Environmental Sociology

Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO)

A large, industrial-style animal agricultural facility that crowds a large number of animals into a confined space. Such facilities rely heavily upon automation to feed and water animals, as well as remove wastes.

Food Desert

A location where people lack access to healthy and nutritious food.

Population Growth

A measure of changes in population over time by taking a population at one time and adding all the births and immigrants who arrive before a later time, while subtracting the deaths and emigrants.

Ecological Footprint

A metaphor for the amount of land necessary to sustain consumption and absorb wastes for an individual.

Symbolic Interactionism

A micro-level sociological theory that studies the symbolic meaning of social interaction and how the self is formed through such interaction.

Elitist Movement

A movement made up of individuals from powerful social groups; early US environmentalism has been called an elitist movement, but more careful analysis shows that while the first US environmental organizations were founded by the rich, white, well-educated men, environmentalism has taken many forms by many types of people over time and across continents.

Neoliberalism

A particular style of governance that supoorts the efficiency of free markets, free trade, and the expansion of private property. Policy instruments typically associated with neoliberal policies include self-regulating markets, deregulation, and privatization. These policies are often framed as austerity or commonsense measures.

Green Revolution

A series of technological innovations to the production of food crops that were designed to increase productivity, including monocropping, mechanization, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and biotechnology in all regions of the globe. This increased global food production but have been associated with widespread environmental damage, including biodiversity loss, salinization, pollution, and desertification.

Environmental Racism

A specific form of environmebtal inequality that includes the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of poisons and pollutants in minority commumities, and the systematic exclusion of people of color from leadership roles in decisions regarding the production of environmental conditions that affect their lives and livelihoods.

Superindustrialization

A term from ecological modernization theory that means modern industrial societies need to employ more and better environmentally friendly technologies to solve environmental problems such as climate change.

Ecofeminism

A theoretical approach that emphasizes hierarchy as the main factor behind the destruction of nature. Patriarchy allows males to mistreat not only women but nature, since the latter is also perceived as female. This theory also emphasizes women's special relationship with nature. An environmental movement discursive frame that sees ecosystem abuse as rooted in androcentric concepts and institutions. Relations of complementarily rather than superiority between culture/nature, human/nonhuman, and male/female are needed to resolve the conflict between the human and natural worlds.

Natural Capitalism

A theoretical argument based on the notion that capitalism can be "greened." The transition to an environmentally sustainable economy initially involves government providing incentives for industry to invest in green technologies. However, government should eventually step aside and allow market mechanisms to take over. The theory presents the transition to a green economy as the next Industrial Revolution.

Environmental Justice

A theoretical framework and methodological approach to examining the uneven ways in which pollution and other environmental hazards are distributed among particular social groups, communities, and regions.

Ecological Marxism

A theoretical tradition based on Karl Marx's description and critique of capitalism. It emphasizes the contradictions of the system and the crises they create. It highlights the contradictions between the capitalist means of production and the environment.

Ecological Modernization Theory

A theory based on the principle that capitalism posesses the institutional capacity to reverse existing environmental destruction and that it can brcome environmentally sustainable. The theory proposes modernization through the employment of green or environmentally sustainable technologies.

Second Modernity Theory

A theory based on the principle that modern societies are making the transition to second modernity, a stage characterized by reflexivity or deep evaluation of our social institutions and ways of life. Scholars who subscribe to this theory disagree with the notion proposed by postmodernists that modern societies have already made the transition to "postmodernity."

World-System Theory

A theory built on the premise that the expansion of European colonialism beginning in the "long 16th century" was capitalist in nature; that is, it was based on the search for wealth and profit. This expansion created a world-system in which the rich countries, the core, have exploited the poor countries, thebperiphery, for raw materials, new markets, and cheap labor. In between the core ans the periphery lies the semiperiphery, a category that includes countries that either declined from the core or rose from the periphery.

Social Ecology

A theory built on the principle that the source of environmental problems lies in social inequality; that is, environmental problems are fundamentally social problems.

Modernization Theory

A theory popular among U.S. policymakers during the Cold War that explained global inequality as a result of different levels of economic and cultural progress rather than a set of innate, inherited, or moral characteristics. This was the theoretical foundation for foreign aid from the United States during most of the Cold War period.

Food Sovereignty

Efforts by people and movements to control the food they eat and how it is produced.

Non-Structural Mitigation

Environmental protection and restoration efforts, such as creating wetlands or forbidding development in hazardous areas, meant to decrease disaster vulnerability by allowing floods, windstorms, and fires in more unpopulated areas to pass through.

Professionalized Environmental Organizations

Formal environmental organizations, registered with the state, with paid leaders and staffs, large budgets, lobbying arms, and extensive fundraising mechanisms; many of the US environmental organizations follow this model.

Claims to Virtue

From Robert Lifton (1982); to describe the act of justifying disturbing or morally unacceptable behavior by claiming it was done with a virtuous intent.

Distanciation

Global economies and electronic communication networks connect us to physically absent people in places that are geographically remote from us.

Intersubjective

Literally, across subjective understandings; or the effort to envision and interpret the world as others see it, filtered through cultural orientations, meanings, and values that may differ from one's own.

Political Consumerism

The notion that what you buy can be political. Specifically, it is the idea that people can express their ethical and political values through their shopping choices.

Population

The number of people living in a specific geographical area at a specific point in time.

Social System

The patterned and complex series of relationships between human individuals, groups, and institutions that form a coherent whole.

Mitigation

The planning and implementation of strategies designed to lessen or eliminate potential disaster impacts.

Internal Colonialism

The political and socioeconomic inequalities that exist between regions in a specific society. Similar in fashion to colonialism, where the wealth and well-being of the Global North are augmented at the expense of the Global South, this is based on unfair and unequal exchange relations, like resources for pollution, between the urban and rural spaces.

Naturework

The process of interpreting nature through cultural ideas.

Implosion

The process of one social phenomenon collapsing, or contracting, into another; for example, the merging of the categories of being "at home" and "shopping."

Industrialization of Agriculture

The production of food and fiber in a rationalized system that relies upon processes and strategies (including mechanization, large-scale production, high use of artificial inputs, and increased specialization of both labor and production) similar to those used in manufacturing.

Norms of Conversation

The rules of appropriate conversation. These vary by conversational context and may apply to topics discussed, ways of talking about various topics, and more.

Norms of Emotion

The socially appropriate range, intensity, duration, and targets of particular emotions in different situations.

Conventional Food and Agriculture System

The system through which a majority of the world's food is produced. It is highly globalized, corporatized, and industrialized.

Moral Hazard

The tendency of people to engage in risk-taking behavior that they would normally avoid because they have insurance that will cover the costs of any negative impacts.

Hurricane Amnesia

The tendency of persons and communities to forget and ignore their disaster vulnerability when there is a long gap between severe disaster impacts, often leading to a refusal to prioritize disaster mitigation efforts in favor of increased physical and economic development.

Climate Justice

The term used to describe climate change as an ethical issue whose central problem is that those who experience the impacts of climate change are often those who contribute the least to it.

Food Regime Theory

The theorization of food and agriculture as a world system that is characterized by particular political, economic, and social relations at different historical junctures.

Carrying Capacity

The total population of any given species that can be supported in a geographic unit without permanently damaging the ecological systems that support that species.

Bioremediation

The use of biological agents (microorganisms, fungi, or plants) to break down and remove pollutants.

Market-Based Approach

The use of the market by social movement organizations to achieve their objectives.

Human Exemptionalism Paradigm

The worldview that believes that humans are above nature and not subject to natural laws.

Food from Nowhere

The increasing disconnection between food, agriculture, and place in the conventional food and agriculture system.

Farms to Factories

The industrialization of food and agriculture through the substitution of artificial inputs for natural processes.

Selective Interpretation

The interpretation of events or ideas to produce desired or consistent emotional or cognitive states.

Food Footprint

The measurement of the environmental impacts of a person's or society's eating practices.

Commodification

A Marxist term that means objects and/or living things, including human beings, acquire or are assigned an "exchange value" so they can be sold in the market. The term is used in several neo-Marxist theories, including world-system theory.

Metabolic Rift

A Marxist term, popularized in environmental sociology by John Bellamy Foster, that describes the transfer of energy from the countryside to the cities when food produced in the former is sold in the latter. Soil nutrients decline in agricultural areas because they are transferred to cities, where they are disposed of as waste, creating pollution and health risk.

Social Darwinism

A Victorian theory associated with Herbert Spencer that posits that the relationship between humans and their environment has a "natural" evolutionary course that can be overcome through social action, particularly restraint on population growth among those groups considered less evolved.

Horizontal Integration

A business strategy focused on consolidating and expanding firms that occupy the same stage of production or that are located in a particular economic sector.

Vertical Integration

A business strategy focused on consolidating multiple stages of a single commodity chain. Vertical integration is achieved when a firm or small set of firms controls all of the stages of production.

Ecosystem

A complex set of relationships between living organisms and the non-living components of their environment. Ecosystem communities are linked together through energy flows and nutrient cycles.

Implicatory Denial

A concept from Stanley Cohen (2011) indicating that events are acknowledged but are not seen as psychologically disturbing or as carrying a moral imperative to act. Unlike other forms of denial that Cohen has coined, knowledge is not at issue, but doing the "right" thing with the knowledge.

Commodity Chain

A concept indicating that the production of goods or commodities forms a series of links with nodes situated in different locations, often in different countries. An example would be parts of an automobile being produced in different countries and assembled in another.

Externalities of Scale

A constellation of adverse economic, social, and environmental impacts found in large-scale production processes but largely absent in small-scale, traditional methods.

Demographic Transition

A description of population growth changes associated with low growth rates achieved through controlled fertility and low death rates achieved through modern healthcare and sanitation. Because of the cultural lag following technological change, birth rates remain high and population growth increases dramatically. Only when family planning norms adjust downward to account for longer life expectancies and higher survival rates among children will population growth slow and stabilize.

Subdiscipline

A field of specialized study within a wider discipline.

Nonpoint Source Pollution

A form of pollution characterized by the lack of a distinct point of origin.

Point Source Pollution

A form of pollution that has a single, distinct point of origin.

Collective Action Group

A group of people banded together to engage in direct action to preserve their local means of subsistence ("the environment"); their actions are voluntary and uncompensated; their efforts are often contrasted with "professionalized environmental organizations."

Treadmill of Production Theory

A theory proposed by Allan Schnaiberg based on the idea that industrial destruction by increasing extraction of natural resources and raising toxicity of pollution and wastes. A key dynamic of the system is the use of corporate profits to invest in production technologies that replace labor with energy and chemicals, resulting in decreasing social benefit with every increase in environmental disorganization. The theory underscores the importance of social inequality and the dominant power of economic and political institutions in producing and maintaining our current social and ecological crises.

Risk Society Theory

A theory proposed by German sociologist Ulrick Beck built on the principle that risk taking is a main feature of modern societies. Decisions in these societies are made taking the probability of risk into consideration. The theory also explains that people have lost faith in the institutions that evaluate risks for them, such as government and science. The theory suggests that one of the most important cultural and policy challenges we face is that human societies are now manufacturing and using more toxic chemical substances than ever before, placing humanity and the nonhuman world at considerable risk. Beck suggests that modern governments need to become self-aware and self-critical or "reflective."

Discursive Frame

A unique cultural viewpoint that informs the practices of a community of social movement organizations. Each of this provides a cultural viewpoint from which the environmental organization acts. This defines the goals and purposes of the organization and provides guidance for the actions of the organization.

Growth Coalitions

An alliance of institutions, often the state and industry, that is committed to economic growth, often at the cost of the environment and/or other forms of societal well-being.

Eutrophication

An ecological response to excessive nutrient levels wherein certain plant and algal species grow excessively, unbalancing an ecosystem's normal cycling of nutrients, oxygen, organic matter, and decay.

Deep Ecology

An environmental movement discursive frame that centers on the belief that the richness and diversity of all life has intrinsic value, and so human life is privileged only to the extent of satisfying vital needs. Maintenance the diversity of life on earth mandates a decrease in human impacts on the natural environment and substantial increases in the wilderness areas of the globe. It is based on the philosophical principle that human beings, like any other species on Earth, are part of the web of life. It proposes that human societies should be rebuilt in harmony with nature.

Greens

An environmental movement discursive frame that maintains that all humans and their communities deserve to live in an equitable, just, and environmentally sound world. Global abuses, such as ecological destruction, poverty, war, and oppression, are linked to global capitalism and the political and economic forces that have allowed the development of social inequality and injustices.

Animal Rights

An environmental movement discursive frame that maintains that all species have intrinsic rights to realize their own evolved characteristics, and to live an independent life free from human direction or intervention.

Reform Environmentalism

An environmental movement discursive frame that maintains that human health is linked to ecosystem conditions. To maintain a healthy human society, ecologically responsible actions are necessary. These actions can be developed and implemented through the use of natural sciences.

Wildlife Management

An environmental movement discursive frame that maintains that wildlife should be managed to ensure an adequate supply to provide for the recreational use of humans in terms of hunting or fishing.

Ecospiritualism

An environmental movement discursive frame that sees nature as God's creation and argues that humanity has a moral obligation to keep and tend the creation. Hence, natural and unpolluted ecosystems and biodiversity needs to be preserved.

Preservation

An environmental movement discursive frame that sees nature as an important component in supporting humans. Hence the continued existence of wilderness and wildlife, undisturbed by human action, is necessary.

Theory

An intellectually guided narrative or story about how the universe works. Theorizing assumes that reality has order; that is, that events have causes.

Growth Machines

Coalitions of elite community members, often including the media, local government officials, prominent business owners, economic development and real estate agencies, etc., that focus on creating the conditions to enable further economic and physical development in their communities, often at the expense of disaster and environmental sustainability.

Environmentalism of the Poor

Concern about the environment, especially when economic livelihoods are at stake; a term often used to describe environmentalism in the Global South.

Precautionary Principle

Defensive public health approach to reducing or banning chemicals even in the absence of understanding whether or not they harm human health; a "look before you leap" approach that disallows the use of a new substance until it is proven safe.

Alternative Food and Agriculture

Refers to efforts to reform food and agriculture according to one or more of the following objectives: healthy food, safe food, local food, democratic food and agriculture, socially just food and agriculture, and environmentally sustainable food and agriculture.

Nature-Society Dichotomy

Separating sociology and the environment.

Rationalization

Social change that involves the transformation of traditional social relationships and institutions, which are based on emotional and religious attachments, through bureaucratization and the application of scientific and pragmatic principles. This involves efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. It is impersonal in the sense that it is devoid of feelings and emotions.

Disembedding

Social relations "lifted out" of their local contexts and restructured across time and space.

Structural Mitigation

Strengthening and/or raising houses and other buildings to resist stronger winds, waves, fires, etc. Also, building large physical barriers such as levees and floodwalls, to prevent floodwaters from reaching a populated area.

Infrastructural Mitigation

Strengthening the things that physically connect communities, such as roads, bridges, sewer and water lines, and communications technologies.

Processual

Studying sociocultural systems as processes that are actively produced and transformed over time, rather than as static and unresponsive "things" or conditions.

Disaster Resiliency and Sustainability

The ability of a community to withstand and recover from repeated disaster impacts over time, with minimal losses of life and property and little damage to the surrounding natural environment.

Perspectival Selectivity

The angle of vision that one brings to bear on certain events.

Population Density

The average number of people who live in a specified area unit, usually a square mile or square kilometer.

Technofix

The belief that the solutions to the current environmental crisis lie in technology. The term is usually used as a criticism of those who hold this belief.

Biomedical Model

The central model used by Western medicine, based on a doctrine of a specific etiology (the search for causes of disease) and the neutrality of medicine; focuses on individual-level causes of illness.

Demography

The discipline in the social sciences that studies the characteristics of human populations, including composition and how populations change over time.

Social Vulnerability

The extent to which a person or community is likely to be affected by a disaster based on race, gender, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, etc.

Physical Vulnerability

The extent to which persons or communities are likely to be affected by a natural or technological disaster depending on their geographical location. Also, the extent to which a person or community has access to protective shelter during a disaster.

New Ecological Paradigm

The idea that social systems must be understood in relationship to their dynamic interactions with the natural world, and that humans are ecologically interdependent with other species.

Socially Organized Denial

The idea that what people ignore or pay attention to is a collective process that results as individuals follow appropriate norms of attention, emotion, and conversation.

Ecoimperialism

The imposition of environmental ideas and practices derived from dominant societies upon subordinated populations, especially with respect to assumptions about the universality of Western definitions and objectives in the management of environmental resources.

Corporatization of Food and Agriculture

The increasing control of food and agriculture by corporations.

Norms of Attention

What is normal to pay attention to or think about for a given group of people. This may be regarding space, time, or something else.

Food Security

When people have access to a sufficient amount of safe and nutritious food.

Genetic Modification

When the genes of a plant or animal are altered, often by importing genes from other plants or animals.