Kenneth A. Gould – författare

Designed to introduce students to key concepts and methods in sociology and to engage them in critical thinking, Ten Lessons in Introductory Sociology provides a brief and valuable overview to four major questions that guide the discipline:* Why sociology?* What unites us?* What divides us?* How do societies change?Deftly balancing breadth and depth, the book makes the study of sociology accessible, relevant, and meaningful. Contextualizing the most important issues, Ten Lessons helps students discover "the sociological imagination" and what it means to be part of an engaged public discourse.

In recent years, environmentalism in the US has increasingly emerged at the community level, focusing on local ecological problems. Correspondingly, the American environmental movement has exhorted its supporters to 'think globally' but 'act locally'. The authors examine this modern environmental mantra by analysing the opportunities and constraints on local environmental action posed by economic and political structures at all levels. The difficulties involved in local activism are explored in three case studies - a wetlands protection project, water pollution of the Great Lakes, and consumer waste recycling. The final chapter then reflects on the challenges facing citizen-worker movements in each case study, and concludes that, despite the inherent difficulties, any successful attempt at mobilisation must have a local component.

In recent years, environmentalism in the US has increasingly emerged at the community level, focusing on local ecological problems. Correspondingly, the American environmental movement has exhorted its supporters to 'think globally' but 'act locally'. The authors examine this modern environmental mantra by analysing the opportunities and constraints on local environmental action posed by economic and political structures at all levels. The difficulties involved in local activism are explored in three case studies - a wetlands protection project, water pollution of the Great Lakes, and consumer waste recycling. The final chapter then reflects on the challenges facing citizen-worker movements in each case study, and concludes that, despite the inherent difficulties, any successful attempt at mobilisation must have a local component.

Schnaiberg's concept of the treadmill of production is arguably the most visible and enduring theory to emerge in three decades of environmental sociology. Elaborated and tested, it has been found to be an accurate predictor of political-economic changes in the global economy. In the global South, it has figures prominently in the work of structural environmental analysts and has been used by many political-economic movements. Building new extensions and applications of the treadmill theory, this new book shows how and why northern analysts and governments have failed to protect our environment and secure our future. Using an empirically based political-economic perspective, the authors outline the causes of environmental degradation, the limits of environmental protection policies, and the failures of institutional decision-makers to protect human well-being.