The Sociologists' Take on the Environment

Abstract

A common mantra when it comes to studying the environment is that only a disinterested, dispassionate natural scientist can untan- gle the natural from the social and thus do things like calculate carbon emissions or predict climate change. But to many sociologists, this is precisely the wrong approach. The sociological approach starts from the assumption that the natural and the social aren't separate and distinct, but in fact mutu- ally created and reproduced.