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"John Hannigan's definitive textbook offers a distinctive, balanced coverage of environmental issues, policies, and action. This revised fourth edition has been expanded and fully updated to explore contemporary developments and issues within global environmental sociology. Environmental Sociology reconciles Hannigan's widely cited model of the social construction of environmental problems and controversies, which states that incipient environmental issues must be identified, researched, promoted and persuasively argued in the form of "claims", with an environmental justice perspective that stresses inequality and threats to local communities. For example, this new edition explores the interconnections between indigenous communities and environmental activists via a study of the difficult relationship between Aboriginal people and environmentalists in Australia. The updated fourth edition also discusses new direct action protest groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, who have reframed the discourse around the 'climate emergency' using apocalyptic language and imagery. Environmental Sociology also signposts exciting new directions for future research. The fourth edition re-interrogates the classical roots of environmental theory with a focus of the work of Alexander von Humboldt. Hannigan also asserts the need for environmental sociologists to turn their attention to 'The Forgotten Ocean', arguing that the discipline should incorporate cutting-edge concepts such as marine justice, striated space, and volumetrics. Environmental Sociology is a key text for students and researchers in environmental studies, political ecology, social geography and environmental sociology"--

Introduction: Re-imagining the 1950s -- On the road : safe adventures in 1950s America -- "The biggest Rolodex in Hollywood" : Walt Disney at mid-century -- Desert spectacular -- The name of the rose -- It happened in Squaw Valley -- The most photographed place in America -- Marine marvels -- Seattle invents the future -- Chemistry sets, planetariums and science fairs -- Interrogating the spectacular.

Oceanic frontiers : harvesting the commons -- Governing the abyss : sharing the commons -- Sovereignty games : claiming the commons -- Saving the ocean : protecting the commons

Dramatic scenes of devastation and suffering caused by disasters such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, are viewed with shock and horror by millions of us across the world. What we rarely see, however, are the international politics of disaster aid, mitigation and prevention that condition the collective response to natural catastrophes around the world. In this book, respected Canadian environmental sociologist John Hannigan argues that the global community of nations has failed time and again in establishing an effective and binding multilateral mechanism for coping with disasters.

AbstractNearly three decades ago, Gramling and Freudenburg (1996) urged that greater attention be given to middle‐range efforts in environmental sociology. In this article, I will argue that since Gramling and Freudenburg offered their advice, there has been a critical mass of work in environmental sociology undertaken from the perspective of middle‐range theory, but this has been undervalued in our never‐ending odyssey in search for grand theory. To illustrate this, I review sociological enquiry into risk and risk communication. To make a case of my own for a middle‐range sociology appropriate to the second quartile of the 21st century, I advocate the development of a "sociology of environmental morality" (see Farrell, 2015; Hannigan forthcoming, 2024; Stock, 2020) to be pursued via a middle‐range perspective. I conclude by outlining two strategies for pursuing a middle‐range sociology of environmental morality.

Despite covering around 70 percent of the earth's surface, the ocean has long been ignored by sociology or treated as merely an extension of land‐based systems. Increasingly, however, oceans are assuming a higher profile, emerging both as a new resource frontier, a medium for geopolitical rivalry and conflict, and a unique and threatened ecological hot spot. In this article, I propose a new sociological specialty area, the "sociology of oceans" to be situated at the interface between environmental sociology and traditional maritime studies. After reviewing existing sociological research on maritime topics and the consideration of (or lack of consideration) the sea by classic sociological theorists, I briefly discuss several contemporary sociological approaches to the ocean that have attracted some notice. In the final section of the paper, I make the case for a distinct sociology of oceans and briefly sketch what this might look like. One possible trajectory for creating a shared vision or common paradigm, I argue, is to draw on Deleuze and Guattari's dialectical theory of the smooth and the striated.Même s'il couvre 70% de la surface de la Terre, l'océan a été longtemps ignoré en sociologie ou traité comme une extension des systèmes terrestres. De plus en plus, toutefois, l'océan retient l'attention, en étant vu comme une nouvelle frontière en termes de ressources, un médium pour les rivalités et les conflits géopolitiques, et un lieu écologique névralgique et unique. Dans cet article, je propose une nouvelle spécialisation sociologique, la 'sociologie des océans', se situant dans l'interface entre la sociologie environnementale et les études maritimes traditionnelles. Après une recension de la recherche sociologique existante sur les sujets maritimes et la prise en compte (ou l'absence de prise en compte) de l'océan par les théoriciens de la sociologie classique, je discute brièvement quelques approches sociologiques contemporaines de l'océan ayant attiré l'attention. Dans la dernière partie de l'article, j'insiste sur le besoin d'une sociologie distincte de l'océan et je présente brièvement à quoi cela pourrait ressembler. Une voie possible pour créer une vision commune ou un paradigme, selon moi, est de s'inspirer de la théorie dialectique du lisse et du strié de Deleuze et Guattari.