From fringe to core? The integration of environmental sociology

Abstract

The extent to which environmental sociology remains a fringe specialty or a leading area of research and practice within the larger discipline is frequently commented on, but rarely examined systematically. This paper assesses environmental sociology’s integration with the core of the discipline with an analysis of environmental publications in the US sociology’s most prestigious mainstream journals between 1970 and 2014. We draw on the theory of scientific intellectual movements (SIMs) to develop a coherent narrative of this integration process and develop testable hypotheses about its extent and timing. Findings indicate that environmental sociology has a growing presence in the top-tier US journals, especially after 1990, and that a unique core of knowledge, focused on the relationship between society and the physical environment has increasingly come to characterize the literature in environmental sociology. A key finding is that growing acceptance of the field by the sociological mainstream was critically facilitated by increased attention to core sociological concerns of stratification and inequality within environmental sociology literature. We also find that cross-national research and global environmental concerns receive notably increased attention in top disciplinary journals over the observation period, especially after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

Keywords:

• environmental justice
• environmental sociology
• intellectual movement
• publications
• scientific movement

Acknowledgments

We thank Riley Dunlap, Greg Hooks, Emily Huddart-Kennedy, Raoul Liévanos, Jennifer Schwartz, and the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank Elyse Bean for her assistance with our intercoder reliability check.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We recognize that environmental sociology has a long and vibrant history outside the United States, especially in the European context (e.g., Beck 1992; Redclift 1987). Given the oft noted divide between European and American environmental sociologies, both in terms of the historical context in which they developed and the content of these intellectual enterprises (see e.g., Dunlap 1997; Mol 2006; Lidskog, Mol, and Oosterveer 2015), we keep the focus of this paper on the American case and the intellectual movement that emerged there. In the conclusion to the paper, we revisit possible connections between environmental sociology in the United States and other countries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauren N. Scott

Lauren Scott is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Washington State University. Her research interests include environmental sociology, the sociology of science and technology, and the sociology of risk.

Erik W. Johnson

Erik Johnson is an associate professor of sociology at Washington State University. His research examines the emergence, development, and political outcomes of environmental movements. Ongoing research projects also examine changes over time in social correlates of environmental concern and development of the field of environmental crime.