Nature and Culture

Three decades after Catton and Dunlap's (1978, 1980) pioneering work, the promise and potential of environmental sociology remain unrealized. Despite the proliferation of theoretical frameworks and empirical foci, a "new ecological paradigm" capable of theorizing the interactions between social structures, human agency, and biophysical environments has yet to emerge. I explore this impasse by tracing the parallels between the Darwinian revolution and recent shifts in metatheoretical assumptions within environmental and mainstream sociology and related disciplines. These parallels suggest that the social sciences are in the midst of a second Darwinian revolution. A fuller appreciation of this intellectual convergence can provide the first steps toward a new evolutionary environmental sociology.

In addressing mounting environmental problems in recent years, many Iranian environmentalists have increasingly adapted discourses and implemented programs that are modeled on scientific ecology. Does this mean the verbatim transfer of Western scientific modernity in Iran? My analyses suggest otherwise. This article explores the unique ways in which a burgeoning environmental awareness unfolds in Iranian contexts by investigating how conceptions of "nature" shape the environmentalists' discourses and practices. It appears that an ecological scientific conception of nature is becoming an important frame of reference among such environmentalists. However, another conception of nature-one framed in relation to Iranian nationhood-makes a key contribution to environmentalism in Iran. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2009-2011 in Tehran, this study demonstrates how "Iranian nature" is delineated and practiced through the environmentalists' (re)engagements with certain objects-maps, posters, and photographs-in relation to which local ways of conceptualizing nature are elaborated.

There is great interest within the water sector regarding the prospect of sustainable operations. Water utilities tend to be conservative entities characterized by organizational inertia, making achievement of sustainable operations a challenge of cultural transformation. We suggest that the construct of "wicked" problems provides a useful heuristic for leaders and other champions attempting to transform water utility culture to achieve sustainable operations. We observe that the cultural transformation toward sustainable water operations seems to be facilitated through the exercise of particular leadership traits, including the ability to craft and communicate a sustainability narrative, willingness and ability to diffuse authority, and an adaptive or learning-oriented outlook. Based on literature review and case research with US water utilities, we identify factors that can act either to enable or constrain efforts to transform utility culture so as to be more amenable to sustainable operations. We explain how each of these factors pertains to the circumstances of water utilities and provide a matrix with which utility leaders and sustainability champions can enact a plan of organizational transformation. We conclude by outlining research topics that flow from our arguments and observations.

Drawing from emergent areas of sociological research and theorization, the authors consider the environmental impacts of militaries from a comparative-international perspective. The article begins with an overview of treadmill of production and treadmill of destruction theories, the latter of which highlights the expansionary tendencies and concomitant environmental consequences of militarization. This theoretical overview is followed by a narrative assessment of military growth and energy consumption, with a particular focus on the US military over the past century. Next, the authors detail the various environmental impacts associated with the growth and structure of national militaries, briefly discuss potential future research directions, and conclude by calling for scholars in future studies on society/nature relationships to seriously consider the environmental and ecological impacts of the world's militaries.

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