Environmental Sociology
The association between societal well-being and environmental quality is an important topic of Sociological inquiry. Environmental Sociology as a subdiscipline within Sociology explores the various forms of interaction between human society and the environment. Environmental Sociologists seek to understand a variety of topics, including agrifood systems, environmentalism as a social movement, the ways in which societal members perceive environmental problems, the origins of human-induced environmental decline, the relationship between population dynamics, health, and the environment, and the role that elites play in harming the environment. The inequitable social distribution of environmental hazards is another central area of Environmental Sociological research, with scholars examining the processes by which socially disadvantaged populations come to experience greater exposures to myriad environmental hazards including natural disasters.
Environmental Sociology represents one of several focal areas of research and teaching in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Incoming students may explore any topical area within Environmental Sociology, but our faculty’s specific expertise includes population-environment dynamics, agrifood systems, environmental inequality and justice, environmental hazards and disasters, environmental regulatory agency dynamics, the sources of variation in power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions, and the role that elite-controlled institutions play in harming the environment. Complementing these strengths, faculty in the Sociology Department’s other concentrations conduct research in areas that strongly inform environmental sociology, including gender and race relations, population-health dynamics, political economy, criminology, and the governance of commodity chains.