SOCS-325 Week 1 Discussion: Defining Environmental Sociology

Week 1: Defining Environmental Sociology Q: Define what Environmental Sociology means to you, and describe what an Environmental Sociologist studies. A: Environmental sociology means a field of sociology which deals with societal-environmental interactions and focuses mainly on the social dimensions of either the natural environment or the human-built environment. Environmental sociologist is a person who studies environmental sociology or society-environment interactions. Student post: “The environmental sociology studies the environment problems and factor that cause the problems that impact the planet. Environmental sociology also has the ability to create solutions to many of these environmental problems.” (Aida Quito, May 6, 2018) A: Aida, I don’t believe in the solution idea. For me the environmental sociology field has a role as an observer, it’s a field where the information it’s gathered for creating a statistics or for giving an summary of the society trends at one point in time. Week 1: Environmental Racism and Justice Q: Compare and contrast, providing examples of each, the constructs of environmental racism and environmental justice. A: Environmental Justice activists define the environment as the set of linked places “where we live, work, learn and play.” The processes that have produced environmental injustice have also simultaneously produced uneven development, marginalized landscapes, increased criminalization of poor people and people of color, and the social movements that work to transform them. A racial formations approach to environmental injustice seeks to interrogate not only racial categories, but also to investigate the long roots of racism that are embedded and masked within natural resource and environmental policies. At the same time, racism’s effects are harmful for society at large. In fact, the dynamics that produce racism are related to those that produce environmental harms. While not all Environmental justice research and activism directly addresses the following goals, many people are already imagining and building broadly democratic, antiracist movements.