ABSTRACT
Interactionism, with its emphasis on self and identity as the motivators of human meaning-making activity, holds a central place in the history of microsociological theory and yet has been largely dismissed by environmental sociologists. Indeed, as Brewster points out, “two of the founders of environmental sociology criticized the most innovative and thoroughgoing biosocial thinkers in the sociological canon for a later tradition in sociology [i.e., interactionism] that has largely ignored both the natural world and Mead’s attention to it” (Brewster, 2011: 40). We draw on Mead’s concern with ethical action to provide context for what we see as a necessary shift to a metaenvironmental microsociological theory. After elaborating on this previously underdeveloped area of Mead’s work, we analyze two cultural “impulses”— the practices of urban agriculture and bicycling for transportation-as illustrations of contemporary efforts to forge identities with new meanings through enactment of new cultural forms. Such efforts, we argue, can be seen as moral actions resulting from the exercise of choices arising from the pragmatic practice of discerning preferable futures and pursuing cooperative social action to achieve them.
