Debra J. Davidson

The Applicability of the Concept of Resilience to Social Systems: Some Sources of Optimism and Nagging Doubts

This article presents an inquiry into prospects for application of the conceptual lens of resilience to social systems. The dominant paradigm of sustainability in its current form is likely to be of limited utility for aiding scholars to contribute to our understanding of past and current global environmental crises, and for planning for such events in the future. Resilience theory offers a compelling source of theoretical insight; however, the current iteration of this framework is not readily applicable to social systems. Our ability to do so requires further theoretical development in the areas of system complexity and agency. This article offers an initial step in this direction, by providing an overview and critique of recent academic treatments of the concept of resilience, and a set of guideposts for further research.

Understanding Environmental Governance A Critical Review

This article presents an historical sketch of the insights and applications provided by social science scholars on environmental governance. The authors begin with a review of the conceptual developments during the past 50 years characterized in terms of six conceptual perspectives: pluralism, agency capture, ecological Marxism, ecological modernization, social constructionism, and global environmentalism. This section is followed by an empirical analysis of academic journal coverage of research on environmental governance from 1963 to 2001 listed in the database Sociological Abstracts. The authors conclude that an understanding of the potential for environmental improvement could be advanced by the treatment of works that fall within the conceptual typology described herein, as a cumulative body of interdisciplinary knowledge. Advancements in this area could, furthermore, be facilitated through a broadening of empirical and methodological treatment of environmental governance and a greater attention to macro-structural relations among state and societal forces and environmental phenomena.

Nuclear Families and Nuclear Risks: The Effects of Gender, Geography, and Progeny on Attitudes toward a Nuclear Waste Facility*

Studies of reactions to nuclear facilities have found consistent male/female differences, but the underlying reasons have never been well-clarified. The most common expectations involve traditional roles-with men focusing more on economic concerns and with women (especially mothers) being more concerned about family safety/health. Still, with changing gender roles, women are becoming economic providers as well as caregivers; past studies have not actually examined the interaction of employment and gender effects. This study examines a rural county where issues of risk and economic interest were both salient-a county where a nuclear waste site had been proposed but where an existing nuclear power plant was a major employer. Overall, concern levels expressed by employed mothers did not differ significantly from those in the rest of the sample, but further analyses revealed a sharp contrast: In the half of the county that was home to the existing nuclear power plant, where economic concerns could be expected to be more salient, over 90 percent of the employed mothers expressed low levels of concern; in the other half of the county, closer to the potential risks of the proposed nuclear waste site, almost 90 percent of the employed mothers expressed high levels of concern. No such differences are found for other sociodemographic groups. This county may or may not be unique; what the findings show is that the interplay of geography, gender roles and risks should receive more attention in other contexts, as well.

We Still Have a Long Way to Go, and a Short Time to Get There: A Response to Fikret Berkes and Helen Ross

We are reminded of the need for integrated research on the resilience of our coupled socio-ecological systems with each day’s headlines, demarcating in graphic terms the mounting challenges such systems face. In the past year, we have all read and watched with dismay of the droughts, floods, fires, and failed crops that confront communities large and small across the global landscape. The question remains, however, whether our scholarly efforts to conceptualize these system dynamics and offer useful guidance for social organizations are as effective as they could be. In their article, ‘‘Community Resilience: Toward an Integrated Approach,’’ Berkes and Ross offer a potential pathway for conceptual advance, by integrating the efforts of health and psychology studies with those of socio-ecological systems research. As I will argue, while I agree with the merits of such an integration, this is an unfinished project, which lacks an essential, critical acknowledgment of our current socio-ecological nexus and an adequate articulation of agency, and this could expand on the opportunities for cross-fertilization between health=psychology studies and socio-ecological systems research to a much greater extent, with a deeper conceptual analysis of each. I treat each of these challenges in turn below.

Challenging legitimacy at the precipice of energy calamity

Look Whos Talking.- Observing Global Flows.- Visualizing the Tar Sands Through Time.- Capital, Labour, and the State.- Ecological Disruption.- Energy Matters.- Lessons from the Study.- A View from the Future.- Index.

Building Environmental States Legitimacy and Rationalization in Sustainability Governance

This article explores the potential for nation-states to become substantial contributors to sustainability governance. This potential resides in the ability of nation-states to make environmental protection a basic goal, in part by committing institutional resources toward the formation and implementation of substantive actions perceived necessary for long-term environmental sustainability. Existing research suggests that nation-states undertake environmental action in order to maintain legitimacy in the face of political pressure. While the maintenance of legitimacy is necessary, we argue that a substantive state role in sustainability governance is also dependent upon the rationalization of state environmental roles. Further, rationalization can be fostered through the enrichment of embedded state-societal networks with two key actors in civil society: environmental justice movements and environmental knowledge professionals. This article develops a conceptual framework that grounds sustainability efforts in rationalization processes and examines the synergistic potential for these two social actors to help build states that institute fundamental environmental reform.

Not All About Consumption

Resource exploitation can lead to increased ecological impacts even when overall consumption levels stay the same. The average barrel of oil on the market today has a larger ecological footprint than did the average barrel in 1950, and the average barrel in 2050 will have a larger ecological footprint than that of today. This tendency is most obvious in the increasing energy inputs required for production (1); production of all fossil fuels has an ecological impact, and increases in energy inputs thus translate into increased environmental impact. But exploiting less-accessible resources also requires more inputs, like diluents, water, and land, and produces more waste. Furthermore, once resources near population centers are depleted, more geographically remote reserves are accessed, increasing the ecological costs of transport. The implication is simple: Even if consumption is held constant, ecological impact can increase—not only for energy but also for other resources.

Reflexive Modernization at the Source: Local Media Coverage of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Rural Alberta

The potential for reflexive modernization is defined by multiple factors, but the acknowledgment of risk is crucial, particularly among social groups that play a key role in risk minimization. This study offers an examination of the role of local media in response to the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in beef‐producing communities in rural Alberta. BSE is one of several global risk issues that reflexive modernization theorists argue have the potential to trigger a transformation toward a critically reflexive society in which such risks are minimized. Content analysis of newspapers in beef‐producing regions in Alberta, however, shows how local media framed BSE in a manner that maximized community cohesion and protection of local culture. This selective coverage of BSE in rural Alberta is quite likely to have contributed to, or at least reinforced, support for the current institutional structure of Canadian agriculture in beef‐producing regions, through the constriction of discourse.

Introduction: building on the legacy contributions of William R. Freudenburg in environmental studies and sociology

One of the most essential ways of ensuring continued advances in scholarship is to identify and nurture those ideas and insights with the greatest potential for enhancing our understanding of the ways things work (and the ways they do not). This special edition of JESS is dedicated to just this task, by focusing on the ideas and insights of a scholar who had a special talent for planting such intellectual seeds, especially in the areas of rural and environmental sociology as well as environmental studies. That scholar, William R. Freudenburg, passed away on December 28, 2010 at a young 59 years, having finally lost his 18-month battle with bile duct cancer, a battle which—according to his doctors—he should have lost much sooner. In this special issue we highlight several areas of intellectual contributions by Dr. Freudenburg, in essence tracing his historical development as a scholar from his initial graduate student work on “energy boomtowns” in Colorado, to his latest work on un-natural disasters, which was capped by publication of Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America. That book came out shortly before his untimely death, having been written with long-time collaborator Robert Gramling in the mind-bogglingly fast period of 2 months. The respect, admiration, and affection for Bill felt by his students, both current and past, and colleagues was on display at “Freudenfest,” a symposium held in November, 2010 at Bill’s home campus, the University of California at Santa Barbara, to honor Bill and his many contributions. The contents of this special issue consist primarily of papers generated from the presentations offered at Freudenfest, all of which highlighted different aspects of Bill’s scholarly contributions. As the following papers will exemplify, Bill’s work typically involved a creative synthesis of qualitative and quantitative evidence, solidly grounded in sociological theory, and often cast with an eye toward policy relevance. This approach enabled Bill to break two particularly formidable boundaries. First, he found himself at the center of policy debates—one of a striking few sociologists to be called upon by official bodies to contribute to debates in which participation from academe was, and continues today, to be dominated by natural scientists and economists. His success at breaching this boundary is most clearly marked by his article on risk assessment in the journal Science (Freudenburg 1988), a rare social science contribution in this prestigious journal. Bill wrote at length about the need for, and strategies to improve upon, social scientific contributions to environmental and technological policy (Freudenburg 1989; Freudenburg and Gramling 2002; Freudenburg 2005a), particularly in the area of social impact assessment methods (e.g., Freudenburg and Keating 1985). His enthusiasm for contributing to policy was evident early in his career, when he was accepted into the ASA’s Congressional Fellow program, working with the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the US House of Representatives (1983–1984). Bill compiled an exemplary record of service on prestigious advisory panels and boards,

Evaluating the effects of living with contamination from the lens of trauma: a case study of fracking development in Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT Trauma, the experience of sudden, dangerous, overwhelming events that render victims powerless, is an apt description of many experiences with toxic contamination. Toxic contamination events nonetheless often have a number of characteristics in common that render such events unique forms of trauma, including the invisibility and ambiguity of threats, an association between the threat and sources of livelihood and identity and the absence of resources necessary for resolution and recovery. While environmental sociologists tend not to analyze toxic contamination from the lens of trauma, doing so may shed important insights into such events and their human and social consequences. The current study explores the toxic contamination experienced by local residents due to nearby hydraulic fracturing activities in rural communities in southern Alberta, a conservative, upper middle class agrarian region with strong links with the oil and gas industry. Residents describe acute impacts to their health, land, livestock and loved ones, but these traumas were then exacerbated by the failure of authorities to respond in a manner expected, and the corrosion of communities. Victims experienced complete upheaval in their beliefs, and for many their experiences with contamination and fears of future exposure have come to dominate their lives.