Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
argue and illustrate in this chapter that environmental sociology - and
the other environmental social science subdisciplines - have only
marginally and rather recently included information, knowledge and
informational developments as central categories in approaching envi-
ronmental reform.
2. First-generation theories: policies and protests
Although emerging as a more central theme in environmental sociology
and political sciences only in the late 1980s, the subject of environmen-
tal reform also has been around since the early days of the environ-
mental social sciences. In its birth days in the 1970s (cf. Mol, 2006b ;
Buttel, 2002 ; Dunlap 2002 ), American and European environmental
sociology and political sciences dealt with environmental reforms pre-
dominantly via two lines: analysing national environmental policies
and environmental state formation and studying environmental NGOs
and protests.
As environmental problems and crises were mainly conceptualised
as (capitalist) market failures in the provision of collective goods, the
emerging environmental state institutions were widely conceived as
among the most important developments to deal with these failures.
The establishment of national and local environmental ministries and
authorities, new national frameworks of legal measures and regula-
tions, new assessment procedures for major economic projects and
other state-related institutional innovations drove sociological and
political sciences interests, analyses and investigations towards under-
standing environmental reform processes. To a significant extent, these
analyses were sceptical of the nation-state's ability to 'tame the tread-
mill' (Schnaiberg, 1980 )ofongoing capitalist accumulation processes
and related environmental deterioration. Building strongly on neo-
Marxist analytical schemes, the state was often perceived to be struc-
turally unable to regulate, control and compensate the inherent envi-
ronmental side effects of an ongoing capitalist accumulation process.
The environmental crisis was seen as being closely and fundamentally
related to the structure of the capitalist organisation of the economy,
and the 'capitalist state' (Jessop, 1990 ) was considered to be unable to
change the structure of the capitalist economy. J anicke's ( 1986 ) study
on state failure accumulated many of the insights and themes of this
line of investigation. Notwithstanding this dominant position during
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