ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS

Environmental Analysis

Environmental Analysis

Environmental Issues

Environmental issues can be discussed within a number of different contexts. For anthropology and sociology, culture and society become important factors in understanding environmental issues. By incorporating a perspective that includes environmental history, aspects of environmental change, dialogue and culture, and future concerns, a more complete understanding of the relationship between socio-cultural actions and the natural environment can be developed. In an effort to understand the nature of environmental problems, one must develop an understanding of the cultural paradigms that guide human behaviour and interaction with the natural environment. Many perspectives seek to explain this relationship. Social scientists look toward dialogue and cultural perspectives to trace the history of environmental concern (Bryant & Mohai, 1992).

Cultural Beliefs and the Environment

The belief that a free market system provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people leads us to place economic decision-making processes in private hands. Frequently, private decisions have public consequences, but these public consequences are not accounted for in production costs or covered by market costs. Instead, the costs are passed on to consumers in the form of taxes and higher base prices for goods and services. Esteemed environmentalists Al Gore Jr. and Robert Kennedy Jr. have argued that if the external costs of production were assumed by manufacturers, then the ultimate benefit would be a system that accounted for waste created in the production process. This is evident in their research on global warming. Coal-fired power plants are promoted as one of the cheapest forms of creating energy. This is misleading, because the health effects of pollution caused by coal are not included in the costs of production. Others argue that those costs would have to be passed on to the consumer. However, they are passed on now in the way of pollution and medical expenses for illnesses associated with environmental contaminants (Cable & Cable, 1997).

Theory and the Environment

Theory addressing environmental issues has been situated in the social constructionist and political economy approaches. Within these approaches, attention has been paid to developments of subfields in social science research, such as social movements and the environment, environmental health, and environmental justice.

Social Construction and the Environment

Social constructionists focus on the construction of social problems and how this allows individuals to assign meaning and give importance to the social world. Sarbin and Kitsuse argued that “things are not given in the world, but constructed and negotiated by humans to make sense of the world”. When interests are at stake, claims are made around an activity in order to define the interests as problems. The process of claims making is more important than the task of assessing whether the claims are true.

Hannigan provides a three-step process for the construction of environmental problems: assembling, presenting, and contesting. He argues that each step develops the claims-making activities of environmental activists and antagonists. Environmental problems are different from other social problems, because claims are often based on physical, chemical, or biological scientific evidence. In nearly all cases of environmental problems, even though ...