Environmental Sociology — Achievements and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce this call for academic papers for a special issue of the journal Societies entitled Environmental Sociology—Achievements and Challenges.

The emergence of Environmental Sociology as a sociological subdiscipline, has been traced as far back as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Environmental Sociology was recognized by the International Sociological Association in 1971; the American Sociological Association followed suit in 1976, forming a section then called Environment and Technology (E&T).

In this special issue of Societies, we aim to collect original research articles and critical reviews that analyze and assess the status of Environmental Sociology from its early beginnings to the present. While singular authors have done so before, this is an opportune time to reconsider Environmental Sociology's station in a more focused manner.

Submissions may address questions related to the conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions of Environmental Sociology to the discipline and beyond, as well as its omissions. Relevant subject matters include but are not limited to:

• The emergence of Environmental Sociology: historical context, theoretical foundations, critical contributions, current trends, and future directions.
• Models and paradigms: conceptions of how social structure and social processes shape our perceptions of environmental problems, and our views about and reactions to them.
• Environmental Sociology, sustainable development, and sustainability
• Environmental justice: environmental inequalities, marginalized communities, racism, discrimination, and conflict.
• Policy and advocacy: does Environmental Sociology inform and affect environmental policies and regulations? Does it inform the strategies of environmental movements?
• Has Environmental sociology left a mark on the discipline, or has it remained rather marginal to sociology as a whole?
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Has Environmental Sociology fostered engagement with other scientific disciplines? Has this collaboration enriched our understanding of environmental issues by integrating these disciplinary perspectives?
• Theoretical and methodological challenges: Has Environmental Sociology developed comprehensive theoretical frameworks and methodologies that address the complexity of environmental issues?

1. Dunlap, R.E., Catton, W.R. Jr. (1979). "Environmental sociology." Annual Review of Sociology, 5, 243-273. Environmental Sociology on JSTOR.

2. Schaefer Caniglia, B. Jorgenson, A., Malin, S.F., Peek, L., Pellow, D.N., Huang, X. (eds.). (2001). Handbook of Environmental Sociology. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-77712-8.

3. Scott, L.N., Erik W. Johnson E.W. (2016). "From fringe to core? The integration of environmental sociology." Environmental Sociology, 3(1), 17-29. https://labs.wsu.edu/erikjohnson/documents/2017/12/fringe-to-core.pdf/.

4. Carson, R. (1962). Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin Company. https://archive.org/details/fp_Silent_Spring-Rachel_Carson-1962.

5. International Sociological Association. (1976). "Report of the General Assembly," The American Sociologist, 11 (2), 123-131.

6. Harper Simpson, T., Simpson, R.L. (1994). "The transformation of the American Sociological Association." Sociological Forum, 9(2), (Special Issue: What's Wrong with Sociology?), 259-278. https://www.jstor.org/stable/685045.

7. Buttel, F.H. (1987). "New directions in environmental sociology." Annual Review of Sociology, 13, 465-488. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.so.13.080187.002341.

8. Lockie, S. (2015) "Why environmental sociology?" Environmental Sociology, 1 (1), 1-3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2015.1022983.

Prof. Dr. Avi Gottlieb
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• environmental sociology
• sustainable development
• environmental justice
• environmental policy