Rural Sociology And The Environment

With increasing awareness of the limits that natural resource reserves and environmental concerns impose on economic growth, rural sociologists have developed new ways of looking at the relationship between man and his environment. This volume surveys changing sociological views of that relationship and explores a holistic, cooperative model of human/nature interaction that reflects the needs of the post-industrial age.

In their introduction Field and Burch review significant landmarks in natural resource sociology and comment on some of the underlying aims of rural sociology. The remaining chapters focus on three distinct periods during which rural sociologists have sought to examine man's relationship and adaptation to the environment.

Review: ?Sponsored by the Natural Resources Research Group of the Rural Sociological Society, this monograph traces the development of environmental sociology from its roots in early rural sociology. The authors are applied rural sociologists who have been very involved with research surrounding natural resources and the development of the Natural Resources Research Group.

The book is organized thematically by chapters that discuss the discipline and its relation to theoretical issues involving the interaction of social and biological systems during the past 50 years. . . . There is an extensive bibliography tied to each section that is very useful. The approach requires that the reader be very familiar with the literature to follow the authors' arguments.

Those interested in environmental sociology will find this historical treatment interesting.?-Choice