ABSTRACT
In practical terms most relevant to author oil spill work, this means most "information" is systematically biased toward the interests of the privileged. Thirty years ago, the natural world did not exist for sociologists, not because they were radical idealists but because they had just never thought about it much. Indeed, it was common for leftist intellectuals to refer to the whole issue as a diversionary 'middle-class shuck', distracting attention from the important matters of race, class, and imperialism. If post-modernism means anything it is the realization that nature has its own agency, quite apart from modernist schemes of manipulating it or leftist disregard of its relative autonomy. Environmental-ism is the result and is probably the sturdiest source of political activism in the US and many other countries. Environmental sociology still does not receive the attention it deserves. Sociology should be the lead discipline in understanding how people use the earth and what it might take to save it.
