During recent years social scientists have come to reaffirm that understanding almost any facet of social life requires a simultaneous understanding of how economic institutions work and how they are influenced by values and norms. Sociology, and especially economic sociology, is well equipped to be of assistance in this endeavor. Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg bring together leading sociologists, economists, and political scientists in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, the first comprehensive view of this vital and growing field. "This excellent volume is a compilation of some of the best writing in this field over the past decade, including basic works like Oliver Williamson's transaction cost theory of the firm, and [is] a helpful comparison of economic sociology to mainstream economics." —Francis Fukuyama, Foreign Affairs "This is the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of the burgeoning field of economic sociology. The scholarship is consistently strong. . .. The book will be greeted warmly and read by serious scholars throughout the social sciences." —Robert K. Merton "This is a bold, ambitious, almost daunting project. ... It will surely become the standard reference book for the field—the sort of text every scholar will have to know-, consult, and cite." —Viviana Zelizer

Handbook of Economic Sociology

Modern management theory is constricted by a fractured epistemology. which separates humanity from nature and truth from morality. Reintegration is necessary if organizational science is to support ecologically and socially sustainable development. This article posits requisites of such development and rejects the paradigms of conventional technocentrism and antithetical ecocentrism on grounds of incongruence. A more fruitful integrative paradigm of “sustaincentrism” is then articulated, and implications for organizational science are generated as if sustainability, extended community, and our Academy mattered.

http://ingenieroambiental.com/inf/elparagigmadeldesarrollosustentable.PDF

Shifting Paradigms for Sustainable Development: Implications for Management Theory and Research

During recent years social scientists have come to reaffirm that understanding almost any facet of social life requires a simultaneous understanding of how economic institutions work and how they are influenced by values and norms. Sociology, and especially economic sociology, is well equipped to be of assistance in this endeavor. Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg bring together leading sociologists, economists, and political scientists in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, the first comprehensive view of this vital and growing field.During recent years social scientists have come to reaffirm that understanding almost any facet of social life requires a simultaneous understanding of how economic institutions work and how they are influenced by values and norms. Sociology, and especially economic sociology, is well equipped to be of assistance in this endeavor. Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg bring together leading sociologists, economists, and political scientists in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, the first comprehensive view of this vital and growing field.

The Handbook of economic sociology

Ecological studies of terrestrial urban systems have been approached along several kinds of contrasts: ecology in as opposed to ecology of cities; biogeochemical compared to organismal perspectives, land use planning versus biological, and disciplinary versus interdisciplinary. In order to point out how urban ecological studies are poised for significant integration, we review key aspects of these disparate literatures. We emphasize an open definition of urban systems that accounts for the exchanges of material and influence between cities and surrounding landscapes. Research on ecology in urban systems highlights the nature of the physical environment, including urban climate, hydrology, and soils. Biotic research has studied flora, fauna, and vegetation, including trophic effects of wildlife and pets. Unexpected interactions among soil chemistry, leaf litter quality, and exotic invertebrates exemplify the novel kinds of interactions that can occur in urban systems. Vegetation and faunal responses suggest that the configuration of spatial heterogeneity is especially important in urban systems. This insight parallels the concern in the literature on the ecological dimensions of land use planning. The contrasting approach of ecology of cities has used a strategy of biogeochemical budgets, ecological footprints, and summaries of citywide species richness. Contemporary ecosystem approaches have begun to integrate organismal, nutrient, and energetic approaches, and to show the need for understanding the social dimensions of urban ecology. Social structure and the social allocation of natural and institutional resources are subjects that are well understood within social sciences, and that can be readily accommodated in ecosystem models of metropolitan areas. Likewise, the sophisticated understanding of spatial dimensions of social differentiation has parallels with concepts and data on patch dynamics in ecology and sets the stage for comprehensive understanding of urban ecosystems. The linkages are captured in the human ecosystem framework.

/pdf/urban-ecological-systems-linking-terrestrial-ecological-2kwkdbwzer.pdf

Urban ecological systems: linking terrestrial ecological, physical, and socioeconomic components of metropolitan areas

Sustainability requires living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere. In an attempt to measure the extent to which humanity satisfies this requirement, we use existing data to translate human demand on the environment into the area required for the production of food and other goods, together with the absorption of wastes. Our accounts indicate that human demand may well have exceeded the biosphere's regenerative capacity since the 1980s. According to this preliminary and exploratory assessment, humanity's load corresponded to 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere in 1961, and grew to 120% in 1999.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/99/14/9266.full.pdf

Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy

paradigm which impedes recognition of the societal significance of current ecological realities. Thus, sociology stands in need of a fundamental alteration in its disciplinary paradigm. The objectives of this article are to make explicit the &dquo;Human Exemptionalism Paradigm&dquo; implicit in traditional sociological thought, and to develop an alternative &dquo;New Ecological Paradigm&dquo; which may better serve the field in a post-exuberant age.

A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology.

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

The emergence of environmental sociology in the 1970s, the decline of interest it experienced in the the early 1980s, and its revitalization since the late 1980s are described and linked to trends in societal interest in environmental problems. We suggest that the status of the field has been heavily dependent upon societal attention to environmental problems, in part due to the larger discipline’s ingrained assumption that the welfare of modern societies is no longer linked to the physical environment. We also suggest that growing recognition of the reality of global environmental change (GEC) poses a fundamental challenge to this “human exemptionalism paradigm,” and thus offers an opportunity for strengthening sociological interest in the environment. Understanding the causes and consequences of GEC calls for examination of societal-environmental interactions, the fundamental subject matter of environmental sociology. Unfortunately, early sociological work has largely ignored such interactions in favor of analyses of the “social construction” of GEC, Consequently, limitations of a social constructivist approach to GEC (and to environmental problems in general) are discussed, and a more inclusive research agenda is recommended.

Struggling with human exemptionalism: The rise, decline and revitalization of environmental sociology

Environmental sociology comprises a diverse set of interests, with the built-environment/natural-environment cleavage being especially significant. Yet, by virtue of their interest in societal-environmental relations, all environmental sociologists depart significantly from the disciplinary tradition of ignoring the physical environment. We offer an ecological perspective as a fruitful way of viewing the relations between societal and environmental phenomena, and as a means of integrating work on both built and natural environments.

What Environmental Sociologists Have in Common (whether Concerned with “Built” or “Natural” Environments)*

As with other sciences, ecology's conceptual foundations emerged long after its origin. Clarification of these foundations should enable human ecology to provide understanding of the fact that industrial civilization causes ecosystem breakdowns. Arthur Tansley's reasons for superseding the community concept and coining the term “ecosystem” need to be known. Sociologists have widely misunderstood the term. Their “ecological complex” is not synonymous with it. Tinkering with ensuing lists of variables can be highly misleading. Human ecology should be the study of whatever ecosystems involve humans. Until we put behind us the unnerving impact of inappropriate criticism, rejoin bioecology enough to get over thinking of succession as invader-driven, and recognize seral stages for what they are, sociologists will fail to comprehend the ineluctable difference between industrialism and ecological climax. Available literature can facilitate sociologists' necessary retooling.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1389410.pdf

William R. Catton

Papers

A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology.

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

Struggling with human exemptionalism: The rise, decline and revitalization of environmental sociology

What Environmental Sociologists Have in Common (whether Concerned with “Built” or “Natural” Environments)*

Foundations of human ecology