ABSTRACT
Environmental sociology, Buttel (2003) observes, has gone through two distinct stages since its emergence in the 1970s as a discrete disciplinary area. In the first stage, the major theoretical task was to identify a key factor (or a closely related set of factors) that created an enduring ‘crisis’ of environmental degradation and destruction. More recently, there has been a significant shift towards another task: discovering the most effective mechanism of environmental reform or improvement which will help ‘chart the way forward to more socially secure and environmentally friendly arrangements’ (p. 335).
