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BOOK OF ABSTRACTS Amended 03.06.08

I WORLD FORUM OF SOCIOLOGY -RC24 SESSIONS

CONTRIBUTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY TO SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES.

Barcelona,

September 5-8, 2008

Compiled and edited by J. David Tàbara, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology

Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Monument to the people of the ‘Platform for the Defense of the Ebro’ who successfully fought against the water transfer of the Spanish 2001 National Water Plan

as part of the New Water Culture Movement. Tortosa, Ebro river basin, December, 2007.

Research Committee on Environment and Society RC24 http://www.isa-sociology.org/barcelona_2008/rc/rc24.htm http://www.environment-societyisa.org/ _______________________________________________________________________________

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1- Session number 1: Social learning about environmental issues

Chair: J. David Tàbara, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain joandavid.tabara@uab.cat

Pedro Roberto Jacobi – University of São Paulo, Brasil. prjacobi@usp.br - Public Participation and the fostering of societal learning in watershed management in Brazil

The paper analyses the institutional transformations that have taken place in the environmental management process in Brazil since the 90´s, emphasizing the enlargement of democratic spaces and popular participation, specially in the field of water management. The focus is on the water basin committees, an institutional engineering that has become one of the references of institutional innovation in the water management process in Brazil since 1997. The new watershed law presents a new framing of the issue of watershed protection, by recognizing the prime importance of a management system, by extending the protection instruments proposed and by opening the possibility of developing widespread agreement among stakeholders for the actions that are needed. Water basin committees are the appropriate arenas to develop a comparative study of institutional performance and its relations with cooperative practices linked to preservation and spatial and environmental management. The text presents an overview of the theoretical debate and the main outcomes of several researches developed in Brazil on social participation in watershed management, using as reference multi-stakeholders platforms (MSPs) as a very challenging mode of involving civil society in decision-making on resource management. The main arguments of this study are to show how these MSPs can make a difference and their potential to bring about creative experiences of social learning in the context of sustainability.

J. David Tàbara, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Francesc Cots, Xingang Dai, Maria Falaleeva, Zsuzsanna Flachner , Darryn MceEvoy, and Saskia Werners. – corresponding author: Joandavid.tabara@uab.cat - Climate learning and diversity. Regional insights from China, Eastern Europe and Iberia.

The building of individual capacities and institutional arrangements to cope and mitigate climate change can be understood as process of social learning. From empirical evidence gathered within the EU project ADAM (www.adamproject.eu) I look at the development of new social-ecological arrangements, capacities, and agents’ transformations derived from increasing climate awareness, risks and opportunities in the following regions: 1. The Alxa region, in Inner Mongolia, China 2. The Tizsa flood plain, in Hungary and 3. The Guadiana river basin, in Iberia, and interpret them from the analytical perspectives of social and sustainability learning. Several factors appear to constrain or enhance climate learning among agents at the regional level. These include: (a) the type and resources for multi-level and cross-sector interaction with empowered agents (b) the available degrees of freedom to modify ones’ practices and social-ecological configuration while creating a better-off situation from such transformations and (c) the capacity of becoming aware, anticipate, and control the negative personal and system’s effects of continuing with the existing patterns of social-ecological interaction and development. Research carried out so far show that these three factors behave and affect climate learning in very different ways in the three regions.

Kirsten Hollaender, University of Groningen, k.m.hollaender@rug.nl, The Netherlands. - Dynamics in a Stakeholder Dialogue: Results from an ongoing project on Monitoring and Facilitating the Stakeholder Dialogue in Costa Due and Subsequent Investment Decisions.

This paper reports from an ongoing monitoring and evaluation project. This project employs dynamic decision analysis to monitor and facilitate a stakeholder dialogue process. The paper presents very recent data illustrating how our approach focuses not only on group dynamics but also is able to capture the dynamics of the issues at hand.

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The project studies and facilitates the Dutch Costa Due dialogue about promising uses for energy from biomass (Concrete Steps towards a sustainable Eemsmond), initiated by the Province of Groningen. In June 2005 the stakeholder dialogue process started and will continue until mid 2009. It is organized around four topics with four according dialogue groups comprising different types of stakeholders.

Dynamic Decision Analysis is integrated with this stakeholder dialogue. Dynamic Decision Analysis contributes to monitoring consensus and conflict during the dialogue. The dialogue groups are heterogenous groups with small and large companies, NGO’s, universities, municipalities and business associations. Dynamic decision methodology is applied to the case of Costa Due to assess (opportunities for) convergence in the various phases of the project. It is also used for monitoring, as it provides a valid tool for measuring as to whether the dialogue process enhances stakeholders' ability to reach decisions.

Our data show the stakeholder positions on a number of environmental decision issues. Comparing between the first and second questionnaire allows us to see how the positions change over time. We collected data on issues, the position taken and the salience of the issue at hand. We did this for all stakeholders involved in the four groups. In first instance our results concern the identification of so called hot issues. These are issues where we have an indication of possible controversy when trying to reach consensus. These are issues where the opinions differ greatly plus at the same time they are regarded as very important by the stakeholders. In the first round we identified five hot issues, such as choosing between sustainable and profitable or importing energy crops vs. growing them in the own country.

The results of the comparison with changes in the second questionnaire round one year later shows us how the positions on the issues developed in the groups. The results show that there is a smaller heterogeneity of positions the members chose. This indicates social learning in the groups. Accordingly, our results show that there are less hot issues and an emerging group opinion.

Using this formal modelling approach to examine social learning answers a main need in the analysis of stakeholder dialogue processes thereby contributing to strengthening its theoretical foundations.

Manoj Kumar Teotia, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, India. manojkteotia@rediffmail.com - Environment, Poverty and Social Learning in Urban India: Issues and Strategies. A Case Study of Ludhiana Metropolitan Town.

Urban environment, a major constituent of quality of life in human settlements in India including Ludhiana is deteriorating rapidly. The environmental fabric of cities has close links with social fabric and hence the urban poor seem to be affected most by poor state of urban environmental infrastructure and services. There seems to be very poor attitude and learning at neighborhood, city or societal level towards environmental issues. The recent survey and study of the city has shown that there are 209 slums in Ludhiana. The coverage and quality of housing, basic amenities, civic services and livelihood options are highly deficient in all the slums. The sanitation is a big causality. Treatment of waste is nonexistent. Due to its industrial base, the town produces hazardous industrial waste which in absence of poor collection, and treatment affects the urban environment and mainly deprived and segregated settlements. The institutional mechanism for social learning about environmental issues is almost nonexistent and ineffective. The urban governance is functionally and fiscally weak and is unable to improve the urban environment. All factors seem to be leading towards environmental crises not only in the city but in the suburbs also. There is an urgent need to evolve strategies to improve urban environment in the city by upgrading and providing adequate shelter, basic amenities and livelihood for the urban poor and more importantly evolving strategies of social learning towards environmental issues. The paper thus is an effort to highlight some issues and strategies relating to Environment, Poverty and Social Learning in Ludhiana metropolitan of Northern India.

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Harald Rohracher, IFZ – Inter-University Research Centre for Technology, Work and Culture, Austria, rohracher@ifz.tugraz.at -Intermediary organisations as facilitators of social learning processes. The case of green electricity labels.

The contribution will be about social learning in the creation and coordination of consumer choice for green electricity by intermediary organisations. In particular, the analysis will centre on the establishment of green electricity labels by environmental and other non-governmental organisations in Germany and Switzerland. These labels set sustainability standards for electricity from renewable energy, for instance by specifying which types of biomass may be used for electricity generation under the labelling scheme and setting up accreditation and evaluation procedures. Such green electricity labels serve as a ‘boundary object’ between electricity generators, suppliers, consumers and regulators and have the potential to shape the transformation of the energy system by creating and articulating demand for specific electricity products and mediating the establishment of socio-technical constituencies around green electricity generation and use. The NGOs involved have been important facilitators of social learning processes. They have played a vital role in defining and negotiating new standards, enrolling and aligning supply- and demand-side actors, communicating with a wider public and building trust for the respective products, establishing links with regulators and shaping policies for renewable electricity at national and European levels. Their role has been especially important in translating between the different logics of demand, supply and regulation, in creating new links between incumbent and new actors in the electricity sector and in organising learning processes between these actor groups. The case study is also an example of ‘civil society intermediary organisations’ increasingly acting as agents of innovation, particularly around environmental issues.

Ana Prades, Tom Horlick-Jones, Josep Espluga, Christian Oltra, and Joaquín Navajas, CIEMAT (*), Spain, and Cardiff University (**), UK. christian.oltra@ciemat.es (Spain). - Investigating lay understanding and reasoning about fusion technology

The limited empirical evidence that is available on the social perception of nuclear fusion suggests that levels of lay understanding are low, and that historical associations with the fission programme have a dominant role in shaping views, where they do exist. In line with the recent adoption by governmental and regulatory agencies, and some businesses, of citizen engagement as a policy tool, it has been suggested that organisations involved in fusion development should seek to promote citizen engagement with information about fusion technology. In this way it is argued, lay publics might come to gain greater understanding of the technology, and so not to reject it out of hand on the basis of a simple ‘nuclear’ branding. However providing such information in a suitably balanced way is a non-trivial problem, and indeed a research task in itself. Participants need to be taken through a learning process, which allows sometimes quite complex information to be assimilated, and examined in a considered way, and which avoids the imposition of a ‘correct’ technical framing of ‘the facts’. In this paper, we report on the development of a hybrid methodology, designed to accomplish such a process of engagement, and to gain insights into changes in lay reasoning as people proceed through a learning and discussion process. In this way, the method combines elements of engagement with research. We will present data from the implementation of this methodology, and discuss the implications of our findings. In conceptual terms, our work may be regarded as bringing together a number of strands of scholarship, including a phenomenological tradition of research into practical reasoning, and an attempt to address in sociological terms areas often seen as dominated by cognitive models drawn from psychology.

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Session 2: Social dimensions of global environmental change Chair: Mercedes Pardo, Department of Political Science and Sociology, University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain, mercedes.pardo@uc3m.es

Jordi Ortega; Iván López, Department of Political Science and Sociology, University Carlos III, Madrid (Spain) jordiortega@hotmail.com; ivlopez@tiscali.es; Climate Change: social and political perceptions of future environmental commitments

Politics doesn’t move immediately. Until today, it would never have been possible to propose policies for half a century from now. This might be because in little more than a decade half of the map of Europe has been redrawn. Any international agenda of note makes commitments up to 2020 or even 2050. What is less than a decade old is now part of the past. In the United States, there is a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions greater than 50% by 2050. Some, like California, have committed to greater than 80%. There is no commitment for reductions before 2030. Vermont has proposed to reduce by 50% by 2030, 75% by 2050, nothing before 2015. What does it mean to develop such long term policies? Are we moving from a position of solidarity with future generations, as outlined within sustainable development principles, to unloading current responsibilities to future policies? What demands are there in the development of global governance, and what effects will it have in the domestication of internal policies? How can we move from a methodological historicism anchored in the present, from where we see the future, to a position where we see the present from a methodological future? This work examines the current development of international law and the capacity of the United Nations to establish world governance, and also considers commitments made towards the future and the social and political perceptions of these.

David Uzzell, University of Surrey, Department of Psychology (UK) d.uzzell@surrey.ac.uk; Nora Räthzel University of Umeå, Department of Sociology (Sweden) Nora.rathzel@soc.umu.se; Changing Relations in Global Environmental Change

We present a model which sheds light on the interconnectedness of what we call relations of production, consumption and political relations. It interrogates the social and political relations under which production/consumption takes place and their implications at a global/local level. International studies demonstrate that environmental professionals as well as the general population display significant biases in their perceptions of the effects of global environmental change, and consider them to be more serious the farther they are away from them (global v local). Furthermore, they attribute responsibility to national and international government and agencies rather than to themselves, thereby inducing feelings of disempowerment and helplessness. Such perceptions are mirrored in media reports, in which the "emerging economies" in the South are perceived as the main danger to the environment because of their increasing production levels. Often these goods are being produced for the North or by relocated Northern corporations who are exporting their carbon footprint to countries where wage rates and environmental standards are lower. In the North sustainability is represented predominantly as a problem of consumption, in the South, predominantly as a problem of production. Such representations are arguably a product of the Brundtland model, where the economy, the environment and the social meet only at their respective peripheries, thus encouraging people to examine and act upon them individually. There is little attempt to understand their interrelatedness involving global/ local relationships, and the connection between environmental degradation and the degradation of working conditions. This is what we try to achieve with the model we present. On an empirical level results from research on a transnational corporation in Sweden, Mexico, and South Africa and a cross national survey looking at people's concerns regarding sustainability and their perceptions of the causes of and solutions to their concerns will illustrate our model and suggest further research and policy agendas.

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Alberto Teixeira da Silva, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais, Universidade Federal do Pará, Amazônia, (Brasil) alberts@superig.com.br e alberts@ufpa.br, Brazil and multidimentional challenges of the climatic changes

Discussing the issue of the global warming became something decisive in the threshold of the XXI century. The climatic aggravation exposes a systemic world crisis and projects disturbing unbalances that already threaten the safety of the people. The energetic pattern which relies on the use of fossil fuels, combined with the devastation of the forests, is interfering directly in the vital cycles of the biosphere in a chaotic way. They forge a multicivic societary impasse which ignores boundaries, territories, cultures and races. A civilization of global damages is being molded, causing multiple and growing changes: politics, social, economical, environmental, cultural and technological. Environmental calamities in the last years such as the drought in the Amazon, the Katrina hurricane which devastated New Orleans in the United States and the first Brazilian hurricane in the coast of Santa Catarina, are visible signs of the crisis of the homogeneous productivist model of the contemporary society. A scientific prognostic from the Panel Intergovernamental de Mudança Climatica (Intergovernmental Panel of Climatic Changes – IPCC ) points the gravity and blames mankind for the climatic chaos. Brazil has an emblematic and vital paper in the discussion of the damages and social transformations. The Amazon can turn into a savannah in the XXI century. Coastal cities will be affected by the advance of the sea, ports can be destroyed and populations would have to be moved from their original cities. Precarious sewerage systems will collapse. Cases of transmissible infectious diseases such as dengue can spread through out the country. Even hotter Metropolitan areas, with more floods, inundations and collapses in areas, mainly in the hill hillsides. New hurricanes can reach the Brazilian coast. The environmental sociology can contribute to a reflection of those processes in a supportable perspective.

Cigdem Adem, The Public Administration Institute For Turkey and the Middle East, and Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) c_adem@yahoo.com; e064213@metu.edu.tr, Diverse discourses on global environmental change and local perceptions in Turkey.

The study focuses on the recent discourses on global environmental change in Turkey and on the local perceptions of global warming. Turkey acceeded as the 189th Party to the UNFCCC in 2004. It has ratified the UNFCCC at a very later stage and is still not a party to the Kyoto Protocol this places Turkey to an exceptional position in global climate change debates. At the moment, an interesting debate is ongoing about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. “The nationalists, the government, the industrialists and even some environmental NGOs are against Turkey’s ratifying the Protocol prioritizing “economic development”. Another tendency is linking the global warming debates with the EU accession process; thus, postponing the ratification of the Protocol to 2014. On the other hand, a signature campaign, “Turkey Ratify the Kyoto Protocol”, was held by the Turkish Greens. The paper discusses and analyses all these competing discourses in the first section. The second section of the paper is part of a field study that was realized between August-November 2003 and August- September 2005, which is carried out in six villages in the Camili basin. The area is situated in the Black Sea region, in the north east of Turkey, in Artvin. The study is conducted within the scope of Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management Project, funded by the Global Environmental Facility, which is ongoing since 2000. The research method consists of a questionnaire conducted by local people related with the perceptions and local understandings of global warming.

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Midori Aoyagi-Usui (National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan); Atsuko Kuribayashi (NLR Institute); Tomomi Shinada (Rikkyo University), Yuki Sampei (National Institute for Environmental Studies) aoyagi@nies.go.jp - Public understanding of Climate change: their logic and motivation for supporting Climate Change prevention actions.

How people understand the climate change issues, and what is the motivation for taking actions against it? We used combination of qualitative and quantitative survey: one is public opinion survey in Japan and another is the focus group interview in Tokyo metropolitan area, and investigated about people’s understanding of climate change and their motivation for supporting and implementation of climate change prevention actions. Our result is as follows. 1) Many people misunderstood main cause and effects of climate change, and mixed up with the depletion of Ozone layer. 2) Mass media is effective information source for taking actions, but “internet” is the two-edged blade. People who often checked internet tended to see climate change issues as “still on the way to reach a settlement among scientists”, as they could find many “skepticisms” on internet. 3)So, almost all people felt “world climate is changing”, but they cannot believe governmental proposal for climate change reduction plan, and that distract people to take actions.

Mercedes Pardo, University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) mercedes.pardo@uc3m.es, The Social Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: some key areas of analysis

Global Environmental Change (GEC) is the most relevant threat to the diverse forms of life of the biosphere. This threat is producing both a redirection of the scientific agenda and the international politics toward GEC, and an increasing emphasis on the social dimensions of GC. Such a redirection represents a challenge for environmental sociology in various instances: theoretical; methodological; the research agenda… GEC is producing a transformation which takes place on a local, regional and global level, and it has an impact both on human quality of life and the capacity for sustainable development in the world. Research on the social dimensions of GEC locates societies at the center of the analysis. It takes into account as well that GEC is produced basically by human activities and that it has consequences on the economic, social, political and cultural globalization. Currently, the most relevant task regarding the social dimensions of GEC could be to place the emerging scientific consensus on GEC in a sociological context. This task is showing a series of central orientations on which environmental sociology is been based: the biogeophysical and societal connexions; their mutual dependencies; their reciprocal impacts as well. Such epistemological connexions are bringing about as a consequence the need to advance on its sociological and epistemological fundaments. This paper tries to identify some of the key areas of the social dimension of GEC for the research agenda.

Session 3. Social movements towards a post-carbon era Chair: Ernest Garcia, Universitat de València, Spain Ernest.Garcia@uv.es David Evans, Centre for Environmental Strategy, School of Engineering (D3), University of Surrey, UK, D.Evans@surrey.ac.uk - Sustainable Lifestylers: Experiences, Tensions, Implications.

In the present cultural climate, discourses of ‘sustainable lifestyles’ are ubiquitous. In media, policy and comment, it is widely held that individuals should be making the transition towards a more ‘sustainable lifestyle’ if societies are to move towards a more sustainable future. Drawing on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews, this paper addresses the real life experiences of those who are already living, or are at least attempting to live, in ways that are sustainable and/or environmentally friendly. Broadly, the analysis considers these ‘sustainable lifestylers’ as representing a variant of a ‘new social movement’ that is already geared towards a low carbon future. Specifically, it considers the behaviours and practices that lead respondents to identify their way of life as sustainable. With this, a socio-cultural ‘model’ of sustainable lifestyle(s) is offered that teases out the links between

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these practices and other variables such as ‘identity’ and ‘values’. More importantly, the analysis unpicks the respondents’ narratives of becoming a ‘sustainable lifestyler’ and the emotional rewards of doing so before addressing the tensions and conflicts- both internal and in relation to existing systems of provision- experienced in attempting to live a sustainable lifestyle. Drawing on these in depth empirical understandings, the paper finishes with a consideration of the lessons that can be learnt from these ‘sustainable lifestylers’ in terms of both creating opportunities and reducing barriers when faced with the challenge of encouraging persons to take up ‘sustainable living’ on a larger, society wide scale.

Ana Horta, José G. Ferreira, João Guerra & Luísa Schmidt. Social Sciences Institute of Lisbon’s University (ICS-UL), Portugal, schmidt@ics.ul.pt - Energy efficiency policy in Portugal – a sociological look.

Most research into energy focuses on its economic and technical aspects. Social ones tend to be ignored or then pointed to as the great obstacle or barrier to achieving the technical potential and the efficient implementation of energy policies. Besides this constraint, it has become usual to focus on the most personal of people’s everyday choices and less on daily and regular behaviour resulting from the structural constraints of these choices. If our aim is to alter the patterns of energy consumption, we must know the factors that determine or condition them. Even though individual behaviour is a basic consideration, we must not underestimate factors that lie outside a person’s decision-making sphere. For example, up to what point does the way a town or village has been planned encourage parents to take their children to school by car instead of by bus or on foot? Or then the way financial restrictions oblige people to choose homes in urbanisations that have not enjoyed any energy efficiency considerations at all. This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of a sociological look at the subject of energy and how it is present and understood on a daily basis, with particular emphasis on energy efficiency.

Mercedes Martínez Iglesias, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia, Spain, Mercedes.Martinez@uv.es - The society of decrease.

The paper outlines an approach to different contributions and theories that have been formulated on decrease in a post-carbon era and to their implications for social change, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view. It is quite impossible to imagine a post-carbon society resulting in an evolution towards alternative energy brought about by technological change alone. Such transition implies significant changes in social structure and lifestyle. Such transition means restructuration of social habits, attitudes towards consumption, and the emergence of social conflicts of a new nature.

Matteo Puttilli, Inter-University Department for Territorial Studies and Planning, Polytechnic and University of Studies of Torino, Italy, matteo.puttilli@polito.it - Energy management and collective action: a territorial approach in Piedmont region (Italy).

The rapid growth of global climate change has created the necessity to produce energy in a more sustainable way. There is an increasing consensus upon the potential economic and environmental benefit of a transition towards an energy system based on renewable sources and energy efficient solutions. Several governments have set (at least formally) ambitious targets to respect the national emission quotes (Kyoto targets). By the way, the evidence demonstrates that, excluding some local good practices and some sporadic national case, there is still a long way to run until the transition to a more sustainable energy system. Many authors set at the level of local practices the most important scale for reaching energy efficiency and renewables implementations. The processes of progressive decentralisation and market liberalisation (diffused in most countries) offer new places for local action, local investments on energy savings and efficiency and for new territorial institutions. This local collective action, both public as private, must be supported by innovative politics and planning models, based on the involvement of local stakeholders and principles of corporate

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governance. That’s the reason why energy management requires a strong shift towards territorial innovation, at the institutional, social and economic level. Moving from the analysis of the international debate and making reference to the case-study of Piedmont region, this contribution aims to show which are these instruments and innovations that can support collective action for the management and promotion of renewables and energy efficiency at the local scale.

Marta G. Rivera Ferre, Animal and Food Sciences Department, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, MartaGuadalupe.Rivera@uab.cat - The agro-food chain towards a post-carbon era: links between the Food Sovereignty and Degrowth proposals.

We are facing important challenges for the future of humanity. Our economy and our food production and consumption are based on fossil fuels, but the reserves are coming to an end and the climate change is forcing the search of alternatives to this situation. Furthermore, the unsustainable use of energy reflects the unsustainable society we have created, based on the continue consumption of goods and commodities by those that can afford them, process that has been reinforced with the development of the globalisation. The energetic crisis we will face will mean the crisis of the agro-food chain, both from the production to the consumption. To overcome the energetic and the agro-food chain crisis, two different recent alternatives have been proposed. The first one, centered in the energy issue, is the degrowth, borne in France from the academy; the second one is the Food Sovereignty, borne from the peasants and civil society movements worldwide to overcome the unfairness and unsustainability of the agrofood-chain and its impacts on the local cultures. The two proposals, despite their different origins, have some common aspects that deserve attention. Furthermore, what the two alternatives are reflecting is the need for a change in the organisation of the society and the socioeconomical system and both proposals are going into the same direction, calling for a localisation of the economy and the food-chain.

Ernest Garcia, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Valencia, Spain, Ernest.Garcia@uv.es -Visions and social movements towards a post-carbon era in Europe.

In the last years, different sources point to a same message: industrial civilization has entered an overshoot mode, the natural limits to growth have been already surpassed. This frontier does not wait for us in the future; it already belongs to our past. If population and the economy were truly beyond the limits, then current visions and theories of social change would be deeply perturbed. If the development era is approaching its end, then many sociological theories on current societies will share the same destiny, sustainable development theories between them. It is worth to examine theories that explicitly look at the social world this way or that –at least- are not incompatible with it. Several approaches are discussed in this context, as well as their concretions in Europe: governance of complexity, post-development and alternative local development, utopian sceneries of a prosperous way-down, visions of collapse and the die-off. All these approaches are, to my judgment, compatible with the knowledge on the limits imposed by nature to social change in modern societies which is available today. There are many differences between them, and the attempt at explaining these differences bumps into the rank of indeterminacy that is characteristic of the evolution of many natural systems and also into the opaque uncertainty of history. Although some versions of those approaches include some kind of 'sustainable development’ jargon, most of them are built upon another frame of reference. After development, sustainability is no longer the exactly appropriate question.

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Session 4. Temas de actualidad en medio ambiente y sociedad i" (Session in Spanish)/ "current / issues of environment and society " Chair: Ignacio Lerma; Universitat de València; Spain; Ignacio.Lerma@uv.es Artemio Baigorri, Mar Chaves; Universidad de Extremadura; Spain; baigorri@unex.es; - Trasvases de capital humano del ambientalismo a la política.

Considerado en tanto que ideología, el ecologismo ha sido la única de naturaleza laica que se ha resistido, mayoritariamente, a transformarse en organización política formal. Los sucesivos intentos de conversión de los movimientos ecologistas en partidos políticos tan sólo han tenido éxitos parciales, en unos pocos países en los que, por otro lado, su propia naturaleza ideológica se ha transformado profundamente en el curso de la práctica política. De hecho, pocos son los países en los que los líderes ecologistas se hayan convertido en líderes políticos de ámbito nacional. Sin embargo, esa característica fácilmente observable a niveles nacionales no parece tener una equivalencia a niveles subsocietales (regionales y locales), siendo relativamente habituales los procesos de conversión de líderes ecologistas, luego ambientales, en líderes políticos, sea a través de partidos, sean mediante candidaturas políticas independientes. En Extremadura, en el marco de una línea de investigación abierta sobre el proceso de ecologización desde la transición a la democracia, se analizan los distintos modelos de trasvase de líderes ambientales a la política que se han venido produciendo a lo largo de las últimas tres décadas.

Paulo Martins; Instituto de Pesquisas Técnológicas de Sao Paulo; Brazil; marpaulo@ipt.br ; - Nanotecnologia, Sociedad y Meio Ambiente : puntos de reflexiones para um nuevo mundo possible.

Este texto tiene por finalidad presentar las interrelaciones entre nanotecnología, sociedad y medio ambiente en términos críticos en el actual modelo de desarrollo, analizando el impacto de las aplicaciones nanotecnológicas en las relaciones entre países desarrollados y subdesarrollado. Se señala la dirección que la nanotecnología debe tomar para que contribuya la construcción de un nuevo mundo posible.

Antonio Aledo; Universidad de Alicante; Spain; Antonio.Aledo@ua.es; - Impacto ecológico del turismo residencial.

Desde hace tres décadas el modelo turístico-residencial es el principal agente transformador de los paisajes naturales y humanos de las comunidades costeras del Mediterráneo español. Cientos de miles de residencias se han levantado, decenas de campos de golf se están proyectando y cientos de kilómetros de autovías y otras infraestructuras se están construyendo para satisfacer las necesidades de un sector en continua expansión –muy especialmente desde 1994. Sus impactos socioambientales son tan enormes que ha generado una fuerte oposición entre diversos colectivos y grupos sociales. A partir de 2002, este sector ha dado un salto cuantitativo y cualitativo en el modelo turístico residencial con la aparición de una nueva fórmula: los resorts turístico residenciales. Estas macrourbanizaciones contienen más de 10.000 viviendas unifamiliares en torno a varios campos de golf. Estos resorts inventan un nuevo entorno turístico, exclusivo y centrípeto sobre un espacio vacío resultado de la erradicación del paisaje tradicional local. Son, en última instancia, expresiones sociomorfológicas de los valores neomaterialistas posmodernos emanados del riesgo y la incertidumbre propios del macroproceso globalizador tecno-mercantilista en el que nos encontramos.

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Adolfo Torres, Carmen Sanz, Juan Bejarano; Universidad de Granada, Spain; atorresr@ugr.es ; csanzl@ugr.es ; jbejarano@ugr.es - Sostenibilidad y conservación de la naturaleza: notas para el debate.

En este trabajo pretendemos, de un lado, avanzar algunos elementos teórico-conceptuales que permitan despejar incógnitas acerca de la sostenibilidad y de la conservación de la naturaleza; de otro lado, apuntar similitudes y contradicciones entre ambos términos para, de esta forma, elaborar una relación sistematizada de aquellos aspectos que, a nuestro juicio, delimitan el debate sobre los mismos dada la mutua convergencia que se está produciendo en los últimas décadas. Si desde la sostenibilidad se plantea incorporar la dimensión ambiental a las relaciones de la sociedad con el medio, las nuevas estrategias de conservación de la naturaleza vienen a redefinir y/o establecer usos sociales, económicos y culturales en los espacios protegidos. El marco referencial será la preservación ecológica, primero, como supuesta meta de sostenibilidad, y segundo, como superación de la conservación de la naturaleza en áreas protegidas en tanto la naturaleza no hace distingos y, en todo caso, conseguir que los espacios naturales protegidos se conviertan en modelos referenciales de preservación ecológica exportables al resto de territorios. Deseamos así contribuir al lema del Forum, La investigación sociológica y el debate público, de forma que la Sociología propicie y contribuya al aprendizaje consciente de carácter ecológico para la transformación de la sociedad en un escenario de futuro cambiante no exento de riesgos, como por ejemplo las nuevas situaciones derivadas del cambio climático y sus efectos sobre las áreas protegidas.

Francisco Guízar; Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México; Mexico; fguizarv@gmail.com - Los recursos naturales y los pueblos indígenas: un análisis desde la sociología del derecho ambiental.

La presente ponencia muestra los avances de investigación de dos proyectos sobre el derecho de los pueblos indígenas y su articulación con el acceso y la gestión de los recursos naturales (agua, tierra y bosque). Para el caso de México, como en los de otras naciones ricas en biodiversidad y en pluralidad cultural, los territorios donde se asientan los pueblos indígenas han resultado contener las reservas naturales más codiciadas por empresas transnacionales explotadoras de recursos estratégicos. Esta circunstancia representa una problemática que se puede concebir en distintos planos: para los pueblos indígenas significa una amenaza a su patrimonio vital, y por ende a su subsistencia socio-cultural; sin embargo, para la sociedad en su conjunto, ello implica un atentado a la conservación de ecosistemas enteros, que pueden resultar vitales para el mantenimiento del precario equilibrio ecológico global.

Las escalas de análisis utilizadas contemplan lo regional, lo nacional y lo global, pues desde el estudio de algunos casos concretos en distintas regiones de México (región Occidente; región Norte; región Centro y región sureste - Chiapas), se ofrece una indagatoria sobre las facultades e impedimentos que en las escalas mencionadas del campo legal se interponen a los pueblos indígenas en torno al acceso y la gestión de los recursos naturales que están presentes en sus territorios. También se contempla analizar los factores de otras esferas sociales fundamentales, como la política y la de la represión estatal. Por el otro lado, se elabora una propuesta metodológica científica para analizar dicha dinámica compleja de articulación de lo jurídico, el medio ambiente y el multiculturalismo en contextos diversos, y a escalas de análisis distintas.

Ignasi Lerma; Universitat de València; Spain ; Ignacio.Lerma@uv.es - Procesos e instrumentos de participación en la cuestión ambiental: legitimidad, privatización y control del conflicto ambiental.

Frente a la emergencia de la cuestión ambiental, en los últimos años, se han venido desarrollando una multiplicidad de mecanismos dirigidos a obtener ciertas dosis de implicación ciudadana en la problemática y en los conflictos que de ella se derivan. En este texto se analiza su posible funcionalidad como instrumentos de participación política restringida -habida cuenta de las condiciones y limitaciones objetivas en que se aplican- que los sitúa prioritariamente para intervenir sobre las consecuencias y con escasas capacidades de incidir en el ámbito de las causas que las originan. El análisis de los mecanismos de participación social junto al fenómeno de su extensión y aplicación en la resolución de problemas ambientales, incluido el revival de algunos que actualmente vuelven a ser utilizados, requiere una reflexión sobre la tipología de instrumentos y técnicas que se aplican y sus

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ámbitos de intervención, sobre el espacio de mediación social y consenso obtenido que generan, así como acerca de la amortiguación o canalización y control de los conflictos “ambientales” sobre los que intervienen. Más aún, parece pertinente establecer su valoración y contextualización como parte de un proceso de institucionalización que al mismo tiempo que pone algunas trabas al consenso productivista, legitima -haciendo uso de ellos y de las técnicas de intervención aplicadas- tanto las relaciones de desigualdad social iniciales entre actores como valida socialmente un marcado isomorfismo estructural (publico-privado) en la medida en que sitúa en un mismo plano de igualdad valores e intereses.

Session 5. Temas de actualidad en medio ambiente y sociedad II: estudios de caso. (Bilingual session / Current issues of environment and society II: case studies " Chair: Ignacio Lerma; Universitat de València; Spain; Ignacio.Lerma@uv.es

Marta Moreno, Juan Ruiz; Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Spain; mmoreno@poli.uned.es - Attitudes and behaviors toward health and environment in Cuba.

Understanding environmental attitudes and behaviors is one of the main goals in environmental psychology. Particularly important and yet underresearched in this area are questions of the cross-content relevance like the complex relation between the environmental, social, and individual and community health conditions. The aim of this study was to examine all these factors in the Quibú basin, Havana, Cuba. We processed statistical data on demographic parameters, mortality and morbidity of official sources. The territorial unit that emerges from this analysis and that accumulates the worst indicators of health borders good part of the river and it is located in the zone of rural-urban interphase, typical strip of establishments of the most underprivileged population. We compared this image with the obtained one through the perception of health and environmental factors as well as the behaviors associated through a survey to 1.111 people. Exploratory factor analysis of the results shows a structure of five dimensions that we have called: action; self-reported health state; social networks; local environment and biocentrism. Correlation between individual variables highlights a consistent association between social networks satisfaction, local environment and facilities evaluation, preventive behavior engagement, community participation and health state. Respondents younger, male, white and with higher level of studies and income, also declare better health. According the results of the regression analysis, social networks improve community health and, on a lesser degree, in environment evaluation.

Andrés Pedreño, Pedro Baños, Irene Pérez, Francisco López ; Universidad de Murcia; andrespe@um.es ; irene.perez@umh.es ; lopber@um.es; - Policies, stakeholder’s perceptions and land use change on desertification processes in the Mediterranean: a research on the region of Murcia (Southeast Spain).

This communication explores the link between land use changes, policies and aquifer overexploitation, and desertification in Southern Europe. The distinctive character of Mediterranean areas arises from both physiographic conditions and the history of human development. The aridity, the frequency of drought events, the management of natural resources, especially soil, water and vegetation cover, and the human pressure on fragile ecosystems have produced land degradation and water shortage. Our starting point is that desertification problems in the Mediterranean countries shaped by economic and social changes are partly a by-product of the regional development along recent decades. The policies implemented along this period had not only failure to address but even exacerbated desertification. Focusing on the Comarca del Noroeste (Murcia, southeast Spain), the results of interviews to relevant stakeholders in the area are discussed: irrigation-farmers´ union, regional and local administrations, agriculture professional organisations, private corporations, and non-governmental organizations. Interviews reveal a variety of ways of interpreting what “desertification” means. Also “aquifer overexploitation” is mostly a qualifier resulting from the perception of some undesirable results of groundwater use, which varies with the point of view and the social group. These perceptions fall into different categories, but each holds a different interpretation of the role of natural resources in the economy and the society.

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Ana Teresa López Pastor, universidad de Valladolid; Spain; anateresa@soc.uva.es - El Agente De Desarrollo Sostenible. Una Experiencia Piloto de Sinergia Institucional Informal En España.

La experiencia sobre la que se reflexiona en estas líneas surge hace cuatro años, en el sur de la provincia de Segovia. Es el campo de actuación del Grupo de Desarrollo Rural –PRODER- Segovia Sur (1.594,8 km2, 25.666 habitantes, 49 municipios). Este trabajo analiza las características singulares del proceso: iniciativa ciudadana en el diseño y la implementación; creación de una figura innovadora en el territorio rural español (Agente de Desarrollo Sostenible) ; puesta en marcha y consolidación de un grupo de trabajo; dimensión supramunicipal de la experiencia; logro de la colaboración institucional informal; retroalimentación en torno a cuatro ejes (análisis, gestión, formación y sensibilización); sinergias en las actuaciones de todos los agentes e instituciones implicados; especial atención a dos públicos objetivo tan necesarios como poco trabajados: políticos y técnicos locales; y consolidación del grupo de trabajo como nudo neurálgico para la puesta en marcha de proyectos piloto encaminados a generar estilos de vida sostenibles (programa “Hogares”Verdes”, promovido y coordinado por el CENEAM). Las conclusiones muestran los resultados positivos obtenidos hasta el momento; los obstáculos contextuales, producto de una dinámica de insostenibilidad del modelo de desarrollo propuesto en el entorno; las estrategias seguidas y las soluciones planteadas para superar los problemas que surgían; los estrangulamientos estructurales de la estrategia de acción y algunas carencias salvables que deben afrontarse para afianzar y ampliar los éxitos conseguidos.

Hernando Uribe; Universidad Autónoma de Occidente; Colombia; huribe@uao.edu.co - Nuevos repertorios de acción colectiva para la toma de tierras en Cali, Colombia.

Durante la crisis del modelo desarrollista que operó en Colombia durante el periodo 1930 y finales de los años setenta y que tuvo como sustento el modelo de Industrialización por sustitución de Importaciones, Santiago de Cali empezó a presenciar tomas de tierras sobre áreas ejidales. Estas tomas de tierras no solo se dieron sobre la zona plana sino que también se presentaron sobre unos diques (de 6 metros de ancho) que habían sido construidos en 1958 para evitar que las aguas del río Cauca inundaran las tierras orientales. De 64 personas asentadas en 1983, se pasó a más de 35.000 en el 2005. Un grupo de estos habitantes sobre los diques se organizó como asociación de carácter ambientalista y agroalimentaria, y promovió una lucha por esta tierra sin precedente alguno. El principal resultado de esta lucha es que, años más tarde, el gobierno cede a estos habitantes la propiedad colectiva de la tierra, pero a los otros habitantes los desaloja. Es importante entonces identificar ¿cuáles fueron esos repertorios de acción colectiva que desarrollaron estos pobladores para legitimarse como propietarios de la tierra? El modelo teórico utilizado para comprender este fenómeno es el de las oportunidades políticas y movilidad de recursos de Charles Tilly y Sydney Tarrow.

Tarcísio Alves; Sociedade de Ensino Superior da Escada; Brazil; deescada@yahoo.com.br - O debate teórico sobre o meio ambiente na sociologia rural brasileira.

No século passado, viu-se brotar várias abordagens fatalistas sobre o futuro do mundo rural frente a sociedade moderna, a história testemunhou o quanto aquelas perspectivas de cunho quase pessimista, por não dizer escatológica, estavam erradas no sentido de determinar que não haveria lugar para o rural nas sociedades industrializadas. Muitas das previsões sobre o destino do mundo rural se estabeleceram fundadas na depreciação das condições sociais em que se encontravam inseridas as populações deste território e se reforçavam na visão que condicionava as relações entre o rural e o urbano enquanto subordinação do primeiro ao segundo. O fato é que, por mais persistente que sejam os problemas relacionados à vida no campo, a dinâmica interna e a própria relação que este território estabelece com o mundo urbano permite-lhe resignificar sua importância dentro de um movimento societário maior.

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Dos temas e demandas trazidos pelo debate contemporâneo sobre ruralidade vêm se destacando a ação dos movimentos sociais no campo, as novas ocupações presentes nos mais diversos contextos de trabalho oriundos da introdução de práticas não propriamente vistas como rurais, a exemplo do turismo, os estudos sobre sistemas agroalimentares, a permanência de estilos de vida camponesa e de suas práticas agrícolas, os conflitos geracionais e a dimensão ambiental da vida rural. Sob este último, a Sociologia Rural tem dedicado atualmente especial atenção. As preocupações ecológicas dentro dos interesses de estudo da chamada “Nova Sociologia Rural”, é resultado, sobretudo das análises sobre o processo de modernização da agricultura, investigando as possíveis formas alternativas de cultivo e sustentabilidade agrícola, dissociadas do paradigma da Revolução Verde.

Guayana Páez-Acosta London University, UK, Maria Teresa Buroz, Catholic University Andres Bello, Venezuela, teresa_buroz@yahoo.com - Bringing Together Sustainable and Human Development: A Conceptual-Methodological Proposal for the Implementation.

This paper sets the discussion in an interdisciplinary field, where considerations of human development, environmental concerns and sustainability are at the core. It argues for the necessity of defining and implementing integrative processes that, by considering the dynamic of social change, fully incorporate the sustainable development perspective along with the human development and capability approach. The authors' combined concerns relate to the complexity arising from a multidimensional reality, where social, environmental, physical, economical, and political aspects intertwine to pose great challenges to initiatives aimed at fostering more sustainable forms of development. Coming from a social science background and formally trained in the environmental field, the authors have been actively involved in various socioenvironmental projects, carried out by different Latin-American non governmental organizations. While working in the field, they both faced challenges to incorporate broader considerations of human development in environmental conservation initiatives. Drawing from their first-hand experience, supported by research-action methodologies and considering relevant sources of information, this work seeks to provide interpretative frameworks and methodological tools that contribute to overcome such challenges. The paper attempts to contribute to the implementation of participative processes of intervention with: 1. increased ability to effectively address social demands, 2. ability to generate socio-economically and environmentally sound, long-lasting opportunities for development, while 3.putting in place institutional and political mechanisms open to adaptive changes upon demand. In consequence, the proposal is the definition of guidelines for the advance of integrative processes, pointing out key elements for the phases of an intervention’s design, implementation, and evaluation. For these purposes, the paper is structured in four sections: The first refers to sustainable development, human development and capability approach’s proposals as alternative notions to welfarist conceptions of development, underlying the principles brought by sustainable development to the public debate, and the incorporation of non materialistic developmental goals by human development and capability approaches, as the theoretic fundamentals that support more context-adapted forms of development. The second re-visits some theoretical approaches that have traditionally dealt with the human-nature relationship, arguing for the need to develop new analytical frameworks that bring to the fore notions of human agency, valuative appropriation of the environment, and institutionalization of change, which are fundamental to the proposal of this work. The third section further elaborates on the aforementioned, arguing that the advancement of sustainable development goals by environmental implementation agencies requires that integrative processes of intervention take place. It discusses the authors' conceptualization of integrative processes and points out their constitutive elements by capitalizing on the lessons brought by the capability approach and supported by constructivist perspectives. The fourth section presents analytical tools useful for the incorporation of institutionalization of change and valuative appropriation of the environment, while advancing integrative processes of intervention.

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6- Session 6. Sustainable global food markets: facing new challenges. Chair: Julia Guivant Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil. juguivant@uol.com.br

Arthur Mol. Wageningen University, arthur.mol@wur.nl ; The Netherlands. Food and biofuels.

Up until now national governments have been central in govening and stimlating biofuels. In most counries governments have stimulated this market through subsidizing farmers, ethanol and biodiesel procssing companies, and biofuel end users: through large R&D programs; Through experiments with various transport technologies and programs; and through market creation by setting mandatory targets for biofuel use. Recently, these national biofuel program are integarted into a global biofuels system, with global trade in fuels and biomass, global standards, and global investments. But there is now growing pressure on governments to no just stimulate production and consumpion of biofuels, but also to make sure that biofuels are produced and consumed in a sustainable way globally. How can we condition this global develoment of biofuels, so that they are either pro-poor and sustainable, or not produced at all? Here the biofuel system runs into comparable governing challenges and many other global environmental challenges. But with biofuels, we see the global integration of agricultural and food systems, energy systems, and mobility systems, making govening questins particularly complex.

Luciano F. Florit, Mestrado em Desenvolvimento Regional, Universidade Regional de Blumenau, Brazil lucianoflorit@furb.br: Sepeciesism and development

This paper analyses implications of consider animals as sentient beings in the discussion about the values that support development patterns and food chain production. This issue derives from discussions grounded in the environmental ethics field about the kind of beings that humans should give moral consideration. In this field, authors argue in favor of the principle of equal consideration of interests that marks, as the boundary of moral obligations, the capacity of suffering, and labels as “speciesist” the deny of animals suffering. This perspective challenges the ordinary comprehension of moral obligations of development that mainly tries to attend only present and future human beings. Therefore, this paper argues that these implications are vast and profound not only for environmental sociology but also for public debate. One consequence is that this issue shows an unequal assimilation between countries that can implies in a new territorialization of the ethic debt related to make suffer to animals. In this matter, European Union and Brazil, particularly Santa Catarina State, are explored as contrasting cases. Another question is how slaughter house workers manage, in its own subjectivity, the constrictions of killing as his daily task. Finally, the paper will explore on how lay people can understand this practice. It is due of its invisibility that this treatment to animals is accepted, as argue many animal rights activists? To analyze this questions the paper will try some hypothesis based on qualitative research done in Santa Catarina, Brazil, between 2004 and 2006.

Stephan Lorenz, Friedrich-Schiller- Universität, Institut für Soziologie, Jena, Germany. Stephan.Lorenz@uni-jena.de: How to deal with food affluence – the German “Tafel“ as a contribution to socio-ecological sustainability?

Fifty years ago, in 1958, J.K. Galbraith published his book “The affluent society”. The main idea he elaborated was a fundamental change from deficiency to affluence in the highly industrialized society. If there are more people suffering from too much and ‘wrong’ than insufficient food, the more important socio-economic problem of society is how to deal with affluence not poverty. Over the last fifty years production and consumption dynamics have expanded - with lots of socio-ecological consequences. Nowadays, forced by globalisation processes, poverty and ‘human waste’ (Bauman) is obviously growing as well as affluence (a larger variety of food from all over the world). An indicator is the recent raise of a special social movement called “Tafel” (Food Rescue

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Program/ Food Bank). They collect unsaleable food for people who cannot consume enough via the market. In Germany the first local “Tafel”-group was founded in 1993, and now there are already more than 700.Following this my presentation will propose a contemporarily appropriate understanding of affluence. Affluence is to interpret as ambivalent and relational: ambivalent because it refers to wealth and prosperity as well as problems of too-much and – more or less unintended – consequences (waste, pollution etc.); relational because affluence is only to understand in relation to deficiency and necessity. That’s why in a sustainability point of view affluence is to understand as a creation task which cannot be resolved only by means of (economic) growth but of limitations too. Empirically I will refer to an ongoing research about the “Tafel” as such a creation option to deal with affluence. Does it provide a sustainable solution dealing with affluence (food waste disposal, support of poor people)? How can it offer an alternative to the dominant economic processes? Or just does it maintain the production-consumption of affluence, and hinder the market participation of poor people?

Camila Moreno, UFRRJ,CPDA Brazil. cc_moreno@yahoo.com: Energy Sovereignty: a contribution from Brazilian social movements on ‘biofuels’ in a transition to a post-oil society.

In Brazil, taking advantage of the vaste tropical territory and potentially available agricultural land and water, the widespread promotion of “agroenergy” (i.e. energy generated from biomass grown to this end) is mainly a state led program (mandatory market created by law and compulsory targets) that has served as a strong economical and political token. As an example, to the controversial worldwide biofuels fever, and its dangerous relation to food supplies and prices, the rush to create international markets and standards has led to the recent affinity between the interest of Brazil and USA on the so called ethanol alliance. Brazilian government and agencies, as well as national and international coorporations- have strongly promoted ethanol from sugar cane throughout the central american corridor and African countries. To an important constituency of the national social movements, biofuels at the same time serve to the reproduction of the developmentist ideology, supported even by the so called progressive and leftist groups and parties, nonetheless the severe ecological impacts on already fragile ecossystems and populations affected by the exponential growth of industrial monocultures. Taking seriously the ideological content of the agroenergy strategy to sustain the urban-industrial ideology, currently the theme “biofuels”, and in a growing sense, energy, are reestructuring the political agenda also from below.

Marcia Grisotti; Julia S. Guivant and Cecile Raud, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brasil grisotti@fastlane.com.br ;juguivant@uol.com.br; cecile@cfh.ufsc.br: Health claims for functional foods: national regulations and the global market

Functional foods represent one of the food sectors with more significant growth in global markets. Specialists warn that there is little understanding concerning the conditions functional foods are being consumed; if the target groups are actually reached, and if educational programs targeted to consumers and aimed at the adoption of health policies, should be recommended. At the same time, not always governmental regulations are clear about how they should be labeled and proved the health claims. In this article we analyze the challenges that functional foods bring to sociological risk analysis because they represent a controversial issue situated between the food-and-drug boundaries. Different points of view involved in the controversy are indentified: medical, epidemiological and nutritional; including also social actors, as the food industry, consumers and scientists. Finally, after contextualizing their development in relation to the global healthy food markets, we focus in an international comparative perspective of the regulations concerning their technical definition

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Theresa Selfa. Kansas State University, USA. tselfa@ksu.edu From Breadbasket to Biomass: Conflicting Claims of Sustainability and Productivism in the American Great Plains.

Recent academic and popular press promote the rapid expansion of biomass and the bioeconomy in the Great Plains region, citing its potential for contributing to national energy independence, revitalizing beleaguered rural communities and economies, and as a carbon sequestration sink to mitigate climate change. Extra-local environmental groups and state governments are also promoting the expansion in the Great Plains of other renewable energy, especially wind and solar power, and actively blocking the construction of new coal fired power electricity plants, claiming it will undermine the gains made by mandatory regional carbon dioxide cap and trade programs instituted in Northeastern States of the US. In contrast, many local communities and local groundwater management institutions in Western Kansas continue to pursue productivist energy and agricultural development, dependent on withdrawals from the High Plains aquifer and immigrant labor force, in extending production of irrigated grain-feedlot-slaughter complex and of fuel crops in the arid southwestern KS. Drawing theoretically from the environmental governance literature, this paper will explore the contradictory politics that frame the claims on different scales of natural resource commons: the Great Plains ‘empty’ landscape is claimed by national and international interests as a commons for energy production and for carbon sequestration; the development of ‘dirty’ energy production is opposed for undermining global climate mitigation measures, while actors in local communities and local water management districts claim proximate common resources for local economic benefit.

Session 7: Ecological restoration, adaptation, and environmental change Chair: Matthias Gross Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany, e-mail: matthias.gross@ufz.de Jean-Michel Le Bot Université Rennes 2, France jean-michel.lebot@uhb.fr - Integrating Non-humans into the City: A Typology of Attachments

Under the effects of urbanization, areas of « natural » character tend to evolve towards impoverishment (loss of biodiversity), by a process of insularisation, fragmentation and isolation (ecological connections are cut off by traffic lanes, built spaces, etc.). Of course, a policy of preservation of natural areas has begun in the 19th century with the creation of parks and gardens in urban areas and by the creation of various national parks and nature reserves in the rural and littoral areas. But since then this zoning policy has proved to be insufficient to prevent the erosion of biodiversity. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account how ecosystems work, by avoiding their fragmentation and isolation. In sociological terms, the question is less about the conservation of "nature" as such than about the extension of the collective (Latour) in order to integrate plants, animals and ecosystems into the city (thus “enlarging the circle”). If the integration of “remarkable” ecological areas and biological connections in urban planification is necessary, it is not enough. It is also necessary to develop various attachments (Latour) between humans and non-humans. Inspired by the “schemes of relation”, as defined by Philippe Descola (2005), as well as by the “theory of the mediation” (Gagnepain), this paper will propose a typology of these attachments.

Pedro Baños Páez and Isabel Beatriz Baños, Universidad de Murcia, Spain pbanos@um.es - Social and Environmental Recovery in the Surroundings Portmán Bay in the South East of the Iberian Peninsula

For over thirty years, the waste from the mining industry located in the area has been dumped on the Portmán bay, such waste originates in the plant where galena, blende and pyrite ores are concentrated. The Portmán bay is one of the most important sources of pollution in whole

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Mediterranean. Furthermore, the dumping of waste from mining caused the silting of the Portmán bay and most of the continental platform facing this bay. After multiple denunciations, protest demonstrations, pressures from several groups, etc., in March 1990, the dumping to the Mediterranean Sea ceased. Immediately following this, the question was raised whether or not to recover the bay and its surroundings. In this communication the prospects for the environmental recovery for the surroundings of the Portmán bay are analyzed as well as the standpoints of the different social actors concerning various options under consideration for its recovery.

Minerva Campos Sánchez, Martí Boada Juncà., and Alejandro Velázquez Montes, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, Minerva.Campos@uab.cat - Socio-ecological approach for the analysis of local adaptive responses to land use change in Pacific coast of Michoacan, Mexico

Nowadays there is a crescent recognition about land use/cover change (LUCC) as the main driver of global change through its interaction whit climate, eco-systemic processes, biogeochemical cycles and human activities. Negative processes of LUCC are affecting primarily regions of high biological diversity in tropical regions most of the times associated with regions of significant cultural diversity and economies strongly dependents of local natural resources. Human dimension of LUCC is related to different scale social forces that affect nature-society relationships, but also the implication of these changes for human livelihoods, health, and well being. Human dimension is one of the most complex components of global change, overall in those territories were environmental history results of traditional management and appropriation strategies of local inhabitants. Therefore, it is important to identify which the local aspirations are, related primarily to landscapes values and consequently over land use. This involvedness requires developing an integrative methodology which integrates societal goals and values with ecological processes. The Pacific coast region in Michoacan, Mexico, represents a good example for identify the historical, socio-demographic and physical events that are involve in local adaptive responses to negative process of land use change. In this work we present a methodological approach to describe local responses of socio-ecological systems to regional modalities of land use change. Therefore we propose to approach the analysis through the identification of key processes and actors, including system spatial attributes, local knowledge and historical profile.

Karen Manges Douglas, Sam Houston State University, USA, kmd007@shsu.edu and Gideon Sjoberg, University of Texas at Austin, USA, gsjoberg@mail.utexas.edu - The Role of Common Property in Reshaping Climate Change in the Future.

The nature of property has been understudied in sociology as environmental sociologists have generally shied away from investigating this problem area. Thus property receives little or no attention in the edited book by Buttel et al. (2002) Sociological Theory and the Environment or in the writings of G. Spaargaren and A. P. J. Mol (2006) on ecological modernization theory and on environmental flows. In this paper we shall utilize the on-going research (for about a decade) by the first named author on the creation and construction of the Edwards Aquifer Authority in Texas as the launching pad for our analysis. The construction of this Authority was set in motion by a Texas legislative act in the 1990s. The political class in Texas recognized the need to plan for (and in the process manage) the possibility of a future drought in this region. A severe drought ravaged the central Texas region in the 1950s, and if such were to occur to today the economic damage would be considerably more severe. The region has industrialized and urbanized dramatically in the past half-century. In the process of constructing this Authority, particular events brought to light that a fundamental restructuring of the legal system was essential. For generations the right of capture ruled supreme in Texas; the owner of a tract of property had the right to pump as much water from under his/her land as this person deemed necessary. Yet, the leadership came to understand that the Authority could not manage any future drought, let alone manage water on a more daily basis, if the right of capture remained intact. Consequently, within the Authority’s jurisdiction the right of capture was replaced by a loose conception of common property.

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Focusing on common property (or the commons) leads us to address the work of Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, who has done more than any other scholar to press forward the saliency of the commons in the investigation of environmental issues (1990, 1994, 2002, 2003, 2006). We intend to summarize briefly her main line of reasoning. With this background in hand we shall focus on the following query: What can sociologists contribute to our understanding of the new institutional and organizational arrangements that need to be created to stem the tide of global warming (or even to reverse it) if not respond adequately to the changes underway as a result? This leads us to address the future—as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck have urged us to do. We take their sociological worldview seriously. Somewhat more specifically we consider what role common property (or the commons) will play in coping the matter of climate change (and environmental change more broadly). If the Edwards Aquifer Authority can serve as a crude guide, and in particular if Ostrom is correct in her assessment, then it follows that sociologists must rethink in fundamental ways the nature of property with respect to, say, the atmosphere. Undoubtedly private property will continue to exist, and we shall witness the rise of a market for carbon and the like. Yet somewhat more abstractly only if the atmosphere (and the larger environmental context) can be thought of as common property will we be able to take major steps in reconstituting the nature of climate change. We do not doubt that more than the matter of property will need to be rethought. Still our thesis remains intact: the matter of property must be seriously addressed.

M Zulfiquar Ali Islam, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh, drzulfiquarai@ru.ac.bd - Indigenous Adaptation Strategies of the Riverbank Erosion Displacees in Bangladesh: A Study of Two Northwestern Riparian Villages

The paper is designed to explore multiple indigenous survival strategies the riverbank erosion displaces of Bangladesh formulate and undertake as none of them is adequate for their subsistence. The empirical data and findings have been procured by the application of social survey, case studies, and focus group discussions. It pinpoints the corrective rather than preventive ways and techniques they employ in confronting with their hardship induced by the catastrophic attack of riverbank erosion and its consequent immense sufferings. Their unflinching courage and resilience in such endeavours are also portrayed in this paper. The paper unveils a disappointing fact that in devoid of organizational support, they have to formulate and undertake various survival strategies in their own fashion in the precarious situation induced by riverbank erosion displacement. Finally, the paper wraps it job up with suggesting some policy interventions that may be considered by the policy planners and implementers for the future development content of riparian Bangladesh.

Sylvia Kruse, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Institute for Environmental Strategies. sylvia.kruse@uni-lueneburg.de - Managing Natural Hazards: Policy Change between Protection, Adaptation and Restoration. Floodplain Management in the Middle Elbe River.

The notion of a policy change from technical protection to precautionary adaptation and risk management as well as ecological restoration resounds throughout the land when dealing with naturals hazards. Is this policy change a vision, a claim or is it already implemented in form of a sustainable transformation process? The paper poses these questions in the field of flood plain management in case of the Middle Elbe River. After the extreme flooding in summer 2002 the previous flood plain policy and management came under scrutiny. New ideas and instruments for a sustainable flood plain management have been introduced by different involved actors. The case study stands for a transformation process which can be found in similar ways in other European riverine regions. Central interests of the empirical study, which is part of a PHD-project, lie on the decisive factors of initiation and regulation

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of the environmental change and on the potential latitude of action for the involved actors. Both intended as well as not-intended regulatory factors are analysed for the Middle Elbe River. Against the background of the empirical study the strategic concepts of protection, adaptation and restoration need to be spatially and temporally differentiated as the policies transform in a heterogeneous and disperse way. The consequences of this differentiation are discussed for the management of natural hazards which poses specific requirements for the regulation of societal relation to nature. Subsequently these findings are put in the context of current concepts of social-ecological transformation.

Session 8: Environment in the Information Age Chair: Arthur P.J. Mol, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, Arthur.Mol@wur.nl Aarti Gupta, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, aarti.gupta@wur.nl - Transparency in Global Environmental Governance: an exploratory analysis

This paper begins with the premise that transparency is an overused but underanalyzed concept in global environmental governance. Transparency is widely assumed to be a key handmaiden in the attainment of desired ends, such as accountability and legitimacy of environmental governance arrangements, yet whether transparency is upto this task remains underscrutinized. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of “governance via disclosure” in the global environmental realm. It identifies key dimensions along which information disclosure can vary, such as who discloses, to whom, what is disclosed, and why. I argue that, despite such differences, there are two common threads which link governance initiatives that have information disclosure at their center, and that both of these common threads merit critical scrutiny. First, I suggest that the focus on information disclosure reflects a “procedural turn” in global environmental governance, with the assumption that “getting the process right” matters in achieving desired outcomes. Yet, what are the promises and perils associated with such a procedural turn? Second, governance by disclosure initiatives share the assumption that information can empower. Empowerment necessarily implies a change in the nature of existing power relationships between key actors. But under what conditions does information empower? In what ways? Is “more and better” information always desirable? The assumption that information empowers is important to examine in global environmental governance, where agreeing on what is “more and better” information is itself often a key site of conflict. The paper illustrates these issues further by briefly examining the “governance by disclosure” mechanism of prior informed consent and its role in governing the global spread of genetically modified organisms. Via this analysis, the paper aims to critically assess the normative assumptions underlying the growing call for transparency, its workings in practice, and its potential to contribute to accountable and legitimate global environmental governance.

Sander van den Burg, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, Sander.vandenburg@wur.nl - Environmental Information Disclosure in China

The disclosure of environmental information has become increasingly popular as a instrument for environmental governance. By making information publicly available, citizens, non-state organizations and others are enabled to put pressure – through naming and shaming – on corporations and/or governments and lead to them to behave more sustainable. Various nation-states, supranational institutions and non-governmental organizations have taken the initiative to develop disclosure schemes which aim to make environmental information publicly available. Studies has shown that this can result in significant environmental benefits. The exact form that disclosure schemes take has also been subject to analysis. Their eventual shape depends on the political culture within which they are embedded, and on the role that citizens are expected and allowed to play. Furthermore, various societal developments – such as the war on terrorism – can come to affect the development and implementation of disclosure schemes. This paper seeks to assess the development of the first Chinese nation-wide disclosure scheme, where the abovementioned topics take centre-stage. The central questions are how disclosure came into

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existence in the Chinese context, how it is affected by political and societal factors, and how this affects the eventual shape (and effectiveness) of disclosure. The empirical focus is in China’s national ordinance on the release of government information flows which was passed on January 2007. The ordinance will come into effect from May 1, 2008 and states that governments at various levels are required to release information which affects the immediate interests of individuals and groups. This includes information on natural and environmental disasters. Prior to this nation-wide legislation, the cities Shanghai and Guangzhou implemented similar legislation and these experiences will also be referred to in the paper.

Eugénia Rodrigues, Universidade do Minho, Portugal, eugenia@ics.uminho.pt - Open Source Monitoring

Despite all the assertions about “the information society” and the role new technologies may play in enhancing public participation and in decentralising societies, there haven’t been many concrete instances that display specific, novel ways in which public access to ecological information has changed the politics or management of the environment. This is not to say that new ICTs have not had a central role in the gathering, processing, displaying and accessing of environmental information by a multitude of actors. New “user-friendly” geo-referencing tools, for instance, mean that it is now possible to map – literally – one’s decision about where to live or buy a house, or to investigate environmental aspects of one’s children’s route to school. Important though these phenomena are, there has still been little cooperation between providers and users of environmental information. By and large, information providers are organisational actors: government agencies, corporations, and large pressure groups. Where there have been information struggles, these have typically been between opposing organisations: between, say, Friends of the Earth and official environment bureaux or between EU bodies and national agencies. Citizens have typically been only the receivers of information. If there is a network, it has mainly seen information flow in one direction. In this paper I analyse a particular case where an explicit attempt was made to combine these two elements: lay publics were thought of as suppliers of information too. By conceiving of individuals as nodes in a monitoring network, the S@W (Senses@Watch) project aimed at granting citizens a place in the formal informational system. By focusing on sensorial information as much as on electronic sensors and new technologies, it sought to draw on a universally-available source of information and to increase reliability by the same token. Finally, by designing the informational network to be supported by the internet, the S@W project aimed to systematise the sensorial reports in a readily accessible and easily comprehended manner. This paper focuses both on the conception of the S@W initiative and on some sociological consequences of its design and operation.

Harald Heinrichs, Lueneburg University, Germany, harald.heinrichs@uni-lueneburg.de - The role of (new) media for citizens’ participation in sustainable development – conceptual framework & typology.

Within the past 10-15 years, parallel to the diffusion of the world wide web, several studies have focused the relevance of the internet for societal participation. But there is only very few studies, which analyze the relevance of (new) media-based communication for civic participation in the fields of environment and sustainable development.

This paper presents a theoretically and empirically based typology, which may help to structure this emerging field of research and practice. Employing approaches from environmental sociology and sociology of communication at first the key terms ‘sustainable development’, ‘citizens’ participation’ and ‘(new) media’ will be defined and differentiated. The term sustainable development encompasses key aspects such as integration of time-spatial distant effects, interrelatedness of societal (socio-economic) and ecological aspects, intra- and intergenerational justice, transformative orientation. The term citizens’ participation is specified by differentiating between economic citizens, political citizen and civic citizens. And for (new) media their multiple functions are discussed: www (information), e-mail, discussion groups (newsgroups, usenet), verbal and visual interaction (chat, irc, skype), interaction in virtual space (mud’s), distribution of audio-visual-representations (pod-, videocasting). Moreover it is of relevance that the borders between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media are blurred: the journalism-based products

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of ‘old’ media are distributed via the world wide web (internet tv, internet radio etc.) and the world wide web is mentioned in ‘old’ media coverage as information source. Based on this heterogeneous research perspectives, which provide the foundation for our theoretical-conceptual framework, we propose a typology for the analysis of the interrelationship between (new) media, sustainable development and participation. The presentation concludes with an outlook of an comparative research project between Germany and Japan, which employs this concept and typology.

Mark C.J. Stoddart, University of British Columbia, Canada, mcjs@interchange.ubc.ca - The Meaning of Mountains: the Media, Skiing and the Environment in British Columbia

The mass media inform and shape our understandings of the non-human environment. Television, the internet and newspapers are only a few venues that give social meaning to the environment and environmental problems. The media also help us construct the social meaning of particular landscapes. Media texts may reproduce dominant discourses about human relations with nature, or they may offer a limited space for social movements to challenge dominant relations between society and nature. In this paper, I draw on several media sources to examine competing representations of skiing landscapes in British Columbia, Canada. Using newspaper articles, ski resort websites, ski magazines and social movement websites (environmentalist and First Nations), I describe how skiing landscapes become contested places. We may view these landscapes as sites of sustainable development. Here, tourists and locals come to interact with nature under the responsible stewardship of the ski industry. Alternately, environmental and First Nations groups challenge this construction of the skiing environment. They invoke claims that skiing irrecoverably transforms wildlife and wilderness landscapes into sites for industrial tourism. In this version, skiing becomes an environmental and social problem. Going beyond this analysis of internet, newspaper and magazine texts, I also draw on interviews with 45 skiers in British Columbia to examine how they make use of skiing-oriented media. Through these interviews, I describe how skiers’ own interpretations of the skiing landscape draw upon and challenge the textual discourses of the ski industry, social movement groups, and mass media.

Maija Sipilä & Liisa Tyrväinen, Finish Forest Research Institute, Finland, maija.sipila@metla.fi - Social Information as a resource in the governance of Urban Environments

To promote the developing of sustainable societies, ecological and social values of the environment need to be integrated in environmental governance. In governing urban environments, different values and forms of information are collected, constructed and distributed in processes such as collaborative land use planning and urban forest planning. Modern technologies have enabled the development of new tools, helping in collecting and presenting social information produced by urban residents. How, in fact, can planners and decision makers use the social information? How can collaborative planning of urban environments help the local community to govern social-ecological challenges such as climate change? How can collaborative planning processes be organized effectively and efficiently from the point of view of different actors? In a sub-study of the research project 'GREENDECISION - Integrating ecological and social information in urban planning' (Academy of Finland 2006-2008), we are studying these questions in two case areas in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. By combining different methods of qualitative research, we are developing theoretical understanding and practical interpretations of the quality of the planning and decision making system as an essential tool for environmental governance. In the study, we also develop methods for evaluating the use of social information in planning processes. Results will be presented on grounds of semi-structured personal interviews and focus groups carried out with 33 planners, decision makers, residents and landowners in 2007, as well as testing of the evaluation methods developed in 2008.

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9. Session 9. Environmental attitudes: conceptualizations and comparisons.

Chair: Riley Dunlap, Oklahoma State University, USA. riley.dunlap@okstate.edu

Henning Best, University of Mannheim, Germany, best@uni-mannheim.de - Environmental Concern and Values: An Empirical Analysis of Four Measurement Approaches

When reviewing research articles on environmental concern and environmental behaviour, one can be irritated by the sheer magnitude of different attitude scales and measurement approaches. Surprisingly little attention has benn paid to the conceptual and statistical connections between the different scales. To facilitate the comparison of different studies’ results, some influential scales for the measurement of environmental values and attitudes are compared empirically in this paper. In a German survey, four pre-existing scales were queried: Inglehart’s materialism / postmaterialism scales, the NEP scale by Dunlap et al. (2000), and attitude scale in the tradition of Maloney and Ward, developed by Diekmann and Preisendörfer (2000), and an object-specific scale measuring attitudes toward waste recycling. The scales are analysed regarding their respective correlation with environmental behaviour and the interrelation of the different measures using structural equation modeling.

Manuel Jimenez and Regina Lafuente, University Pablo de Olavide of Sevilla & IESA-CSIC, Spain, mjimsan@upo.es – Defining and Measuring Environmental Consciousness.

On the bases of the revision of the main analytical approaches found the literature, in this paper we set up a multidimensional and behaviour-oriented definition of environmental consciousness, and put forward a way for its operationalization with the final goal of obtaining synthetic measures (or indexes) of this phenomenon applicable to different social contexts and time-periods. The proposed operationalization uses as empirical bases the data obtained in a survey on environmental attitudes and behaviour conducted in 2004 among the Andalusian population (Ecobarómetro de Andalucía, 2004). The resulting measures are, then, employed to identify social clusters according to the diverse nature of their environmental consciousness and to explore their basic socio-demographic profiles.

Sadegh Salehi, Mazandarn University, Iran & Lees University, UK, splssal@leeds.ac.uk – New Environmental Paradigm and Environmental Responsible Behaviors.

This study aimed at determining whether Iranian people express support for the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP)? And is participating in environmentally responsible behaviour reflected in participants’ environmental attitudes and ultimately, what social characteristics (age, gender, place of residence, education, social class, and political orientation) are associated with differences in NEP and environmental behaviours? Based on the new environmental paradigm, we draw this hypothesis that as individuals’ beliefs in the NEP increases their environmental responsible behaviours. An ecologically homogeneous sample consisting of 715 participants was selected from Mazandaran, Gilan and Golestan, Iran (southern states of the Caspian Sea). A respondent over the age of 15 within each household was chosen for the interview. The questionnaire used in the survey included a wide range of items and was tested twice in rural and urban area of different states. This helped to revise the wording of the survey items so that they were appropriate for local people. The NEP variable were measured by applying the 12 items designed to measure the NEP.Environmental responsible behaviours included Energy Saving, Water Conservation, Green Consumerism, Waste Management behaviours which occurred at home. T-test and ANOVA were employed to compare the research groups (male/female, urban/rural/...) and Pearson correlation coeffients and Eta tests were employed to show the effect of independent variables on NEP. Using principal factor analysis and examination of the items loading on each factor suggests that the NEP scale is measuring orientations toward: 1. The balance of nature (4 items)

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2. limits of growth (4items) 3. Man over nature (4 items). Analyzing responses of the NEP in terms of age, gender, place of residency, level of education, social class and political orientation yielded different results which show the association or effects of different factors on the NEP.

Giangiacomo Bravo and Beatrice Marelli, Department of Social Studies, University of Brescia and Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability, Italy, gbravo@eco.unibs.it – Environmental Perception and Protected Area Management: An International Comparison

This paper is a first product of a wider research project aimed at studying the effects of an interesting experience of decentralized international cooperation among protected areas. For nearly ten years, most of the “regional parks” of the Piedmont regions (NW Italy) have established partnership agreements with a number of African and Latin American protected areas. The research focused on 11 Piedmont parks along with 8 conservation areas located in Rurkina-Saso, Senegal and Tanzania. Among the factors that influence the performance of the different areas in maintaining the biodiversity and quality of the local environment, the beliefs and perceptions regarding the role and the importance of the natural environment for local people cannot be ignored. Environmental perceptions vary widely across time and space, and influence the performance of the different conservation areas mainly by affecting the design and functioning of their management institutions. This ongoing research project employs both quantitative (a revised NEP Scale) and qualitative (open-ended questions and direct observation) methods in order to build a reliable picture of environmental perceptions in each studied area. The beliefs, concerns and values of the conservation areas employees (managers, rangers, etc.) represent our focus. Neverless, where possible the research has been extended also to the populations living inside or in proximity to the reserves. Our first results show that those factors play a significant role in influencing the performance of the various protected areas.

Steven R. Brechin, Susan Borker, Paul Mohai and Solange Simoes, Syracuse University, University of Michigan and Eastern Michingan University, USA, sbrechin@maxwell.syr.edu – Gender and Environmental Attitudes and Values on Three Continents: A Comparative Study of Detroit, USA, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beijing, China

Building upon the well established Detroit Area Studies Program, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, by replicating this study in two other international locations, this paper makes use of a unique dataset to explore environmental issues comparatively in greater depth, including a number of important scales. In particular, the authors explore public attitudes and values of citizens in three metropolitan areas in three different countries: Detroit, USA, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Beijing, China. A seriousness of environmental problems index was constructed from seven individual environmental problems asked in each of the three metropolitan areas. Drawing on their relationship to the environment, the findings challenge and support several established relationships in the general literature, including age, gender, motherhood, political views, income, local environmental problems, and the postmaterialist values thesis. Our findings found many relationships differed by gender so we analyzed the datasets separately for males and females. Age is more strongly related to environmental attitudes for women than men in all three metropolitan areas. Previous literature suggests that younger women are more concerned about the environment than older women because they have young children at home. However, in our study we found that women who were most concerned about the environment had not yet had children. Political ideology in Detroit and Belo Horizonte metropolitan areas [question not asked in Beijing] better explained men’s rather than women’s attitudes toward the environment. Family income was not related to environmental concern for either men or women in any of the countries. Education level explained some level of concern only among women in China and Brazil. Unlike many previous studies that have data only on either neighborhood problems or general issues, these data had information on both. The public’s recognition of neighborhood environmental problems is moderately correlated to their attitudes

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about more generalized environmental attitudes but not to Inglehart’s Postmaterialist Value Thesis (PVT). Contrary to some previous literature, Inglehart’s PVT had very limited explanatory power, especially when tied to the index of seriousness of environmental concern. Our data show that in Beijing and Detroit the relationship between PVT and environmental concern is curvilinear but with the relationship linear for men but curvilinear for women in both those countries. In Belo Horizonte, Brazil PVT was linear for both men and women but the relationships are weak. In multivariate analyses, PVT effects disappear.

Riley E. Dunlap and Richard York, Oklahoma State University and University of Oregon, USA, rdunlap@okstate.edu - The Globalization of Citizen Concern for the Environment: Results from Seven Cross-National Surveys

The results of seven large, cross-national environmental surveys are employed to test the “affluence hypothesis” that citizen concern for the environment is strongly related to national affluence. This hypothesis is suggested by Inglehart’s theory of value change that assumes that environmental concern arises from the growth of “post-materialist” values, and is a key assumption made by proponents of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Results from the Gallup Organization’s 1992 Health of the Planet Survey, three waves of the World Values Survey, the 1993 and 2000 ISSP Surveys, and Gallup International’s 2000 Millennium Survey are used to conduct a comprehensive test of the affluence hypothesis. After methodologically defensible measures of environmental concern are created from each survey, national-level aggregate scores of citizen concern for the environment are correlated with time-appropriate measure of affluence, annual gross domestic product per capita. The overall pattern of correlations across the seven surveys reveals little support for the affluence hypothesis. There are as many significant negative correlations between affluence and environmental concern as there are significant positive correlations, and the remaining third of the measures yield insignificant relationships. Given that only one-third of the correlations between national affluence and citizen concern for the environment are positive and statistically significant, it is concluded that the seven cross-national studies of citizen concern for the environment fail to confirm the widely endorse affluence hypothesis.

10. Session 10. Environmental behaviors: sociological analyses.

Chair: Riley Dunlap, Oklahoma State University, USA.

riley.dunlap@okstate.edu Ritsuko Ozaki and Alexander Frenzel, Imperial College, London, UK, r.ozaki@imperial.ac.uk – Adopting Green Electricity Products: Consumers’ Environmental Beliefs, Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions.

Environmentally friendly products can have a hard time diffusing into a market for many reasons. They might not offer the same functionality as non-green products, they may be more expensive when offering the same functionality, or they may require changes in consumer behaviour. Green electricity, generated from renewable sources such as wind, solar and biomass, is one new green product that has not been widely accepted by UK consumers. This paper analyses the way consumers’ environmental beliefs and norms are translated into attitudes towards a green innovation and intentions to adopt it. In order to understand how behavioural intentions are formed, we suggest that the existing innovation adoption-diffusion and behavioural models should be combined with consumption theories. When a person decides to adopt a new product, s/he considers not only technical functionalities, product attributes and outcomes of the adoption behaviour, but also the symbolic meanings the product carries for that individual and the daily practices that lead to the need to adopt it. We also add the ‘willingness-to-pay’ element to our framework as affordability is an important decision-making factor.

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The present paper reports findings of two empirical studies. We conducted focus group interviews to tease out issues consumers have regarding ‘being green’ and adopting green electricity. Then, a questionnaire survey is conducted to support and validate the theoretical constructs that emerged from interviews and also to investigate statistically the relationship between environmental beliefs, attitudes towards green energy and adoption intention. We intend to clarify the self-selection processes in which consumers elicit pro-environmental behaviour and adopt green products. Policy implications on the diffusion of green electricity will also be developed.

Hiroshi Kojima, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, kojima@waseda.jp – A Comparative Analysis of Determinants of Reported Environmental Behaviors in Four Capitals in East Asia.

This study analyzes Comparative Surveys on Environmental Consciousness in East Asia (P. I.: ZHENG Yuejun, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto), which was conducted in Beijing, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo in 2005 and 2006, to assess the possibility regional cooperation in environmental protection. It focuses on six questions on environmental behaviors as perceived by respondents, which can be comparable to questions in GSS-type surveys in East Asia. They include 1) purchase of environment-friendly goods, 2) recycling of used goods, 3) efforts to save water, 4) efforts to save energy at home, 5) use of public transportation, and 6) purchase of organic vegetables. Binomial logit analysis with step-wise selection has been applied to the integrated data set and the data set for each city to explore common demographic and socioeconomic determinants. The bivariate analysis reveals that the level of reported behaviors tended to be lower in Tokyo possibly because Japanese tendency to make neutral choice and it may not necessarily mean Japanese actually do least. Logit analysis of the integrated data set also shows the same tendency. In addition, characteristics such as female, middle-aged and religious tend to have positive effects while those such as single, unhealthy, and short-term resident tend to have negative effects. The use of public transportation has somewhat different from other dependent variables in being more closely related to low socioeconomic status. Among independent variables, the effects of religion varies by dependent variables as well as city (e.g., no significant effect in Beijing). Further analysis is necessary to assess the effects of culture, including religion, on environmental attitudes among societies with seemngly similar cultures.

Henrike Rau, NUI, Galway, Ireland, henrike.rau@nuigalway.ie – Making the Switch? Social and Cultural Dimensions of Mobility and Modal Choice in Ireland.

Recent changes in land use, transport and mobility patterns have turned Ireland into one of the most car-dependent countries in the world. This car dependency has also transformed the social and cultural fabric of Irish society in ways that have benefited some while impacting negatively on others. Attempts at local and national level to encourage people to switch to more sustainable modes of transport have hitherto had limited success, partly because many Irish people now find themselves ‘locked into’ car-dependent travel patterns. But are people actually prepared to consider alternatives to the car? If so, how do they envisage changes in their mobility habits and travel patterns to affect their day-to-day lives? The hegemony of the car as powerful symbol of individualised mobility and the importance of ‘conspicuous consumption of distance’ as cultural practice in contemporary Ireland have resulted in the marginalisation of more sustainable modes such as walking, cycling and public transport. Alternatives to the car are thus frequently rejected by people on socio-cultural grounds that link (auto)mobility to questions of power, status and cultural capital. This paper will present empirical evidence from Ireland to highlight existing tensions between socio-cultural and environmental dimensions of transport and mobility that have yet to be fully recognised in the context of Irish transport planning and policy making.

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Louise Reid, Phil Sutton and Colin Hunter, University of Aberdeen and Robert Gordon University, UK, l.a.reid@abdn.ac.uk – Environmental Attitudes and Behavioural Change: A Role for Household Environmental Impact Diaries?

The relationship between expressed attitudes and actual behaviour in the context of sustainable development is complex (Staats et al., 2004) and difficult to apply in a policy-relevant manner (Aall and Norland, 2005). The household, however, represents a key ‘lens’ for understanding the environmental impact of consumption patterns and for instigating educational programmes and policy designed to change individual consumer behaviour (Simmons and Chambers, 1998). Recent research indicates that the use of a household diary can be very beneficial in helping to understand household environmental impact, in educating householders about their impact, and in identifying major ‘behavioural turning points’, where householders may focus efforts to reduce their environmental impact (Hunter et al., 2006). This paper reports on PhD research, the aim of which has been to assess the innovative use of a household diary approach as a means of framing and collecting household environmental impact data, and, critically, as an educational vehicle for bringing about behavioural change and operationalising Scottish Executive policy goals. This paper will draw together and present the initial findings of this research, with specific regard to the way in which the household diary approach can capture the motivators of, and barriers to, environmental behaviours within the household. In addition, the paper will evaluate the success of the diary approach in identifying ‘behavioural turning/tipping points’ and in instigating behavioural change.

France Jean-Paul Bozonnet, PACTE-CNRS – Political Studies Institute of Grenoble, France, Jean-Paul.Bozonnet@iep.upmf-grenoble.fr – Are Media Effective At Producing Environmentalism?

Since environmental movements sprang up in the sixties, scholars emphasize the prominent influence of media (Downs, 1972). However, if assertions are frequent about this influence, verifications are rare. Fortunately, large surveys as ESS (European Social Survey of 2002), carried out in 20 European countries, include indicators of media exposure as watching television, listening radio, reading newspapers or using the Internet. They include also indicators of environmental commitment: ecologically friendly purchasing, belonging to environmental organisation, and donation, participation, voluntary work, as well… That is not exactly attitudes nor opinions, but much more effective components of environmentalism. Thereby we propose to explore the complex relation between this media exposure and environmental commitment in Europe. Is media exposure inducing environmental commitment? If it be so, what kind of media is the most effective? Is this commitment linked to newspapers and political literacy? What is exactly the TV role? Is intelligentsia in the right when decrying it? And what about a media so disputed as the Internet is to day?

Hellmuth Lange. University of Bremen, Germany lange@artec.uni-bremen.de Globalization of bad habits only? New middle classes between McDonaldization and environmental concern. (Germany)

What has been seen so far as a problem of early industrialised (Western) societies is about to turn into a concern of Westerners about the new middle classes in newly industrialising countries, notably in rapidly modernizing and economically successful countries like China, Indonesia or India. The new middle classes are imputed to be nothing less than “consumerist predators” and to be characterized by “complete insensivity to any social concern” (Varma). Following this assumption, making consumption more sustainable seems to be a non-issue par excellence. The concern is that they will, at the utmost, do like the middle classes in the West did, or even worse. As a matter of fact, there is much evidence to confirm such an apprehension. Considering that the estimate for 2002

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was at 1.7 billion people forming the middle classes worldwide (Gardner et al.) and that the Indian middle class alone is estimated at about 250 million people this can actually rise serious concern from a sustainability perspective. Nevertheless it does not go without saying that until now only scarce attention has been paid to the question why globalisation should only take place as a spreading of former (and still very significant) Western faults and errors, thus ignoring and omitting what has been learnt so far and what, today, has become part of the world wide debate on how to develop more sustainable lifestyles. ‘Emerging lifestyles between MacDonaldization and sustainability perspectives’ is the topic of an empirical project conducted in Bangalore/India. Its focus is on highly qualified professionals working in trans-nationally engaged companies, thus being incorporated in a highly globalized ‘postmodern’ working environment while, at the same time, more ‘fordist’ and even traditional cultural links remain relevant. Empirical results of the project will be displayed. The theoretical background is the debate on whether globalisisation is leading to a homogenisation of cultures, to different “modernities” (Eisenstadt) or to “varieties of modernity” (Schmidt). In analytical and practical respect the focus is on identifying specific gateways to making lifestyles more sustainable, different from how the issue has developed in the West.

Session 11. "Environmental justice and ecological debt"

Chairs: Michael Redclift (UK) and David Manuel Navarrete (Spain) michael.r.redclift@kcl.ac.uk

Andrew Jorgenson. North Carolina State University. jorgensonandrew@hotmail.com - Structural Integration, Environmental Degradation, and Health. Cross-National Study of Industrial Organic Water Pollution and Infant Mortality in Less Developed Countries 1980-2000.

This research bridges the areas of environmental sociology, political-economic sociology and the sociology of health. Drawing from foreign investment dependence theory, uneven ecological exchange theory, and world polity /world society theory, the author tests three hypotheses: (1) foreign investment in manufacturing is positively associated with industrial organic water pollution intensity, (2) export intensity is positively associated with industrial organic water pollution intensity, and (3) environmental international non-governmental organisations presence is negatively associated with industrial organic water pollutions intensity. The author also assesses the impact of organic water pollution on infant mortality in less-developed countries. In genera, findings for Prais-Winsten regression analyses with panel-corected stardard errors and generalised least wsquares panel regression analyses of less developed countries confirm the tested hypotheses, and indicate that industrial organic water pollution is positively associated with infant mortality rates, net of the effects of health expenditures, education levels, and other relevant factors. Overall, this research underscores the policy relevance and sociological significance in considering how forms of structural integration impact the environmental and human health, particularly in less-developed countries.

Marco Grasso, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy marco.grasso@unimib.it - The shape of distributive justice in climate change.

The paper is centred on the shape of climate justice, i.e. on the distributive patterns that specify how much of a given currency of justice subjects are entitled to in the context of global climate change. After an overview of the possible currencies of climate justice, the first objective of the paper is the analysis of the main distributive patterns that characterize liberal theories of justice in the climate arena: egalitarianism (equality in the allocation of the currency of justice), prioritarianism (priority should be given to the worst-off in distributing the currency of justice), and sufficientism (every subject must have a sufficient, yet not equal, share of the currency of justice).

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Then, the paper tries to demonstrate that the ethical characteristics of climate change demand a hybrid sufficientist pattern, specifically a priority-constrained sufficientism grounded in, or at least acknowledged by, broadly egalitarian theories of justice.

Inaki Barcena, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Basque country Inaki.barcena@ehu.es - Ecological debt: a tool for moving forward to another possible world. who is indebted to whom?’

Asking oneself this question can be a highly useful exercise. If through emulation, all the people on the Earth had the level of consumption of resources and waste generation of the industrialised countries, we would need five or six more Earths. It is evident that the system of production, distribution and consumption of globalised capitalism is not sustainable. But what is even more important is that in order to safeguard the development model for the welfare of a small part of humanity, past generations have been massacred, and the welfare of the present and future generations has been jeopardised, systematically violating the Human Rights of the majority of the world’s people.

David Manuel-Navarrete, Mark Pelling and Michael Redclift, University of London, UK David.MANUEL-NAVARRETE@cepal.org - The Eye of the Storm": environmental justice and local governance in the Mexican Caribbean.

The majority of the world’s population and physical assets are urban based, yet little is known of the ways in which competing visions and manifestations of urbanisation effect the social distribution of environmental risk associated with climate change, and the opportunities for new policies to improve human security and environmental justice in coastal zones. Globally, climate perturbations exacerbated by global warming carry important implications for human security, especially in coastal locations. Among the most important of these perturbations is the increased severity of hurricane-force storms. This paper, based on research undertaken by the authors for the ESRC (UK) will investigate social and political capacity, and action taken to adapt to the risks and impacts of hurricanes, in an area that is increasingly at the ‘front line’ of global climate change: the Mexican Caribbean coast south of Cancun. The paper compares the impact of changes in governance regimes, under rapid urbanisation, on local adaptive capacity and the actions undertaken by state, non-state and individual actors. It focuses on the development of social capital and the uses to which this is put under pressure from risk and impacts of extreme climatic events.

Carmit Lubanov, Tel Aviv University, Israel don1298@netvision.net.il - Environmental Justice in Israel: Narrative Model of Geographical Injustice.

The Environmental Justice is a newly thematic perception of environmentalism, and, based on the last 4 years of environmental activity in Israel, could be reviewed on 3 levels of references: a) conceptual idea which links between the state of environment and social justice terms; b) socio-political reflection in which the population who suffering from environmental hazardous, in most cases, is political powerlessness; c) strategic policy platform towards sustainability. Based on more than 50 cases of different aspects of environmental injustice cases that were examined, the main two features of environmental injustice in Israel are: 1) The debilitated populations more exposed to environmental pollution are weaker ones, of various natures: due to status, ethnic and or geographic backgrounds; Environmental injustice is most acute in the Arab sector; 2) Lack of accessibility to decision making nodes as well as to basic services and infrastructure. These findings are most acute in the periphery.

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The article would attempt to characterize environmental justice while consider the fundamental issues we have reviewed and will present the 'Narrative Model' of the Geography spectrum of the environmental justice based on few cases. The model will refer as well to the unique geographical scales of Israel in terms of natural resources, the imbalance between perception of different groups in the society regarding "fair share" of natural resources and their practical usage of those resources. The quarries issue will be examined in this context, and other issues as civil society and conflicts,

Mariana Walter & Leire Urkidi, Autonomous University of Barcelona marianawalter2002@gmail.com ; leireurkidiazk@hotmail.com - Anti-gold mining local movements in latin-America.Gold for others or water for us.

Under the regulatory restrictions established by the Washington Consensus (1990), liberal, open market economic policies, State reform and privatizations were spread through Latin America, fostering new legislation that attracted foreign investment. Mining is the paramount example: since the early 90's, it experienced a growth without precedents in private investments. Hence, environmental conflicts questioning the uneven costs and benefits distribution of the activity arose throughout the region. This paper examines two gold mining conflicts that took place in the city of Esquel (Argentinian Patagonia) and in Pascua-Lama (Chilean frontier with Argentina). In the studied conflicts, affected communities, disempowered and excluded from decision making processes, undertake an alternative evaluation of mining projects and their impacts. And during that evaluation, the arisen anti-mining movements construct a structural vision of the problem, incorporating the environmental justice language into their protests. These struggles show that community networks play a crucial role in knowledge, experience and strategy transmission and contribute to the settlement of a national and international interpretation of the mining conflicts. The larger access to information and media reached through these networks enhances the empowerment of the involved communities, favoring the discussion about the power schemes where justice demand emerges.

12- Session 12. Science and technology and risk.

Chair: Eugene Rosa, Washington University, USA. rosa@wsu.edu

Diana Gallego Carrera. University of Stuttgart, Germany. Diana.Gallego@sowi.Uni-Stuttgart.de Planning Geological Underground Storage for Radioactive Waste: Communicating with Society.

In this presentation final results of the 1-year project “Planning geological underground storages for radioactive waste: Communicating with society” will be discussed. Worldwide over 400 nuclear power stations are running. They all produce high-level radioactive waste, which has to be disposed of but at the present time no radioactive waste facility is in operation. Many countries attempt to run a facility for high-level radioactive waste, which seems to be manageable and no big challenge in a technological point of view. The fact, that at the present time no facility for high-level radioactive waste exists is closely connected with citizens’ low acceptance of such a facility. There might be different reasons for this low acceptance, but one issue is for sure citizens mistrust in authorities and the way decisions in environmental and technological conflicts are made. Therefore, the presentation raises the question of how an appropriate information and communication strategy to solve technological conflicts between citizens, scientific experts, industry and political authorities can be achieved. Within the project, discussed here, we compared

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international participation and communication processes in finding under-ground storage sites for high-level radioactive waste in four selected countries. By using an evaluation-framework and conducting expert-interviews we analysed these communication processes and developed prototypical scenarios that serve as a basis for compiling a reference catalogue of “good communication practice”. The results of this empirical data provide guidance for decision-making processes within technological and environmental conflicts exemplified on radioactive waste management dialogues.

Les Levidow. Biotechnology Policy Group, Open University, UK. L.levidow@open.ac.uk - Turning Environmental Risk into Safety Claims: Conflicts over the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Since various crises of food safety in the European Union (EU), institutional reforms have been designed to regain public confidence in regulatory decisions and their expert basis. Towards that aim, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was meant to provide advice that would be ‘independent, objective and transparent’, while also helping to harmonise ‘science-based regulation’, even precaution. In evaluating agri-biotech products during 2003-2005, however, the EFSA procedure intensified disagreements among national experts. Its official advice systematically downplayed uncertainties about risks, by discounting evidence of possible risk, while imposing a great burden upon objectors to demonstrate risks. This safety advice draws upon unofficial backstage views, not appearing in the official advice. In these ways, uncertain risks are turned into safety claims which justify commercial authorisation with no requirement for market-stage monitoring. In the name of neutral scientific advice, EFSA’s incorporates policy assumptions, thus providing a policy-based expertise. These conflicts arise from EFSA’s implicit role in a regulatory harmonisation project which absorbs scientific uncertainties into supposedly expert advice. As an alternative approach, expertise could instead be pluralised, so that norms and uncertainties become more explicit. Pressures for EU reform manifest tensions between those two approaches, amidst ongoing conflicts among member states.

Tapio Litmanen. University of Jyväskylä , Finland. tlitmane@yfi.jyu.fi - Public Consent and political effectiveness of science: Experts’ views on the role of social science in nuclear waste management in Finland.

The aim of the paper is to explore both social and political usage of social science research and its’ effectiveness in the process of planning, developing and making decisions on Finnish nuclear waste management. The line of argument is that the public participation in the process is important, but in order to reach some kind of public acceptability to the plans the actors in charge of “solving” the nuclear waste problem have to govern the societal process and respond to the claims and the needs of public by integrating also social science research into the development of nuclear waste management model. In trying to understand the unique positive siting decision of Eurajoki municipal council in January 2000 and the decision-in-principle the Parliament ratified in May 2001 one has to pay attention to the bureaucratic processes laying the foundations of those decisions. Some kind of public consent, contentment or acceptability was reached in those skilful and long bureaucratic processes involving both deliberative means and responsive use of social science. More general reflection on the ground of the study is the deepening relationship between science and politics, bureaucratic ethos of science, social responsibility of science, increasing need to control the quality of different societal processes and to legitimize societal and political aims. The empirical part of the paper is based on on a study, where ten experts of Finnish nuclear waste management were interviewed.

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Paulo Roberto Martins. Research Institute of Technology of São Paulo State, Brasil. marpaulo@ipt.br - Risks and Nanotechnology: Technical, Social, and Commercial Challenges.

This paper intent to show the audience some importants point about risks and nanotechnology in terms of technical, social and commercial aspects.

In the fist topic (technical) we will show the relationship between nanotechnology risks in human health, environment and research and standards. The second topic (social) will be about these risks in terms of perception, beneficial x commercial applications, impact in developing countries, social impact of controversial innovations Finally, commercial aspects will give information about Regulation, labelling, research transparency, litigation, insurance, and reputation This is one possible plot to discuss the relationship between risks and nanotechnology that RC24 should start to do in deep.

Nick Pidgeon. University of Cardiff, UK. PidgeonN@cardiff.ac.uk - Nuclear Power and Climate Change: Old Arguments, New Framings?.

The UK is witnessing a new line in political debate around new nuclear energy generation as one potential feature of future energy policy, specifically for contributing to climate change mitigation alongside energy security. Little is known about how ordinary citizens might be responding to this reframing. This paper reports the results from a major British survey (n=1491) undertaken in the autumn of 2005. Public perceptions of nuclear power have, particularly following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, been consistently negative. The consistent message from the current survey is that while higher proportions of the British public are prepared to accept nuclear power if they believe it contributes to climate change mitigation, very few would actively prefer this over renewable sources given the choice. Discursively, people see both climate change and nuclear power as problematic in terms of risks and express only a ‘reluctant acceptance’ of nuclear power as a ‘solution’ to climate change. The combined data from this survey can also be interpreted as an indication of the complexity surrounding beliefs about energy futures and the difficulty of undertaking simplistic risk-risk tradeoffs within any single framing of the issues; such as nuclear energy versus climate change. The results also indicate that it would be unwise, in the UK as elsewhere, to simplistically assume that there exists any single or stable public ‘opinion’ on such complex matters. We conclude with a discussion of the role and implications of social sciences evidence for the policy process as governments and populations around the globe deliberate about both of these critical environmental-technological risk questions.

David Fig. Independent scholar, South Africa. davidfig@iafrica.com - Public scrutiny over the choice of risky technologies: evidence from South Africa, Sweden, and the United States.

To what extent can the public exercise some control over the assessment and adoption of technologies that involve considerable risk to human and environmental health? This study looks at the ways in which public participation in technological assessment have occurred within three democratic societies: South Africa, Sweden and the United States. It will trace the debates around the need for and efficacy of mechanisms which some societies have installed for civil society and government to review risky technologies. South Africa’s democratic constitution upholds the rights to knowledge, public participation, and sustainable development. Yet a number of technologies which have recently been adopted since 1994 cannot be regarded as fulfilling criteria of sustainability and transparency. The mechanisms for

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public scrutiny of these technologies will be examined, in an effort to understand how the new democracy defies some of its founding values. In the case of Sweden, the paper will look at the way in which the state assisted civil society to form technical awareness as part of enhancing public debate in the face of the 1980 referendum on the future of nuclear power. The United States also offers an interesting example, since its Congress established an Office for Technological Assessment during the period 1972-1995. This Office offered its resources to the public in order to make available various scientific assessments of risky technologies. The Office was abolished in 1995, an event which raises interesting political questions. The empirical data established by the case studies feeds into a debate about what kind of institutional architecture is necessary in contemporary democracies to provide neutral information to assist the public to participate in debates around the introduction or continued use of environmentally risky technologies. In view of the advancement of corporate lobbying, it is important to consider ways in which fuller information on risk becomes available as a way of improving public participation in complex decision making that affects environmental futures.

13- Session 13. Ecological risk: local to global.

Chairs: Nick Pidgeon, Cardiff Universty, UK; and Eugene Rosa, Washington University USA. PidgeonN@cardiff.ac.uk rosa@wsu.edu

Stefan Walter University of Lapland, Finland. Stefan.walter@ulapland.fi - Can science manage ecological risks?

Social order can be seen as a response to life’s complexity. With the help of technology socio-cultural evolution has increasingly well adapted to complexity, producing itself increasingly complex social structures. Simultaneously, societal evolution has also produced more and more ecological impacts. Thus, ecological impacts appear as a consequence of managing complexity ever better. While society is inconceivable without any technology, in modern globalised society there is increased pressure for novel technology and fast scientific innovations. Advantages include the maintenance of economic competitiveness, as by-products possible reductions of resource extraction and less waste emissions, and most importantly the maintenance of governance capacity. The latter is a direct consequence of competitiveness and its trust-strengthening capability. However, more knowledge and technology create more complex conditions. This is, for example, reflected in the increasing selectivity of modern life, i.e. the need to make more decisions. Thus, science strengthens the circumstances under which social structures produce ecological impacts. Hence, there is a risk in not innovating, which is reflected in the loss of economic competitiveness and possible loss of governance capacity. On the other hand, there is a risk in innovating, reflected in unintended consequences, such as ecological impacts. Consequentially, over time the gap between complexity, which social structures attempt to govern and the actual governance capacity will widen. More knowledge and innovations make it increasingly less probable that society can adequately respond to the challenges of complexity. Does science, thereby, increase the risk of unintended consequences, including ecological impacts?

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Vanesa Castán Broto, Claudia Carter, Lucia Elghali, and Kate Burningham. Social and Economic Research Group Environmental and Human Sciences Division, Forestry Commission, UK. Vanessa.broto@forestry.gsi.gov.uk - Limitations of risk analysis tools to address local concerns about residential pollution.

Risk assessment is commonly applied to evaluate and manage the potential hazards associated with pollution and their probability of occurrence. However, expert-led hazard evaluation may be insufficient to address concerns of locally affected residents. This paper reviews a case study of coal ash pollution and remediation in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the development of an EU project RECOAL (Remediation of Coal Ash Disposal Sites on the Western Balkans) that has been studying this issue during the last three years. In doing so, the paper shows that by solely using a standard risk analysis approach, the project has not addressed the most immediate concerns of the local residents regarding the environmental degradation.

Qualitative research was carried out among residents living near the coal ash disposal sites. Their concerns have been summarised and presented to the RECOAL consortium and to some degree led to small adjustments in its focus and approach. However, the project appears to be unable to address day-to-day problems of the local population. The risk assessment methodology, for example, does not accommodate issues such as the changed visual amenity, increased littering, the dirt caused by fine ash particles, foul smells and minor skin and throat/lung releated irritations,. Local interviewees described atypical phenomena such as ‘sticky rain’, ‘black snow’ and ‘dead water’ that have not been specifically addressed within RECOAL. The case study suggests that environmental policies and management practices need to become more engaged with and propose solutions relevant to everyday life practices in those residential areas.

José M. Echavarren. Universidad Pablo Olavide, Spain. echavarren@gmail.com - Fear and Ecoreligion: new elements of the current ecological crisis.

The current ecological crisis has brought about an environment of fear that affects many people in society. In this article we study how environmental fear influences attitudes and ecocentric practices in Europe as well as its relation with a sacred interpretation of nature. Religion can be considered a cultural answer to collective fear and this is why we study how it reacts to the new environmental fear. The article draws special attention to a new ecoreligion named Cosmic Piety by Giner and Tàbara. The data used in the research comes from the ISSP Environment survey of 2000, covering 13 European countries. The results show that environmental fear activates ecological behaviour, and Cosmic Piety scores high in environmental fear as well as in ecocentric behaviour. Traditional religious beliefs tend more to experience environmental fear, but the main difference with Cosmic Piety is the lack of transcendence in the interpretation of the sacred essence of nature. This lack of transcendence explains the higher ecocentric values of Cosmic Piety.

Christopher Oliver. Are biofuels a Panacea or a potential environmental disaster? Michigan State University USA. Oliverc1@msu.edu. Exploring environmental risk and the ecotechnological contradiction of the capitalist state,

The biofuels industry in the United States and Europe has grown dramatically over the past decade and continues to be an important component of energy policy among the US and governments of the European Union. Debate among policy and technical experts as to the viability and cost effectiveness of biofuels as a replacement of petroleum based energy production remains vigorous. However debate regarding the environmental risk associated with use of biofuels is limited. In this paper I will explore the literature on the biofuels production industry in the US and Europe and its potential economic and environmental consequences. I assert that some environmental theorists (Mol; Mol and Spaargaren; Mol and Sonnefeld; Hajer) argue that technological solutions to environmental problems can serve the interest of both state and industry, protecting environmental and public health, and avoid excessive environmental regulatory

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measures that impede economic growth (arguing also that regulations can foster growth through "green growth" initiatives). However, technological "solutions" often exacerbate existing environmental problems and put the public's health at greater risk than the initial dangers these policies sought to remedy. One potential case of such an ecotechnological contradiction involves the development of the biofuels industry in the US and Europe. The premise of this paper is that ecotechnological contradictions facilitated by partnerships between industry, the scientific community and the regulatory system (the State) are logical outcomes of a capitalist system that treats nature solely and exclusively as a commodity. Further, nature is reduced to a "substitutable" resource, one that can only be valued through purely economic means. However, as I demonstrate, these capitalist assumptions – both in theory and in practice – undermine the very conditions necessary for its continued existence. These ideas are an extension of a number of socio-cultural, environmental, risk and STS theorists including Beck, Braun and Castree, Buttel, Habermas, Latour, O'Connor, Rosa, and Schnaiberg

Biancca Scarpeline de Castro. UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil. bianccastro@ig.com.br Science and Technology and Development

The development, which several authors characterized in different ways, has, as a characteristic in common among most of those analyses, the importance of the science and technology progress for its consummation. The article proposed has the aim of referring to some points related to science and technology and to the development, pointing, first of all, the importance of the already mentioned binomial for the development different authors desire, not questioning the definition of the concept itself (comprehending the development as a process). In a second moment, it is intended to highlight the importance of (economical and social) development for science and technology, pointing not only the benefits they can provide, but also the problems and the risks which follow its deficiency and its excess, and, finally, discuss the possibility of solution for those questions in an important theoretical proposal: the sustainable development.

Giuseppe Tipaldo., Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy. Giuseppe.tipaldo@unito.it A comparative analysis of local press about settlement of an urban waste incinerator in Turin and Trento Plant and infrastructure settlements with a heavy ecological impact represent a highly sophisticated and diverse phenomenon. From a socio-communicative point of view, the variables to be monitored are very abundant and for each of them it is possible to found different interpretations, one of which is presented here. In order to strategically break those deadlocks connected with settlement projects of works considered ‘useful by unwanted’, it is necessary to fully know the complex reciprocal—and often synchronic—influences among the three players belonging to the high public media ranks (political system, public opinion, and mass media). To this end, the most meaningful results of public debate regarding the project to build a big household waste incineration plant. The aim is to trace the prominent coordinates which have typified the debate staged on the media arena, embodied by the local daily press, concerning the incineration issue.

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14. Session 14. Community and natural resources.

Chair: Stewart Lockie Central Queensland University, Australia. s.lockie@cqu.edu.au

E. N. Ashok Kumar, SRTM University, India, erantia@rediffmail.com: Forest-Community Interface: Some Structural Determinants.

The linkages between the community and the forest resources are determinant upon the structure of the community and ordering of various social groups-strata. In the context of stratified nature of Indian society, individuals living in the vicinity of forests tend to express their preferences over a particular forest resource based on not only the economic circumstances, but also the socio-cultural values cherished by the group to which they are members. Against this backdrop, the paper intends to address to a set of three questions: 1. What are the prominent social strata in the community under the study? 2. What are their choices and preferences for the resources available in the forest? and 3. What are the variations across the strata in utilizing those resources? This paper is a part of the study funded by the World Bank under “India: Environmental Management Capacity Building” Technical Assistance Project. The study was carried out in two villages of Maharastra state, Western India. The study adopted a blend of economic and anthropological methods in the collection and interpretation of data. The community under the study was divided into four strata: (i) Tribes; (ii) Herdsmen; (iii) Farmers; and (iv) Village Artisans and Servicemen. It was found that (a) the tribes, conspicuously harvested gum, Mahuva flowers, bamboo, Tendu leaves and Charoli seeds which carry a social stigma as “tribal forest resources”. The farmers indulged in harvesting fuel-wood and timber which enjoy a secular status in the community. (b) Characteristically, the tribes harvested forest resources for income generation and the choice was guided by the opportunity cost of labor while for the farmers, the decisions were motivated by the substitution cost. (c) The tribes harvested such resources which involved more drudgery compared to those of the farmers. Thus the study inferred the structured nature of Community-Forest Interface.

Maria José Carneiro, UFRRJ, Brazil, mjcarneiro@terra.com.br: Environmentalism and agriculture: new disputes on the use of the territory.

The creation of areas of ambient protection has been one of the main instruments of the governmental police for conservation of biodiversity. Despite of the new instruments of local participation and the new ideologies that search to associate the conservation of biodiversity to the preservation of the native culture and to the sustainable territorial development, the governmental action does not take into account the different representations of “nature” and the different uses of the territory by the local population. In general this generates or strengthens conflicts. Established agricultures in areas of Atlantic Forest are, now, faced to the menaces on their activity based on the itinerant agriculture as a form to recuperate the fertility of the soil. This practice is severely restrained by the environmental organisms under the argument that it would be an aggression to the biodiversity and the recovery of Atlantic Forest. In result, these small farmers are taken to abandon the agricultural activity or to change their system of production incorporating an intense use of fertilizers and other sorts of chemistries’ products. This article aims at to present and discuss the way as the local population appropriates of the environmental discourse as a way of defending themselves from the repressive actions of the governmental organisms.

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Stewart Lockie, Centre for Social Science Research, Central Queensland University, Australia, s.lockie@cqu.edu.au: Community-based conservation of agricultural biodiversity within neoliberal regimes of governance.

International agreements highlight the centrality of agricultural biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides to human well-being, but provide little guidance on how to integrate agrobiodiversity within workable national and local regimes of governance. In constructing a workable regime of governance for agricultural biodiversity, Australian governments have been particularly concerned to maintain and extend the neoliberal project of market rule. Biodiversity loss is defined as an outcome of market failure induced by inadequate property rights, perverse incentives, lack of information, and the inability of markets to capture the full ecological cost of agricultural production. Neoliberal logic thus suggests that biodiversity loss is best addressed through various types of market reform that encourage and enable individual producers to internalise the environmental and social costs of production. However, new tensions have been created between the totalising logic of market rule and the spatio-temporal variability and specificity of biodiversity management. Despite the positive emphasis of Australian agri-environmental policy on planning and capacity building, declining terms of trade for agricultural produce are likely to may make it very difficult for the majority of landholders to actively manage biological resources for which there are not direct and immediate productivity benefits.

Sabine Möllenkamp, Darya Hirsch, Institute for Environmental Systems Research University of Osnabrueck, Germany, sabine.moellenkamp@usf.uni-osnabrueck.de: Comparing research-supported stakeholder involvement in the Rhine and Amudarya basins: is it to compare "apples and oranges"?

Stakeholder involvement is considered as one of the prerequisites for adaptive and integrated water resources management. It is closely linked to learning which is in the core of the adaptive management process. Participation is required by international agreements (Rio Declaration, Aarhus Convention) as well as by European environmental regulations (European Water Framework Directive). However, current practice is behind the national and international recommendations and obligations. In order to support participation in water management, the EU FP 6 NeWater project (www.newater.info) encourages direct interaction of research and consultancy with stakeholders. Within the project, participatory processes are being supported in European case studies (e.g. Rhine basin) as well as beyond Europe (e.g. Amudarya basin). What can research induced processes change in the existing water management practice? What are prerequisites for such processes to function properly? These questions are elaborated in the paper. We also discuss how far research induced participatory processes help practitioners to engage on their own in the future or if involvement of researchers is rather impeding for future initiatives. The paper first illustrates background conditions and current processes in the Rhine and Amudarya basins and describes the stakeholder processes supported by the NeWater-project. The inherent motivation and dynamics of the respective water management regimes to build up and sustain participatory processes also beyond the NeWater interventions are analysed. Finally, we draw on the question in how far the two participatory interventions are comparable, as they have started out with similar motivations, but have to cope with fundamentally differing background conditions.

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Irene A. Sosunova, International Independent University of Environmental and Political Sciences, sossunova@mtu-net.ru, Monolache Konstantin, Ministry of Defense, Moldova, monolache53@mail.ru: Socio-ecological interests, ecological problems and public debate: comparative analysis of Russian and Moldavian transforming societies.

Experimental studies of socio-ecological interests as a sociological category nowadays become rather actual. This study made it possible to take into scientific consideration the consolidating and differentiating roles of socio-ecological interests in the process of social transformation. At the same time, the concepts of reflection of ecological problems in social consciousness and mass behavior of different social groups have been elaborated. In 2006 -2007 the realized tasks of the authors' project were focused on the creation of theoretical foundations of analysis of socio-ecological problems of Russian and Moldavian societies in transformation as well as the preparation of methodic of comparative sociological research of socio-ecological factor in political relations in Russia and Moldova. During this period the following scientific and practical results were achieved: The categorical apparatus for description of socio-ecological problems in frameworks of comparative research was created. This provided for specification of the existed definitions, introduction of new concepts and categories and the operationalisation of those. The conception of reflection of ecological environment to social behavior and orientations of different social-demographic groups of population was adapted and developed as well as conception of socio-ecological monitoring and conceptual scheme of origin and development of socio-ecological conflict in Post-Soviet dimension. The conceptualization of reflection of socio-ecological problems in mass behavior of different social communities in transformation was approved. Theoretical and experimental study of general and specific aspects of the process of institutionalization of social-ecological interests in Russia has been conducted. Paper is prepared during the research undertaken under the sponsorship of Russian Fund of Fundamental Research 08-06-90102-Мол_а.

Hilary Tovey, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, htovey@tcd.ie: Constructing Communities for Natural Resource Governance.

Participatory approaches to natural resource management/governance interpellate the ‘community’ in governance processes in a range of different ways. Thus, for example, users of a Transdisciplinarity approach have criticised the monopolistic role of scientific ecological knowledge in natural resource management, arguing that the normative assumptions about human-nature relationships underpinning ecological science need to be opened up to ‘community’ debate and redefinition as part of a process of joint production of knowledge for regulating local natural resource use. Proponents of Public Ecology speak aboout the need to draw on all available sources of knowledge in order to manage a nature which is chaotic, complex and constantly changing, including that of ‘the larger community of stakeholders’ alongside professional ecologists. Those influenced by the concept of ‘post-normal science’ refer to the need to extend ‘the peer review community’ as part of the process of achieving a more participatory form of natural resource governance. Appeals are thus made to spatial, interest-based, and cognitive communities, among others, as legitimate actors within natural resource governance. The identification of such new actors, and the possibility of accommodating them within policy structures which are still organised around adherence to democratic decision-making in its representative form. will be the main points of my discussion.

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15. Session 15. "Public participation in environmental monitoring"

Session organizers: Steven Yearley (UK) and Maria Eugenia Rodrigues (PT) Email: steve.yearley@ed.ac.uk eugenia@ics.uminho.pt

Maria Eugénia Rodrigues, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, eugenia@ics.uminho.pt & Steven Yearley, University of Edinburgh, UK, steve.yearley@ed.ac.uk - Locating environmental monitoring: how to analyse environmental monitoring in the light of sociological theory

This paper has two aims: a) to show how central environmental monitoring is to many forms of environmental activity and intervention and b) to indicate how the practice and role of monitoring can be beneficially understood in sociological terms. In this abstract we will simply illustrate these two aims. With regard to the first aim, let us consider the case of risks. All sociologists are now familiar with the notion of environmental risk, risk management and risk reduction. But we argue that the establishing and management of risks is always tied to practices of monitoring. Without environmental monitoring there can be no risk calculations. The irony is that all the sociological attention has focused on the risks and none on the monitoring. We show that this applies to a very wide range of environmental phenomena. With regard to the second aim, we use case-study material to indicate the different ways that monitoring can be undertaken. We demonstrate that there is a sociology of monitoring. We indicate that the choice of monitoring procedure (whether it is mechanised or dependent on skilled interpretation, whether it is done by professionals or citizen activists) has significant implications, both for the information that monitoring generates and for the whole way in which environmental issues are conceptualised. We conclude with a call for the wider recognition of the significance of environmental monitoring practices and for proper sociological acknowledgement of monitoring’s role in environmental cultures.

Nicolas Benvegnu, Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, École des Mines de Paris & Groupe de Recherche Énergie, Technologie et Société, EDF R&D, nicolas.benvegnu@ensmp.fr - A political invention? The procedure for a public debate on the installation of wind turbines in Atrébatie, France.

Over recent years, traditional modes of political management have been vastly improved and completed by a series of procedures which provide more room for action prior to the decision which will eventually result from citizen participation. Some of these have gradually been stabilised and even occasionally institutionalised (by way of consensus conferences, participative budgets, etc.). But this field continues to be enhanced by greater debate, reflection and exchange, leading to a multitude of experiments, methods, places and tools for public debate. The equipment needed for information and for the publicisation of causes and their discussion comes from a huge reservoir of innovations : Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are ever more frequently integrated into this type of experiment. In this presentation, drawing on the case of a debate organised by elected officials who were backing a controversial local development project – namely the development of a site for wind turbines in the north of France – we wanted to examine how ICTs had assisted in an inquiry run by citizens who wanted to learn more about this controversial proposal. I will demonstrate how ICTs were utilised as a device with which to manage the procedure as a whole.

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Ana Gonçalves, ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal, Ana.Goncalves@iscte.pt & João Guerra, ICS, University of Lisbon, Portugal, Joao.Guerra@iscte.pt - Learning science, exercising citizenship: a Portuguese case study.

Air pollution in Europe is causing alarming increases in respiratory diseases, mainly among children and other vulnerable population. To help policy makers justify difficult decisions on pollution, scientists need to correlate these with indoor, outdoor and personal exposure data, but to gather extensive personal exposure data, through the specialized agencies and institutes, is a heavy burden — and expensive — which is preventing its large scale implementation. Policy makers need also to raise awareness on air pollution, to gain citizen support to set in place good policies to curb pollution. Besides the importance of informed political support, citizen behaviour is part of the problem and its educated improvement must be part of the solution. Political leaders agree on the strategic need to promote citizenship in the European Union, but indoctrination approaches, even if wrapped in the noble flag of democracy, clearly do not produce healthy results, in schools or elsewhere. Schools seek ways to raise the quality of learning through experimental science and promoting social responsibility, but finding the right approach to motivate students remains a challenge. For all those reasons, EuroLifeNet main objective is to connect the gathering of scientific environmental data with raising citizen awareness through participation, with focus on youth, targeting schools as a key partner. The proposed communication will present and discuss some empirical results of a comparative survey of social risk perceptions associated with air pollution applied to Portuguese students who have and who have not been involved in EuroLifeNet’s air monitoring activities.

Gláucia da Silva, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, glauciasil@terra.com.br - Nuclear risk in France: the Local Information Committees case

This essay aims to describe the work of the Local Information Committees (CLI) which were created in France to establish a relationship between nuclear power plant agents and the implicated population with the purpose of supervising the industries’ activities. It argues that the CLI allows both the management of local people’s suspicion regarding the nuclear plant and the technological risk management provided by the nuclear plants to their neighborhoods. In a context of extreme disagreement, CLI members have elected the principles of “neutrality”, “autonomy” and “independent action” in order to promote a successful communication between nuclear companies and citizens. It also calls attention to the fact that there is a conflict which is frequently described as a “war” between those who are nuclear industry supporters and promoters and those who are in opposition to nuclear power plants.

Magnus Boström, Södertörn University College, Huddinge, Sweden, magnus.bostrom@sh.se & Kristina Tamm Hallström, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, Stockholm, Sweden, NGO participation in global social and environmental standard-setting

Worldwide we see an explosion of new private, ‘multi-stakeholder’, authorities that aim to set and issue new standards for socially and environmentally responsible behaviour. Such hybrid type of authorities offer new channels for political participation and environmental monitoring among great numbers of social movements and non-governmental organizations. NGOs often play agenda-setting roles and many also participate permanently. Literature so far has paid attention to the roles of NGO in providing legitimacy, ‘moral authority’ or alternative framings in such arrangements. However, there is less research on the long-term implications of such participation, for instance around the (lack of) abilities among NGOs to maintain a powerful role and a critical eye. This paper will analyse the participation and roles of NGOs, particularly environmental NGOs, within three global standard-setting organizations: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the International Organization for Standardization in its current work on Social

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Responsibility (ISO-SR). We address such questions as 1) how NGOs are categorised and the consequences of particular categorization (e.g. what types of NGOs that benefit from a particular categorization); 2) what type of power resources (cognitive, symbolic, and material) NGOs are able to mobilise and maintain in debates and negotiations of standard-setting procedures and criteria; 3) what the global standard setting organisation can or cannot do to assist participation of various NGOs (e.g. NGOs from poor countries); and 4) how NGOs link to their own constituencies (questions around representation, accountability, as well as cognitive and organizational autonomy). The paper will end up in a discussion about how NGOs’ roles and impact have changed over time in relation to the institutionalisation of standard-setting practices, and we will discuss if this type of public participation favours particular types of NGOs (e.g. radical vs moderate).

Ana Delgado, Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway & Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, ana.delgado@svt.uib.no - Re-thinking public participation in environmental governance

The complexities of the natural and social systems, the uncertainties constituting scientific knowledge and the distrust towards science and technology have become regular topics within the social approaches to science. Commonly in environmental governance, public participation is recommended as a way to deal with those issues. This paper will address public participation by reflecting upon ideas and describing practices of sustainable development management, especially regarding agri-biodiversity conservation. The first section of the paper will concern itself with a classic ‘dilemma of green deliberation’ and public participation: where to place the border between expert and lay knowledge? Borrowing from Collins and Evans I will call it “the problem of extension”. The second part of the paper will consist of a description and an analysis of an empirical case. It is based upon empirical studies within the MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People Movement), the biggest rural movement in Latin America. The MST has assumed governmental functions; it is not just a movement but also an important rural technical organization. MST technicians work together with small-scale farmers for the sustainable management of agri-biodiversity. The paper will describe the lay-expert interplay within the MST showing how the dilemma of green deliberation plays out in the everyday relation between technicians and farmers. In the conclusion the paper will call for more contextual and political ways of solving “the problem of extension”. I suggest the notion of ‘emerging participation’, aiming to provide some provisional and partial insights on how to replace the borders between citizens and experts in environmental governance.

16. Session 16: Democratizing knowledge, democratizing power I. Downstream dynamics of knowledge/power Chair: Luigi Pellizzoni, University of Trieste, Italy, pellizzonil@sp.units.it Steven R. Brechin, Syracuse University (USA), sbrechin@maxwell.syr.edu, & Osmany Salas Independent Consultant, Belize. - NGOs, Civil Society and State Networks: Democratizing State Functions of Nature Protection in Belize, Central America

This paper explores the democratizing impact of indigenous non-government organizations-civil society-state networks involved in nature protection activities that have evolved over the last decade or so in Belize, Central America. In many places worldwide the state maintains a heavy hand in nature conservation activities, including the control of information. More recently states are increasingly making arrangement with international non-government organizations and international agencies. These collaboration and power-sharing arrangements with local people and communities are often in name only or the power-sharing arrangements that emerge are quite asymmetrical including the allocation of information. In this paper the authors offer an encouraging example of state-civil society collaboration that have resulted in greater democratization and power-sharing among agencies of the state, non-government organizations, and local communities. The paper explores in some detail how power sharing approaches have emerged in Belize through two different

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types of co-management arrangements, one between the state and civil society organizations and then between these organizations and local communities. This progress at both democratization and power sharing may be placed in some jeopardy with the recent rise of international NGOs in Belize.

Aino Inkinen, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland, aino.inkinen@ymparisto.fi - Does knowledge bring power? The case of participation in environmental decision-making

Keynes once said that there is ‘…nothing a government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult...’. Nonetheless, faced with the challenge of governance today, decision-makers must learn to obtain, process and use knowledge from many sources and of many forms in order to make decisions. In environmental decision-making, the source of knowledge for decision-makers has long been the expert-dominated pool of science, largely made up of epistemic and technical types of knowledge. Through the development of governance and integration of participatory processes in law and policy, the positivist knowledge base is no longer seen legally or democratically as satisfactory, and decision-making requires the identification of a good epistemic mix, incorporating phronesis (practical wisdom) and metis or tacit knowledge. This also means greater transparency, access to information and public participation in environmental decision-making, something European states have committed to do as signatories to the Aarhus Convention. In this paper the case of public participation in the Finnish environmental permit process is investigated. The permit system is a fairly rigid command-and-control structure although it also incorporates formal participatory processes, aimed at improving transparency, acceptability and quality of permit decisions. The role of knowledge in permit decision-making is investigated in terms of access, impact and influence. What can knowledge do, and what does it do? In whose hands is knowledge power?

Beatrice Bengtsson, University of Lund, Sweden, Beatrice.Bengtsson@fpi.lu.se & Mikael Klintman, University of Lund, Sweden, mikael.klintman@fpi.lu.se - Dilemmas for Developing Legitimacy in New Food Safety Governance: The example of the European Food Safety Authority

The food scares during the 1990s and the following public concerns facilitated a transformation of food safety governance on national and European levels. As a result, the responsibility to ensure consumer protection and to restore public confidence is increasingly shared between government agencies, the food industry, and NGOs. The paper is a research review exploring key factors of the new food safety governance architecture in the European Union. The aim is to examine if the ambitions of democratizing food safety governance facilitate a democratization of knowledge. What perspectives on safety and risk are welcomed and what are excluded, and how are the boundaries drawn? Participatory and deliberative processes are increasingly applied to food safety governance to reduce democratic deficits. However, democracy may also be discussed in terms of substantive principles, such as plurality of knowledge claims. The results reveal that responsibility for food safety may have become more evenly distributed. However, power asymmetries remain. The take on democracy in the food safety domain concerns working procedures rather than knowledge or expertise. Therefore, the article stresses the need for problematizing the role of scientific truth claims and to conceptualize expertise in ways more relevant for the new food safety governance.

Luigi Pellizzoni, University of Trieste, Italy, pellizzonil@sp.units.it - Manufacturing nature. Converging technologies and the knowledge/power dynamics

In the last years two master narratives have taken the floor in an increasingly pervasive way. One is that of ‘knowledge-based economy’, by which scientific knowledge and technological innovation are designated as the key factors for economic growth. Famously endorsed by the European Union it has been adopted by all the most advanced countries. The other narrative is that of ‘converging technologies’, by which we are at the beginning of a new era promoted by synergistic combination of nanoscience and nanotechnology, biotechnology and biomedicine, information technology and cognitive science, the driver of convergence being arguably nanoscience and nanotechnology.

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The two narratives are clearly connected. They both argue that techno-scientific advancement in the nano-bio-cognitive areas would enhance not only wealth but also sustainability. Both narratives, moreover, suggest a subtle interplay between the natural and the social, the discovered and the manufactured. The prospect is not only of a further step in the control of nature, understood as the non-human world, but that, such advancement taking place at the crossroads of body and mind, physical processes and cognitive processes, it would impinge on the core of human beings, their own ‘nature’. Enthusiasts and catastrophists predictably fill the debate. Predictably too, public discussion is framed by official discourses presenting such processes as universally beneficial, inevitable (self-driven), well-managed (by the usual knot of government-business interests), and therefore deserving public approval or (in the case of a lack of it) efficient decision-making. In addressing such issue many critics question the marginalisation of relevant knowledge and commitments, the assumption being that a ‘democratization’ of knowledge entails a democratization of power. I will focus on the manufactured and contested character the world is assuming, arguing that the transformation of discoveries into inventions is likely to become crucial to power struggles, and against the mainstream I will explore the idea that in such context a democratization of knowledge may strengthen, rather than weaken, power structures.

Benoit Vergriette, AFSSET, France, benoit.vergriette@afsset.fr & Sylvie Loisel, AFSSET, France, sylvie.loisel@afsset.fr - Democratising the expertise process related to environmental and health risks: a French experience

Following various sanitary crises in the 80s and early 90s such as HIV-contaminated blood or mad-cow disease (BSE), France like numerous other European countries established safety agencies concerned with health products, foodstuffs, environment, etc. The aim: renewing traditional policy-making on issues related to health, by providing sound scientific advice to policy-makers. However, with the growing concern about long-term health effects of technological innovations and environmental degradation, which are often characterised by a high level of uncertainty, the scientific expertise process is sometimes contested as being too opaque, closed, or even influenced by private interests. This presentation will focus on the experience of the French agency for environmental and occupational health safety (Afsset) and how it deals with communication, information, stakeholders’ involvement both in the Agency’s management structure and in the risk assessment process. Will also be presented the joint initiative for promoting a more participatory approach of the expertise and risk governance processes carried out by several French public institutes and agencies in charge of scientific expertise.

Wynne Wright, Michigan State University, USA, wrightwy@anr.msu.edu & Bálint Balázs, Szent István University, Hungary, Balazs.balint@essrg.hu - Democratising Agro-Food Knowledge? The Case of Hungaricums

Policy-makers, analysts, researchers and rural development professionals are increasing expressing trepidation about the ways in which global forces are impacting rural development. Many rural areas are finding their markets less competitive, their social protections eroding, and their human capital deficient and outmoded. As a consequence, some development efforts are attributing a place or regional identity to sets or ‘baskets’ of agro-food products and services that are frequently found in the same region in an effort to catalyze a value-centered, regional development strategy. These baskets commonly include a wide variety of diverse, yet related, agricultural activities and products, tourist services, cultural attractions, and landscape and environmental amenities. When given a regional or place-based identity, the products and services ‘in the basket’ gain meaning and value from each other and the territorial context in which they are available while also strengthening the reputation of a locality. This paper reports the findings of qualitative interview data that seeks to identify how businesses, government agencies, non-profit groups and citizens construct and use territorial or place-based identity as a quality attribute to promote regional development in Hungary. Preliminary results suggest that place-based agro-food marketing is replete with paradox. Using the case of traditional products of Hungary, called Hungaricums, we show that place-based marketing is

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rooted in the cultural knowledge systems of indigenous populations. We see this renewed interest in place-based products as a form of agro-food democratization because it celebrates and diffuses traditional knowledge. Yet, it also commodifies local knowledge. We conclude by considering the consequences of this contradiction, tension and struggle for the democratization of the agro-food system.

17. Session 17. Democratizing knowledge, democratizing power II: upstream dynamics of

knowledge/power. Chair: Luigi Pellizzoni Università di Trieste, Italy. PellizzoniL@sp.units.it

Bálint Balázs, Szent István University, Hungary balazs.balint@essrg.hu , Norbert Kohlheb Szent István University, Hungary & György Pataki, Szent István University, Hungary - Forest Discourses and Democratizing Knowledge: The Case of Hungarian Forestry

Sociology’s renewed interest in forestry issues is increasingly relevant in identifying various social forces effecting knowledge production about forests, understanding the context in which different stakeholders attribute differing values to forests. This paper reports the findings from Hungary of a complex, self-reflective qualitative valuation exercise of forests which aimed to identify forest discourses and values of stakeholders involved in forest management. Forest discourses and interpretations were explored by interviewing in three case study areas to understand co-evolutionary differences between three forest-dependent local communities representing contrasting levels of socio-economic development and ecological features. A floodplain gallery forest with pastures and invasive poplar hybrids, a moor forest with giant oak trees on grassland turned into sandy plain and intensive plantations and, finally, a family forestry with diverse woodlands will present results of semi-structured interviews and transect walking with stakeholders. Preliminary results suggest that the discourse of local traditional knowledge claims are emotional and habituated and judged private-family ownership and small-scale non-industrial cultivation methods to be the proper way of living off sustainably forest services. The professional forestry discourse is instrumentally rational and scientific and forests are valued more when they are intensively cultivated. The discourse of locality gives a privileged status to locally situated knowledge and local ownership of forests. The paper will conclude by referring to the revealed and constructed discourses of consensus-building focus groups where researchers discussed analytical results with local stakeholders to reflect on the possibilities to democratize traditional knowledge claims, bring local knowledge back into public policy decision-making.

Laura Centemeri, University of Milano, Italy, laura.centemeri@unimi.it - Environmental damage as externality: a sociological perspective

Starting from the economic definition of environmental problems as externalities, nowadays the dominant frame in environmental policies, the aim of this paper is to propose a broader sociological perspective on environmental damage as externality. A sociological approach enables not only to take into account a pluralism of instruments for the collective choice besides the economic ones, but as well a pluralism of forms of qualifying the damage. This implies to recognize as relevant for the collective decision different forms of knowledge about environmental damage, included those more embedded in the local contexts affected by the damage. The economic frame is then just one of the legitimate ways to qualify the damage. In order to internalize and, most of all, to repair in an effective way the environmental damage, its social and political nature can not be bypassed in the name of a technical or expert definition. This calls for instruments of public action that can include the variety of actors concerned by the damage and that are sensitive not only to the necessity of “mediation” between different definitions of the public interest but as well of “translation”, with respect to forms of “local” knowledge that have to be made publicly recognizable. Evidences from controversies on environmental damage are discussed in this perspective.

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Cécilia Claeys-Mekdade, Université de la Méditerranée, France, mekdade@univmed.fr - The limits of participative democracy: How wide is the gap between forums and “ordinary” inhabitants/citizens?

Previously existed, participative democracy has nevertheless fond a new dynamic within environmental issue since the 1960/70’s. Well-embedded into the English-speaking culture, participative democracy has rapidly spread to other Western countries and more recently to the south, encouraged by international declarations as the Rio one (1992). From this point of view, a good environmental policy “should be” based on participative democracy (article N°10 of the Rio declaration). This link between the environmental issue and the democratic one, especially in its participative form, is based on the assumption that the environment concerns everyone who therefore should be allowed to express their opinion. If the growth of participative procedures is increasingly visible, their capacity to reach a large public and therefore to provide the opportunity to a diversified range of “ordinary inhabitants” to express themselves, is less obvious. In fact, the rate of participation is still narrow and the people expressing themselves often belong to the middle class rather than the labour one. This leads to the following dualism. On the one hand, the public debates bring together a restricted number of participants able to get into deep discussions, learning from each other, and sometimes also managing to reach a common decision. On the other hand, most of the inhabitants “just” stay at home. Such a difference between these forums and the silent inhabitants tends to open a gap. This paper proposed to analyse what this gap is made of: How wide can it be? Is there any links between the forums and the silent populations, and how such connexions would work? Is this gap more often filled by confidence or rather by suspicion? And, the last but not the least, why such a gap exists? And finally, what can the sociologists do about it? This paper is based on the comparative analyse of both qualitative and quantitative databases dealing with several French cases which have been studied since the 1990’s by the DESMID research group, within national research programs (supported mainly by the Ministry of the Environment and the CNRS).

Pablo García Serrano, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, Juan Pedro Ruiz Sanz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, ephemero25@gmail.com & Marta Moreno González, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain, mmoreno@poli.uned.es - Model management of urban environment problems from the participative action-research. One experience in Centro American and Caribbean small towns

The design of plans and models of urban environmental management such as waste management or the basic reorganization, has been developed usually from a technocratic point of view, emphasizing technical abilities and material means. The social contribution to the generation of such systems is practically non-existent, reducing the participation to use and payment service fighting the imbalance between citizen necessities and services with an increase in resources assigned for itself. This situation is critical in the context of weak institutional development or lack of municipal resources, as happens in Centro American and Caribbean areas. In this case ONGs and cooperation agencies take the function of administration giving resources and technical capacities for the supply. Those organizations import in equal way a technocratic model, designing and implanting management systems created by specialists. The experience that we show here has been developed by secondary school teachers and students from six centers, three in Costa Rica, one in Nicaragua and two in the Colombia Caribbean, which are developing an action-research process in urban solid waste whose main objective is to carry out an approach to social, health and technical aspects that condition the agreement between administration, company and citizens, aiming at defining an efficient model for the urban waste handling in the different areas.

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Maria Jose Carneiro, Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, mjcarneiro@terra.com.br, Teresa da Silva Rosa tsrosaprof@yahoo.com.br, Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, & Camila Medeiros Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Scientific evidences in the Brazilian government environmental policy

The relationship between the process of producing knowledge and its use by policy’s compilers is important in the understanding of the whole process of building up environmental policies, especially those to be implemented in areas already occupied by familial agricultures. Policies on nature conservancy, such as the implementation of conservation unities and regulation laws on land use, can compromise social cohesion. Based on the interviews with technical staff of governmental institutions, politicians and scientists, the information in policies and laws rationales on conservation of biodiversity was identified. These policies are not sustained by evidence based knowledge, but they are based on reasons and interests of other nature. Knowledge produced by scientific and academic entities is not used by environmental policies’ compilers. Paradoxically, compilers see themselves sufficiently well informed in order to take decisions concerning the policy to be implemented. This paper intends to present the rationality supporting these policies and to suggest some explanations for this kind of behavior.

Minna Santaoja, University of Stuttgart, Germany, minna.santaoja@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de - Grassroot knowledge for biodiversity

Despite all international goodwill biodiversity is still in decline. Locally other things often take priority, good green arguments don't dominate. And yet actions regarding biodiversity conservation are inherently taken locally. Decision making comes down to favourable combination of knowledge, values and power their location and posession. Even if belief in ‘scientific truth’ has shaken, it is still in the hands of ‘authorities’ to decide what is relevant knowledge. Uncertainty is swept aside. This paper presents an ongoing PhD work that is conducted within the EU Marie Curie Research Training Network GoverNat, ”Multi-level Governance of Natural Resources: Tools and Processes for Water and Biodiversity in Europe”. My interest is to explore how could different types of knowledge and values be integrated in multi-level biodiversity governance. I assume the perspective of volunteer naturalists as important knowledge providers in biodiversity management, and drawing in the first stage on experiences among Finnish volunteer naturalists try to sketch ecological citizenship that integrates notions of trust, responsibility and aesthetical appreciation of nature. How to build momentum for this kind of citizenship? The volunteers are interestingly on a boundary between science and lay knowledge, simultaneously experts and ‘participants’. They are few in numbers an getting old, which is alarming for the future of biodiversity decisions. The small number of women among naturalists directs focus to the gendered nature of biodiversity knowledge. Volunteers as an entry point to local biodiversity management could provide insights how to ground biodiversity knowledge locally for decision making and environmental education.

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18. Session 18. Environmental organization for a sustainable future. Chair: Seejae Lee, Catholic University, South Korea. seejaelee@catholic.ac.kr

Catherine Delhoume, LaSalle Beauvais Institute, France catherine.delhoume@lasalle-beauvais.fr -How agriculture can contribute to a better respect of environment ? Managing new advices toward dairy farmers.

In Europe and more specifically in France, the milk sector is travelling important structural changes, in response to global market forces, but also in response of environmental issues. Indeed, this problematic is a key parameter to have in mind, that has its importance for politics and also for society. In this perspective, dairy farmers have to take into account new demands linked to the promotion of a breeding more extensive than intensive. In this context, the diferent organizations that are linked to the dairy activities, as chambers of agriculture, advisers in management, have to renew their advices toward farmers. In this paper, we will take the Picardy region as a study case, and present the work impulse by a profesional organization called “Agro-transfert”. We will analyse the work and the function of professional organizations to promote and to hold in position the milk activity. In order to give new advices linked to environmental issues, we will see that “Agro-transfert” is trying to promote extensive systems, with the herbivore cattle farming.

Karunamay Subuddhi, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay: Mumbai, India subuddhi@hss.iitb.ac.in, k_subuddhi@hotmail.com - Strategic: `Global Frames’ for environmental transformation in the contemporary world: Communicative structures and practices of Green activism.

Since the end of cold war in the mid-1980s the environmental issues come to be seen increasingly as global. The emphasis on `framing’ the green ideal combines various factors drawing on economic, social and organizational resources such as media, money, skills, legitimacy and so on. At a diverse and different locations or sites of struggles, environmental transformation is recognized as differentiated and conflict-led process made up of various theories or discourses, conceptualized as a kind of `cognitive praxis’ (Dryzek, 1997), a set of slogans and practices which are not simply for protesting against industrial society and its waste and artificiality but a form of `sub-politics’ (Beck, 1995) or cultural politics of ecological modernization in which the ecological transformation is an `ongoing social process, as distinct combinations of thought and action , of intellectual and practical developments of cultural struggles and tensions . Like other forms of scientific-technical activity, Green activism consists of human actions and interactions – the disparate attempts to construct truth collectively (Jemison, 2000). Nevertheless, instead of forming unions and political parties, the environmental groups focus on grassroots politics and create horizontal, directly democratic associations targeting the social domain of civil society and concerned with democratization of structures of everyday life focusing on forms of communication and collective identity. The shifts in orientations and environmental concerns have manifested both at the discursive level, where newer principles of environmental science, technology and management concepts (such as sustainable development) are formulated as well as in principles on practical levels, where network of innovators are serving to link universities, business firms and government agencies in new configurations. Some describe this effort to transnationalize the environmental problems as a kind of practice of `frame bridging’ – a system of mobilizing and networking strategy aimed at universal identity or a sort of balancing act between particulars and universals, between objectivity and subjectivity. One important frame of the campaign frame is to overcome the situations of sufferings at the local levels and its global spectators by combining emotions and facts and by a process called `scope-enlargement. The shifts in emphasis and extension of environmental conflicts at the local, national and transnational levels involve distinctive method of deliberation and construction of environmental role. The scientific and democratic discourses that

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aim at fulfilling some important functions, namely, social learning, decision making and co-ordination, however, show some ambiguities of normative structuring of the environmental role. In all countries, at the discursive and doctrinal level, there continues to be overriding emphasis on furthering economic growth and international competitiveness, despite internationalization of environmental concerns. The quest for sustainable development is seriously constrained by the imagined or real imperatives of globalization. The paper examines this process of `global environmentalism’, which is defined some as a kind of `global ecology’ that makes us aware that environmental problems are no more limited to national boundaries and they are serious and much more urgent as they are highly interlinked, However, how to move on from specific national policies to the global level remain unclear. Today, there is increasingly a discrepancy between the new awareness among citizens resulting from global ecology on the one hand and traditional means of political action on the other. While the environmental problems are global in reach, either as a result of the diffusion of sources of environmental risks or of the diffusion of impacts, the benefits and burdens are inequitably distributed. Most importantly, the process of uneven impact at the local level has been described by some as a process of `peripheralization, which in turn created and reinforced tensions between global north and southern peripheries. The paper examines the forms of collective actions under the global frame and representations for environmental stewardship.

Ilaria Beretta, Catholic University of Milan, Italy ilaria.beretta@unicatt.it - Environmental and social sutainability politics/practices. Santiago’s case(Chile).

My research paper focuses on sustainability problems management at local level. In particular, it tries to lead collective reflections upon the difference between “compulsory politics/practices” and “voluntary politics/practices”, and it deepens the real meaning of second ones. With my research work, I tried to answer following questions: Given the difference between compulsory and voluntary politics/practices, in the field of local sustainability problems is it true that the adoption of “voluntary politics” by local politician means that they are sensitive to environmental problems and by consequence - quite in an automatic way- that they are sensitive to sustainability problems and they have a sustainable attitude? What are the most important differences among sustainable attitudes assumed by politicians at local level? By a theoretical point of view, among the different approaches which can be adopted by the Environmental Sociology, the so called “co-evolutive” seems to be a valid way to observe the surrounding reality, in order to reach a greater sustainability of development. In fact, this approach, focusing on the study of links between different systems (social, economic and environmental), on reciprocal repercussions, and on reciprocal modifications, looks like the correct “reading-key” – or “magnifier”, by which observing the manifold dimensions of reality. By consequence, the study I made on the metropolitan area of Santiago (Chile) specific case (Gran Santiago) adopted the coevolutive approach as the main interpretative model of referring reality. The analysis of the most important environmental local problems and their politic solutions was made trough the coevolutive reference model and allowed to underline correlations existing between environmental and social sphere in this specific reality.

Seejae Lee, The Catholic University of Korea, Korea, seejaelee@catholic.ac.kr – Impacts and Vulnerability: Variant Impacts affected by Hebei Spirit Oil Spill Accident in Korea

On December 7, 2007, in the Western coastal sea of Korean peninsular the Hebei Spirit Oil Tanker crashed with the Samsung tugboat equipped with marine crane, and spilled 15000 tons of crude oil. The oil spill caused extensive ecological and socio-economic damages in the area. Ecological and social impacts have not yet to be fully determined, because the accident of this kind will affect the area for long time. This research, carried out by a team of the environmental sociologists and psychologists, in their preliminary survey, explores the variant impacts of the oil spill on people’s living in the affected area. This research will continue for three years to follow the extended effects on ecological and people’s lives.

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The research tools of the social impact assessment(SIA) have been partially used in this research, although the SIA is primarily designed to measure foreseeable impacts caused by development projects or policies. By using SIA tools, we could measure impacts of the oil spill on population, job opportunities, community relations. We also used some psychological research methods to expose how such a sudden accident gives impacts on people mental life. The impacts on people, as a preliminary survey has so far shown, are variable, depending on occupation, age, income on personal level. In this research I would like to develop and use a scale of vulnerability indicator. The scale of damage does not only depend on the magnitude of impacts, but also on the ability or inability to resist impacts, in other word, vulnerability. The variables for the vulnerability indicator include personal physical ability, family relations, social capital, community structure, and institutional arrangements. Our preliminary interview revealed that those with younger age, good family relations and social capital are less affected by the oil spill damages, because they can easily mobilize resources for survival at the time of crisis. This research will contribute not only to the oil spill accident research, but also to researches on any disaster situation.

Lotsmart N. Fonjong, University of Buea, Cameroon, William T. Markham, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, United States, wtmarkha@uncg.edu - Environmental Organizations in Cameroon: Contributions to Environmental Protection and Civil Society

This paper examines environmental organizations operating in Cameroon. These organizations fall into three categories: First, numerous environmental organizations from the global North operate programs in Cameroon, mostly in the areas of nature protection and development. Their membership bases and funding sources are outside of Cameroon, and their Cameroonian programs are often strongly shaped by the policies of their international parent organizations and the need to maintain the support of members in developed nations. They lack the legitimacy that would come from a membership base within Cameroon, but their organizational capacities and access to funds give them great impact. Second, in response to funding opportunities from abroad, numerous ‘client environmental NGOs' have appeared in Cameroon. Many of these operate at the regional and national levels, but some are purely local. These organizations pursue environmental and nature protection with varying degrees of success, but their goals and operations are often strongly conditioned by the necessity to attract outside funding and the desire to keep their staffs employed. Lacking a local membership base, their legitimacy is sometimes in doubt, especially when they fail to achieve their goals. Third, numerous local groups, such as Village Development Associations, pursue environmental projects. Their membership and financial support come from local communities and emigrants from these communities. They enjoy the legitimacy that comes from having an indigenous membership base, but they are frequently underfunded and lack technical expertise. Drawing on both theoretical analysis and case studies, the paper compares and evaluates the effectiveness of these organizations in ameliorating environmental problems, building sustainable communities, and strengthening civil society. We conclude that their success depends not only on the factors mentioned above, but also on the economic and political context in which they operate and on their ability to collaborate successfully with one another and with local and national political structures. The paper concludes with suggestions for strengthening these organizations and enhancing the collaboration among them in order to achieve harmonious and sustainable development.

Ingmar Lippert, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, United Kingdom i.lippert@lancaster.ac.uk - Agents of/for constructing (un)sustainable futures: Hope for change.

This paper focuses on those agents who are supposedly a key element of bringing about 'greening' of organisations, i.e. agents of ecological modernisation. Although ecological modernisation theory has

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significant shortcomings, I am arguing that it can be of use to conceptualise how agents view and shape realities, and thus, futures. I problematise the constructions of futures by them based on ethnographic fieldwork in a transnational corporation. This allows to attend to the contradictions of capitalism under which these agents operate and which constrains possible sustainable futures. Blühdorn suggests that organisations reproduce unsustainability. Nevertheless, there is hope in the context of work: Agents might bring about 'greening' of organisations in terms of some form of reasoned utopianism. This focus on the agent is bringing into play the work of Bourdieu and semiotic versions of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Therewith it becomes possible to conceptualise our agents in their positions in social and material fields. Following Bourdieu, agents have a habitus which is shaped by the fields in which they are positioned. At the same time the habitus as a generative scheme of practices and perceptions channels agents to reproduce the configuration of fields. This limits imagined sustainable futures. However, the habitus is not deterministic. It is open for change. Hence, this theoretical frame allows for agents who could - by basing their action on an analysis of their situation - aim at changing configurations of social and material fields to bring about a sustainable future. STS puts into perspective how materialities and knowledges thereof contribute to the shaping of both futures and utopias. Thus, therewith, the STS/Bourdieu approach is worthy to scrutinse environmental practices situated in organisations.

19- Session 19. Community based movements in a globalizing world Chair: Hellmuth Lange, University of Bremen, Germany.

lange@artec.uni-bremen.de

Mei-Ling Lin, National Open University in Taiwan, Taiwan paulina@mail.kh.edu.tw - Asia-Pacific, Globalization and Sustainable Development: New Challenges for Local Communities in Fighting Poverty

This paper will explore how global culture has come to eclipse local knowledge, especially with respect to resource needs, and has moved localities to embrace universal consumption practices. People’s experiences are shaped by processes that operate on the local and global levels. Globalisation can be seen as the trend of giving markets much more steering powers on technology and societal developments. The powerful forces of globalization, liberalization and technology have brought rapid change and advancement. New forms of corporate governance are emerging driven by societal expectations. Resource depletion raises many troubling questions about the prospect of sustainability within the neo-liberal model of capitalism and the culture of consumption. The lack of environmental sustainability is one symptom of the malaise that affects public policy priorities. The inadequate supply of public goods essential to environmental sustainability combines with the under-provision of other public goods to worsen poverty and social inequity. The author first briefly reviews recent developments in economic growth and the environment to provide a general context. The author then moves through a series of common themes, including governance and political economy, the under-supply of non-environmental public goods, international trade issues, fiscal and structural adjustments, and the under-supply in terms of quantity and quality of specific environmental goods. Sustainable economic growth theory integrates the effects of environmental degradation on social welfare, economic growth, and the risk of environmental thresholds within a dynamic framework. Thirdly, the author studies how growth theory can be embedded in an extension of the standard national-income-accounting framework. Fourthly, the author offers an example of the application of green accounting in Taiwan, a region where environmental accounting can have an impact on policies, including natural resource and environmental issues in national accounts. The introduction of green national accounting and related themes, implies the alternative view that the value of the environment and resources are part of the calculation of national product. The results are striking, and helped to establish the empirical significance of green national accounting. Broader discussions of the relationships between alternative economic policies, and environmental and resource degradation and management, focus

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on relationships between macro policies and environmental and resource degradation. The level of government subsidies follows particular patterns that are not closely related to economic efficiency, but rather to other political and economic factors. The author discusses briefly public investments and their interactions with environmental and resource problems. Fifthly, people require a radical rethinking of the social economic and political structures, and do so in a way which moves us towards the goal of sustainability. The author explores the question of whether local communities need to develop within their educational systems means of inculcating a sense of citizenship which encompasses environmental responsibility. The empirical section presents findings from a new quantitative study(N=1,200) of household panel experiences, using the Survey Questionnaire “Social Inclusion, Environmental Sustainability and Citizenship” data. Are there criteria we can adopt to assess the viability of proposed political economic systems to sustain human existence? The author engages in thinking about improving the human condition and the eco-sustainability of communities in which life is embedded. Environmental issues received some attention and sustainability may have been an objective. It matters a great deal whether environment is defined to cover only ecological matters or broadly to cover socio-economic and cultural concerns. The author explores the ways local communities have reinvented themselves using cultural knowledge to sustain both local and regional networks and the sense of cultural identity amid dislocations within their own societies and in the international economy. The author will show how the idea of sustainability can be used as a concept for intercultural policy making. However sophisticated our quantitative techniques, the author is forced to make essentially qualitative judgments about the reasons behind the variations. In the concluding section, the author draw together key lessons not just to understand environment and development linkages, but also to manage such linkages at both micro sectoral and macro economy-wide levels. A variety of methods were used: literature review, survey research, and analysis of newspaper articles, maps, and census data.

Wilson Akpan, University of Fort Hare, South Africa, wakpan@ufh.ac.za - Bringing the Community Back in? The “Sociological Turn” in Direct State Participation in Petroleum Exploitation in Nigeria.

Amidst the worsening socio-political climate in Nigeria’s heavily militarized oil-rich Niger Delta region are indications that the fiscal relationship between the Nigerian state and private transnational petroleum operators is undergoing a significant change. From sole concessions in the pre-independence and immediate post-colonial periods, to a contractual system of joint ventures (starting from the early 1970s), petroleum fiscal regimes in Nigeria, historically underpinned by economics and politics, appear to have entered a phase whereby socio-ecologic considerations are beginning to matter. Whereas the early 1990s saw the introduction of production sharing agreements, policy pronouncements over the last few years have emphasized the “domestication” of vital aspects of exploration and production. Thus from merely “nationalization”, there is increasing contemplation of a “people-based model” of state participation in petroleum exploitation. This paper examines how the antinomies of the relationship between the state and transnational petro-capital and pressures from the national and international civic sphere have combined to impel a shift in the “grammar” and practice of state-private sector partnerships in the Nigerian petroleum sector. It interrogates the extent to which the emerging “sociological turn” in petroleum sector partnerships unlocks domestic entrepreneurial energies in Nigeria as a whole and responds to the endemic grassroots discontent in the Niger Delta region. The discussion is based on an analysis of government pronouncements, policy initiatives, and specific interventions that have been implemented in the petroleum sector in the last few years. Where necessary the analysis has drawn on empirical (ethnographic) data obtained by the author in the Niger Delta in 2003.

Ikechukwu Umejesi, University of Fort Hare, South Africa iumejesi@ufh.ac.za and Wilson Akpan, University of Fort Hare, South Africa wakpan@ufh.ac.za - Resource-sector reforms or resource scramble? The socio-ecological bases of compensation demands in Nigeria’s “rejuvenated” solid minerals economy.

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In 1999 the Nigerian government unveiled major reforms in the country’s solid minerals industry, which comprises coal, gold, tin, bitumen, talc, limestone, uranium, asbestos, limestone, iron ore and several others of which Nigeria has proven commercial reserves. The main aim – which was similar to those announced for agriculture, tourism, financial services and manufacturing - was to diversify an economy that had for four decades been hobbled by an overdependence on petroleum, stimulate employment, and bolster Nigeria’s ambition of becoming one of the world’s 20 leading economies by 2020. The “reforms” have attracted unprecedented attention from foreign and local mining firms to the erstwhile moribund solid minerals sector. In 2006, Nigeria’s nine identified coal mines were concessioned to private companies. This paper looks beyond the “economic diversification” objectives of resource sector reforms, and interrogates the reforms against grassroots narratives of “entitlement”, “dispossession” and “compensation”, especially at the level of the mining communities. Using the coal industry as a case study, the paper examines the existing compensational regime in the solid minerals sector and highlights its strengths as well as those attributes that bolster unsustainable and conflict-inducing extractive practices. The central question addressed is: What does extractive sector regulatory and compensational framework in the Nigeria’s coal mining sector say about sustainable resource exploitation, especially against the backdrop of intense resource scramble? The analysis is based on primary ethnographic and survey data obtained in the Southeastern Nigerian town of Enugu-Ngwo, the country’s premier coal mining community. The paper also draws lessons from the Nigerian petroleum sector, as well as from the solid minerals industry elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Koichi Hasegawa, Tohoku University, Japan, k-hase@sal.tohoku.ac.jp - Local Environmental Movement and Local Governance for "Climate Crisis.

The emission level of greenhouse gas in Japan went up to 8 % increase and more, although Japanese government promised a reduction of 6% compared to 1990 level. So we must decrease totally 14% of green gas emission within next 5 years during the first engagement period of the Kyoto protocol. In 1998, the right after the Kyoto conference, Japanese government passed a new law to promote global warming protection. Under this law, each prefectural government was encouraged to nominate a prefectural center of promoting global warming protection. Currently, almost of all 47 prefecture has such center. Half of these centers are a kind of created organization of prefectural government, and the other half are independent NPOs. My focus of this paper is in the policy network and collaboration formation related to this issue at the local level. In contrast with more protest oriented national NGOs, I describe some examples of such institutionalized collaborating environmental network with local government, industry, local NGOs and citizens, based on my participatory observation and some case study. It performed a lot of task of outreaching, education, supporting local or community level activities, consulting, research activities, collecting data and so on. One of the most interesting task is educating and training volunteer, named “action initiator of promoting global warming protection”. Nationwide we have totally more than 6000 initiators. They are talking about climate change on their own voices as volunteer in primary school, junior high school, and local meeting. Just like local “Al Gores”.

Lucia da Costa Ferreira, Brazil Simone Vieira de Campos, Eliana Junqueira Creado, Ana Beatriz Vianna Mendes, Camilo Caropreso, Nepam/Unicamp, Brasil luciacf@unicamp.br - Encounter of Waters: Social Dynamics and Biodiversity in the Brazilian Amazon

This article is resulted of theoretical and empirical research on the social organization of groups to act in favor of the conservation of biodiversity and their influence on social change in the direction of a feasible future in the Brazilian Amazon. The geographic area of research is the embryo of central corridor of protection in the Amazon state, between the midcourse of Negro and Solimões rivers. The main hypothesis explains the social organization that promotes changes through the conflicts on the use of natural resources and not the aggregation of the subjects around an identity or a conservationist project. The research crossed day-by-day and historical analysis scales through methods of situational and process analysis. This was done through an adaptation of the arena concept in Hannigan (1997) and Ostrom (1990; 1994). The subjects of the research were political, communitarian and institutional leaders and influential groups in two protected areas of the Brazilian

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Amazon: one of integral protection, the National Park of Jaú, and the other of sustainable use, the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.

Edwin Zaccaï, Belgium, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. ezaccai@. ulb ac.be - Doomwatch, the Good life, and practical environmentalism.

Since Western environmentalism rose in the late sixties, important changes have occurred in the ranking of the ecological themes causing concern among the population, as well as in the perception of the causes of these problems. However, even if utilitarian and economic justifications gain ever more support among environmental policy decision makers, two background conceptions that have been present from the start remain in the design of Western type environmental consciousness. First, a constant trend for a major doom invocation. And second, implicit links between the denunciation of environmental damages, and a call for a number of ethical values (the “Good” life), as for example: “To be, rather than to have”, “autonomy, against the industrial society”, “critics of consumption”, etc. The paper tries to elaborate on these two red lines, through a selection of cases and authors illustrating the social conceptualizations of environmental problems. It shows also possible relations between them, as for example the prophetic threat of a disaster (taking several shapes) perceived as a penalty for failing to live a “Good” life. We investigate the origins of these two driving forces, and above all their functions and consequences for the effective prevention of environmental problems. Indeed, the relations that the advocacy for environment sustain with these conceptualizations can sometimes weaken it, when doom fails to happen, or if the interlocutors do not share the same specific ethical choices. This analysis may also question the frequent discrepancy between the high symbolic importance called to in the justifications given to reforms, and the often modest practical propositions generated. This attempt to better elucidate the dynamics sustained by symbolic motivations on one side, and their practical outcome on the other, will be applied in conclusion to the actual dominant figure of climate change, revitalizing and changing the profile of ecological doom.

20- Session 20. Social responses to environmental problems. Chair: Louis Lemkow, Autonomous University of Barcelona Louis.Lemkow@uab.cat

Brent K. Marshall University of Central Florida,, J. Steven Picou, University of South Alabama, and Nnenia Campbell, University of Central Florida – The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans: The Long Road to Recovery bmarshal@mail.ucf.edu (USA).

With the recent spate of worst-case events (e.g., Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Asian Tsunami), it is abundantly clear that disasters, experienced either directly or indirectly via the media, will be pervasive features of social life in the 21st Century. The impact of Hurricane Katrina on individuals and communities residing in coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, and in New Orleans, will last for decades. As members of the American Sociological Association’s Gulf Coast Disaster Research Team, we are collecting baseline data for a four-panel, longitudinal survey that focuses on individual and community recovery over the long-term. An a priori classification of Katrina as a certain type of disaster is difficult because perceptions may vary by location. For example, storm surge and wind damage on the gulf coast may perceived as an “act of of God” (natural), while the levee failure in New Orleans may be perceived as “human-caused” (technological). As such, the process of recovery may also vary by location. The purpose of this paper and presentation is to identify and discuss which factors are impeding and enabling individual and community recovery two years after Katrina. The long-term objective of the project, by assessing the relative strength of various factors across space and over time, is the development of culturally-sensitive and location-specific intervention programs that help individuals and communities recover.

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Javier Ernesto López Ontiveros UANL, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, México, jelo74@yahoo.com – The Indifference Towards the Environmental Problem in a High Risk Residential Area. A Case Study in the Área Metropolitana de Monterrey, Nuevo León, México (Mexico).

The industrial contamination has put in risk nature and human health. Nevertheless, an apparent indifference prevails among people. An important number of researchers consider that this behavior is due to several factors: insufficient empowerment, absence of environmental instruction, lack postmaterials values, and a weak pro-environmental consciousness. However, this study pretends to demonstrate that the individuals’ indifference cannot be explained by inadequate values and lack of knowledge with regard to environmental problems. Through a case study in the Área Metropolitana de Monterrey, Nuevo León, México, I will show that the inhabitants of a highly contaminated residential area built on an industrial dump and government are aware of the danger with regard to people’s health. Nevertheless, this awareness has not generated a social movement among the residents in order to oblige government and industry to solve the environmental contamination. Thus, the present study tries to analyze the apathy that exists among the inhabitants of this residential area. Grounded on social constructionist perspective, the main objective of the research is to explain the way people choose to cope with the daily stress generated by living a dangers environment. Research data were gathered by semi-structural in-deep-interviews.

Teresa Da Silva Rosa, Rio de Janeiro Rural Federal University. Brasil tsrosaprof@yahoo.com.br Budget program - Cofinancing with NOGs”/Ecological terminology in European Union’s budget program.

The integration of environmental dimension on international cooperation policies is fundamental to encourage environmentally friendly development projects in Southern countries supported by international organizations. Sustainable consumption and production can contribute for the reduction of impacts on the use of natural resources if they are considered by public policies’ discourses. The European Union discourses on Co-financing with NGOs project in developing countries were assessed in terms of the integration of two sustainable strategies: reducing the exploitation of resources by consumption (sufficiency) and the disposal of waste products by production processes (eco-efficiency). The assessment pointed out that the message is ambiguous, outdated and hardly integrates ecological contents. Seemingly, it does not favors sustainable development, because it does not take into account the need for finding a balance between the economy and the environment. The weak integration of ecological contents seems to hide the EU’s economic interests rather than to create true ecological awareness, in order to reproduce the current socio-economic system.

Shyamal Das, Lisa Eargle, and Ashraf Esmail. Minot State University, India. shyamal.kumardas@minotstateu.edu - Modernity- Self-expression or Tradition- Survival Values?: Which Way is Better for Environmental Philanthropic Attitudes in the Cross-National Spectrum of Environmental Values?.

This study examines whether modernity and self-expression values are environment-friendly for societies across the globe. The environmentalist group blames modern-rational values, hence capitalist mentality, for promoting adverse environmental degradation while the neoclassical development camp refutes this stand arguing that the lack of modern values is responsible for the same. We divide modern-rational values into two: modern and self-expression values. Therefore, we apply widely accepted recent measures of modern-traditional and self-expression-survival values to examine their effects on environmental philanthropy defined as peoples’ wish to provide material contribution to the improvement of environment. Using four wave-panel data (1981-84, 1989-93, 1994-99, and 1999-2004)

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from World Values Surveys covering 80 countries, we ran a series of multiple regressions to test the opposite claims made by these two camps. Preliminary findings show that modern and survival values are environment friendly, and therefore, neither of the claims was found solely tenable. The findings also provide a derivative that the poor are not exclusively responsible for the degradation of environment as several neoclassical thoughts claim.

Filip Alexandrescu, University of Toronto, Canada, filip.alexandrescu@utoronto.ca - Whose resources? What resources?” The stratified construction of “community resources” at Roşia Montană, Romania.

This paper explores the different meanings and uses attributed to the resources of the Roşia Montană community located in Western Romania. Here, a Canadian mining company intends to develop the largest gold deposit in Europe, in a region that the opponents of the project claim should be developed through agriculture and ecotourism. What are the “real” resources of the area and how they should be developed are highly controversial issues among the stakeholders of the project. The objectives of the paper are twofold. First, I show how the stakeholders of the project construct the natural and human-made resources of the area in different (diverging but also overlapping) ways. Second, I seek to explain these different constructions in terms of the positionality (Harstock 1987) of the different actors in the political economy of the project and their location at local, regional / national and transnational scales. The case under study raises important questions about what counts as a “resource” and who should be in charge of managing and ultimately benefiting from these “resources”. In this way, it enables a detailed analysis of the ideological frameworks surrounding the meaning and use of resources in a post-communist community facing the conflicting pressures of economic and political globalization.

Saurabh Gupta Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London Sg59@soas.ac.uk Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Problems and Prospects

Since the early 1990s, we have witnessed two significant shifts in development practice and policy with regard to natural resources. First, the state has gradually lost its legitimacy as the sole agent of rural development, and second, the rise in concern for ‘sustainability’, ‘community participation’, and ‘decentralized management’ of natural resources like water, pastures and forests, within academic and policy circles. These changes have drastically altered the relationships between local ‘communities’ and their common natural resources, especially in the regions where majority of populations are dependent on rainfed agriculture and dryland farming for subsistence (and livelihoods). My paper examines the debates on ‘community-based natural resource management’ (CBNRM) on the basis of empirical research on the watershed development initiatives (rainwater harvesting, and management of community pastures and forests) of a prominent grassroots organisation called Seva Mandir, based in Rajasthan--the largest and driest province in India. While the heterogeneous nature of rural ‘communities’ is widely recognized in the contemporary international development discourse, I maintain, the role of intervening agency is still not adequately explored and problematised in much of the literature on CBNRM. This paper is an attempt to fill in this gap by addressing the following main analytical questions. What is the main agenda of Seva Mandir vis-à-vis participatory watershed development, and how does it operate in its ‘field of action’ (Rajasthan villages)? How Seva Mandir’s natural resource development interventions change existing relations of power in rural communities, and create new relations of patronage? What kind of relationship does Seva Mandir share with other elements of the watershed development regime (international donors and the state agencies)? I highlight the processes of negotiation, cooperation and conflict between differently positioned rural social groups and development actors in the context of watershed development and management.

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21- Session 21. Environmental identities, environmental literacy and processes of knowledge building. Chair: Tim O’Riordan, University of East Anglia t.oriordan@uea.ac.uk Maik Adomssent (corresponding author), Patrick Albrecht, Matthias Barth, Simon Burandt, Angela Franz-Balsen, Jasmin Godemann & Marco Rieckmann. Institute for Environmental and Sustainability Communication, Germany. adomssent@uni-lueneburg.de - Social-Ecological Change via ‘Sustainable Universities’ - Findings and Transferability of Transformative Approaches.

The dual capacity of academic institutions for both investigation of and impulse transmitters for inter- and transdisciplinary research is depicted by means of the research and development project ‘Sustainable University – Sustainable development in the Context of University Remits’. Its particular character lies in an integrative perspective on universities, in the joint analysis of outcomes and their reference to overarching questions, and the attempt to transfer its findings onto other higher education institutions. The project is embedded in the framework of transdisciplinary research which can be understood as applying scientific approaches on to practical problems by collaborative action of scientists and practitioners, jointly looking for practicable solutions. Case study methodology is a well-used and appropriate research tool in studies of sustainability in higher education. However, case study can only be of transformative value for others if it encompasses a reflective analysis of practice with traceable documentation. These theoretical and empirical challenges, supplemented with the particular defiance of scientists being their own partners of practice, led to the development of a new synthesizing research approach: the “Transformative Case Study” which is described and discussed in detail. Findings show empirical evidence for successful development of transdisciplinary techniques for sustainability in higher education domains (among others management, research, and teaching). Efficacy for governing social-ecological change calls for systemic approaches instead of focusing upon isolated sustainability fields of action, combined with additional reinforcement of strategic scope/effectiveness by establishing an intermediate level of collaboration (e.g. working groups of sustainability activists within universities and in higher education policy and administration

Leila da Costa Ferreira Brazil leilacf@unicamp.br Intellectual Production in Latin America. The Environmental Question and Interdisciplinarity.

While dealing with both interdisciplinarity and environmental sociology as fields that harbor scientific contentions regarding conflicting ideas, practices, institutions, this paper aims at providing an account of the multifaceted processes implied in the institutionalization of environmental concerns in Latin-American academia and research centers. The paper discusses the extent to which one can legitimately talk about “a Latin-American scientific specificity”, supposedly resulting from peculiar theoretical approaches or even from particular socio-environmental features (such as widespread poverty and high rates of social inequality, along with unparalleled levels of biodiversity). Last but not least, the paper seeks to draw a sort of thematic map (via bibliographical review, interviews and DATABASE), as well as a consideration of the levels of scientific institutionalization of environmental issues in differents research centers located in Argentina, Chile, Colômbia, Mexico, Uruguay, Equador and Brazil.

Piet Sellke University of Stuttgart, Germany. Piet.sellke@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de - The Emerging Opportunities and Emerging Risks: Reflexive Innovation and the Case of Pervasive Computing.

In this presentation final results from the 2-year research project “Emerging Opportunities and Emerging Risks: Reflexive Innovation and the Case of Pervasive Computing” will be discussed.

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Innovations in risk fields are not merely dependent on innovation networks, the market, and regulators. Rather, they depend also on the wider public sphere such as NGOs, the media, the scientific community and the public as citizens. Pervasive computing systems and its applications are good examples for this development, because they are seen as a systemic risk with a complex functional chain, and a high level of intrinsic uncertainty and ambiguity in regard to the value attachments of the societal actors. Within the project discussed here, expert interviews with actors of each of the above mentioned groups were conducted. Additionally, focus-groups gave insights into risk perceptions and recommendations of actions from a citizens’ perspective regarding pervasive computing applications. The results of this empirical data collection is incorporated into an integrative risk governance framework, which provides guidance for the development of comprehensive assessment and management strategies to cope with risk technologies. Finally, legally reviewed recommendations of actions for the different stakeholders involved in the area are proposed

Akgun Ilhan and J. David Tàbara Autonomous Autonomous University of Barcelona. Water identities and social learning in Spain and Turkey.

The ways different societies identify and interact with water define how wider social-ecological relationships are created and re-created. We argue that Western societies need to make a radical shift in their understanding of water, not only as a resource but also as a part of the ecological system that deserve respect and appreciation. Building a new encompassing identity for and with it may help current societies in the common duty to leave future generations a planet with the resources and diversity that we have enjoyed so far. This radical shift cannot happen by any other means but in a bottom-up, participative and iterative mode. Vast and imaginative learning processes need to be put in place to support an equitable and efficient transition towards a sustainable society, that is one which capable to see behind the surface of the current problems and to take responsibility of its own actions. Experiences from different parts of the world on how to move towards sustainability already exist, as in the case of water management. These inspiring experiences and the role they have played in changing unsustainable perceptions of nature-society relationships need to be analysed in order to draw insights and lessons for humanity so that to improve our understanding of the roots of our environmental behaviour and its consequences on all of us. From this angle, the present research aims at analyzing social movements and policies related to water management in Spain and Turkey. It looks at the influence of development of cultural artifacts and identities such as the ‘New water culture in Spain’ and the case of Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in Turkey, and the role played by power and the political culture in these developments. Methods include content analysis of articles, participative observation and interviews with experts from both countries. The research fills a gap in water management research and social theory from a cultural and international comparative perspective.

Régine Boutrais, Doctorant, CERSO, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches en Sociologie des Organisations, Université Dauphine Paris, and Benoit Vergriette, Division Manager, Risks & Society, AFSSET (Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire de l’Environnement et du Travail, France regine.boutrais@afsset.fr - The emergence of environmental health and the dynamics of NGOs in France

Various sanitary crises (asbestos, heat waves, mad cow disease/BSE, SARS…), industrial accidents (Tchernobyl, Seveso, Bhopal…), and the rapid development of new technologies (genetherapy, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies…) resulted in growing public concern over links between environment and health. This is due to the extent of cross-boarder pollution but also to its diffuseness in the environment (air, water, soils, food…). The effects of chemical substances in the body being cumulative, interactive and delayed in time, a higher degree of scientific expertise is required to study and understand the complex biological and toxicological mechanisms involved. Public perception of risks has increased because of the uncertainty related to the consequences of these environmental hazards on human health and the insufficient scientific research and knowledge in this field. In recent years, profound changes have occurred in the interaction between science and society, challenging the traditional risk governance based on scientific “technocratic” expertise. Civil society

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demands to be involved in risk assessment and management and co-production of knowledge. It also requires a better transparency in the decision-making process, more democratic governance of these issues in accordance with numerous regulations and programmes, such as the Aarhus Convention, European initiatives to bridge the gap between science and society or the “Grenelle de l’Environnement” in France. NGOs endeavour to promote public participation and debate on environment and health issues. However, the three major sectors of non-profit organizations involved (protection of the environment, patients’ and consumers’ associations) have difficulties in finding common inter-associative strategies in the emerging field of environmental health. The case study of French NGOs will focus on the strategies of these actors (analysis of historical, political and sociological context) and possible interactions, convergence or conflicts among these movements in bringing environmental health to the attention of the public and decision-makers.

Olga Mamonova, Russia. Socio-ecological monitoring as a tool of public opinion investigations.

Abstract not available.

22- Session 22. Further debates on environment and sustainability. Chair: Mercedes Martínez Iglesias, University of Valencia, Spain. Mercedes.Martinez@uv.es Tom R. Burns Department of Sociology, University of Uppsala, Sweden tomburns@stanford.edu (USA) and Nina Witoszek University of Olso, Norway. - The crisis of our planet and the shaping of a sustainable society: Toward a new humanistic agenda

The point of departure of this article is the continuing massive destruction of the planet earth environment. Reversal of this tragic development and the achievement of sustainability cannot be accomplished without major changes in the institutions and cultural formations of modern society. The paper stresses the need to redirect and transform economic, political, scientific and educational systems in order to protect planet earth and to accomplish sustainable development. In the spirit of the Brundtland report (1987), the article singles out not only the profound institutional and cultural barriers to accomplishing a more sustainable development but indicates some of the necessary radical steps and strategies necessary: the transformation of capitalism, the transformation of politics and regulation, the restructuring of science and education, a revolution in culture. The article points out several untapped forms of education, in part viewing society as a learning system, and as a system where a multitude of small actions can make a major difference. The article ends with a declaration of a new humanistic agenda for a global future based on creative adaptation.

Oleg Yanitsky. Institute of Sociology Russian Academy of Sciences yanitsky@mtu-net.ru and Irina Borislavovna Mardar, Institute of Sociology Russian Academy of Sciences irina_mardar@mail.ru - Environmental Debates in Russia: From late 1980s till early 2000s” (Russia).

The paper presents the results of long-term research aimed at the discovering the major trends in environmental debates conditioned by Russian reforms, the emergence of civil society, and the shift of the geopolitical situation of the Russian nation-state. Changes in the very topic (theme) of debates, actors and its resources, allies and adversaries involved, the corridor of political opportunities of the debates as well as the character and meanings of symbols used by the participants of the debates are the main topics of proposed paper. Four major shifts seems have been occurred. First, from the debates on ultimate goals to short-term issues. Second, from nation-wide to “island-like” debates

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determined by the division of Russia into specificity of variety of regions. Third, from value centered towards economically conditioned. Forth, from humanistic towards social-technological in character of language and communication.

Marja Ylönen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, Mkylonen@yfi.jyu.fi - Social Control of Environmental Crimes

Social control of environmental crimes in Finland is approached as ideological institution. Ideology is understood as interpretations and knowledge dependent on social and material conditions. What makes social control interesting in this case is that the controlled, the wood industry, has been the biggest water polluter in Finland and influential actor in the national economy, and therefore more powerful than those who control, the environmental authorities. During the last 30 years environmental authorities, who are in the position of a gate keeper as far as definition of environmental law breakings as deviant is concerned, have been criticized by citizens and prosecutors for neglecting the enforcement of environmental laws and for favoring industry’s needs. According to the statistics, only a small number of environmental law breakings has led to sentences and especially among the environmental authorities the elimination of law breakings has been common. Therefore, this paper deals with the ideological aspects of control. What are the dominant discourses of control and on what kind of justifications are they based on? What kind of paradoxes and anomalies are included in controlling talk? What kind of possibilities have been there to challenge the dominant control codes and to democratize the controlling knowledge? The data consist of articles of the Water Economy journal, interviews with environmental authorities and court documents concerning crime cases.

Mariel Vilella Casaus (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain). News on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs): A case study research on activist media strategies from the environmental communication field. Press mariel@moviments.net

The study of the environmental advocacy over a social-environmental conflict shows specific elements to study: firstly, the environment does not have a voice on its own, so it depends on the political and media strategies employed by the social agents involved; secondly, social environmental conflicts -in the light of the current environmental decline- respond to complex processes more than to single events, which very often contradict the media and the institutional politics criteria for intervention. In these terms, agents involved in environmental advocacy face these challenges and try to gain media coverage as a way to access the public sphere and place in there their own demands. Following the institutional elitism model for media and political power, social agents compete for recognition in the public sphere on an unequal basis. Up to a point, the status held by different groups determines their capacity to produce and legitimate their interpretation of the world in the public sphere through language and symbolic power. However, given that institutional power is a complex structural element where public arenas follow multidimensional dynamics of interrelation, social agents with lower status may and do employ media and political strategies to defend environmental interests. This paper wants to explore the role of environmental advocacy groups and their media strategy in the case study of the GMOs issue during 2005 in Catalonia. The political and media confrontation context during that time makes this case especially relevant to understand the role and importance of small environmental groups in the advocacy of a social-environmental conflict, and why, despite their media strategy the general press still lacks an appropriate environmental frame in the general press to portray such issues.

Kimie Tsunoda (Japan) – Bioregional Identity and Aquatic Management: Case Study of the Tsurumi River Water Master Plan in Japan Abstract not available.

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Ndukaeze Nwabueze, University of Lagos, Nigeria nwabueze1955@yahoo.com – Human Encroachment and the Socio-Economic Implications of Wetland Loss in Lekki Peninsula, Lagos, Nigeria.

The problematic of this study is hinged on the generally low level of awareness in the country and the emergent concern for the adverse social and environmental implications of human encroachment arising from massive building construction in urban development and renewal projects in the Lekki Peninsula Wetlands. Interest in this area is stimulated by the surprisingly active involvement of the government of Lagos State which plays the encouragement and facilitation role in the building projects occasioning rapid loss of wetlands. Encroachment in the Peninsula is in two main forms of land use, that is (a) farming, fishing, lumbering and saw milling by the original settlers and inhabitants (b) development of new towns, residential estates and shopping centres, by the ‘invading army’ of new settlers. Through dredging, reclamation and sand filling, the invaders have, in the last two decades, built the high brow Victoria Garden City (VGC) at Ikota, Lekki Development Scheme alias Jubilee Housing Scheme; Ikota Model Shopping Complex; Crown Residential Estate at Sango-tedo; Cooperative Estate at Badore, Hotels, Schools, Service Stations, Hospitals, and other establishments that serve these communities through a combination of: Structured personal observation of the people, projects and activities in-depth interview of purposively sampled knowledgeable informants including government officials; profiling of new residential estates, tracking and profiling of original inhabitants through personal and focus group interviews; and map reading and evaluation of changing land use patterns, an analysis of socio-economic implications of the rapidly receding Lekki Peninsula Wetlands for the old and new settlers was undertaken. The findings reveal some paradoxes: of official collaboration in wetland loss; wetland loss occasioned by rural poverty, on one hand, and wealth in the hands of the nouveux riche in the city on the other hand; expansion of Lagos into the lagoon wetlands due to shortage of land in the metropolis; conflict between official policy of environmental protection and powerful vested interests; huge revenue from developments to the state and local governments in the short run versus wetland depletion and environmental degradation in the long run; occupation by the rich and powerful ‘land grabbers’ and permanent displacement of the original inhabitants and squatters. In conclusion, the report isolates population pressure, poverty of the original settlers, conflict of interest among contending social groups, and ‘hunger’ among the new elite for choice ocean view land, as main factors contributory to wetland loss. The author recommends the re-education of the State and Local Governments about the wealth, use and need for a policy of wetland preservation as the key salutary measure.

23- Session 23. Climate, ozone, water scarcity and the new social institutions. Chair: Brian Gareau, University of California, USA. bgareau@ucsc.edu Midori Aoyagi-Usui, Yuki Sampei Tomomi Shinada, and Atsuko Kuribayashi. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan, NLR Institute, Sampei.yuki@nies.go.jp , aoyagi@nies.go.jp – Longitudinal Analysis of Public Awareness of Climate Change.

We investigated the relationship among printed news media reporting and change in Japanese perception of climate change issues. We used monthly public opinion data about “most serious issue in Japan” and “most serious issue in the world” from July 2005 to May 2007, and Japanese newspaper articles from June 2005 to May 2007. For the public opinion data, we used only “world” issues, as response rate for climate change issue is too low in analyzing “in Japan” data. The results are as follows. 1) Public opinion data is divided into two periods, one is before January 2007, and another is from January 2007. The reason of this is considered to be the effect of rapid increase of exposure from TV program. So, we analyzed dataset only for the first period. 2) The most significant effect from newspaper articles is the number of climate change related articles in the front page of newspaper, and not total number of climate change related articles in whole pages

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of newspaper. 3) As for the demographics of respondents, age is the most effective, and education level is the next effective characters of explaining the longitudinal change of perception of climate change issues.

Ralph Matthews and Robin Sydneysmith, The University of British Columbia, Canada. ralph.matthews@ubc.ca - New Institutional Analysis' and Climate Change Adaptation: Applications to Whitehorse and Other 'Arctic Gateway Cities.

This study focuses on the role of institutional processes (from planning regulations to governance relationships) on the ability of the City of Whitehorse, Yukon to develop sustainable adaptation strategies to deal with climate change. It is part of the International Polar Year research efforts organized under CAVIAR (Climate Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions) based at the University of Oslo and University of Guelph. The aim is to develop a framework that may be used in an analysis of climate change adaptation in Arctic gateway cities throughout Europe and North America. In contrast to earlier research that focuses on individual level attitudes and values around issues of climate change, the Whitehorse study looks at the institutional processes and normative relationships that assist or impede the ability of a sub-Arctic urban centre to respond in a sustainable manner to the combined impacts of global warming and the increased economic expansion around resource exploration and shipping that climate change in bringing about in the Arctic. The specific focus is on understanding the application of governance, through an exploration of key institutional linkages and relationship[s in the context of near term, adaptive strategies and future adaptive capacity.

Fritz Reusswig, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany, fritz@pik-potsdam.de: Recent Transitions in the Global Discourse on Climate Change: An Explanatory Attempt

The paper focuses on recent changes in the global discourse on climate change. By ‘discourse’, I refer to a structured (although not necessarily coherent) ensemble of scientific research & communication, mass media reports, public awareness & action, corporate response, and problem specific policy measures & symbolism. As characteristic features of the recent transition in the climate change discourse I regard: (1) from scientific understanding to social decision-making; (2) from sector specific to cross-cutting policies; (3) from a merely political to a wider social issue. The paper presents a set of different empirical indicators for these shifts in various countries (UK, USA, Germany, France, Brazil, China, India, selected African countries, Russia), and tries to identify reasons why some are more advanced than others. For this purpose, a mix of quantitative indicators (such as the Climate Change Performance Index or global public surveys) and case studies (such as on mass media coverage in selected countries) is used. In a final section, the paper tries to give an overall conceptual framework for analysing discourse transitions, and to identify possible points of intervention and social learning with regard to the overall goal of a low carbon global society. My theoretical plea is that environmental sociologists should move away from purely domain specific research (such as looking at attitudes & behaviour), and instead embrace a systemic (and in part: interdisciplinary) perspective, focusing on multi-level explanations and the long-term dynamics of socio-environmental systems

Anders Blok, Department of Sociology, Copenhagen University, Denmark, anders.blok@sociology.ku.dk: Environmentalism on the carbon markets: consuming, engaging, or confronting economics?

Markets and the economic calculative techniques on which they rely arguably play increasingly central roles in environmental governance, from the widespread use of cost-benefit analysis to the construction of markets in environmental ‘goods’. Nowhere is this tendency more pronounced than in the gradual ‘marketization’ of global climate change, embodied in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Under the auspices of transnational governance

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structures, a diversity of carbon markets are now emerging, with the EU ‘cap-and-trade’ ETS and the ‘project-based’ UN CDM by far the largest in scale. While invested with great expectations, these carbon markets continue to be controversial and widely contested. In particular, carbon markets have become a new arena for enacting rather traditional cleavages between economy and ecology; or, in knowledge-political terms, between economics and ‘eco-logics’, the knowledge base of environmentalism. This paper explores the conflictual interface between economics and environmentalism, both conceived as heterogeneous bodies of expertise, techniques, material infrastructures, and public alliances. If, as Bruno Latour suggests (2004), there is a ‘war of the eco-sciences’, how does this play itself out around carbon markets? More specifically, how are environmentalist groups responding to the new public-political concerns raised by these markets? Briefly, environmentalists may be variously ‘consuming’, ‘engaging’, or ‘confronting’ carbon economics. Exploring this issue empirically, focusing on environmental NGO networks in and around Copenhagen, Denmark (the COP15 2009 climate summit host city), will shed light on the extent to which environmentalist practices are helping to ‘democratize’ this otherwise highly technocratic world of ‘marketized’ climate change politic.

Maud Orne-Gliemann. maud.orne-gliemann@wanadoo.fr - Local water resource management in South Africa: negotiating community action with reform institutions

Since 1994 and the end of Apartheid, South Africa engaged on a large democratization enterprise. As part of this transformation, the Water Services Act and the National Water Act put to the fore objectives of equity, representativity, sustainability and efficiency in the water sector, and provide for the decentralization and devolution of management responsibilities. At local level, water user associations (WUAs) are progressively established, institutionalizing the pooling of capacities and resources for the operation and maintenance of water systems. This paper questions the creation and functioning of WUAs in already organized and managed contexts by looking at the interactions between community action and the newly established institutions in smallholder irrigation schemes. Following a stream of thought from the theory of public policies, the implementation of WUA is understood as a negotiation process between the existing and the exogenous system, process mediated through the social representations of each actors. Supported by two case studies from the Limpopo Province and interviews with representatives of government and WUAs from the rest of the country, this research shows that the outcome of the negotiation process is manifold, ranging from parallel existence to assimilation of the two management systems. Focusing on people’s perceptions and understanding of water management, the study argues that this diversity is the combined result of diverging management strategies and objectives, and diverging institution sizes and territories of reference for water management.

Brian J. Gareau, University of California, USA. bgareau@ucsc.edu - The Social Organization of the Montreal Protocol.

A great deal of research has been devoted to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). But little discussion of the Montreal Protocol has materialized in the discipline of sociology specifically. This paper seeks to eliminate this near-omission by providing a sociological assessment of the Montreal Protocol. What sociological accounts do exist are relative devoid of critical analysis due to their reliance on social capital. The paper proposes to move beyond the “social capital” assessment presented in existing sociological research on the protocol by drawing from theoretical contributions in macrosociology that consider multiple conceptualizations of power, and the political science perspectives of industry/nation-state cooperation and “knowledge broker” influence. Following Barnett and Duvall, I provide an overview of the framework of the Montreal Protocol as a social institution, highlighting the various dimensions of power that encapsulate decision-making within this global environmental institution. The argument here is that a broader sociological perspective sheds light on the reasons for the recent shift to failure in phasing out remaining ozone-depleting substances in the Montreal Protocol, specifically methyl bromide.

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24- Session 24 New environmental analyses, the state, the market, and community Chair: Ralph Matthews Email: Ralph.matthews@ubc.ca

Marie-Hélène El Jammal (IRSN) and Jean-François Tchernia, Tchernia Etudes Conseil, Grenoble IEP, France zouher@tele2.fr - Post-materialist values and the French population’s perception of risks

IRSN’s opinion barometer permanently monitors the ways in which the French perceive risks and risk management. In 2006, this barometer included a series of new questions aimed at measuring the extent of the commitment to post-materialist values. Detailed analysis of the impact this indicator has had on all the questions posed by the barometer relative to risks shows that while post-materialism has a significant impact on the issue of risk perception, this does not involve the severity of risks so much as the information available relative to this concern. The paper presented here aims to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between post-materialism and the perception of risks in France, and to draw conclusions regarding the aspects of information that an institution responsible for risk monitoring should take into consideration. In fact, Post-materialists tend to place a great deal of value on information, especially that issued by experts, as well as on various aspects related to it, such as transparency, the focus on the individual in the relation to such information and the acknowledgement of his/her ability to process it. Thus, underlying the issue of risk management, there is a democratic demand for openness with regard to information, which is tending to grow stronger as post-materialist trends become more developed among the French population

Ugransen Pandey us_pandey123@yahoo.com India. - Pollution of small scale glass industry in Firozabad

It has been observed that small and medium enterprises in India are generally less efficient in material and energy use compared to larger enterprises and enterprises of similar scale in the developed countries. The poor energy and environmental performance is directly related to the lack of technical capacity in these enterprises to identify, access, and adopt better technologies and operating practices. Through detailed diagnostic studies carried out by TERI in various small and medium scale industrial clusters in 1995, it was found that there exists a tremendous scope for increasing energy efficiency in these units. Based on these studies, the small-scale glass industry cluster in Firozabad was identified for further intervention The demonstration pot furnace, using natural gas as fuel, was commissioned in February 2000. The plant has been in operation for over one year now. There has been no deterioration in the plant performance, in terms of specific energy consumption, over this period. While specific energy consumption for the conventional furnaces was found to be about 5860 kcal/kg of glass, for TERI furnace it was found to be 2460 kcal/kg of glass, a reduction of nearly 60 %. The paper will also include a comparative survey of international and available Indian Standards in the glass industry and highlight the differences. This survey will lead the way to compliance with the environmental, health and occupational standards. Last but not least, the paper will pay special attention to social conditions prevailing in the sector. In this connection, close co-operation with the relevant NGOs and focal agencies will be sought.

Leonardo Freire de Mello School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design. State University of Campinas, leo.mello@gmail.com, Asanches4@hotmail.com Alessandro Sanches Pereira School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design. State University of Campinas.- Limits and Continuity: building conceptual foundations for mathematical modelling to foster socioenvironmental sustainability in the real estate industry.

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The concept of sustainability has been broadened to become a new paradigm and to form a hope for human development. There is some consensus around its implementation; however, the imprecision of the concept causes worldwide debates regarding the diversity of adoption and understanding. In this context, the question is how we can shape the development process in order to make it capable of taking into consideration the local way of becoming sustainable. The housing industry faces similar problems because the way in which the technology is used today does not fulfil the goal of assisting sustainability. Generally the industry only meets the terms for environmental legislation requirements and does not contribute to the local society development. Consequently, it is necessary to develop a strategic plan for future housing process and repair its design failures by evaluating its current performance. An effective process must integrate the socioenvironmental development concept into the implementation strategy. As a result, the new housing plan must not only promote strict environmental sustainability, but also contribute to the reduction of poverty and social inequalities at the same time it creates quality of place. Quality of place is related to how much physical space and both, urban and social, structures of a region – or city, or community, or neighbourhood – are able to satisfy the inhabitant’s individual preferences and values. Also, how much they are able to affect the decision making processes of local people, families and business. This relatively new concept incorporates personal experiences – positive and negative occurrences related to one determined portion of space such as how much socioenvironmental characteristics, chances of job and career improvements, options of leisure, cultural and historical heritage – into the urbanization process discussion. The evaluation of the quality of place, therefore, becomes an important tool for the decision-making process of public policies and community development. Therefore, it is possible to think about tangible ways of contributing to the real estate industry incorporates the socioenvironmental sustainability in the medium and the long terms goals. This paper intends to help building the conceptual foundations for a mathematical modelling in order to understand the decision-making process trends. The current real estate industry tends to unsustainability. Consequently, it is necessary to search for approaches, which make possible to shift from unsustainability to socioenvironmental sustainability. The idea of using mathematical modelling is interesting because it shows that is not possible to change the real estate industry with the current rules and the technology. However, it is possible – through some structural changes and paradigms – in order to invert the polarity of the equation from negative or unsustainable to positive or sustainable.

Ana Teresa López Pastor, Miguel Vicente Mariño, Spain (miguelvm@soc.uva.es) (anateresa@soc.uva.es -Some keys for improving the efficiency of environmental communication

La comunicación que se presenta busca reflexionar, a partir de dos casos concretos, sobre las características que deberían tener diferentes estrategias de comunicación ambiental, si queremos que realmente sean eficientes. Asumimos claramente, que en el nuevo modelo de sociedad en el que estamos inmersos, la importancia de la comunicación es clave. Más aún, nos parece imprescindible si realmente pretendemos una mayor conciencia de la situación de insostenibilidad del planeta y especialmente una generalización y asunción de prácticas hacia la sostenibilidad por parte de los gobiernos, las organizaciones y la sociedad civil. Comenzamos, en un primer apartado, con la construcción de un marco teórico a partir de perspectivas teóricas tanto de la sociología general, como de la sociología ambiental, y la comunicación, en sentido amplio (incluyendo aquí opinión pública, comunicación con fines sociales, publicidad –en nuestro caso publicidad responsable-, relaciones públicas, comunicación –en este caso comunicación responsable-..., y educación ambiental). Los dos apartados siguientes son la aplicación de este marco teórico a dos casos concretos: una estrategia de comunicación frente al cambio climático (proyecto CLARITY) y el planteamiento de un código deontológico de buenas prácticas ambientales en la comunicación publicitaria.

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CLARITY –Acción educativa por el clima- es fruto de la colaboración entre equipos de divulgadores de cuatro países europeos, uno de ellos España, y desde su presentación en marzo de 2006 se han distribuido ya más dos mil copias del CD. Este nuevo modelo de campaña de comunicación ambiental, creado como proyecto compartido y para compartir ( todos los materiales están en Internet y se distribuye el CD con los mismos gratuitamente) nos parece una experiencia importante a partir de la que reflexionar sobre algunas claves para la eficiencia de la comunicación ambiental. Junto a lo que llamamos comunicación ambiental, en el contexto de la comunicación con fines sociales, nos parece imprescindible detenernos en la publicidad comercial -y sus estrategias de relaciones públicas- por lo que analizamos también la llamada “publicidad responsable”, en concreto un ejemplo de autorregulación que debería ser el “Código de buenas prácticas ambientales en la comunicación publicitaria”. Las conclusiones que fluyen de ambas casuísticas nos permitirán profundizar en una reflexión y un debate que nos parecen no sólo intelectualmente interesantes sino, a nuestro juicio, socialmente muy útiles.

Leire Urkidi Azkarraga, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, leireurkidiazk@hotmail.com - The process of democratizing power in the environmental conflict of Pascua-Lama

Chile constitutes a strongly centralised country with a long mining tradition. Its open market economy has stimulated foreign investment as a main development strategy, generating a proliferation of extractive projects with a high socio-environmental impact. In many cases, these projects face the rejection of the local population that has been officially excluded from the decision making process. This paper focuses in the Pascua-Lama conflict, in the border between Chile and Argentina. A gold mining project going to be placed in their water sources generated an opposition movement in the affected community. The environmental evaluation process, undertaken by technicians and approved by governmental politicians, impeded information and decision access to the community, promoting alternative ways of achieving it. The contact with national NGOs and groups involved in other environmental conflicts enhanced sharing related knowledge and spreading their demands at the national and international level. The internationalization strategy implied community empowerment and acquirement of political opportunities. However, the knowledge and power attainment does not mean a direct and real access to decision making. In fact, despite the high international impact of Pascua-Lama, until now its opposition movement has not been successful. This makes us reflect on the possibilities of different strategies of power democratization in environmental conflicts.

Luísa Schmidt –ICS - Lisbon’s University, Portugal (ICS-UL) schmidt@ics.ul.pt - Environmental Policy in Portugal: The Social Causes of Failure.

Although Portugal has been a member of the European Union for 20 years, there is little evidence of any impact of that membership on the environment. The persistent failure of environmental policies, despite a growing administrative apparatus and a sizeable accumulation of legislation, can be attributed to social causes and, to a large degree, failures in communication. This paper focuses on the results of research carried out over 10 years, in the context of OBSERVA, on the environment, society and public opinion. The programme has afforded an examination of the dynamics of civil society in relation to several public policies, almost all of them introduced on a European-wide basis. This has enabled the identification of a number of themes relating to the social barriers most responsible for the ineffectiveness of policies, even when they have had favourable legislative and financial support. The paper includes elucidative examples, particularly in regard to basic sanitation, water and energy policies.

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JOINT SESSION I: The Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy: Critical Perspectives Hosted by RC23, Sociology of Science and Technology (session 16) Co-sponsored by RC02 Economy and Society; and by RC24 Environment. Chair: Les Levidow, Open University, UK, L.Levidow@open.ac.uk 1. 'Bioeconomy' as a Self-fulfilling Prophecy Kean Birch, University of Glasgow, kean.birch@socsci.gla.ac.uk and Les Levidow, Open University, UK, L.Levidow@open.ac.uk

Current EU policy in the life sciences represents European futures as a 'knowledge-based bioeconomy' (KBBE), i.e. as market relations constituted by and constituting technologies derived from the biosciences, in turn commoditizing biological resources. In principle, the 'bioeconomy' concept could encompass various European futures. In practice, however, EU policy favours specific priorities and technological choices, which have yielded few commercially successful products despite enormous investment. This outcome has resulted from ideological expectations which attribute extraordinary powers to techniques acting on the molecular level, in turn informing actors who perform the economy along those lines. From this critical perspective, the KBBE can be understood as a self-fulfilling prophecy; i.e. it is a process that depends upon reshaping the world in its image. Therefore any outcomes should be seen as pre-empting alternative futures and not simply as the fulfillment (or otherwise) of the imagined futures. In order to illustrate these dynamics it is useful to link theoretical approaches and research in science and technology studies (STS) with economic sociology.

2. Political Conflicts over the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy Marja Häyrinen-Alestalo, University of Helsinki, Finland, marja.alestalo@helsinki.fi

The ´knowledge-based economy´ refers to high-tech, market-driven activities that are needed to transform national economic structures towards competitiveness in international markets. The knowledge-based economy is an important goal of the ´competition state´, which has sought to harmonise science, technology, economic and industrial policies. European competition states have emphasised political strategies capital-intensive innovations that can help to commercialise and market products. The recent reformulations of innovation policy attempts to apply ´market forces´ logic in all sectors of society. The aims of economic and social policies have become contradictory, especially in the Nordic welfare states. The competition states have made attempts to apply market-driven aspirations to biotech as well as ICT. The OECD, EU and their member-states have presented visions of the knowledge-based economy where the success story of ICT serves as a model. Despite high public and private invests into biotechnological research it has little output and a slow commercialisation of its results. Politically biotechnology has become a loser that has not filled the expectations of the knowledge-based economy. The knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE) has been an effort to elaborate new attractive visions for policy-makers. To be progressive, the KBBE should become more reflexive about hybrid sciences and ways of governing innovation. There is a need for co-operation among biotech and social scientists, philosophers and jurists - as well as a dialogue between multidisciplinary scientific communities, policy-makers and citizens. This paper will discuss the following questions: What are the benefits of biotech applications? How can the investments and returns be evaluated? What kind of new risks will result? How can the policy-makers become sensitive to new forms of public concern?

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3. Of ‘Bad’ Fish: regulation, eco-labels and popular culture in the (re)construction of European bio-economies Stefano Ponte, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark, spo@diis.dk

According to Chris Patterman (DG Research, EC), the ‘Knowledge-based bio economy reacts to growing European and global demand for secure, healthy and sufficient food, produced with ethically acceptable environmental standards . . . [and] to growing demand to utilise renewable biological instead of fossil resources for energy production’. From this perspective, a bio-economy is then an economy where knowledge and biotechnology play an essential role, with possible applications in the realms of food additives and supplements, crop protection systems, bio-polymers and bio-fuels. Within the official contours of the ‘knowledge-based bio economy’, the EU has fostered specific regulations and initiatives such as Biofuel directives, a Biomass Action Plan, an Environmental Technology Action Plan and various Technology Platforms. However, a ‘properly’ managed bio-economy is, more broadly, based on public regulation on food safety and environmental protection that incorporates principles of quality management, systemic performance objectives, and decision-making based on ‘impartial’ expertise and knowledge, and value-free science. In relation to calls for ‘secure, healthy and sufficient food’, this broader framework includes a complex set of regulations now known as the EU ‘hygiene package’. But regulation does not have a monopoly on representations and perceptions of bio-economic management. Private ecolabels compete in this space of depiction and, despite their claims to impartiality, operate in the context of competitive pressures and specific political economies. Furthermore, popular culture and the media develop and spread their own conceptualizations of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as clearly indicated by the rejection of GM foods among the European public. Through the application of convention theory, this paper examines the overlap of interests, political uses of science and knowledge, and claims to legitimacy that constitute actual and imagined bio-economic management. Empirically, it draws from the case study of defining ‘good’ fish by analyzing three parallel processes pertaining to regulation, private standards and popular culture: (1) the imposition of past bans on fish imported from Lake Victoria into the EU on the basis of ‘food safety’ regulation; (2) the development and application of the UK-based Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label on ‘sustainable fisheries’; and (3) representations of the fish bio-economy as in the award-winning documentary ‘Darwin’s nightmare’ by Belgian director Hubert Sauper.

4. Corporate Imaginaries, Publics and the Knowledge Based Bioeconomy Larry Reynolds, , Univ of Lancaster, UK, larry.reynolds@lancaster.ac.uk and Bron Szerszynski, bron@lancaster.ac.uk

This paper explores the role of imaginary futures and techno-corporate visions in the political economy of the biosciences. Taking the ‘visioning exercises’ of EU industry lead ‘technology platforms’ as its starting point the paper examines how discourses of environmental sustainability are now being wedded to particular capital accumulation strategies, in the attempt to build new hegemonic alliances around biotechnology and biofuels. In these simultaneous co-productions of the material and the symbolic, certain futures become crystallised and techno-corporate solutions and trajectories locked in, while other visions, possibilities and answers risk becoming marginalised. Using this empirical focus, the paper also reflects on attempts to bring together the concerns of Political Economy with STS, particularly ideas of ‘Cultural Political Economy’ developed by Jessop and Sum (2005).

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5. Will the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy Ever Arrive? The Problem of Productive Labour David Tyfield, Lancaster University, UK, d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk

The huge investment, of money and political energies, in the creation of the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) within the European Union and elsewhere, must be set in the context of the state of the global political economy. Since about 1980 the global economy has been in a period of “financialisation”, the dominance of global finance. This has driven the search for a new productive mode of growth in the creation of a new industry into which capital can expand, namely the KBBE. This process has produced the related dominant discourses of “innovation” as the source of wealth, “biotech” and its promise and the “knowledge economy”. These express the hope (or rather the need from the perspective of capital) of such a new mode of productive growth. Backed by the huge power of finance capital, the seamless shift in treatment of these developments from hope to inevitability may be systematically overlooked. The question arises, therefore, of whether or not a genuinely “knowledge-based bio-economy” can conceivably be capitalist, or whether there are contradictions implicit in this model of economic activity that mean it can only ever remain an unfulfilled promise. The KBBE envisaged by EU policy remains fundamentally capitalist and thus demands the creation of profit, which depends upon the extraction of surplus value from productive labour. Yet the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, like the socially-efficacious categories of “profit” and “surplus value”, does not refer to any “real” phenomenon but is only tenable in particular socioeconomic contexts. In particular, the categorial stability of a capitalist economy presupposes a thorough-going materialism, in which effect upon a material substrate is the definitive and objective evidence of value creation. This paper examines whether the changing context of work practices, and the importance of intangibles in the emerging KBBE, can continue to support these distinctions and thus a specifically capitalist KBBE.

6. Discussant to be arranged

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JOINT SESSION II: Joint session 2. Leisure, Tourism and Environment. Part I.

Joint session of ISA Research Committee on Environment and Society (RC 24), ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Leisure (RC 13), and ISA Research Committee on Tourism (RC 13). Session organiser: Ishwar Modi, India International Institute of Social Sciences. Jaipur, India. iiiss2005modi@yahoo.co.in

Chairs:

Arthur P.J. Mol, Wageningen University, Netherlands, arthur.mol@wur.nl and Scott North, Osaka University, Japan, north@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp

Presenters: Alex Deffner and Theodore Metaxas, University of Thessaly, Greece, Adeffner@prd.uth.gr - The Cultural and Tourist Policy Dimension in City Marketing: The Case of the Olympic Municipality of Nea Ionia, Magnesia, Greece.

Culture and tourism have been used extensively in a variety of initiatives that concern urban regeneration, by using particular promotional strategies and tactics in the context of city marketing. The contribution of culture and tourism must be related to the conformance and implementation of urban policy actions, the focus on the satisfaction of the needs and demands of the potential target markets, the enforcement and promotion of the urban cultural identity and image, the contribution of citizens to achieving a better quality of life, and the construction of a city’s competitive advantage in order to attract tourists, inhabitants and investors. The paper investigates the cultural and tourist policy dimension in city marketing, using as a study area the Olympic Municipality of Nea Ionia in the Prefecture of Magnesia Prefecture in Greece. The data are derived from the INTERREG IIIC CultMark (Cultural Heritage, Local Identity and Place Marketing for Sustainable Development) project that has been in operation in five European places locations (Nea Ionia - lead partner, Chester-UK, Rostock/TLM-Germany, Kainuu-Finland, Pafos-Cyprus) from 2004 till 2006.

Arvind Kumar Agrawal,University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India, drarvindagrawal@gmail.com - Globalization, Leisure and Tourism : A Critical Analysis from Third World Perspective.

Globalisation is a complex and all pervasive phenomenon. The Culture, hitherto, a local-geographical syndrome, is going to change with far reaching developments. This process is weakening geo-cultural and geo-social bonds and it is bringing into effect a new global cultural and global social scenario which is primarily leisure oriented with heavy emphasis on tourism. French economic historian, Braudel said that the world economy is not the ontology of world society but those entities, individual and corporate, those interact with and thus create patterns that may be called global structures. Globalisation is not all about bringing the world together rather it has thrown new challenges belonging to the political, social, cultural, economic and environmental spheres. Thus globalisation has brought many threat perceptions and reaction syndromes at the level

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of local cultures. A paradoxical combination is emerging with globalisation, i.e., it is seen associated with spread of democratization, promotion of individual liberties, Human Rights and development of civil society but also leading to high disparities, growth in social inequality, erosion of public social service such as education and health, social welfare and unemployment insurance systems. Globalization has led to such increasing inequalities and disparities that the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. There is a growing pauperization of the population in least developed countries. In the last few decades, the share of global income held by the handful elite of world population increased from 70% to 83% while the share of the poorest dropped from 2.3% to 1.4%.1 This article focuses on this particular reality that how globalization of trends in leisure and tourism are very lopsided meant only for the affluent citizens of affluent nations at a heavy cost of poor people of poor countries. This cost also includes the environmental degradation, social and economic decline as the state’s capacity in third world countries to invest on welfare measures is being cut down drastically. 1 Ghai, Dharam and Cynthia Hewill de Alcantara, 1994. ‘Globalization and Social Integration: Patterns and Processes’. UNRISD Occasional Paper No.2, World for Social Development, Geneva: UNRISD.

Devesh Nigam and Vinay Kumar Narula, Bundelkhand University, Jhansi deveshnigam2003@yahoo.co.in, & vin_nar@rediffmail.com - Ecotourism in Madhav National Park, India: Tourist Perspectives on Environmental Impacts and their Management.

Ecotourism potentially provides a sustainable approach to development in India. However, to realise this potential the adverse effects of visitor activity and associated infrastructure on the natural environment and the tourism experience must be identified to guide management actions and thus to sustain the resources on which ecotourism ultimately depends. This study, conducted in Madhav National Park of India, reports one of the first efforts to identify the impacts of ecotourism in India from the perspective of visitors. Environmental conditions of greatest influence on visitors’ experiences included litter and biophysical conditions such as deforestation, soil erosion and vegetation damage. These conditions were of greater concern to visitors than social conditions, such as the number of people. These results suggest that management efforts can be directed towards indicators of greatest concern such as litter, soil erosion and vegetation damage. The broad support given by those surveyed for a range of management actions provides managers with a choice of strategies to sustain ecotourism in Madhav National Park. This study, with its sociopolitical approach, contributes to a greater understanding of the implications of the ecotourist experience for ecotourism management in India. Keywords- Ecotourism, visitors’ experiences

Francis Lobo, Edith Cowan University, Australia, f.lobo@ecu.edu.au - Consuming Experiences: Challenges for Leisure Tourism.

This paper draws on the work of Pine and Gilmore (1999). It applies their model of economic progression to leisure and tourism in general and specifically to a tour of Vietnam. The model espouses four economic distinctions of commodities, goods, services and experiences. The development of the coffee bean is used to illustrate the four economic distinctions. Later, distinctions are emphasised into diverse areas of a tour. The landscape of the experience realms is further elaborated as having four aspects: entertainment; educational; escapist and aesthetic. Descriptive evidence shows how leisure and tourism fit into the template of the four economic distinctions and

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within the experience realms. Where there is a blurring of boundaries in the realms as in a location of spectacular scenery the four aspects merge to provide the richest experiences. The paper concludes with Pine and Gilmore (1999) adding a fifth distinction – guided transformations. The implications for leisure and tourism promotion are to advance the marketing of experiences for individuals with a view to progress towards transforming lifestyles.

James Moir, University of Abertay Dundee, UK, j.moir@abertay.ac.uk - Tourism: A Visual Leisure Pursuit.

This paper explores the ways in which tourism is located within an inner/outer dualism with respect to it being a perceptual experience. Sight-seeing serves to construct social and personal worlds in the sense of literally guiding the tourist to what should be viewed and how these are then translated in ‘experiences’ of place. This kind of perceptual-cognitivism is a cultural commonplace, actively maintained in the accomplishment of a range of social practices, including the production of literature associated with tourism such as travel guides. The notion of tourist ‘sites as sights’ is therefore actively constructed and comes to define the nature of what counts as tourism as a leisure activity. Such sites might include buildings, religious sites, natural scenery and so on. Some may be listed as ‘must see’ whilst others are included in terms of a more leisurely or wider interest. This activity and social practice preserves an ideology of tourism as the journeying of psychological individuals seeking to add to their experience. It is argued this maintains an economy of tourism rooted in a psychological discourse of perception and this is related to examples of Barcelona as a tourist destination.

Leena Sebastian, IIT, Madras, India, lina_stanly@yahoo.co.in - Tourism Development and Related Transformations: A Comparative Case Study of two Destinations in Kerala, South India.

With its promotional activities and paradisiacal slogans like the God’s Own Country, Kerala has emerged into an internationally renowned tourism destination. However, regardless of the prominence accorded to tourism as a strategy to solve the multitude of developmental issues confronting the state, relevant questions like tourism’s contributions to local and regional development remains unexplored. This paper attempts to assess and compare the tourism development experiences of two destinations, Kumily and Kumarakom in Kerala, South India, with regard to the concepts of sustainability. A case study method involving multi-stakeholder inputs is undertaken. This paper is part of a larger study that relies on both primary and secondary data sources, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The paper compares tourism development patterns between destinations with and without a planned intervention in tourism. Both Kumily and Kumarakom offer primarily nature-based tourism experiences, and the tourism activities depend on sensitive environment. The major attraction in Kumily is the Periyar Tiger Reserve, which was notified as a National Park in 1982. Tourism growth in Kumarakom has evolved mainly around the Vembanad backwaters that form a part of the Ramsar site, Vembanad- Kol Wetland system. Tourism activities have brought about significant societal and environmental transformations at both the regions. Shaped by the needs of the tourism industry innovative forms of tourism have emerged at these destinations. For instance, traditional kettuvallams that used to carry cargo through the inland water ways have been transformed into house boats that enhance the unique experience of backwater tourism destinations. This paper explores whether the tourism activities in Kumily, with its planned intervention, are more sustainable than Kumarakom. The conversion of ex-poachers into protectors of nature and the

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involvement of marginalized sections of the society in Community Based Eco-tourism are a few among the many transformations that have occurred at the destination. In Kumarakom, the unplanned and haphazard growth of tourism has given rise to several negative impacts. The pollution of the ecologically fragile backwaters, conversion of agricultural land into tourist resorts etc. has resulted in severe environmental and social concerns. The growth of tourism in Kumarakom has remobilized and demobilized the local residents in several aspects. It is evident from the findings that Kumarakom has a high rate of out-migration of the local residents. The findings of this paper have implications for destination planners and policy makers pertaining to the various issues and prospects associated with nature-based tourism, especially in rural developing communities.

3- Joint session 3. Leisure, Tourism and Environment. Part II.

Joint session of ISA Research Committee on Environment and Society (RC 24), ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Leisure (RC 13), and ISA Research Committee on Tourism (RC 13). Session organiser: Ishwar Modi, India International Institute of Social Sciences. Jaipur, India. iiiss2005modi@yahoo.co.in

Chairs: Raymond Murphy, University of Ottawa, Canada (RC24) rmurphy@uottawa.ca , Jaap Lengkeek, University of Wageningen, The Netherlands jaap.lengkeek@wur.nl

and/or Jan te Kloeze, WICE, The Netherlands jan.tekloeze@wur.nl

Presenters: Karen Wall, Athabasca University,Alberta, Canada, kwall@athabascau.ca - Healing Waters, Healing Histories: Aboriginal Pilgrimage, Social Change and Concepts of Reconciliation.

Varieties of pilgrimage tourism include travel to aboriginal sacred sites and cultural experiences, but seldom studied are the experiences of Canadian aboriginal people as mobile subjects across social boundaries. The annual Lac Ste Anne pilgrimage in western Canada draws up to 40,000 people, mainly of indigenous descent, from throughout the Americas and abroad. However, while the site’s significance to local cultural history has recently won it federal heritage designation, in addition to proposals for facility development and promotion in the area, the event itself is close to economic and environmental crisis. Beginning with a consideration of pilgrimage, leisure and tourism as subject to tensions between retreat and reconstitution of the status quo for participants, the paper inquires into theoretical frameworks that connect ‘places-apart’ with structural everyday conditions. Critical theory about leisure practices suggests insight into how, among marginalized peoples, the modern pilgrimage may provide a platform for dynamic change and action in the broader context of economic and political developments. An important point of connection is the discursive overlap between the traditional pilgrimage theme of reconciliation as healing (individual, collective, social) and the recent establishment of a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address historical inequities in the Aboriginal/Euro-Canadian relationship. As an experience outside of but reflective of everyday society, the pilgrimage provides a key to understanding patterns of retreat from and engagement with contemporary society in terms of reconciliation processes.

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Mounet Jean-Pierre and Rech Yohann, Université J. Fourier – Grenoble, France, yohann.rech@ujf-grenoble.fr , Jean-Pierre.Mounet@ujf-grenoble.fr - The participatory management of outdoor recreation areas: governance and participation.

Having to compose with uncertainties is now a reality for all the actors of our society. This situation of uncertainty has invested numerous domains and led to renew the major persistent separations, for example between common citizens and elected representatives (Callon & al., 2001). The outdoor recreation domain is not exempted from this phenomenon because the technical or environmental controversies are very frequent and contain an important part of uncertainty. Within the framework of nature sports, it is sometimes complex to know the impact of a human activity on the environment, to characterize human flux, to realize adequate land settlements etc. In managed areas, the administrators are so confronted with the problem of decision-making in context of strong uncertainty. Indeed, nature sports are very regularly renewed and their followers, often very mobile, choose their site in a way that still needs to be characterized. Furthermore, they often practice without belonging to an associative structure and without being with a professional. The management of nature sports is problematic inasmuch as these activities fit on spaces which are also places of life or work, and cause interactions between multiple actors. In order to bring appropriate solutions to these problems without being disconnected with the public, several French Regional Natural Parks rushed into the way of the participation, notably by the implementation of a participatory management. However, the consultation can not be effective it is based only on the representation of the spokesmen or on that of the local followers. In reality, it is the question of the representation of all the followers that is asked and which questions the evolution of our democracy. If the political representation of an individual is assured in its electoral constituency, the territorial distortion provoked by its move does not allows him to speak where his practice takes place.. To avoid any ideological representation of the participation, it seems necessary to study this phenomenon in a empirical way. The research conducted in the Regional Natural Park of Chartreuse (France) is based on sixty semi-directive interviews and is divided into two parts. On the one hand, our goal is to understand whether the participative democracy in protected areas remains of the order of the speech or if this one takes shape by procedures and recognizable modes of organization to imply the followers. On the other hand, the conditions of emergence of the participative democracy must be questioned. It seems necessary to understand if the followers perceive the management of the site and if they are inclined to put a lot in a personal way into this management. Key words : participatory management, participation, governance, outdoor recreation, French country park

Pedro Prista, ISCTE, Portugal, pmpm@iscte.pt - Social Tensions, Tourism and Landscape.

Growing expectations around the role of tourism in the sustainability of protected areas have underlied the importance of the political game around the concept of landscape. At the local scale, framed as a protected area under the statute of “Area of protected landscape”, that political game reveals the historical depth and present relevance of some social tensions. The Natural Park of the Southeast of Alentejo (Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano), is an area under several measures of environmental protection, national and international. It serves as research laboratory and field of reflection about the dilemmas and the ambiguities of the social uses of the landscape. The analysis of the tourist phenomena, presently under a great expansion in the Park, allows us to clarify some of these ambiguities and helps to decide upon some of these dilemmas. This paper is based upon research and field work conducted in the last 10 years at the OBSERVA and sustains itself on a broader reflection about the tourism phenomena in Portugal and is implications on the social, cultural and environmental sustainability of the country.

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Pekka Mustonen, Statistics Finland, Helsinki, Finland, and Antti Honkanen University of Applied Sciences, Vaasa, Finland, antti.honkanen@puv.fi , Young ‘serious’ tourists -The effect of commitment on the green motivations.

The paper is based on survey, “Finnish Speaking Youth and Tourism in Vaasa” which were carried out as survey questionnaire in several high schools and vocational schools in Vaasa. The responders were 16-17 years old Finnish speaking students. Vaasa is a bi-language (Finnish and Swedish) city but 71 % of population speaks Finnish. The sample size of survey was 285. Structural equation modelling was chosen for the analysis method. The intention is to clarify if green tourism motivation has a link with education institution (high school or vocational school), parents (in this case mother’s) education, gender, travel career and serious tourism (form of serious leisure). The mother’s education was measured by three different education levels. Travel career was conceptualized as the number of countries visited during a life and serious tourism is a construct which items consist of different questions about the meaning of tourism as free-time activity for responder. According to the results, mother’s high education increased the possibility of green tourism motivation. Young women were more interested in it than men but education institution had not a direct effect but through serious tourism. Travel career did not have a link with green tourism motivation but a reason can be that responders travel experience was vague in general. The most remarkable finding was that strong serious tourism attitudes led to high level of green tourism motivation. However, high mother’s education, studying high school and being female increase the possibility of serious tourism attitudes. Study supports the assumption that information of environmental friendly tourism has penetrated consciousness of youth with well-educated parents and those who are ‘serious tourists’. However, still are work to do especially with young men whose parents are not educated and who travelled casually.

Rohit Modi, Suzlon, Pune, India, shalinismile@gmail.com - Changing Trends: The Road becomes the Destination.

Two roads and a story which says you can change the way people look at roads! Yes, the East Coast road and the Old Mahabalipuram road in Tamil Nadu have achieved grand and brand excellence thanks to the novelty of the idea through which they were conceived and executed.

The entire idea, conceived by a private firm Tamil Nadu Road Development Corporation (TNRDC), ensures road safety and enhances user comfort. The entire stretch has a glossy look with extensive provision of retro-reflective signboards. The pavement center line marking and edge-line marking have been done with retro reflective paint imported from Kuwait. Moreover, guide posts with reflectors and delineators have been provided at suitable interval for the entire stretch. The delineators have been imported from Australia and reflectors from Austria. The road has been further beautified with extensive tree plantation and transplantation of tress along with roadside arboriculture and landscaping.

Traveling along the East Coast Road is a pleasure as the reflectors, retro-reflective signboards and Cat’s Eye throughout the road length is a cynosure to the motorists who enjoy every bit of their journey. Winding its way along the Bay of Bengal, the newly revamped highway connects Chennai with Pondicherry. Weave your way through chock-a-block roads of southern Chennai, dodging hunkering trucks, swerving motorists, darting children and ambling cows, and you’ll gradually encounter the open highway. The tarmac glides beneath you, and on the left, the sea glistens in the sunlight, as cars rev up their engines for a one-of-a-kind ride along ECR. A hoarding en route captures the thrill of cruising down the 113 km highway - “Sometimes the road becomes the destination.”. Sprinkled with luxury resorts, adventure sport arenas, quaint eat outs, and tourist spots

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immersed in south Indian culture, this potpourri highway has something for everyone. Thanks to the East Coast Road an entire township has developed around it and benefited the entire state.

The Old Mahabalipuram Road now called the Rajiv Gandhi Highway is the next Project that the same company undertook. The road is world class, lined with trees in the median and the sides, replete with a walking and a cycling track off the shoulders. It’s a ‘designer’ road and one where you can enjoy the beautifully designed boundary walls with paintings and sculptures to beckon. Truly, the road is the destination where art comes out into the common man’s daily life and is no more the treasure of the museums alone. The article takes you on a journey elucidating the importance of the idea its the execution and the effects on the community, at large, of such an endeavour.

Ronit Grossman and Yael Enoch, The Open University of Israel, Israel, ronitgr@openu.ac.il and yaelen@openu.ac.il , ‘Cosmopolitans’ and ‘Provincials’ in On-line Diaries of Travelers to India.

India is an attractive tourist destination for many Western travelers. For some of them this journey takes on a special significance, even beyond what they themselves had expected before the trip and they choose to share their personal experience with a wider audience by posting their travel journal on the Internet in the format of a weblog. Many of these diaries are updated frequently during the trip, sometimes even on a daily basis. Following the rhythm of their journey, we try to understand the pre-travel expectations of the diary writers, their actual experiences during the trip and the significance they attach to "their" India both during the trip and once they are back home. India as a "touristic space" has often existed for a long time in the minds of the travelers, in their imagination, their dreams and their fantasies. The diaries can be looked upon as sites that combine the internal journey and the external world, the "here" and the "there", the real and the imaginary, and enable the writers to clarify the boundaries between them. By processing their experience through writing a diary the travelers deconstruct and reconstruct both "India" and their own nation as well as the relationship between them. By posting the diaries on the Internet they in fact create a new "touristic space" which enables others, i.e. people who visit the site, to take part in the creation or re-creation of images relating to India. The modern technologies (e.g. the Internet) redefine the time-space relationship and enable travelers to retain daily contact with their "home" , to be at the same time away and in touch, experiencing and longing for an experience, taking the "local" into what was intended to be an experience of the "global." (see for example Bauman, 1998; Benedikt, 1995). Thus India and the home country are entities that can be seen as states of mind which are discussed and elaborated in the travel journals. These states of mind can be seen as co-productions created by the journal writers together with their audience, real or imagined. By analyzing diaries written by travelers from several nations we intend to examine how the experience of a different culture (India) is interpreted by people from different backgrounds. Hannerz (1996) distinguishes between "cosmopolitans" who are always willing to engage with cultural Other, whereas "metropolitan locals" or "provincials" mostly remain rooted in their own culture. Though clearly both types of tourists can be found among the diary writers from different nationalities, the question remains whether one or the other type can be considered as a dominant characteristic of the touristic discourse constructed by the writers from the particular nations. References: Bauman Zygmunt (1998). Globalization: the Human Consequences. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Benedikt Michael (1995). "On Cyberspace and Virtual Reality". Man and Information Technology. Stockholm: IVA. Hannerz, Ulf. (1996). Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge.

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Shalini Modi, India International Institute of Social Sciences, Pune, India, shalinismile@gmail.com - The Road Less Travelled: Out of the Past into the Future.

There was a time not long ago when India was synonymous in the popular imagination of the west as a place of chaotic crowds, numbing poverty, streams of beggars, snake charmers and maharajas, women with a big red ‘dot’ and teeming slums. Now that the image is shifting to the IT industry, call-center empires and even the big world of Bollywood films, tourists and the 300 million-odd members of India’s burgeoning middle class – are seeing a changing India, different from the one they remember in their youth. Interestingly, the tourism sector reports a great shift in the places that interest tourists, domestic and foreign both. In addition to the Taj Mahal, magnificent palaces and echoes of the Raj, India-bound vacationers are opting for a radically different travel itinerary – slum tours, graveyard tourism and socially relevant stays in rehabilitation homes and the like where they offer their services for a good period up to four weeks or so! Add to the list, medical tourism and educational tourism. A big draw for foreigners keen to experience the ‘real India,’ slum tourism is the latest buzzword in Indian travel. A new company offers a close-up view of life at Mumbai's Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, with uncensored – if brief glimpses into the dark underbelly of urban India. In New Delhi, enterprising street children have formed their own informal tour guide operation, picking up visitors from the train station for a walk about through their world. In both places, children still trawl through garbage mounds and open sewers. Mounds of rotting refuse and musty alleys lined with shanties crammed against each other remind the visitor of bad times. Emaciated rag pickers comb through discards at railway stations India's clichéd impoverished exotica is on full view for public consumption, either just another commodity along the tourist trail or a consciousness-raising experience. Bus tours of the shanty towns of Soweto in South Africa or guided walks through the favelas of urban Brazil have attracted curious tourists for years. In Kenya, the mean streets of Kibera, Nairobi’s biggest slum, have become a must-see for tourists, even drawing international celebrities. Following a similar template, tours to Delhi's railway underworld and Dharavi have been running for about a year and are immensely popular with Western and Indian visitors.

Sherry Sabbarwal, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, sherrysabbarwal@hotmail.com - Experiencing Leisure: Using Phenomenology in Tourism Inquiry.

In many post-modernist works the tourist experience has been viewed as either something essentially unauthentic, shallow and phony, or as a earnest search for authenticity, an effort to escape from a world from which one is increasingly alienated. However, we would like to believe that there are other ways of looking at leisure and tourism. Holidaymakers perceive and ‘feel’ the places where they are on holiday in different ways. In this sense, leisure can be viewed as an experience rather than as an activity or state of mind. It is with this view that writers like Erik Cohen advocate studying leisure in a way that ensures a better understanding of tourist 'experiences' in a phenomenological way, by using the method of descriptive phenomenology to acquire the lived experience of leisure. They feel that leisure should be seen as being central to human action rather than being constructed and represented as something trivial and somewhat meaningless, or more predominantly, as being a persistent and futile search for meaning.

Regarded in this way, inquiry into leisure in general and tourism in particular, is not so much about exploring the physical space or division of time or `free' experience. Rather, it is about the freedom, choice, pleasure, flexibility and satisfaction derived from these by each of us. Hence, any analysis of tourism needs to not only to focus upon the interrelation of the physical site and the activities availed of at the tourist destination, but requires a fundamental focus on subjective experience itself.