Love Canal. We hear these words and quickly recoil, remembering a community poisoned by toxic waste. Twenty years after the incident, Allan Mazur reexamines the circumstances that made this upstate New York neighborhood synonymous with ecological catastrophe and triggered federal "Superfund" legislation to clean up the nation's thousands of hazardous waste sites.
But is there only one true story of Love Canal? Borrowing the multi-viewpoint technique of the classic Japanese film Rashomon, Mazur's book reveals that there are many--often conflicting versions of what occurred at...
Love Canal. We hear these words and quickly recoil, remembering a community poisoned by toxic waste. Twenty years after the incident, Allan Mazur r...
Biology_perhaps the most exciting science of the last half-century_is reaching into scholarly disciplines throughout academia, yet sociology has barely entertained it. The reasons for hesitation are clear enough. Sociobiology and ethology have been unappealing to sociologists because they explain human behavior the same way they explain the behavior of social insects, fish, and birds; often evoking images of sexism and Social Darwinism, both anathemas to modern sociologists. Nonetheless, sociologists do show growing interest in biology and what it can contribute to their discipline. In this...
Biology_perhaps the most exciting science of the last half-century_is reaching into scholarly disciplines throughout academia, yet sociology has barel...
While conventional social problems textbooks focus on issues in the United States, Global Social Problems examines major problems around the world. Beginning with a broad history of how humanity came to be divided along its present major social cleavages, the text then turns to the specific problems of war, social inequality, population, and resources and environment. It is intended as a core reading for a class on global social problems including war, inequality, population, and resources and environment.
While conventional social problems textbooks focus on issues in the United States, Global Social Problems examines major problems around the world. Be...
Why do people accept ideas that are contradicted by science or logic? In Implausible Beliefs, Allan Mazur offers a comparative look at the nature of irrational belief systems, their social roots, and their cultural and political impact. He begins by providing standards for judging beliefs implausible and assessing the impact of such belief systems onpolitics and social policy in the US. Mazur describes and defends commonsense criteria for establishing that certain views should not be sustained in the face of present-day understanding. He presents a statistical portrait of...
Why do people accept ideas that are contradicted by science or logic? In Implausible Beliefs, Allan Mazur offers a comparative look at the...
Given time, scientists reach consensus about the truth or falsity of a wide range of alleged hazards. Today, there is broad agreement that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone. On the other hand, research does not support claims that electromagnetic fields from transmission lines cause a noticeable increase of leukemia. But new allegations continuously arise. Are manufactured chemicals in the environment distorting normal hormonal processes in our bodies? Are genetically modified foods a cause for concern? Addressing one of the most vexing problems in risk policy, Allan Mazur asks how we can...
Given time, scientists reach consensus about the truth or falsity of a wide range of alleged hazards. Today, there is broad agreement that CFCs destro...
Energy is at the top of the list of environmental problems facing industrial society, and is arguably the one that has been handled least successfully, in part because politicians and the public do not understand the physical technologies, while the engineers and industrialists do not understand the societal forces in which they operate. In this book, Allan Mazur, an engineer and a sociologist, explains energy technologies for nontechnical readers and analyses the sociology of energy. The book gives an overview of energy policy in industrialised countries including analysis of climate change,...
Energy is at the top of the list of environmental problems facing industrial society, and is arguably the one that has been handled least successfully...
Newspapers and TV often report controversial risk warnings over technological innovations, scientific developments, or environmental hazards that have at their core a dispute between experts who contradict one another not only on preferred policy but also on the scientific facts that underlie decisions about public policy. Recent examples are the disputes about climate change, fracking, vaccination and autism, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Adversaries mobilize constituents with similar interests or ideologies, form opposing coalitions, and compete for media exposure. They...
Newspapers and TV often report controversial risk warnings over technological innovations, scientific developments, or environmental hazards that h...
