Valerie J. Gunter & Steve Kroll-Smith 
Volatile Places [EPUB ebook] 
A Sociology of Communities and Environmental Controversies

Volatile Places: A Sociology of Communities and Environmental Controversies is a thoughtful guide to the spirited public controversies that inevitably occur when environments and human communities collide. The movie ‘
An Inconvenient Truth’ based on the environmental activism of Al Gore and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina are specifically highlighted. Authors Valerie Gunter and Steve Kroll-Smith begin with a simple observation and offer a provocative case study approach to the investigation of community and environmental controversies.




Key Features:  

• Compels students with personal narrative: Co-author Valerie Gunter, who was teaching at the University of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck, gives her personal standpoint of this tragedy.


• Creates a dramatic story around the controversy: Each case study illustrates a local environmental conflict and is written to capture students′ attention.


• Provides a unique way to view environmental conflicts: The book illustrates the importance of each perspective and local knowledge when making decisions about the environment.


• Makes connections with previous chapters: The chapters are integrated to create a strong sense for the multifaceted approach to the study of community and environmental controversies.


• Includes portfolios in each chapter as well as concept and theory boxes: Students are inspired to engage in spirited thinking, original research, and action.

Intended Audience:  

This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Environmental Sociology. It is also an ideal text for Social Problems courses focusing on environmental issues.

Tabella dei contenuti

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. When Environments and Communities Collide

2. The Presence of the Past

3. Trust and Betrayal

4. The Problem of Uncertain Knowledge

5. Perceptions of Fairness

6. Oppositional Activity and Social Capital

7. Social Facts and Brute Facts: Confounding the Social and the Physical

Postscript

References

Index

About the Authors

Circa l’autore

Professor Kroll-Smith is the Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. He was formerly a research professor of sociology at the University of New Orleans. He has edited and written 5 books on environmental hazards and disasters, health and the environment, and sociologists as expert witnesses. He is the current editor of Sociological  Inquiry and the 2004 recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contribution Award in the study of Environment and Technology. Kroll-Smith’s current work is the problem of race, class, and water in New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane’s Katrina and Rita. He also regularly contributes to the growing scholarship on the sociology of sleep.