ASA Task Force Releases New Book on Climate Change

Newswise — WASHINGTON, DC, August 3, 2015 — Climate change is one of the most critical issues of the 21st Century, presenting a major intellectual challenge to both the natural and social sciences. While there has been significant progress in natural science understanding of climate change, social science analyses have not been as fully developed. Edited by Riley E. Dunlap and Robert J. Brulle, the forthcoming book, Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, breaks new theoretical and empirical ground by presenting climate change as a thoroughly social phenomenon, embedded in behaviors, institutions, and cultural practices.

This collection of essays summarizes existing approaches to understanding the social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of climate change. From the factors that drive carbon emissions to those which influence societal responses to climate change, the volume provides a comprehensive overview of the social dimensions of climate change. An improved understanding of the complex relationship between climate change and society is essential for modifying ecologically harmful human behaviors and institutional practices, creating just and effective environmental policies, and developing a more sustainable future. Climate Change and Society, which will be published in September 2015 by Oxford University Press, provides a useful tool in efforts to integrate social science research, natural science research, and policymaking regarding climate change and sustainability.

Produced by the American Sociological Association’s Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change, this book presents a challenging shift from the standard climate change discourse, and offers a valuable resource for students, scholars, and professionals involved in climate change research and policy.

Dunlap is Dresser Professor and Regents Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University, Past President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Environment & Society, and Past Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environment & Technology. He is senior editor of the Handbook of Environmental Sociology and Sociological Theory and the Environment, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Brulle is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science at Drexel University, and Past Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Environment & Technology. He is author of Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective and co-editor of Power, Justice, and the Environment. He was a 2012-2013 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

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About the American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.

To schedule an interview with the editors or to request a review copy of the book, please contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or [email protected], or Sinead O’Connor, Oxford University Press, at (212) 743-8204 or [email protected]. O’Connor wrote this press release.