Introduction

For a short historical period in the late 1980s and early 1990s environmental social science occupied a central place on academic and political agenda across Europe. National governments rolled out ten-year environmental research programmes, charitable Trusts and Foundations allocated parts of their social policy research budgets to environmental questions and the European Commission disbursed funds to scholars across Europe to develop multidisciplinary scientific networks capable of investigating the relationships between natural and social processes. Social scientists of many persuasions found themselves with a sudden, and largely unexpected, interest in environmental change and books, journals and pamphlets began to appear on natural and social impacts on the environment authored from departments of cultural studies, sociology, social policy, politics, economics and psychology. Texts with avowedly green credentials became best-sellers, ‘risk’ became almost de rigeur in environmental studies, ‘ecological modernization’ effected a translation of green agenda into the policy frameworks of establishment organisations, and a new route to personal chairs opened up for the most dedicated and ambitious environmental social scientists.