Newsletter of the Section on Environment and Technology
American Sociological Association
Summer 1998
What Do Others Think of Us?:
Natural Scientists, Environmental Sociologists, and Policy Studies
Natural scientists represent an important audience for our work because many of us work in organizations in which natural scientists predominate. Most environmental studies programs in higher education have governing boards or faculties composed primarily of natural scientists. Those of us who work in land grant universities are members of college of agriculture faculties dominated by biologists. Environmental sociologists who work in applied settings like the national labs often work as members of teams which include natural scientists. Under these circumstances it matters what natural scientists think of us because, quite frequently, they provide us with jobs, influence our chances for promotion, and, more diffusely, shape the way we think about the human dimensions of environ-mental phenomena.
The importance of natural scientists to our organizational lives is not easy to see when we first begin training to become sociologists. Most of us have been trained in graduate programs in sociology, and natural scientists have no presence in these programs, so one important audience never gets heard as we struggle in graduate school to define our professional identities and research areas. For this reason I thought I would use this column to outline, based on my own experience, the particular contributions that natural scientists think that we can make to the scientific enterprise.
Natural scientists usually distinguish between two types of social scientists, economists and the rest of us (anthropology, geography, political science, and sociology). In their eyes economists focus on commodities, and the rest of us have the capacity to do policy studies, if we do anything at all! Policy is important in the eyes of natural scientists because it has obvious effects on their own scientific enterprises. The political reception that a new biotechnology like the bovine growth hormone gets may influence how much it is used. Political change in the form of new legislation may provide the economic basis for toxicological research in environmental science. Ecologists see policy as one of the few tools that we have to fight the biodiversity crisis stemming from climate change and tropical deforestation. In each of these instances policy variables have a critical influence on the work that natural scientists do, and for this reason they will support the hiring of social scientists whose research focuses on policies.
Because policy research often has an important applied dimension, it may be looked on with disfavor by influential faculty in graduate programs of sociology, and students may shy away from this type of research early in their graduate student careers. This aversion to policy research strikes me as both unfortunate and unwarranted. It is unfortunate because it diminishes the chances that these sociologists will be able to compete for research positions in environmental policy. It is unwarranted because the denigration of policy research ignores the affinity between research on policies and research in political sociology. Well conceived studies of policies invoke such important and enduring concerns in 20th century macrosociology as the historical increase in state power and the emergence of the welfare state. In other words one can do research in environmental policy and still address fundamental questions in sociology. This situation may be one of those where someone, trying to do some good, does well. Because at least one important audience for our work, natural scientists, would like to see more of us doing work on a wide variety of environmental policies, graduate students in environmental sociology may improve their chances of finding employment among natural scientists if they address the political dimensions of the sociology of the environment.
In San Francisco
and the Bay Area, both government and the citizenry appreciate the relationship
between their society and its environment. Along with the usual complement
of grassroots groups, the city of San Francisco has a Department of the
Environ-ment and an official Sustainability Plan. (Check them out at http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/environment/)
The non-profit group Sustain-able San Francisco also promotes this plan,
by serving as a watchdog as well as by recognizing environmentally sensitive
individuals, groups, and businesses. (See Sustainable San Francisco's quarterly
newsletter on-line at http://www.igc.apc. organization/sustainable/newsletters/current.html)
At the regional level, the non-profit Urban Ecology, Inc. promotes sustainable
development. The group's publication Blueprint for a Sustainable Bay
Area won the American Planning Association's 1998 Public Education
Award (Schwab and Lewis 1998). The book was selected in part because it
"reaches people at both personal and regional political levels" (p. 15).
Individual actions are discussed and integrated with choices at various
levels of industry and government.
The area boasts numerous natural and technological recrea-tional sites. Alcatraz is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The former military fort and penitentiary welcomes thousands of human visitors, while other areas of the Rock welcome a host of birdlife (Drew 1998). The Alcatraz site includes ruins of the guardhouses and remains of the gardens planted by military and prisoners' families in soil imported for that purpose. The building ruins have become overgrown and enhance the natural habitat for colonial nesting birds. Since early in this decade, when part of the island was set aside as a wildlife sanctuary, bird colonies long established there have grown dramatically.
Golden Gate Park includes various gardens and museums, as well as trails for hiking, jogging, skating, and biking. The Japanese Tea Garden, Conservatory of Flowers, Strybing Arboretum, and the California Academy of Sciences (including a planetarium, aquarium, and natural history museum) are there. You can walk along the San Francisco shoreline through the Waterfront. If you visit here, you can walk through the Golden Gate Promenade and the Presidio, which used to belong to the military, as well as the Embarcadero, which used to be freeway. You'll also see South Beach Marina and Park, Pier 39, Fisherman's Wharf, and Ghirardelli Square.
Other notable sites
include the Ansel Adams Center, featuring his wonderful photographs; the
Exploratorium, with hands-on science, art, and percep-tion exhibits (located
in the Palace of Fine Arts); the walk-through waterfall at Yerba Buena
Gardens; Underwater World, with its underwater acrylic tunnel; Ocean Beach;
Seal Rock; the Transamerica Pyramid; the San Francisco Zoo; the Crookedest
Street in the World (Lombard); the NASA/Ames Research Center (ASA is organizing
a tour--see the preliminary program); Muir Woods National Monument; and,
of course, the bridge that "couldn't be built"--the Golden Gate Bridge
(it has a pedestrian sidewalk).
References:
Drew, Lisa. 1998. "This Prison is for the Birds," National Wildlife, June/July, pp. 40-45.
Schwab, James and Megan Lewis. 1998. "Public Education," Planning,
April, p. 15.
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