Making Social Science Matter presents an exciting new approach to the social and behavioral sciences including theoretical argument, methodological guidelines, and examples of practical application. Why has social science failed in attempts to emulate natural science and produce normal theory? Bent Flyvbjerg argues that the strength of social sciences lies in its rich, reflexive analysis of values and power, essential to the social and economic development of any society. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this book opens up a (...) new future for the social sciences. Its empowering message will make it required reading for students and academics across the social and behavioral sciences. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of environmental ethics and argues that a post-environmental ethics may be unavoidable. It does so by exposing and questioning the ontological assumptions common to otherwise different modalities of environmental ethics. These modalities, it is argued, rest upon an implicit or explicit 'material essentialism'. Such essentialism entails the belief that putatively 'environmental' entities have discrete and relatively enduring properties. These properties 'anchor' ethical claims and permit the objects of ethical considerability to be named. Against this, it (...) is argued that a non-essentialist ontology is preferable. This ontology presumes neither that environmental phenomena are simply environmental nor that their properties can be 'fixed' under some determinate description. Drawing on recent 'hybrid' research in human geography and elsewhere, it is suggested that the motility and mutability of ostensibly environmental entities be recognised. This recognition, I conclude, desta bilises conventional environmental ethics and calls for a more supple mode of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

In accordance with environmental injustice, sometimes called environmental racism, minority communities are disproportionately subjected to a higher level of environmental risk than other segments of society. Growing concern over unequal environmental risk and mounting evidence of both racial and economic injustices have led to a grass-roots civil rights campaign called the environmental justice movement. The environmental ethics aspects of environmental injustice challenge narrow utilitarian views and promote Kantian rights and obligations. Nevertheless, an environmentaljustice value exists in all ethical world views, (...) although it involves a concept of equitable distribution of environmental protection that has been lacking in environmental ethics discussion. (shrink)

In the US, there are two primary environmental justice arenas. One is the activism, which draws on the skills of a wide range of community, academic and professional actors. This partnership draws on the Civil Rights Movement and organises through the internet. The other arena is the courtroom where environmental justice lawyers try to prove 'racial intent'. In the UK, there is an emerging call for environmental justice, but there is no comparable Civil Rights movement, just a well organised if (...) very unrepresentative environmental movement. However, in the UK, it is possible to discern at least three 'constructions' of environmental justice: access to the countryside amongst those from ethnic minority groups; Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland's 'Pollution Injustice' campaign and Friends of the Earth Scotland's 'Campaign for Environmental Justice'. In the absence of a UK Civil Rights framework, there are indications that environmental and sustainability policy discourses are beginning to be re-framed around notions of justice, rights and equity. This is beginning to form a platform around which an embryonic environmental justice network is mobilising. (shrink)