Prueba de las hipótesis formuladas

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

It is individuals who take the actions that cumulatively contribute to climate change. These individuals might be the CEOs of major industrial businesses who are responsible for their company’s contribution to pollution or rural farmers who, en masse, decide how much fertilizer to use, how to contain biogas, etc. Therefore to modify the human impacts on climate change we must understand individual motivations for action.

Our understanding of human decision making might start with economic theories of how people respond to incentives to pursue resources, psychological theories of why people take actions for their well being and theories from political science about how people respond to local institutions (Ostrom 1990). This would include such areas as risk management, rituals and local norms, and logical fallacies behind seemingly irrational behavior.

To the economic, institutional, and psychological base the sociologist can help us understand how the social contexts in which people are embedded affect their decisions. Members of our immediate social contexts provide support, resources, and information that contribute to our well being and help us pursue our goals (see the literature on social capital Coleman 1988; Lin 1999, 2001; Portes 1998). Therefore, people fundamentally want to take actions to at most gain status, and at least to avoid being ostracized by members of their immediate social contexts.

While Granovetter (1985) makes the embeddedness argument for economic action, I would extend the theory to environmentally impactful action which is often a function of trade-offs with immediate economic benefit. This embeddedness argument applies to CEOs who may take actions to conform to the norms in their immediate social circles. Critically, these norms may emphasize environmentally friendly behavior or immediate economic returns. I and my colleagues also observed how Vietnamese farmers responded to their social contexts in deciding whether to use organic or conventional techniques, the former becoming the norm, but requiring the forgoing of immediate gains to acquire the knowledge to successfully employ organic techniques.

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

It is one thing to say that action is socially embedded, but it is another to empirically examine how embeddedness works. To my mind, a key limitation of the work on embeddedness has been to identify the relevant social contexts. For example, economists who have minimized the influence of peers on adolescents have defined peers as all members of a school (see Akerlof and Kranton 2002 for a notable exception). But sociologists have long been aware that peers can be more narrowly, and saliently, defined by social categories, course taking or direct social relations. In fact, new sociological theory suggests that adolescents may be more influenced by those with whom they would like to be friends than by their already existing friends who accept them for who they are (Giordonno 2003; Frank et al 2008). Just so, we must identify the relevant social contexts for the range of actors who impact the environment. This will likely draw on various applications of social network theories and tools.

For the CEO is the relevant social context the board of directors, social relations, members of the family, members of community, or members of the church. For the rural farmer, is the relevant social context the community, kin, or others outside the community who offer new economic opportunity? Of course, members of each social context may have effects, but we do not know who affects beliefs and who affects behaviors, and how and why. I

believe sociologists are uniquely qualified to think about how to define the relevant social contexts in which people are embedded and the mechanisms (e.g. through norms or anticipated resource allocations) through which people are affected by members of their social contexts.

Sociologists can also address how social contexts are formed. For example, the friendship circles of CEOs may be established through educational and work experiences early in their careers (Frank and Yasumoto 1998; Kadushin 1995) or through participation in social organizations later in their careers. In this case, a sociological understanding of the phenomenon would attend to the ultimate social effects of access to educational or social institutions. Similarly, sociologists can help understand migration patterns that ultimately define the small communities in which farmers become embedded.

Sociologists can also attend to how people make decisions about to whom to allocate resources, including information, to others in their communities. Do people allocate resources to fulfill previous obligations or to advance themselves in their social contexts? Do they differentiate between close relations and other members of their social systems (Frank, forthcoming). The answers have implications for the efficiency of resource use and ultimately for environmental impact.

The agenda I have outlined is basic research because we need deeper understanding of socially embedded behavior to be able to anticipate the unintended consequences of policies and less formal action (Portes 2000). Much human behavior that impacts the environment is already understood as a by-product of economically motivated behavior. In this frame sociological motivations appear irrational. But sociological motivations are real and rational, and it is our job to understand them. The sociological frame can also informal the dynamic interplay between human action and environmental conditions, as the individual reaction to conditions is likely filtered by the immediate social context.

References

Akerlof, George A. and Rachel E. Kranton. 2002. “Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons for the Economics of Education.” Journal of Economic Literature 40(4): 1167-201.

Frank, K.A. (Forthcoming) ATheory and Empirical test of Identification with the Collective as a Quasi-tie.@ Special issue of American Behavioral Scientist, guest edited by Pamela Paxton and James Moody

Frank, K.A., Muller, C., Schiller, K., Crosnoe, R., Riegle-Crumb, C., Strassman-Muller, A (In press). “The Social Dynamics of Mathematics Course Taking in high school.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol 113: 6. Frank, K.A. and Yasumoto, J. 1998. “Linking Action to Social Structure within a System: Social Capital Within and

Between Subgroups.” American Journal of Sociology 104 (3): 642-686.

Giordano, Peggy C. 2003. “Relationships in Adolescence.” Annual Review of Sociology 29: 257-81.

Granovetter, M. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91(3):481-510.

Kadushin, C. 1966. “The Friends and Supporters of Psychotherapy: On Social Circles in Urban Life.” American Sociological Review 31:786-802.

. 1995. “Friendship Among the French Financial Elite.” American Sociological Review 60:201-21. Lin, Nan. 1999. “Sunbelt Keynote Address.” Connections 22(1):28_51.

______. 2001. Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ostrom E. 1990. Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, MA:

Cambridge Univ. Press.

Portes, A. 1998. “Social Capital.” Annual Review of Sociology 24:1-24

______A. 2000. “The Hidden Abode: Sociology as Analysis of the Unexpected.” American Sociological Review Volume 65, Number 1, pages 1-18.

Eric Hanley