Ch 1. Introduction: Conceptualizing environment-society relations – Magnus Boström and Debra J. Davidson
Ch. 2. The Anthropocene: A Narrative in the Making – Rolf Lidskog and Claire Waterton
Ch. 3. Metabolism – Debra J. Davidson
Ch. 4. Risk and Resilience – Marja Ylönen
Ch. 5. Global Environmental Networks and Flows addressing Global Environmental Change – Peter Oosterveer
Ch. 6. The environmental state and environmental governance – Arthur P.J. Mol
Ch. 7. Economic Valuation of the Environment – Steve Yearley
Ch. 8. Environmental Expertise – Rolf Lidskog and Göran Sundqvist
Ch. 9. The Practice of Green Consumption – Emily Huddart Kennedy and Darcy Hauslik
Ch. 10. Minding the mundane: Everyday practices as central pillar of sustainability thinking and research – Henrike Rau
Ch. 11. Environmental Justice – J. Timmons Roberts, David Pellow and Paul Mohai
Ch. 12. Environmental Democracy: Participation, Deliberation and Citizenship – Frank Fisher
Ch. 13. Joining people with things. The commons and environmental sociology – Luigi Pellizzoni
Ch. 14. Spatial frames and the quest for institutional fit – C.S.A. (Kris) Van Koppen and Simon R. Bush
Ch. 15. Conflicting temporalities of social and environmental change? – Stewart Lockie and Catherine Mei Ling Wong
Ch. 16. Conclusion – A proposal for a brave new world of conceptual reflexivity - Magnus Boström, Debra J. Davidson, and Stewart Lockie
Afterword: Irony and Contrarian Imaginations – Matthias Gross.
Magnus Boström is Professor of Sociology at Örebro University, Sweden, with a theoretical interest and research profile in environmental sociology. His research interest generally concerns politics, representation, consumption and action in relation to a broad variety of transnational environmental and sustainability issues.
Debra J. Davidson is Professor of Environmental Sociology in the Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology at the University of Alberta, USA. Her key areas of teaching and research include social responses to climate change, and crises and transitions in food and energy systems.
This book offers a critical analysis of core concepts that have influenced contemporary conversations about environment-society relations in academic, political, and civil circles. Considering these conceptualizations are currently shaping responses to environmental crises in fundamental ways, critical reflections on concepts such as the Anthropocene, metabolism, risk, resilience, environmental governance, environmental justice and others, are well-warranted. Contributors to this volume, working across a multitude of areas within environmental social science, scrutinize underlying worldviews and assumptions, asking a common set of key questions: What are the different concepts able to explain? How do they take into account society-environment relations? What social, cultural, or geo-political biases and blinders are inherent? What actions or practices do the concepts inspire?
The transdisciplinary engagement and reflexivity regarding concepts of environment-society relations represented in these chapters is needed in all spheres of society—in academia, policy and practice—not the least to confront current tendencies of anti-reflexivity and denialism.