Pub Date : 2022-01-05DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2021603
Linus Ekman Burgman
ABSTRACT Recycling nutrients from renewable sources, like sewage sludge, has been promoted as a step towards a circular economy by decreasing extraction and dependency on inorganic fertilizers. Implementation, however, is often controversial. In 2018, a Swedish governmental inquiry was commissioned to propose a complete ban on land application of sewage sludge to reduce soil pollution and increase phosphorus recovery. In 2020, the inquiry suggested two pathways, one to ban all land application, and one where agricultural land use should continuously be allowed. This paper is based on interviews with experts tied to the inquiry where they reference to sewage sludge, related objects, and future management. The inquiry’s inability to propose a coherent suggestion is analysed inspired by the concept of multiple ontology. Several ontological versions of sewage sludge emerge that unveil tensions between concepts of danger and cleanliness, pollution and naturalness, often captured in previous studies of waste. Some versions of sewage sludge conflict, which can explain the difficulty to establish an ontologically singular knowledge base for a transformation of sewage sludge from waste to resource. Though most of the experts agree that circular economy and nutrient recycling are good things, policymaking is caught in an ontological conundrum.
{"title":"What sewage sludge is and conflicts in Swedish circular economy policymaking","authors":"Linus Ekman Burgman","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2021603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2021603","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recycling nutrients from renewable sources, like sewage sludge, has been promoted as a step towards a circular economy by decreasing extraction and dependency on inorganic fertilizers. Implementation, however, is often controversial. In 2018, a Swedish governmental inquiry was commissioned to propose a complete ban on land application of sewage sludge to reduce soil pollution and increase phosphorus recovery. In 2020, the inquiry suggested two pathways, one to ban all land application, and one where agricultural land use should continuously be allowed. This paper is based on interviews with experts tied to the inquiry where they reference to sewage sludge, related objects, and future management. The inquiry’s inability to propose a coherent suggestion is analysed inspired by the concept of multiple ontology. Several ontological versions of sewage sludge emerge that unveil tensions between concepts of danger and cleanliness, pollution and naturalness, often captured in previous studies of waste. Some versions of sewage sludge conflict, which can explain the difficulty to establish an ontologically singular knowledge base for a transformation of sewage sludge from waste to resource. Though most of the experts agree that circular economy and nutrient recycling are good things, policymaking is caught in an ontological conundrum.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49635545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2022.2043529
S. Lockie
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report on physical understanding of the climate system, released August 2021, concluded that human influence has unequivocally warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land (IPCC 2021). This came as no great surprise given the Fifth and Fourth Assessment reports released in 2014 and 2007 concluded exactly the same thing. Keep going back and the only discernable difference in headline conclusions from IPCC assessments is the degree of confidence with which they are put. In 1995, the balance of evidence pointed toward human influence on the climate. By 2001, the evidence that humans were responsible for most observed change was getting stronger. Increasing confidence in our understanding of climate change and its likely trajectory is to be expected. Behind subtle changes in the language used to express headline assessment findings is both a considerable global research effort and vastly improved understanding of climate changes and drivers at finer spatial and temporal scales. Of course, IPCC assessments still have their limitations. While it is known, for example, that tipping elements in the climate system increase the risk of abrupt and irreversible change at higher levels of global warming, these processes remain difficult to model (IPCC 2021). Climate agreements and policies informed by IPCC assessments proceed, for the most part, as if tipping points are unlikely when, in reality, they are poorly understood (Lenton et al. 2019). My main concern in this essay though is the continuing sociological naivety of IPCC assessments and many of the policies they subsequently inform. It is not that IPCC assessments ignore the social dimensions of climate change altogether. In fact, they report on risks to human health, livelihoods, food systems, cities and natural resource availability alongside vulnerability and adaptive capacity in relation to these risks. What renders the assessments sociologically naïve is not ignorance of the anthropogenic drivers and consequences of climate change but simplistic assumptions about the relationships between science, policy and politics and about the dynamics of social change more generally (see Grundmann and Rödder 2019). Placing greater store on the insights of sociologists (and other social scientists) would go some way to addressing this concern and so, to this end, this essay will summarize major trends in climate change sociology before turning to a small number of key, but largely outstanding questions, that demand sociological and transdisciplinary attention. First though, it will address the charge often levelled at sociology that the discipline does not take climate change seriously.
{"title":"Mainstreaming climate change sociology","authors":"S. Lockie","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2022.2043529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2022.2043529","url":null,"abstract":"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report on physical understanding of the climate system, released August 2021, concluded that human influence has unequivocally warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land (IPCC 2021). This came as no great surprise given the Fifth and Fourth Assessment reports released in 2014 and 2007 concluded exactly the same thing. Keep going back and the only discernable difference in headline conclusions from IPCC assessments is the degree of confidence with which they are put. In 1995, the balance of evidence pointed toward human influence on the climate. By 2001, the evidence that humans were responsible for most observed change was getting stronger. Increasing confidence in our understanding of climate change and its likely trajectory is to be expected. Behind subtle changes in the language used to express headline assessment findings is both a considerable global research effort and vastly improved understanding of climate changes and drivers at finer spatial and temporal scales. Of course, IPCC assessments still have their limitations. While it is known, for example, that tipping elements in the climate system increase the risk of abrupt and irreversible change at higher levels of global warming, these processes remain difficult to model (IPCC 2021). Climate agreements and policies informed by IPCC assessments proceed, for the most part, as if tipping points are unlikely when, in reality, they are poorly understood (Lenton et al. 2019). My main concern in this essay though is the continuing sociological naivety of IPCC assessments and many of the policies they subsequently inform. It is not that IPCC assessments ignore the social dimensions of climate change altogether. In fact, they report on risks to human health, livelihoods, food systems, cities and natural resource availability alongside vulnerability and adaptive capacity in relation to these risks. What renders the assessments sociologically naïve is not ignorance of the anthropogenic drivers and consequences of climate change but simplistic assumptions about the relationships between science, policy and politics and about the dynamics of social change more generally (see Grundmann and Rödder 2019). Placing greater store on the insights of sociologists (and other social scientists) would go some way to addressing this concern and so, to this end, this essay will summarize major trends in climate change sociology before turning to a small number of key, but largely outstanding questions, that demand sociological and transdisciplinary attention. First though, it will address the charge often levelled at sociology that the discipline does not take climate change seriously.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43558260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-29DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2015548
Ellen Kohl, M. Sullivan, Mark Milton Chambers, Alissa Cordner, C. Sellers, Leif Fredrickson, J. Ohayon
ABSTRACT How damaging was the Trump administration to environmental justice (EJ) efforts and policy? Since federal EJ oversight at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is governed by executive order, rather than statute, approaches to it have varied by presidential administration. In this paper, we draw on interviews with current and recently retired EPA employees along with staffing and budget data, to examine how EJ has historically been supported and enacted within the agency, with a focus on identifying impacts of the Trump administration on EPA’s EJ work. We find that while leadership support for EJ and emphasis across the agency have changed across presidential administrations, the EJ program has always held a marginal position in terms of allocation of resources and emphasis in regulatory decision-making. Starting from this position of long-term marginalization, EPA’s EJ program was further marginalized by the Trump administration. Though EPA employees expressed divided opinions as to how consequential the Trump administration’s actions were on enacting EJ internally, many thought that the administration’s emphasis on deregulation had significant health consequences in EJ communities. We argue that the impacts of the Trump administration, like those of future administrations, must be assessed within a historical context.
{"title":"From ‘marginal to marginal’: environmental justice under the Trump administration","authors":"Ellen Kohl, M. Sullivan, Mark Milton Chambers, Alissa Cordner, C. Sellers, Leif Fredrickson, J. Ohayon","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2015548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2015548","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT How damaging was the Trump administration to environmental justice (EJ) efforts and policy? Since federal EJ oversight at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is governed by executive order, rather than statute, approaches to it have varied by presidential administration. In this paper, we draw on interviews with current and recently retired EPA employees along with staffing and budget data, to examine how EJ has historically been supported and enacted within the agency, with a focus on identifying impacts of the Trump administration on EPA’s EJ work. We find that while leadership support for EJ and emphasis across the agency have changed across presidential administrations, the EJ program has always held a marginal position in terms of allocation of resources and emphasis in regulatory decision-making. Starting from this position of long-term marginalization, EPA’s EJ program was further marginalized by the Trump administration. Though EPA employees expressed divided opinions as to how consequential the Trump administration’s actions were on enacting EJ internally, many thought that the administration’s emphasis on deregulation had significant health consequences in EJ communities. We argue that the impacts of the Trump administration, like those of future administrations, must be assessed within a historical context.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42387119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-18DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2018123
Öykü H. Aral, J. López-Sintas
ABSTRACT Explaining cross-national differences in individual pro-environmental behaviors is usually grounded in large, heterogeneous data sets. Consequently, research findings may over- or underestimate the effects of environmental variables of interest when analyzing cross-level interactions. This research contextualizes environmental behavior in the European Union, a set of socioeconomically different countries that share a common institutional framework. We explore the effects of country-level drivers on behavior after controlling for individual-level drivers using multilevel regression analysis to estimate the impact of country-level drivers on both the mean behavior of individuals and cross-level interactions. The direct impact of country-level drivers on pro-environmental behaviors was as expected: country affluence and income inequality had positive and negative impacts, respectively, whereas country education level, environmental issues, and cultural values had no direct impact. Nonetheless, in terms of cross-level interactions, country education level increased the effect of perceived behavioral control on behaviors. In Western countries, the influence of country affluence and education level on behavior, operating through social-psychological drivers, maybe underpinned by different socioeconomic mechanisms. Income may not be enough to change perceptions of reality, but income can be transformed into cultural capital that, in turn, may change socially ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions.
{"title":"Is pro-environmentalism a privilege? Country development factors as moderators of socio-psychological drivers of pro-environmental behavior","authors":"Öykü H. Aral, J. López-Sintas","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2018123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2018123","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Explaining cross-national differences in individual pro-environmental behaviors is usually grounded in large, heterogeneous data sets. Consequently, research findings may over- or underestimate the effects of environmental variables of interest when analyzing cross-level interactions. This research contextualizes environmental behavior in the European Union, a set of socioeconomically different countries that share a common institutional framework. We explore the effects of country-level drivers on behavior after controlling for individual-level drivers using multilevel regression analysis to estimate the impact of country-level drivers on both the mean behavior of individuals and cross-level interactions. The direct impact of country-level drivers on pro-environmental behaviors was as expected: country affluence and income inequality had positive and negative impacts, respectively, whereas country education level, environmental issues, and cultural values had no direct impact. Nonetheless, in terms of cross-level interactions, country education level increased the effect of perceived behavioral control on behaviors. In Western countries, the influence of country affluence and education level on behavior, operating through social-psychological drivers, maybe underpinned by different socioeconomic mechanisms. Income may not be enough to change perceptions of reality, but income can be transformed into cultural capital that, in turn, may change socially ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43163214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-14DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2002000
R. Ozaki, M. Aoyagi, F. Steward
ABSTRACT This paper examines new initiatives in shared mobility of Kashiwa City, a satellite town outside Tokyo, from the users’ perspective. In Japan, the transport sector accounts for almost 20% of carbon emissions. At the same time, a population decrease has led to a decline in use of public transport, reducing the level of the quality of life of residents who live in rural and remote areas. This makes residents depend on private cars, ending up contributing to carbon emissions. Three key issues for sustainable mobility to tackle carbon emissions and residents’ wellbeing issues are discussed. Kashiwa City has experimented with new shared transport services with fixed-route microbuses and more flexible community taxis. The paper explores user perception and experience of such community mobility services and considers the three issues from the viewpoint of the practice of mobility. Background interviews were conducted with the city’s officials and transport service operators, and an ethnographic study was carried out and in-situ conversations were made to explore the utility and meaning of mobility. To increase use of public transport to further reduce CO2 emissions from transport, it is important to pay more attention to the practice of mobility from the user’s perspective. (200 words)
{"title":"Community sharing: sustainable mobility in a post-carbon, depopulating society","authors":"R. Ozaki, M. Aoyagi, F. Steward","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2002000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2002000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines new initiatives in shared mobility of Kashiwa City, a satellite town outside Tokyo, from the users’ perspective. In Japan, the transport sector accounts for almost 20% of carbon emissions. At the same time, a population decrease has led to a decline in use of public transport, reducing the level of the quality of life of residents who live in rural and remote areas. This makes residents depend on private cars, ending up contributing to carbon emissions. Three key issues for sustainable mobility to tackle carbon emissions and residents’ wellbeing issues are discussed. Kashiwa City has experimented with new shared transport services with fixed-route microbuses and more flexible community taxis. The paper explores user perception and experience of such community mobility services and considers the three issues from the viewpoint of the practice of mobility. Background interviews were conducted with the city’s officials and transport service operators, and an ethnographic study was carried out and in-situ conversations were made to explore the utility and meaning of mobility. To increase use of public transport to further reduce CO2 emissions from transport, it is important to pay more attention to the practice of mobility from the user’s perspective. (200 words)","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43342014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-06DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.2001990
M. Purnomo, A. Maryudi, Novil Dedy Andriatmoko, Edy Muhamad Jayadi, Heiko Faust
ABSTRACT Using the political ecology approach, we investigated the Indonesian government’s decision to commercialize protected areas (PAs) and promote its tourism sector aggressively, and examined how this commercialization is enabled through various institutions and governing structures. We confirmed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia was an alternative accumulation, dealing with the crisis of capitalist accumulation. Our empirical finding showed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia had detimental environmental and social impacts, such as deadlocks or monopoly or management, and environmental deterioration. This commercialization pattern was different from accumulation by conservation in other regions, such as Africa, where local people were deprived of their access to the means of production, consequently becoming laborers in the tourism industry. In Indonesia, local people were given access to resources; however, as these resources were of little value, they became laborers in the tourism industry. Further research is needed to test whether different patterns of accumulation by conservation also apply to other types of PAs in Indonesia, such as national parks and customary forests, including various coral reef conservation areas in remote and small Islands used as tourist attractions.
{"title":"The cost of leisure: the political ecology of the commercialization of Indonesia’s protected areas","authors":"M. Purnomo, A. Maryudi, Novil Dedy Andriatmoko, Edy Muhamad Jayadi, Heiko Faust","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.2001990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.2001990","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Using the political ecology approach, we investigated the Indonesian government’s decision to commercialize protected areas (PAs) and promote its tourism sector aggressively, and examined how this commercialization is enabled through various institutions and governing structures. We confirmed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia was an alternative accumulation, dealing with the crisis of capitalist accumulation. Our empirical finding showed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia had detimental environmental and social impacts, such as deadlocks or monopoly or management, and environmental deterioration. This commercialization pattern was different from accumulation by conservation in other regions, such as Africa, where local people were deprived of their access to the means of production, consequently becoming laborers in the tourism industry. In Indonesia, local people were given access to resources; however, as these resources were of little value, they became laborers in the tourism industry. Further research is needed to test whether different patterns of accumulation by conservation also apply to other types of PAs in Indonesia, such as national parks and customary forests, including various coral reef conservation areas in remote and small Islands used as tourist attractions.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45042867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-30DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.1997386
Pernilla Hagbert, Liisa Perjo, Åsa Nyblom
ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore narratives of sustainability in housing and everyday life, positing the home as an ‘opportunity space’ for sustainability transitions. Case studies of three Swedish housing associations provide empirical insights on how sustainability is understood and practiced among residents. Addressing aspects of power and problem framing in sustainability transitions, we analyse how sustainability engagements in the associations are shaped by intersecting discourses, power relations and norms relating to age, gender, class and ethnicity. The analysis suggests that reflexivity on sustainability in the associations on one hand links to different sustainability approaches, which relate to assumptions regarding who can become engaged and the organisation of the associations’ work. On the other hand, narratives and practices of ‘doing sustainability’ are made sense of in different ways, where issues of for whom, the type of knowledge that is premiered, and the ‘upscaling’ of initiatives pose challenges for a more inclusive and transformative approach to sustainability in housing associations. Taken together, this creates different conditions for sustainability transitions in housing and everyday life, shaped both by norms of who and what is seen as sustainable, and by structures that outline the space for action for the associations and their residents.
{"title":"Taking the lead or following norms? Examining intersections of power in sustainability transitions in Swedish housing associations","authors":"Pernilla Hagbert, Liisa Perjo, Åsa Nyblom","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1997386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1997386","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore narratives of sustainability in housing and everyday life, positing the home as an ‘opportunity space’ for sustainability transitions. Case studies of three Swedish housing associations provide empirical insights on how sustainability is understood and practiced among residents. Addressing aspects of power and problem framing in sustainability transitions, we analyse how sustainability engagements in the associations are shaped by intersecting discourses, power relations and norms relating to age, gender, class and ethnicity. The analysis suggests that reflexivity on sustainability in the associations on one hand links to different sustainability approaches, which relate to assumptions regarding who can become engaged and the organisation of the associations’ work. On the other hand, narratives and practices of ‘doing sustainability’ are made sense of in different ways, where issues of for whom, the type of knowledge that is premiered, and the ‘upscaling’ of initiatives pose challenges for a more inclusive and transformative approach to sustainability in housing associations. Taken together, this creates different conditions for sustainability transitions in housing and everyday life, shaped both by norms of who and what is seen as sustainable, and by structures that outline the space for action for the associations and their residents.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43579857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.1980936
Elliot Clarke
ABSTRACT Onshore Coal Seam Gas (CSG) extraction is a controversial practice that has attracted scrutiny from stakeholders surrounding its risk to livelihoods and the environment at the water-energy-food nexus. Victoria’s 2016 public Inquiry into Unconventional Gas provided an opportunity to evaluate how stakeholders conceptualise the role of livelihoods at the water-energy-food nexus and how discourses were deployed to interpret the risks and benefits of CSG development. This paper argues that the relationship between CSG, livelihood assets and resource security is discursively constructed as a form of power and plays a significant role in both nexus modelling and CSG decision-making. This is supported by the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which determined that stakeholders regularly considered livelihood assets to be crucial to both sustaining livelihoods and resource security in Victoria. Based on these findings, a revised water-energy-food nexus model is presented where livelihood assets are positioned at the centre of the nexus framework. This paper concludes by considering how competing environmental discourses are likely to shape the future of Australia’s water, energy and food security in ongoing CSG debates more generally.
{"title":"Livelihood discourses at the water-energy-food-nexus in Victoria’s Coal Seam Gas (CSG) debate","authors":"Elliot Clarke","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1980936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1980936","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Onshore Coal Seam Gas (CSG) extraction is a controversial practice that has attracted scrutiny from stakeholders surrounding its risk to livelihoods and the environment at the water-energy-food nexus. Victoria’s 2016 public Inquiry into Unconventional Gas provided an opportunity to evaluate how stakeholders conceptualise the role of livelihoods at the water-energy-food nexus and how discourses were deployed to interpret the risks and benefits of CSG development. This paper argues that the relationship between CSG, livelihood assets and resource security is discursively constructed as a form of power and plays a significant role in both nexus modelling and CSG decision-making. This is supported by the application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which determined that stakeholders regularly considered livelihood assets to be crucial to both sustaining livelihoods and resource security in Victoria. Based on these findings, a revised water-energy-food nexus model is presented where livelihood assets are positioned at the centre of the nexus framework. This paper concludes by considering how competing environmental discourses are likely to shape the future of Australia’s water, energy and food security in ongoing CSG debates more generally.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48480337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.1991647
A. Porcelli, J. Besek
ABSTRACT It is inarguable that the natural sciences, from chemistry to ecology, are indispensable if sociologists are to address environmental change. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how, exactly, sociologists incorporate natural science into their work. In other words, what might a sociologist mean if they say that natural science is a vital part of their research? Here we examine this question through a comparative history of environmental science and technology studies (eSTS) and environmental sociology (ES), arguably the two sociological subdisciplines to which the inclusion of natural science is most important. Our results show a complicated picture, one in which eSTS and ES, at times, influence one another’s approach to natural science, yet at most other times diverge completely. In the first half of our analysis we detail how they have diverged, showing how most eSTS scholars have treated natural science as an object of analysis while most ES scholars, in turn, have treated natural science as a resource for analysis. Then, in the second half, we discuss where and how they have converged, focusing on three shared concerns: ignorance, democratizing environmental knowledge, and postcolonial epistemologies.
{"title":"Sub-disciplining science in sociology: Bridges and barriers between environmental STS and environmental sociology","authors":"A. Porcelli, J. Besek","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1991647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1991647","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It is inarguable that the natural sciences, from chemistry to ecology, are indispensable if sociologists are to address environmental change. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how, exactly, sociologists incorporate natural science into their work. In other words, what might a sociologist mean if they say that natural science is a vital part of their research? Here we examine this question through a comparative history of environmental science and technology studies (eSTS) and environmental sociology (ES), arguably the two sociological subdisciplines to which the inclusion of natural science is most important. Our results show a complicated picture, one in which eSTS and ES, at times, influence one another’s approach to natural science, yet at most other times diverge completely. In the first half of our analysis we detail how they have diverged, showing how most eSTS scholars have treated natural science as an object of analysis while most ES scholars, in turn, have treated natural science as a resource for analysis. Then, in the second half, we discuss where and how they have converged, focusing on three shared concerns: ignorance, democratizing environmental knowledge, and postcolonial epistemologies.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48089136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-12DOI: 10.1080/23251042.2021.1987608
Kirsten Vinyeta
ABSTRACT Over the last century, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has reversed its stance on the ecological role of fire – from a militant enforcer of forest fire suppression to supporting prescribed fire as a management tool. Meanwhile, the Karuk Tribe has always prioritized cultural burning as a vital spiritual and ecological practice, one that has been actively suppressed by the USFS. This article examines the discursive evolution of USFS fire science through the critical lens of settler colonial theory. A content analysis of agency discourse reveals how the USFS deployed anti-Indigenous rhetoric to justify its own unsubstantiated forest management agenda. USFS leadership racialized light burning by deridingly referring to it as ‘Piute Forestry.’ The agency has also discredited, downplayed, and erased Indigenous peoples and knowledges in ways that invoke tropes of the ‘Indian savage,’ the ‘Vanishing Indian,’ and the concept of ‘Terra Nullius.’ It wasn’t until the 1960s – in the context of the Civil Rights and American Indian Movements – that the USFS began contemplating the value of prescribed fire. This research illustrates the complicated relationship between the settler state and Western science, as well as the malleability of scientific discourse in the face of changing social contexts.
{"title":"Under the guise of science: how the US Forest Service deployed settler colonial and racist logics to advance an unsubstantiated fire suppression agenda","authors":"Kirsten Vinyeta","doi":"10.1080/23251042.2021.1987608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2021.1987608","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over the last century, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has reversed its stance on the ecological role of fire – from a militant enforcer of forest fire suppression to supporting prescribed fire as a management tool. Meanwhile, the Karuk Tribe has always prioritized cultural burning as a vital spiritual and ecological practice, one that has been actively suppressed by the USFS. This article examines the discursive evolution of USFS fire science through the critical lens of settler colonial theory. A content analysis of agency discourse reveals how the USFS deployed anti-Indigenous rhetoric to justify its own unsubstantiated forest management agenda. USFS leadership racialized light burning by deridingly referring to it as ‘Piute Forestry.’ The agency has also discredited, downplayed, and erased Indigenous peoples and knowledges in ways that invoke tropes of the ‘Indian savage,’ the ‘Vanishing Indian,’ and the concept of ‘Terra Nullius.’ It wasn’t until the 1960s – in the context of the Civil Rights and American Indian Movements – that the USFS began contemplating the value of prescribed fire. This research illustrates the complicated relationship between the settler state and Western science, as well as the malleability of scientific discourse in the face of changing social contexts.","PeriodicalId":54173,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48455926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：