1996/03/01 by Frederick H. Battel
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Organic Food and Agriculture #Rural development and sustainability
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1549-0831.1996.tb00610.x
openalex publication_date 1996/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract Rural sociologists have been disproportionately represented among the major contributors to environmental sociology. In part, this is because several areas of longstanding rural sociological interest (e.g., sociology of resource management and outdoor recreation, studies of resource‐dependent communities) essentially came to be redefined as environmental sociology during the 1970s. The most significant role of rural sociologists in building environmental sociology, however, has perhaps been the fact that the material and biophysical nature of the phenomena they have traditionally studied contributed to a general predisposition to recognize the “materiality” of social structure and social life. I assess the major strategies that have been developed for theorizing this materiality, and then indicate some of the most critical lines of debate and dissension. I argue that if these debates are examined in their specifics—rather than as incompatible perspectives or “paradigms”—some opportunities for synthesis become apparent. Some suggested avenues of synthesis are set forth.