................................................................................................11
, Science Wars................................................................................................................................12
The Black Box................................................................................................................................12
Actor Network Theory (Bruno Latour)..........................................................................................12
Science and Technology as Political..................................................................................................12
Chapter 7 – The Ideology of Environmental Domination......................................................................12
Chapter 8 – The Ideology of Environmental Concern...........................................................................14
Chapter 9 – The Human Nature of Nature............................................................................................17
Chapter 10 – The rationality of risk......................................................................................................20
Chapter 11 Mobilizing the Ecological Society.......................................................................................21
Mobilizing Ecological Conception.....................................................................................................21
The Cultivation of Knowledge.......................................................................................................21
Cultivating Knowledge in the Fields of Iowa.................................................................................22
Cultivating Dialogic Consciousness...............................................................................................22
Mobilizing Ecological Connections....................................................................................................22
The Tragedy of the Commons.......................................................................................................22
Why It Really Isn’t as Bad as All That............................................................................................22
The Dialogue of Solidarities..........................................................................................................22
A Tale of Two Villages...................................................................................................................22
How Big Is Your Solidarity?...........................................................................................................22
Mobilizing Ecological Contestations.................................................................................................22
Double Politics and the Political Opportunity Structure...............................................................22
The Pros of the Three Cons...............................................................................................................23
Chapter 12 – Governing the Ecological Society....................................................................................23
Democracy and Bureaucracy............................................................................................................23
Legal Structure..................................................................................................................................23
The Bottom and the Top...................................................................................................................23
Participatory Governance.................................................................................................................24
Local Knowledge...............................................................................................................................24
Governing Participation................................................................................................................24
Grounding Our Knowledge...........................................................................................................24
Finding Our Balance..........................................................................................................................24
,An Invitation to Environmental Sociology -
Summary
Chapter 1 – Environmental Problems and Society
Environmental sociology= study of community in largest sense, pivotal role of social inequality.
Joining the Dialogue
The Ecology of Dialogue
Materialists (emphasizing material conditions of life) = environmental problems cannot be
understood apart from material threats posed by how our societies are organized.
Idealists (emphasizing the role of ideas) = agrees with materialists, emphasizes influence of social life
on how we conceptualize problems.
Ecological dialogue = interrelationship between material and ideal dimensions of the environment.
The Dialogue of Scholarship
Scholarship is special kind of opinion, but still opinion. Environmental sociology is important, there
are serious environmental problems that need concerted attention.
Three central environmental issues:
- sustainability
- justice
- beauty of ecology
Sustainability
Energy
Options when in shortage: get more or use less or do both + go clean.
Oil and Gas
We reached ‘’peak oil’’ state more difficult/dirty/dangerous sources:
- ‘’tar sands’’ / ‘’oil sands’’
- conventional oil/gas sources getting less conventional
- ‘’fracking’’ / hydraulic fracturing.
Portion of world’s energy supplied by oil/gas still declined.
Coal and Nuclear
High coal availability, but it’s dirty.
Nuclear energy advocates= it’s worth the risk, critics = it’s too risky.
Renewables
Wind power grows rapidly, much potential for further increase.
Renewables still have costs/consequences ‘’use less’’ emphasis.
Challenges: interests make money through waste + most jobs increase need for energy.
Solution: there’s money to be made in conservation / renewable energy.
Global Climate Change
Not warming up everywhere + changes entail more than warming ‘’global climate change’’ instead
of ‘’global warming’’. Change mostly due to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use + other
GHGs. Not only projections anymore: actual increase in heat waves, occurrence of storms/floods,
,breakoffs of chunks of ice shelves and diseases due to warmer weather. “Extra blankets on a warm
night’’ = human-induced climate change + solar radiation.
The Two Ozone Problems
- “Ozone hole’’
Caused mainly by CFCs, which were banned
Causing health problems like skin cancer
No longer increasing but takes long to repair
- Ozone at ground level
Visible as brown smog.
Caused by fossil fuel combustion (cars / factories)
Burns lung tissue of animals and leaf tissue of plants
Premature deaths
Reduces crop production + damages forests
‘’Too much ozone down here, not enough up high, and no way to pump ozone up there’’
Particulates and Acid Rain
Particulates
Visible as whitish smog
Penetrate deeply into lung tissue
50% is dust, released from poor fuel combustion
50% ‘’secondary’’ particulates, caused by burning of fossil fuels
Premature deaths + increases heart attack rates
Acid Rain
Combination of pollutants and water in the atmosphere
Direct damage to plant tissues
Leaching nutrients from soil
Acidification of lake waters
Threats to Land and Water
Threats to farmland
Soil erosion
Irrigation
Salinizes soils
Waterlogs poorly drained soils
Water shortage
Expansion of roads/suburbs
Threats to water
Irrigation of cropland + growing thirst of cities lack of water
“water stress” = demand for water exceeds availability
‘’peak water’’ = moment when overall demand for water exceeds rate of replenishment
Global warming decline of surface water
Falling water tables from the depletion of groundwater stocks
Over-extraction degrades quality of remaining groundwater
Much of remaining freshwater is polluted.
Production threats + overconsumption ‘’land grabbing’’
Environmental Justice
Those with least power get most pollution.
, Environmental racism = social heritage differences in the distribution of environmental goods/bads,
due to intentional/institutional reasons.
Who Gets the Bads?
Environmental inequality influenced by:
- skin color (darker skin more bad)
- social class (lower class more bad)
- wealth of the country
international trade in hazardous waste from rich poor
companies relocate hazardous production practices to poorer countries (LEGAL!)
Growing placelessness of marketplace impact on daily lives of affected people easily overlooked.
Who Gets the Goods?
Closely linked to inequality in income.
- inequality between countries
Increased during last decades.
- inequality within countries
Less within wealthy countries
Substantial impact on quality of life for the poor
Hunger can exist in conditions of prosperity
Income ≠ wealth, wealth gaps are even greater.
Wealth of average person in rich countries global consumption gap + pollution gap.
Poorer people are underfed, while wealthier people are overweight/obese.
Double burden of malnutrition = undernutrition and overnutrition exists in the same population.
Environmental Justice for All
Environmental hazards cross social boundaries as they cross bodily ones.
Body burden = chemicals present in the body; some environmental chemicals not made by body are
still present everyone suffers from environmental problems.
The Beauty of Ecology
Beauty of ecology = every living thing’s right to home/habitat, that is sustainably beautiful and
beautifully sustainable.
Threats to ecology:
Loss of species / landscape
Vary widely due to unknown amount of species
Species have always come and gone, but not at the current high rate
Caused by deforestation
Loss of quiet intimacy with the Earth
Due to modern technology
Philosophical and physical
The Social Constitution of Environmental Problems
Social constitution of daily life (how we institute the structures/motivations that pattern our days)
sidelining concern about environmental consequences, while living amidst environmental problems
makes consequences real. Constitution depends more on other people than on environmental
implications of our actions. Ideal social situation: taking environmentally appropriate action without
being aware of it being environmentally appropriate.
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