Where does Environmental Sociological data come from, really? An Argument for a Post-Positivist Agenda

• In Event: 50817 - Novel Approaches to Environmental Sociology

Abstract

How do environmental sociologists know what we know? Through what empirics do we build our claims? Where does our empirical data come from, and how has it been collected? Drawing from journals including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems since 2010 as well as Environmental Sociology since 2015, we catalog the empirical data employed in over 80 self-identified “environmental sociology” quantitative articles in order to help answer these questions. We not only identify common data sources, but investigate how these data were collected in the first place. We find that, in various ways, the data environmental sociologists employ is most often created via means that demand a heaping dose of critically reflexivity. Furthermore, after a review of the language in the articles themselves, we find that despite clear questions regarding how precisely these data reflect the socio-environmental realities they attempt to describe, environmental sociologists are rarely critical of these data sources. This leads us to an argument for a post-positivist environmental sociological agenda, meaning an agenda that at once recognizes that data collection (as well as other aspects of science) can and should be at the forefront of our empirical claims about the world, yet also one that reflexively incorporates the fallibility of all scientific enterprises into analyses

Authors

• Jonas Adams, University at Buffalo, SUNY

• Jordan Fox, SUNY-Buffalo

• Patrick Trent Greiner, Vanderbilt University