Call for Papers
for THE ENVIRONMENT & SOCIETY RESEARCH NETWORK sessions
on the theme POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
at the 5th Conference of the European Sociology Association
28 August - 1 September 2001, in Helsinki, Finland
At the 5th ESA Conference in Helsinki next year, the Research Network on
Environment & Society will be exploring the relationship between 'power
and the environment' through a number of sub-themes dealing with
markets, civil society, regulation & implementation, and the tensions in
present theoretical and methodological literature.
The sessions of the Environment & Society Research Network are open to
all, and we strongly encourage all social scientists with research
interests in the changing societal conditions of environmental
protection to consider sending a paper abstract for our Helsinki
sessions.
Abstracts should be sent BEFORE 30 JANUARY 2001 to the following:
Ørnulf Seippel <[log in to unmask]>, AND
ESA Conference <[log in to unmask]>
To elucidate the general theme of POWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT, we have
chosen the following broad sub-themes:
1. MARKETS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Markets, power and the environment are interconnected on several points.
With the globalization of the economy, large market actors have come to
play a much more powerful role in environmental management. Furthermore,
with the increasing marketization of European societies, environmental
management has come to rely increasingly on market-based instruments,
such as eco-taxes. Yet, the use of eco-taxes have been severely
constrained by resistance of market actors. These problems are further
exacerbated by the transnational nature of most environmental issues.
Finally it should be noted that economic valuation is very much related
to how well markets work.
2. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The last decade has witnessed an increasing importance and power of
civil society actors in environmental matters. These actors include not
only environmental NGOs, but increasingly also consumers, ecological
production co-operatives etc.. Their power has increased parallel with
the decreasing legitimacy of governmental authorities, but the question
is to what degree civil society actors can and will replace governmental
authorities or if new alliances between state and civil society will
form.
3. REGULATION & IMPLEMENTATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
The traditional command-and-control approach to governmental
environmental protection has long been acknowledged as being severely
limited in both effectiveness and cost-efficiency. However, potent
alternatives have not been easy to find. A number of European states
have been experimenting with voluntary agreements between government and
business, but as in the case of eco-taxes these new instruments of
regulation have often been constrained by lack of enthusiasm of the
business sector. Solutions may arise from a new balance of power
evolving between government, business and civil society actors even if
it is a dynamic and ever changing one.
4. THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL TENSIONS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY
Understanding of the ever changing and dynamic nature of environmental
policy is both enriched and complicated by deep and persistent tensions
in the theoretical and associated methodological approaches applied.
There are differences in diagnosis between the predominantly realist
theories of eco-modernization and risk society on what is likely to be
the main driving forces and solutions in future environmental policy,
and there are epistemological tensions between these realist theories
and various kinds of discourse and social constructivist theories about
the environment and what makes it an object of public concern.
Associated with these differences of epistemology are differences of
methodology that remain largely unexplored in social theory.
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