Bruce Hackett

Social Stratification and Environmental Degradation: Understanding Household CO2 Production

Arguing against the economic model of consumer sovereignty that is assumed in policy discourse concerning the environmental effects of consumer demand, this analysis explores the social origins of one consumption-based environmental problem (greenhouse gas emissions), and considers the social impact of carbon tax proposals aimed at slowing global warming. It uses data on household-level energy consumption in California to show patterned variation in energy use and carbon emissions among households. This variation is accounted for by social class and life cycle differences in housing, appliances, travel, and lifestyle—the cultural expressions of a materialized social structure. A comparison of the economic impact of alternative carbon tax proposals shows that tax rates designed to significantly reduce global emissions would also differentially increase energy costs, with regressive effects upon low- and moderate-income households. Despite the possibility of compensating energy subsidies, caveats are offered based on the history of federally funded low-income energy assistance programs in the United States. Carbon taxes are not simple substitutes for social class and life cycle-appropriate policies designed to: (1) equitably increase the efficiency of housing and household technology, (2) reshape residential settlement patterns, and (3) fundamentally improve the transportation system in the United States.

Social Structures and Economic Conduct: Interpreting Variations in Household Energy Consumption

The consumption of natural resources is rapidly emerging as a major social problem, and social efforts to control this consumption are guided in part by research that tries to specify the meaning of resources to consumers. This paper compares a sociological perspective with the more widespread economic model of consumption, using data from study of billing systems, sociocultural status, and household energy use in a California apartment complex. The research suggests that the role of marginal price in ordering consumption can be interpreted as a contingent feature of the socially structured relationship between consumption and social status. It also suggests that the utility of a technology is a secondary and emergent product of its use, a fact obscured by the conventional analytic separation of supply and demand or means and ends.

Social and engineering determinants and their equity implications in residential electricity use

Energy conservation may occur because of either economic constraints or voluntary changes in values and lifestyle, with quite different social welfare implications. We examine the determinants of summer electricity use in single-family dwellings. Income and household size strongly affect energy use, while factors related to values and lifestyle are less important. A causal model approach is used to show how the social variables are related to energy use through intervening engineering/hardware variables.

Evaluation of a community-Based electricity load management program☆

During the summer of 1980, Davis (CA) undertook a program to encourage residents to reduce peak electricity use. The program was initiated by the local utility company and carried a collective financial incentive: for every 1% reduction in peak electricity use, the utility would reward the city

review symposium : Riots and Rebellion: Civil Violence in the Urban Community, Louis J. Masotti and Don R. Bowen [eds.] (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 464 pp.,

10,000 up to a maximum of

8.50; paper,

100,000. This paper discusses the program and evaluates its effects during the first experimental summer of operation.

3.95)

before us for consideration a collection of 25 articles designed to reveal some of the reasons why these scenes of acute social disturbance and even terror have occurred. The book is helpful in this regard and also useful as an indicator of some of the serious contemporary difficulties encountered in trying to make a good social science study. In their introductory theoretical overview on civil violence, the editors direct attention to four themes around which the many efforts