Definiciones conceptuales

What do we know:  What does Sociology bring to the table for studying the human dimensions of global climate change?

To date, sociology has made some useful contributions to our understanding of global climate change, building on research in other fields as well as that which is predominantly situated within the field of sociology itself. Since many of the scholars who have conducted these studies are participating in this Workshop, I will not summarize their work. Instead, I will focus on the ways that my work has contributed to our understanding of global climate change. Because sociology provides such a broad methodological toolbox for studying social phenomena, my research (as well as the extant sociological research on climate change more generally) has been able to contribute much more to our understanding of the human dimensions of global climate change. Overall, I believe that sociology as a field provides opportunities for research that focuses on multiple scales and incorporates mixed methods in ways that research in other disciplines, such as international relations and economics, cannot. In particular, by allowing for the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and analyzing processes at multiple scales, sociological work on climate change can provide important insights. In addition, I believe that research that explores the increasingly complex case of climate change has the potential to contribute significantly to the field of sociology more broadly.

International Comparative Work: My earliest research on climate change came from an international comparative perspective. Some of this work contributed to the on-going discussion about the relationship between characteristics of nation states and their emissions (e.g. Roberts and Grimes 1997; Dietz and Rosa 2001; York et al. 2003a, 2003b). In particular, this study focused on understanding how we can explain the differing levels of carbon dioxide emissions in advanced industrialized nations. The paper concluded that the strongest predictors of emissions are measures of ecological efficiency, which tend to be associated with potentially less symbolic policy decisions (Fisher and Freudenburg 2004). In addition to this quantitative analysis, I also published National Governance and the Global Climate Change Regime (Fisher 2004), which adds an ethnography of the politics of climate change to the previously discussed quantitative analysis. This book focuses on the interactions among stakeholders involved in decision making on climate change in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. Coming from a sociological perspective, while incorporating the findings of scholars from other fields, it provides a deeper understanding of how each country’s position on the Kyoto Protocol emerged by focusing on national politics and how they interact with international policy-making processes. The book concludes that understanding the international politics of climate change and the debates surrounding the Kyoto Protocol requires an exploration of domestic politics and policy-making processes within nation-states.

What do we need to know:  What are the major sociological research questions?

Domestic Work on the Relationship between National and Sub-National Scales: More recently, I have continued my research on climate change decision making in the United States. The first step in this work is an updated and

expanded version of the US chapter of the 2004 book, which was published in Sociological Forum in 2006. Here again, this research involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to understand climate change policy making. The paper concludes that climate change politics in the United States have been driven by the ways that natural resources are extracted and consumed at the state level. Building off of these findings, I am currently working on a project for the Norwegian Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) that is focusing on the relationship between local initiatives to regulate emissions and national politics. The project aims to analyze the ways that the US Conference of Mayors and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives are working

to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in communities and cities around the United States. Through this project, I will be able to evaluate the connections (and disconnections) between climate change policy-making processes at different scales in the United States.

Collective Action around Climate Change: At the same time, I have expanded my work on collective action and protest to look at how individual citizens mobilize around the issue of climate change (for information about this on-going project, see Fisher et al. 2005; Fisher 2006b). So far, data have been collected in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany to understand mobilization and recruitment around this particular issue. Because I am applying a methodology that I have used to study protests that target issues as diverse as globalization, anti-war, and domestic politics, I am able to compare how climate change protesters are similar and different from others activists. As part of this project, I am analyzing the connections among climate change protesters. Preliminary findings of this research, which are based on data collected during the Step It Up Day of Action Against Climate Change in November 2007, include:

1. Climate change activists tend to participate in actions in their own communities, and do not tend to travel internationally to protest;

2. Most climate change activists have participated in collective action around the issue between two and five times in the past five years;

3. More than two-thirds of climate change activists have also participated in demonstrations about peace; 4. Most climate change activists are not involved in labor unions or groups;

5. About three-quarters of climate change activists identify themselves as being politically left-of-center; and 6. More than three-quarters of climate change activists have a university degree and more than a third have an

advanced degree.

In addition, climate change activists are extremely civically engaged. In the past year: 99% reported signing a petition; 89% had contacted an elected government official; 74% had contacted an organization or association; 65% attended a public, town, or school meeting; and 65% voted in an election (during the non-midterm and non- presidential election year). I will continue to analyze these data (and the comparable data from protests in the UK and Germany) in the coming months.

Advocacy Networks and Climate Change Politics: Also, I hope to work with Jeff Broadbent on the Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (COMPON) Project in the coming years. If funded, I will direct the United States case study for the project, which aims to analyze transnational comparisons of national policy responses to global climate change. The project will focus on the role of advocacy and civil society networks. It will build on much of my current research, incorporating quantitative and qualitative methods that explore multiple scales of governance. Because the US case will be conducted in conjunction with studies taking place in countries around the world, it has the potential to contribute significantly to our overall understanding of climate change policy making and the ways that domestic politics affect international politics (as well as vice versa).

Although I have focused this summary on the ways that my research has applied sociology to our understanding of global climate change, in terms of how sociology as a field can provide a more rigorous understanding of the

interactions among scales of policy making, as well as provide a broader methodological toolbox than other disciplines, I would like to stress the importance of the converse as well. In other words, the extremely complicated issue of climate change and the complex policy domain that is emerging around this contentious issue presents a particularly interesting case for sociological study that has the potential to provide insights to sociology itself.

References

Dietz, Thomas and Eugene A. Rosa. 1997. “Effects of Population and Affluence on CO₂ Emissions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 94:175-9.

Fisher, Dana. 2004. National governance and the global climate change regime. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

—. 2006a. “Bringing the Material Back In: Understanding the United States Position on Climate Change.” Sociological Forum, Volume 21, Number 3: 467-494.

—. 2006b. “Taking Cover Beneath the Anti-Bush Umbrella: Cycles of Protest and Movement-to-Movement Transmission in an Era of Repressive Politics.” Research in Political Sociology, Volume 15: 27-56.

Fisher, Dana R. and William R. Freudenburg. 2004. “Postindustrialization and environmental quality: An empirical analysis of the environmental state.” Social Forces 83:157-188.

Fisher, Dana R., Kevin Stanley, David Berman, and Gina Neff. 2005. “How Do Organizations Matter? Mobilization and Support for Participants at Five Globalization Protests.” Social Problems. Volume 52, Issue 1: 102-121. Roberts, J. Timmons and Peter E. Grimes. 1997. “Carbon Intensity and Economic Development 1962-91: A Brief

Exploration of the Environmental Kuznets Curve.” World Development 25 (2):191-198.

York, Richard, Eugene A. Rosa, and Thomas Dietz. 2003a. “Footprints on the earth: The environmental consequences of modernity.” American Sociological Review 68:279-300.

_____. 2003b. “A Rift in Modernity? Assessing the Anthropogenic Sources of Global Climate Change with the STIRPAT Model.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy23:31-51.

Ken Frank