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Research Committee on
Environment and Society RC24
Programme Coordinator
Raymond Murphy, University of Ottawa, Canada, raymond.murphy@uottawa.ca
Organizing committee members
Matthias Gross, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany, matthias.gross@ufz.de
Magnus Boström, Södertörn University College, Huddinge, Sweden, magnus.bostrom@sh.se
Mikael Klintman, University of Lund, Sweden, mikael.klintman@fpi.lu.se
Venue
Svenska Mässan (Convention Centre)
Each session, group or committee is allocated in the same venue throughout the Congress, except for few occasions such as joint sessions. This is a preliminary venue and can be subject to minor changes. The final schedule will be presented in June.
Sessions
For exact date/time schedule of each session, please contact directly session chair.
Session 1: The pillar of social sustainability in eco-standardisation
Organizer: Magnus Boström, Södertörn University College, Huddinge, Sweden, magnus.bostrom@sh.se
Session 2: Global environmental change and the viability of adaptive technologies
Organizers: Matthias Gross, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany, matthias.gross@ufz.de and Filip Alexandrescu, University of Toronto, Canada, filip.alexand@gmail.com
In an era of global environmental change, discussions on the viability of adaptive strategies of human societies to natural changes become increasingly omnipresent in public discourse. This session will focus on the social relevance of alternate technologies and their political and cultural acceptability to address the viability of different energy systems for the reproduction of human societies.
Session 3: Civil society and environmental governance
Organizer: Dana Fisher, Columbia University, USA, drf2004@columbia.edu
In recent years, civil society actors have gotten increasingly involved in environmental politics at all scales of governance. This session encourages submissions that explore the roles that non-state, non-market actors are playing, whether individually or in hybrid collaborations.
Session 4: Green consumption and the tensions between global and local markets
Organizer: Julia Guivant, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, juguivant@uol.com.br
Session 5: Social theory, environmental reform, and the new world (dis)order
Organizers: Arthur Mol, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, Arthur.Mol@wur.nl and David Sonnenfeld, State University of New York at Syracuse, USA, dasonnenfeld@gmail.com
This session brings together theory-informed papers that aim to interpret and understand the institutions, actions and authorities for environmental reform in the new world (dis)order. Do we need and see new forms and patterns of environmental reform; how can we understand their emergence and functionng; how do we evaluate them; what does this mean for (environmental) social theory?
Session 6: Environmental attitudes and behavior: What do surveys tell us?
Organizers: Riley Dunlap, Oklahoma State University, USA, riley.dunlap@okstate.edu and Luisa Schmidt, Unversity of Lisbon, Portugal, schmidt@ics.ul.pt
This session will examine environmental attitudes and public opinion toward environmental issues. Papers examining opinions/attitudes toward climate change and/or cross-national comparsions of environmental opinions/attitudes are especially welcome, as are tests of theoretical models (such as the value-belief-norm model) of environmental behaviors.
Session 7: Market based instruments for the provision of ecosystem services
Organizer: Stewart Lockie, Central Queensland University, Australia, s.lockie@cqu.edu.au
From cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas abatement to biodiversity auctions, eco-labelling and trade reform, market mechanisms are increasingly seen by governments and other agencies as the most efficient, effective and politically feasible means to secure the provision of ecosystem services. This session will examine the assumptions underlying environmental governance through 'the market', the contribution of sociological theory to our understanding of market-based governance, empirical experience in the application of market-based instruments, and possibilities to extend, supplement and/or challenge the market paradigm.
Session 8: The human management of the ‘natural order’: invasive/endangered species, flood/drought, salty/fresh water
Organizer: Cecilia Claeys-Mekdade, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France, mekdade@univmed.fr
This session focuses on the paradox constituted by the human management of the ‘natural order’. What does ‘natural order’ actually mean? For whom (scientists, activists, stakeholders)? What for (nature itself, humankind survival, God accomplishment)? How is this issue handled in concrete cases like the management of invasive/endangered species, flood/drought, salty/fresh water?
Session 9: The shaping of public environmental risk perceptions
Organizer: Leonardas Rinkevicius, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania , leonardas.rinkevicius@ktu.lt
Session 10: Environmental issues and people's voice in Asia
Organizer: Koichi Hasegawa, Tohoku University, Japan, k-hase@sal.tohoku.ac.jp and KU Do-Wan, Environment and Society Research Institute, Korea, kudowan@korea.com
Focusing on environmental issues and civil activities in Asia. Under rapid modernization and industrialization, people suffer from serious environmental disruption. How do they react and raise their voice? Or how do they hope in their silence.
Organizer: Eugene Rosa, Washington State University, USA, rosa@wsu.edu
The ecological foundation of human societies has all but been ignored by sociology. Perilous threats to those ecosystems over the past century have made that inattention ever more difficult to maintain. Sustainability is the broad rubric comprising the many actions for addressing those perils.
Session 12: Culture/climate change: migration, adaptation, and re-settlement in an age of change
Organizers: Steven Yearley, University of Edinburgh, UK, steve.yearley@ed.ac.uk and Laura Jeffrey, University of Edinburgh, UK, laura.jeffery@ed.ac.uk
Sociologists are now very aware of climate change, but to date there have been few studies of the migrations and re-settlements that are expected to be an aspect of cultural adaptation to this phenomenon. This session invites empirical and theoretical analyses offering insights into this topic.
Session 13: Environmental organization and natural resource sustainability in the developing world
Organizers: Lotsmart Fonjong, University of Buea, Cameroon, lotsmart@yahoo.com and William Markham, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA, wtmarkha@uncg.edu
The session will discuss the role and participation of indigenous and international enivironmental organisations on enviromental protections and ecological movements in developing countries and question existing frameworks for analysing enviromental issues by these organisations.
Session 14: Water crisis and governance: social learning and political-institutional challenges - experiences of the North and the South
Organizer: Pedro Roberto Jacobi, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, prjacobi@usp.br
The session proposes an interchange of different experiences in dealing with water governance through the implementation of stakeholder participation to improve cooperatin and improve resource management problems.
Session 15: Biodiversity regulation and institutionalization of global-local linkages
Organizer: Karunamay Subuddhi, Indian Institute of Technology, India, subuddhi@hss.iitb.ac.in
Conceptually, biodiversity is multilayered with various meanings. With the adoption of Brundtland Report in 1989 and subsequently the decision of the General Assembly to convene the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, diversity regulation has become the hottest environmental issue. This convention became the medium of considerable controversy with respect to the question of access to genetic resources in southern nations. With the emergent legal and organizational infrastructure supported by the United Nations, and through involvement of NGOs and supplemented by number of regional measures, environmental politics, involving biodiversity regulation, has become a part of global capitalist competition and regional and national competition. As increasingly, biodiversity discourse relates to broader content of the regulation of societal relationship with nature, we need to have an adequate understanding of such networks of international regulation.
Session 16: New trends in environmental sociology
Organizer: Mikael Klintman, University of Lund, Sweden , mikael.klintman@fpi.lu.se
Session 17: Sustainability transitions and environmental sociology
Additional session on the Congress theme.
Organizers: Joan David Tabara, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain , joandavid.tabara@uab.cat and Ernest Garcia, Universitat de València, Spain, Ernest.Garcia@uv.es
This session will provide examples and review the state of the art about the social research on sustainability transitions. While it will concentrate on the specific contribution of environmental sociology to the understanding of the constraints and opportunities for transitions in diverse natural resource and environmental risk regimes, we will deal with these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. Papers showing empirical evidence of sustainability transitions and containing specific lessons learnt about the best possible tools, mechanisms and procedures which supported those positive transformations in specific social-ecological systems are encouraged. A debate on different models of transition and confronting visions (sustainable development, steady state, degrowth, postdevelopment, prosperous or chaotic way-down...) can also be expected.
Session 18: Sustainability and quality of life: concordant or conflicting goals of societal development?
Joint Session of RC24 Environment and Society and RC55 Social Indicators [host committee]
Session 19: Leisure and tourism: Environmental dimensions
Joint Session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC24 Environment and Society
Session 20: Business meeting
Integrative Session 1: Social change and the mitigation of climate change: Future scenarios
Integrative session of Research Committees RC24 Environment and Society, RC23 Science and Technology, RC07 Futures Research
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International Sociological Association, March 2010 |