Social Theory and the Global Environment

by Michael Redclift

Issues such as ozone depletion, global warming, acid deposition, deforestation and species-loss have until recently been primarily matters for natural scientific determination and 'expert' policy prescription. If the social sciences had any role, it was to investigate social impacts of processes and policy responses formulated elsewhere.
Social Theory and the Global Environment emphasizes the ways in which cultural, economic and political values are already involved in shaping the definitions of 'environmental problems' for scientific analysis. Providing a much-needed perspective on the relationship between social theory and sustainability, the book examines the challenge which environmental problems and human concerns with the environment represent for Sociology and stresses the necessity for the voice of social science to be heard on the most pressing issue of our environmental degradation and its human cost.
The contributors, all international social scientists with longstanding interests in environmental issues, explore the current policy agenda from a critical perspective, emphasizing the need for qualitative studies of the way societies represent the 'environment' in public discourse. In their various ways they call into question purely technical versions of environmental management, and draw upon social theory to construct a broader view of humanity's relation to 'nature'.
Social Theory and the Global Environment is the first volume in the Global Environmental Change series published in association with the ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme and edited by Michael Redclift, Martin Parry, Timothy O'Riordan, Robin Grove-White and Brian Robson.

271 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 1994