環境社會科學

概念

環境社會科學中的主要課題，領域和概念旨在傳達與自然和人類活動交織在一起所產生的環境問題，這些活動不斷地重塑環境，或者自身創造環境。例如，政治生態學建立在環境不是以政治為前提的基礎之上，因此它的主要研究方向是誰可以加入自然環境中，環境資源如何通過自身改變人類的政治結構，權力關係，經濟制度和社會進程。Paul Robbins, conveys this in his differentiation of "A-political verse political ecologies". According to Robbins political ecology places emphasis on identifying "broader systems rather than blaming proximate and local forces; between viewing ecological systems as power-laden rather than politically inert; and between taking an explicitly normative approach rather than one that claims the objectivity of disinterest".人類環境關係通過貫穿整個人類關係網絡和生態系統交織結構的「系統」且相互影響。在描述環境公平時，Shoreman-Ouimet和Kopnina強調的概念包括「人類社會和生態行為者有關的權重問題」。在進一步嘗試理解人類與環境的關係時，環境社會科學的研究者已經開始探索人類與非人類之間的關係，以了解兩者在自然界中如何相互影響。Ideas related to exploring human and animal interactions within the natural world, have become prominent in environmental ethics. Shoreman Ouimet and Kopnina define environment ethics as "a sub-discipline of philosophy that deals with the ethical problems surrounding the environment, in some cases providing ethical justification and moral motivation for the cause of environmental protection or for considerations of animal welfare". This has culminated in debates regarding environmental value and moral rights and who within the larger ecosystem should be assigned these rights. Environmental ethics explores the dialectic between human and nature exploring how the human configuration of nature may in turn reshape humans, their relationships and their conditions. Ideas that have emerged from the questions seeking to examine this dialectic include those of "post-domesticity and domesticity". Domesticity refers to societal dynamics produced in societies in which humans have daily contact with animals other than pets in contrast in post-domesticity people are quite distant from the animals they consume in referencing the ideas of Bulliet (2005) Emel and Neo convey that a distance from witnessing the processes that govern animal life including births, deaths while consuming animals as food, impacts people differently than if they were to be interacting continuously with animals. They mention that post- domesticity may produce feelings of guilt however the continued distance between animal life brought by interacting with animals as a commodity may cause people to only distantly relate to them or think of them as packages in a store disassociating them from the life-cycles they embody. Therefore environmental science has paved the way to multiple concepts, ideas and paradigms that differ among each other but all seek to intertwine issues related to the environment with other fields and issues in the social sciences.

社會流行病學

社會學家研究SES（社會經濟地位）以決定不同的資源獲取途徑，對資源產生的資本和生活質量對資源進行劃分。 通常，他們的調查涉及決定健康的社會因素，疾病控制和預防中心（CDC）報告稱這是「人們生活，學習，工作和玩耍時的健康風險和造成結果「。 這些社會流行病學家必須與環境社會科學家合作，以了解不同環境對人類健康的影響。這些研究成果用於制定環境和公共衛生政策，以提高全球人類的生活水平。第五屆歐洲環境與衛生部長級會議同意通過新的都市計畫政策，衛生和環境立法進程，努力改善低收入人群住房條件，防止兒童面臨重大的環境健康風險。 某些環境對人類社會的影響提供了社會流行病學調查的基礎，以確定它們是否與社會地位的高低有關，特別是只有某一部分人口受到負面影響時，體現的尤為清楚。流行病學使用宿主 - 代理 - 環境三角框架來理解人類生病的原因，這種三種方法允許社會流行病學家探索環境如何導致一個分區或整個人群的健康狀況下降。 It promotes the idea that the social, cultural, economic, political and environmental factors are all important factors to be considered, and health impact assessments (HIA) recommended by social epidemiologists working with environment social scientists are effectively making positive changes in the environment. The World Health Organization (WHO) worked with its members to compose the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) protocol in 2001 to ensure health impact assessments would be made with environmental assessments for policies relating to bettering the quality of life especially within low socioeconomic communities all around the world. As the environment can create stressors that are factors (i.e. low quality housing in areas of high pollution) that limit the quality of life of millions of people globally, environmental social scientists work collaboratively with the data social epidemiologists investigate and provide to understand the relationship between health status and environmental issues.