Why is it that not all environmental problems attract the same public attention? In his revealing approach to the environment, John Hannigan demonstrates that society's willingness to recognize and solve environmental problems depends more upon the way these claims are presented by a limited number of interest groups than upon the severity of the threat they pose.
Using examples drawn from the US, UK and Canada, Hannigan provides students with a model for analysing environmental issues that can form the basis of their own research. He also, for the first time, places the construction of environmental knowledge in the context of wider debates within sociology on modernity and postmodernity and what it means to live in a `risk society'.
1. ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY AS A FIELD OF INQUIRY 2 CONTEMPORARY THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY 3. ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE 4. DISCOURSE, POWER RELATIONS AND POLITICAL ECOLOGY 5. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES AND PROBLEMS 6. MEDIA AND ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 7. SCIENCE, SCIENTISTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS 8. RISK 9. BIODIVERSITY LOSS: THE SUCCESSFUL 'CAREER' OF A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM 10. TOWARDS AN 'EMERGENCE' MODEL OF ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY
"the best introduction to the social constructionist approach to environmental problems available today"
– Environmental Politics