CHAPTER 15

- While both public health and sociology can describe who is more likely to become ill or die,
epidemiology focuses on biomedical mechanisms and health behaviors, while sociology
examines the aspects of society responsible for social patterns in morbidity and mortality.
- Health is a sensitive indicator of social, economic, and political forces in a society.
- The infant mortality rate for the U.S. is one of the highest among wealthy countries.
- Infants born to Black women are substantially more likely to die before their first birthday than
infants born to White women.

Epidemiology –Study of the frequency, patterns, and determinants of health-related states and events.

Health–State of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease.

Health inequities–Differences in health that arise due to unfair and unequal social forces.

Illness–The subjective experience of a disease, condition, or set of symptoms.

Infant mortality rate–Number of deaths occurring before one year of age per 1,000 live births.

Life course–Interconnected sequence and timing of socially-defined life events that unfold over a
person’s through their own actions and behaviors.

Maternal and child health–Subset of public health focused on mothers, infants, children, and
adolescents.

Maternal morbidity–Illness or disability directly related to pregnancy or childbirth.

Morbidity–A disease condition.

Mortality–Death.

Pre-existing condition–Disease or condition that exists prior to a particular event, such as pregnancy, or
before a person enrolled in a health insurance plan.

Public health–Field of study focused on the description and prevention of disease and illness.

- Health and illness are not objective states but are defined and experienced through social
construction and reflect social control.
- Early sociological studies of health focused on the spatial distribution of certain conditions to
demonstrate that morbidity and mortality are not inherent in the individual but reflect social
forces.
- As the field of medical sociology developed in the mid-20thcentury, sociologists studied how the
definition, meaning, and experiences of illness are socially constructed.
- If a person is ill, they may be exempt from social responsibilities and take on the sick role. This
role requires that the person seek and follow advice from a medical expert, and that the illness
isn’t believed to be their own fault.
- Ordinary experiences can become medicalized if they are framed using medical language. The
focus of treatment then become the individual person rather than society.
- Race, gender, and class intersect with all aspects of health and illness to yield different
experiences.
Eliot Freidson

Émile Durkheim

Irving Zola

Susan Sontag

Talcott Parsons

W.E.B. DuBois

Contested illness–Illness that is disputed or questioned by medical experts.

Demography–Study of features of human populations such as births, deaths, aging, and migration.

Disease–Physical or mental disorder in the structure or function of the body.

Economic segregation–Degree to which the poor live apart from wealthier groups.

Impairment–Loss or diminishment of physical or mental function.

Labeling–Assigning a disease or medical condition to an illness or set of symptoms.

Psychosomatic illness–Illness that is considered the physical manifestation of a mental illness or stress.

Socially legitimate–Consistent with the norms and values within a society.

Medical sociology–Branch of sociology that deals with social and cultural features of health, illness, and
medicine.

Medicalization–Process by which ordinary experiences are defined in medical terms, or by which

circumstances previously regulated by religion or the law come to be defined in medical terms.

Racial segregation–Degree to which different racial and ethnic groups live apart.

Sick role–Rights and responsibilities of a person who has a socially legitimate illness.

Social control–Ways societies try to influence members’ behavior to maintain social order.

Socioeconomic status–Social and economic standing, often measured through education, income,
occupation, and wealth.

Stigma–Characteristic of an individual or group that is seen as inferior or undesirable.

- Our health care system and the debates around health care reform are embedded in larger
social and cultural norms, values, and ideologies around who deserves to live a healthy and
fulfilling life.
- The American health care system is a patchwork of several different types of health care
systems.
- The Affordable Care Act (ACA) attempted to increase the number of people with health
insurance while decreasing health care costs.
- Numerous attempts at partially or entirely repealing the ACA have been a focus of political
debates.
Affordable Care Act–Federal health care law, signed by President Obama, that expanded health
insurance coverage.

Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act–Federal law requiring hospital emergency
departments to stabilize or transfer people with medical emergencies or in labor, regardless of their
health insurance status or ability to pay.

Health care system–Collection of institutions and organizations that deliver and fund health care.

Medicaid–Joint federal and state government program that provides health insurance for low-income
families or individuals.

Medicare–Federal program that provides health insurance to adults 65 years and older and people
under 65 who have certain conditions.

Universal coverage–All people have affordable access to the medical services they need.

- The social determinants of health include “a society’s past and present economic, political, and
legal systems [and] its material and technological resources.”
- Race, gender, and class are major social determinants of health due to their social meaning and
the extent to which structural racism, sexism, and classism interactively play out.
- Your health is related to the health of people in your social network.
- Neighborhoods are the sites of many resources and constraints important for health.
- Stigmatizing stereotypes can result in poor health through social, economic, and political
constraints and through social stress.
- Chronic stress is related to multiple illnesses through wear and tear on the biological stress
response system.
- Each of the social determinants of health interact with and/or operate through one another to
result in health inequities.

Glen Elder: outlined a theory of the life course related to child development, and many sociologists have
adapted this perspective to the study of health

Joe Feagin: helped us understand the stressful experiences of Black men and women as they negotiate
everyday American life. Marginalized social groups often anticipate potential prejudice or discrimination
or worry about previous problematic encounters. This anticipation or worry may stem from their own
personal interactions as well as encounters experienced by people in their social networks – or just as
importantly, from experiences of their larger marginalized group

Leonard Pearlin: stress proliferation, when one stressful event leads to a series of other stressful events
and situations

Interpersonal discrimination–Unfair treatment by one person to another, generally due to a prejudice

about that person or their social group.

Occupational prestige–Status and social power associated with particular occupations.

Physical environment–Human-made/built (e.g., Housing, roads, pollution) and natural (e.g., rivers,
climate) features of a work, school, or neighborhood context.
Social determinants of health–Historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that
drive social patterns in health.

Social environment–Social elements of one’s work, school, or neighborhood, including violence, civic
participation, and cohesion.

Social network–Structure of socially interrelated individuals.

Social support–Emotional, informational, and instrumental (e.g.money, transportation) support we

receive from others.

Spillover effects–Effects of one context or situation on a seemingly unrelated context or situation.

Stereotyping–Process by which a particular feature of a group is linked to undesirable characteristics.

Stress proliferation–One stressful experience cascades into other stressful experiences.

Structural racism–Set of beliefs and ideologies, and the social structure that they create through policies
and institutions, based on the idea that a specific racial group is biologically or culturally superior to
other racial groups.

Structural sexism–Set of beliefs and ideologies, and the social structure that they create through policies
and institutions, based on the idea that men are superior to women.

Vigilance–Anticipation and worry-related stress due to the burden of stigmatizing stereotypes about a
social group.

- Social genomics is an emerging interdisciplinary field that integrates social factors with genetics
to understand health. Sociologists can play a key role by identifying the social forces that result
in social patterns in health.
- Sociologists have contributed significantly to our understanding of historical social forces. Social
epidemiologists have started linking broad aspects of history to contemporary health.
Sociologists can add substantial nuanced historical information to the study of contemporary
health and health inequities.

Social genomics–Study of social factors and their impact on the human genome.

CHAPTER 9

- There are multiple ways to think about the relationship between schools and society
- Functionalist theories emphasize schools’ role in keeping society running smoothly.
- Conflict theories highlight struggles for power within and across groups and how schools
reproduce the class structure.
- Critical Race Theory (CRT) points to the institutionalized nature of racism and its manifestation in
schools.
- Interactionist theories pay close attention to what happens in schools, especially everyday
interactions.

Emile Durkheim

Randall Collins
Pierre Bourdieu

W.E.B. DuBois

Gloria Ladson-Billings

Socialization–Process through which people come to share the values and practices of a society.

Sorting–Process of dividing students into groups, often based on ideas about intelligence or
achievement.

Achievement ideology–Belief that anyone can succeed through education and hard work.

Social reproduction–Process through which schools perpetuate the class structure.

Social capital–Resources people access through their relationships or social networks.

Cultural capital–Knowledge, habits, and skills valued by institutions.

Institutionalized racism–Racism that is built into policies and practices.

- Students from higher-income families generally do better in school, at least in part because of
their increased access to educational opportunities.
- In 2017,45% of Black students and 45% of Hispanic students attended schools where at least
75% of the students were low-income; by contrast, only 8% of White and 15% of Asian
students attended such schools.
- Because school funding comes mostly from local property taxes, districts serving large numbers
of low-income students raise less money than higher-income districts.
- The Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education made it illegal to have
separate school systems for Black and White children.
- Progress toward integrating schools peaked in the late 1980s and has declined since then. The
number of intensely segregated schools serving students of color tripled between 1988 and
2016.
- On average, students of color receive harsher punishments than White students, even for the
same infractions. In preschool, Black students are twice as likely as Whites to receive out-of-
school suspensions.
- Schools are important sites for the performance of gender.
- In recent decades, women have outpaced men in high school and college graduation. In 2018,
33% of menages 25-29 had at least a college degree, whereas 39% of women did.
- The rise of the LGBTQIA+ movement is reshaping gender norms and challenging schools to be
more inclusive.

Sean Reardon

James Coleman

Annette Lareau

Ann Ferguson

Barrie Thorne
Myra and David Sadker

Achievement gap–Differences in academic outcomes between groups of students.

Opportunity gap–Differences in opportunities and resources available to groups of students.

Coleman Report–Study of U.S. schooling that identified student background as the most powerful
influence on achievement.

Social construct–A category that can take on the appearance of “scientific fact,” but is actually the
product of society and culture.

De jure segregation–Segregation of schools enforced by law.

De facto segregation–Segregation of schools created by residential segregation.

Double segregation–Concentration of large numbers of low-income students of color in particular

schools.

Heteronormativity–Assumption that individuals are heterosexual, and that biological sex and gender
expressions are aligned.

- The hidden curriculum is a key mechanism of socialization within schools, teaching students
about power, appropriate behavior, and their place in the world.
- Schools use tracking to sort students into different groups, which then affects their learning
opportunities.
- Race is a major factor in track placement, with students of color often ending up in classes below
their ability levels.
- Class is also a major factor in track placement. Students from the highest fifth of family incomes
are about three times more likely than students from the lowest fifth of family incomes to be in
high-track classes.

Philip Jackson

Jean Anyon

Amanda Lewis

John Diamond

Joanne Golann

Hidden curriculum–Unofficial messages to students that are communicated through rules, routines,
arrangements of classrooms, and interactions.

Tracking–Process of sorting students into different groups based on ideas about ability, achievement, or
prospects.

Second-generation segregation–Racial segregation within schools because of racialized patterns in

tracking assignments.

- The federal government contributes less than 10% of school funding.

 - Standardized testing has increased dramatically since the passage of NCLB, with mixed
consequences.
- Charter schools are the most popular form of public school choice. The number of students in
charter schools more than quadrupled between 2004 and 2018.
- Some charter schools do better than traditional public schools and others do worse.
- Charter schools are generally more segregated than traditional public schools. Black charter
school students are nearly three times more likely than Black public school students to attend a
school where all or nearly all students were members of minority groups.
- School reform efforts should pay closer attention to social relations in low-performing schools.

Charles Payne

Anthony Bryk

Education policy–Decisions about school-related issues, including funding, operations, curriculum,

student assignment, and staffing.

No Child Left Behind Act–2001 federal law that mandated regular standardized testing and set
consequences for low-performing schools.

Charter schools–Privately run but publicly funded schools.

CHAPTER 12

- For the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas.
- In 1990, there were just 10 megacities with at least 10 million inhabitants. By 2016, there
were 31.
- Clusters of cities are now linked together by geographic proximity (megaregions) and through
networks of economic activity (global cities).
- Sociologists like Simmel, Tonnies, and Wirth have long worried that the rise of cities has eroded
community life.
- Others like Claude Fischer argue that cities simply generate new forms of community, such as
subcultures.
- And others like Barry Wellman point out that our networks in school, work, and online now
define our communities as much as our residential neighborhoods.

Robert Putnam

Ferdinand Tonnies

Georg Simmel

Louis Wirth

Claude Fischer

Jane Jacobs

Barry Wellman

Urbanization – Growth in the proportion of a nation’s population living in cities.

Megacities – Urban areas with at least 10 million people.

Megaregions – Chains of densely populated areas that extend over long stretches of space.

Globalization – Movement of products, services, and information across national and continental
boundaries.

Global cities – Major urban areas that serve as nodes for the worldwide network of economic activity.

Social capital – Tight connections that people form with each other through organizations, civic life, and
strong social ties.

Urbanism – Unique ways of life found in cities.

Subcultures – Groups that hold values and engage in activities that separate them from wider society.

Social networks – Various types of connections that individuals form with other people, no matter where
they’re located.

- More than six million African Americans left the south from 1900 to 1970, transforming cities in
the Northeast, Midwest, and the West.
- Patterns of migration, explained by a combination of push and pull factors, are crucial for
understanding the layout of city neighborhoods.
- The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ushered in major demographic changes that
continue to shape the racial and ethnic composition of our country.
- 44.4 million U.S. residents were born outside of the country as of 2016, accounting for almost
14% of the U.S. population.
- The largest number of new immigrants come from India, China, Mexico, the Philippines, and El
Salvador.
- New immigrants have multiple pathways of incorporation into American society and culture, not
one single model of assimilation.
- Due to legal and informal discrimination and intimidation, African Americans have never
followed the same model of residential assimilation as White ethnic groups.
- Coalitions of economic, political, and cultural elites often work together to shape the city, with
the overarching goal of attracting new populations and expanding economic activity.

Isabel Wilkerson

St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton

W.E.B. Du Bois

Ernest Burgess

Douglass Massey

Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy Abrego

The Great Migration – Movement of millions of African Americans, from 1900 to 1970, into cities outside
the south.
Oral history – Research method relying on interviews with people who recount personal narratives from
the past.

Push and pull factors – Forces that lead people to leave their original location and forces that draw them
to their new destination, respectively.

Chicago School of Urban Sociology – Group of sociologists at the University of Chicago who had
tremendous influence on the study of cities in the first half of the 20th Century.

Human ecology – Study of ways in which groups are sorted into environments that provide the best fit
between the individual and the environment.

Ethnic enclave – Section of a city where the local culture and labor market are dominated by a single
ethnic group.

Rational choice theory – Economic perspective that decisions are made by individuals acting in their own
self-interest.

World systems theory – View that capitalist exploitation creates conditions that push people to move,
usually to the country that disrupts social and economic life in their home country.

Global neighborhoods – Neighborhoods that contain at least three different racial or ethnic groups.

Legal violence – Fear and harsh enforcement experienced by immigrants because of immigration
policies.

Immigrant integration – Process by which immigrants and their descendants integrate into American
society.

First generation – Immigrants born in another country.

Second generation – U.S.-born children of immigrants.

- The number of Americans living in extremely poor neighborhoods rose from about 4 million in
1970 to almost 14 million by 2013.
- A range of social problems, from joblessness to violence, has emerged in neighborhoods with
concentrated poverty.
- Segregation by income and class has also risen. Since 1970, the number of American families
living in either extremely poor or extremely affluent neighborhoods has risen from 12% to 34%.
- Racial segregation increased in central cities both because of active discrimination in the housing
and lending markets and because of widespread migration of Whites to the suburbs.
- Chicago, New York, and Miami have the highest levels of segregation between Blacks and
Whites. Oakland, New York, and Los Angeles have the highest levels of segregation between
Latinos and Whites.
- Although the problem of concentrated poverty has worsened, racial segregation has fallen since
1980 and violent crime declined sharply since the early 1990s.

John Logan and Harvey Molotch

Elijah Anderson
William Julius Wilson

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton

Jacob Vigdor and Edward Glaeser

Growth machine – Powerful set of urban actors that come together to promote an agenda of population
expansion and economic growth.

Gentrification – Shift in the population of a community bringing in new residents who are more affluent
or more educated than the original residents.

Concentrated poverty – Neighborhoods with extremely high rates of poverty, usually defined as at least
30% or 40% poor.

Economic segregation – Degree to which the poor live apart from the rich.

Residential segregation – Degree to which different groups, typically classified by race, ethnicity, or class,
live apart from each other in separate communities.

White flight – Migration of Whites out of central city neighborhoods and into suburban communities.

Redlining – Practice of outlining in red any sections of a city that were considered “risky” and rejecting
loan applications in that area.

Suburban sprawl – Expansion of the boundaries of suburbs farther from central cities.

- Cities are seen by many as the key to economic growth and environmental sustainability, yet
they are also the sites of extreme inequality
- The tensions of our urban world have begun to bubble up, generating sustained protest
movements.
- The next challenge of our urban future may be to create innovative, creative cities that are also
inclusive and just.

Richard Florida

Enrico Moretti

Edward Glaeser

CHAPTER 13

- Determining what is deviant relies on social agreements between community members.

- Lines between deviant and non-deviant behavior are upheld through enforcement of social
norms. Social norms vary in degree of importance and how severely violations are punished.
- Societies enforce norms through processes of social control.
- One way to exert social control is through moral panics.
- Deviance is a relationship between individuals and larger social landscapes.

William Graham Sumner

Karl Mannheim
Erich Goode & Nachman Ben-Yehuda

Howard S. Becker

Erving Goffman

Deviance–Behaviors that violate social norms.

Norms–Expectations for behavior.

Folkways –Norms about customs, traditions, and etiquette.

Mores–More seriously protected norms that reflect the morals and values of a social group.

Laws–Most seriously protected norms; codified and require specific enforcements.

Social control–Ways societies try to influence members’ behavior to maintain social order.

Moral panics–Overheated, short-lived periods of intense social concern about an issue.

Moral entrepreneurs–People who try to influence societies toward increased awareness of and concern
over the violation of social norms.

- When a so-called deviant act occurs, there are multiple overlapping ways to explain it. Thus,
there are many theories of deviance and crime. Their usefulness varies depending upon the
context, but all seek to understand deviance.
- Functionalist theories focus primarily on the social purposes of deviance. They seek to
understand why people engage in deviance.
- Conflict theories of deviance focus primarily upon power relations in society, and the ways in
which the powerful understand deviance in ways that benefit themselves. They seek to
understand how norms, rules, and laws are created and shaped through processes of social,
political, and economic power.
- Not all deviance is negative; deviance can solve problems through innovation.

Émile Durkheim

Robert K. Merton

Richard Cloward & Lloyd Ohlin

Karl Marx

C. Wright Mills

Edwin Sutherland

Functionalist theories of deviance–Theories that focus on potential social purposes that deviance serves.

Social cohesion–Degree to which we identify with and maintain social rules and connections.

Normative–Accepted and expected behavior.

Anomie–Asocial lack of morals and expectations for behavior that can lead to deviance.
Strain–Stress that results from anomie.

Strain theory–Functionalist theory that describes five adaptations to strain: conformity, innovation,
ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.

Opportunity theory of deviance–Functionalist theory that says delinquency is a function of opportunity

and access to delinquent behavior.

Conflict theories of deviance –Theories that ask about how rules and norms are shaped by power
relations in society.

Worldview–Set of shared values, beliefs, and understandings about how the world should be.

Hegemony–Type of domination in which the powerful obtain the consent or support of the
subordinated

Stigma–A phenomenon in which a person is discredited and/or rejected by society because of an

attribute they have.

Differential association –Theory that deviance is learned through intimate personal contacts.

Control theory–Theory that claims deviance arises from a weakening of social connections.

Labeling theory–Theory that deviance is created through reactions to an act.

- A sociological perspective on crime and violence expands beyond the focus on individual
characteristics and considers the features of environments and societies that make crime more
or less likely.
- Murder is the crime that is measured most precisely because it’s tracked by both police
departments and health departments.
- A large portion of all violent crime is committed by a small network of individuals.
- Individuals’ ties to other people and institutions have a large impact on their involvement with
violence.

Cesare Lombroso –One of the founders of criminology; scientist who argued that crime is explained by
biological abnormalities.

Criminology–Study of crime and criminal behavior.

Crime–Act that violates the penal code.

Penal code–Written laws that govern behavior in a particular jurisdiction.

Violent crime–Crimes like homicide, robbery, assault, and sexual assault, which involve the use of
physical force.

Property crime–Theft that doesn’t involve the use of direct physical force.

Street crime–Violent crimes and property crimes that are more common in public spaces and often
involve the police.
White-collar crime –Crimes like fraud, embezzlement, and other unethical acts or business practices that
are typically not carried out on the street or in public spaces and don’t use physical force.

Criminal–Person who violates the penal code.

Social network–Group of people linked together in a specific way.

Social bonds –Connections and attachments to people and institutions in mainstream society.

Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) –Strategy to reduce crime through the design
of buildings and physical space.

Broken windows theory–Theory of policing that argues that small signs of disorder lead to outbreaks of
more serious crimes.

- Violence has fallen steadily over the last several centuries of human history.
- The rate of homicides and all violent crimes in the U.S. has been cut in half since the early 1990s.
- In 2018, there were 5 homicides per every 100,000 residents.
- The homicide rate in the U.S. is more than twice as high as in many nations in the developed
world, including Canada, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and many others.
- Three possible explanations for the high rate of violence in the U.S. are our historical culture of
violence, the large number of guns, and the high level of inequality.
- There is no single answer as to why violence fell in the United States, but several factors played
at least some role, including the growth of police, improvements in policing tactics, the rise of
incarceration, and the end of the crack epidemic.
- Other factors, like the decline in alcohol consumption and lead poisoning, may also have played
a role in reducing violence but don’t yet have sufficient evidence to come to a clear conclusion.

James Alan Fox

Steven Pinker

Franklin Zimring

Steven Levitt

Key Terms

Homicide rate–Number of homicides per 100,000 residents.

Culture of violence–The idea that the United States has a unique heritage in which settlers had to resort
to violence to protect their property and themselves, creating a longstanding norm of violent behavior.

Relative deprivation–A feeling of falling behind while other people do better and better. Merton argued
that this feeling creates strain, leading to crime.

- The U.S. imprisonment rate is higher than any other country in the world. More than 2 million
Americans are in prison or jail, and almost 5 million are on probation or parole.
- About 60% of African American men born near the end of the 1960s will go to prison at some
point in their lives.
 - Research shows that more police on the street does tend to reduce violence, but also has
substantial costs.
- Slave patrols were the first institutions of law enforcement in the American south, providing an
example of how Black Americans’ attempts to achieve freedom and full citizenship have often
been labeled “criminal.”

George Floyd

Bruce Western

Michelle Alexander

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Kahlil Gibran Muhammad

Mass incarceration–Expansion of imprisonment to a level not matched elsewhere in the world or at any
previous point in U.S. history.

The New Jim Crow–A book written by Michelle Alexander arguing that mass incarceration represents the
latest in a series of institutions and policies designed to reinforce a racialized caste system in the United
States.

Defund the police–The slogan of a movement to shift resources from police budgets to other agencies
that provide services, like jobs programs or mental health treatment, to residents of a city.

Black Lives Matter–Movement devoted to, among other things,reducing police violence against African
Americans.

CHAPTER 16

- Early sociologists often overlooked the natural environment, focusing instead on social issues
and causes of behavior.
- In the 1970s, environmental sociology arose as sociologists began to place more attention on
how societies and the environment interact.
- Public concern about the environment grew in response to several ecological disasters and
growing pollution.
- Societies have often treated the environment as though humans are exempt from any limits
on our economic growth or use of resources.
- Environmental sociologists called for an approach that acknowledges limits on available
resources and the need to live in balance with the environment.

Frederick Buttel

Émile Durkheim

William Catton and Riley Dunlap

Biodiversity–The variety of species in an ecosystem.

Human exemptionalist perspective–View that humans are different from other living beings and do not
face environmental limits on our economic growth.

Rural sociology–Subfield focuses on people in rural areas and their connections to the environment and
natural resources.

Human ecology–Subfield that focuses on the social organization of urban communities and similarities
to other organisms.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)–1970 law requiring federal agencies to consider the
environmental effects of policies and legislation.

Environmental Protection Agency–Federal organization created to oversee implementation of NEPA.

New Environmental Paradigm (or New Ecological Paradigm)–Perspective that considers potential limits
to economic growth and encourages developing a stable economy balanced with nature.

Conjoint constitution–Society affects the natural environment, and environmental change affects the
quality and scope of society.

- There are multiple ways to think about the relationship between societal development and
environmental protection.
- Pessimistic theories see economic growth as in conflict with environmental protection.
- Optimistic theories think economic growth is possible with environmental protection.
- The anthro-shift argues that the relationship between economic growth and environmental
protection changes based on other social characteristics.
- The anthro-shift says that the relationship between society and the environment is determined
by risk and perceptions of risk.
- The anthro-shift is multi directional; it can move toward both more and less environmentally
friendly configurations of actors.

Civil society–People working individually or collectively through community groups and social
movements.

Treadmill of production theory–Suggests that societies driven by economic expansion conflict with
nature.

Old-growth Forest –One with mature trees that have been relatively undisturbed by human activity.

Metabolic rift perspective–Theory focused on the interchange of matter and energy between human
societies and the larger environment as economies grow.

Growth imperative –Need for constant economic growth.

Social metabolism–Exchange of resources and material between society and the environment.

Ecologically unequal exchange theory–Focuses on unequal resource exchanges and ecological

interdependencies within the global economy

Environmental state–Governments include environmental protection as a basic responsibility.

Nongovernmental organizations–non-profit groups that work independently of governments.

Ecological modernization theory–View that the dynamic nature of capitalism allows economic growth
and related technologies to be directed toward environmental reforms.

World society theory–Perspective that global institutional structures bring about environmental
protection.

Reflexive modernization–View that through development, environmental protection becomes more

common.

Risk society–Risk is spread broadly throughout a society.

Green New Deal–Proposed legislation to address climate change and racial inequalities.

Anthro-shift–Sees the society-environment relationship as dynamic, determined by how governments,

the market, and civil society interact and how much they prioritize environmental issues.

Risk–Actual and perceived exposure to environmental dangers and natural disasters.

- Climate change is a key example of how societies and the environment affect each other.
- Different measures of carbon emissions highlight different relationships. Per capita emissions
focus on inequality and how much carbon is produced by each person in a country. Emissions
per unit of GDP measure how much carbon a nation produces for the value it creates in its
economy. Total emissions allow us to see our overall impact on the atmosphere.
- Scientists agree that we should limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid devastating
impacts on societies around the world. We are not currently on track to stay within this limit.
- To reduce climate change, societies could follow several pathways, focuses more on reducing use
of fossil fuels (to limit emissions of carbon) or relying on technologies to remove carbon after it’s
released.
- While countries signed on to the Paris Agreement, it does not enforce any specific limits on
carbon emissions or commit nations to reducing carbon emissions.
- Climate denial involves intentionally spreading misinformation, so people are unsure about the
severity of climate change or whether humans cause it.
- Climate change represents a tragedy of the commons, as every nation has access to the
atmosphere and releases carbon, even though the overall result hurts everyone.
- A small group of hyper polluters in any industry are often responsible for a large proportion of all
pollution.

Garrett Hardin

William Freudenburg

Don Grant

Climate change–Warming of the Earth and increases in extreme weather events)

Total emissions–How much carbon we add to the atmosphere.

Per capita emissions–Carbon emissions per person.

Commons–Resource available to everyone.

Emissions per unit of GDP–Eco-efficiency, or carbon emitted to create economic value.

Paris Agreement–Global agreement to take steps to address climate change.

1.5 degrees Celsius–Scientific consensus of amount of global warming societies can adapt to.

Desertification–Land turns into desert.

Climate denial–Intentionally promoting scientific misinformation about climate change.

Echo chamber –Ideologically similar groups who amplify and distort climate misinformation.

Tragedy of the commons –Since everyone has access to the common resource, individual people may
act selfishly and use too much of it.

Disproportionality–Inequalities in the production of environmental harms.

Hyper polluters–Those disproportionately responsible for environmental harms.

- In recent years, social movements have introduced protest campaigns to bring more attention
to climate change. Participation has grown rapidly.
- Activists use a mixture of insider and outsider tactics to influence government environmental
policy.
- Environmental justice activists emphasize that race, ethnicity, and class affect who experiences
the most severe effects of environmental degradation.
- Young activists have been at the center of recent climate change movements.
- Environmental sociologists continue to influence government policy by studying how societies
and the natural environment affect each other and how environmental destruction will impact
different communities and nations.

Greta Thunberg

Earth Day–Annual event to protest environmental pollution and celebrate the planet.

Environmental justice movement–Focuses on the unequal distribution of environmental harms and

environmental goods by race and class.

Frontline communities–Those that experience environmental pollution and harm first and most severely.

Fridays for Future–Group coordinating tactic of skipping school on Fridays to protest inaction on climate
change.