A sociological approach to human-environment relations

Environment and Society relates to a diverse audience and encompasses viewpoints from a variety of natural and social science approaches.

This integrative book about human-environment relations connects many issues about human societies, ecological systems, and environments with data and perspectives from different fields of study. Its viewpoint is primarily sociological and it is designed for courses in Environmental Sociology and Environmental Issues, or taught in departments of Sociology, Environmental Studies, Anthropology, Political Science, and Human Geography.

Upon completing this book, readers should be able to:

• Understand how environmental problems relate to human behavior, culture, and social institutions
• Evaluate suggestions for changing the human-environment relationship to a more “sustainable” environment, society, and world order
• Recognize the importance of worldviews and paradigms that have implicit basic assumptions about the “way the world works” and see how they shape the scholarship of experts in different fields
• Examine the work and perspectives of economists, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers and policy analysts as they address environmental and ecological issues