New rig on the block: spatial policy discourse and the new suburban geography of energy production on Colorado's Front Range

ABSTRACT

Drawing from the Critical Discourse Analysis and Cultural Sociology of Space frameworks, this empirical analysis explores the discursive struggle between stakeholders of divergent viewpoints as they respond to the newfound spatial proximity of oil and gas extraction to homes and schools in suburban residential areas on Colorado's northern Front Range. Through an analysis of media, policy-making, and neighborhood meeting discourse, this study examines the social construction of space through policy narratives and regional debates about the American West's relationship to extractive industries. Results reveal that the discursive struggle over suburban drilling hinges upon the question of whether industrial activities belong in residential areas and is carried out through competing policy narratives that invoke differing (spatial versus aspatial) policy solutions. The deliberative quality of these policy narratives is constrained by existing spatial policy practices and further constrains democratic engagement.     

Situational Waste in Landscape Watering: Residential and Business Water Use in an Urban Utah Community1

Abstract: Landscape water conservation is an important issue for municipalities throughout the Western United States, and especially in Utah as rapid growth strains existing water supplies. We conducted interdisciplinary research in Layton, Utah, that aimed at understanding patterns of landscape water use among households and businesses. The research project involved three basic tasks. First, a landscape “water budget” was developed by producing a calibrated and classified mosaic of landscape type and area from airborne multispectral digital imagery, integrating this information with Layton City parcel boundary data to determine landscape vegetated areas per lot, and estimating irrigation needs derived from reference evapotranspiration (ETo) obtained using weather data for the Salt Lake City metropolitan region. Second, utilizing Layton water billing data, water use for each household and business was identified and categorized as “conserving,”“acceptable” or “wasteful” by determining how much the water applied varied from actual landscape plant need. Third, surveys were administered to a random stratified sample of households and businesses in the study area to investigate various factors that were hypothesized to be predictive of wasteful watering practices. This paper primarily focuses on analysis of the household and business survey data, which explores factors affecting urban landscape water use from a human behavioral perspective. We found that the most significant factors predicting actual water use were the type of irrigation system and whether the location was a household or business. Attitudinal and motivational characteristics were not consistently associated with water use. We found that wasteful watering is the result of many factors embedded in the complex context of urban landscapes. This implies that water conservation programs should identify potential wasteful users through analyses of water billing data and direct water conservation measures at these users by focusing on site‐specific evaluations and recommendations. Water audits or water checks are one such tool that some communities have employed to help people understand and assess the quantity of water needed by and applied to their landscapes. This approach provides an opportunity to evaluate situational constraints at particular locations and design appropriate strategies for reducing water waste.     

经济社会学视角下的我国环境污染转移问题分析

在阐述环境污染转移的概念及其主要表现形式的基础上。对我国环境污染转移的原因进行了深入分析，并提出了合理可行的解决对策。     

Selling “Fracking”: Energy in Depth and the Marcellus Shale

The development of horizontal hydraulic fracture drilling or “fracking” has allowed for the extraction of deep, unconventional shale gas deposits in various shale seams throughout the USA. One such shale seam, the Marcellus shale, extends through New York State, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where shale gas development has rapidly increased within the last decade. This has created a boom of economic activity surrounding the energy industry. However, this bounty comes with risks to environmental and public health and has led to divisive community polarization over the issue in the Marcellus shale region. In the face of potential environmental and social disruption, and a great deal of controversy surrounding “fracking” the oil and gas industry has had to undertake a myriad of public relations initiatives to legitimize their extraction efforts in the Marcellus shale region, and to frame the shale gas boom in a positive light to stakeholders. This article investigates one such public relations initiative, the Energy in Depth (EID) Northeast Marcellus Initiative. Through qualitative content analysis of EID's online web material, this article examines the ways in which the industry presents and frames natural gas development to the general public. Through appeals to patriotism, the use of environmental imagery, and a claimed commitment to scientific reason, the oil and gas industry uses EID to frame the shale gas extraction process in a positive light, all the while framing those who question or oppose the processes of shale gas extraction as irrational obstructionists.     

安全社会学与社会学基本理论

安全社会学即是将安全问题与社会学知识结合起来,把安全看做一种社会过程,研究安全问题的社会原因、社会过程、社会效应及其本质规律。无论古典社会学还是现代社会学,无论社会学结构主义还是社会学建构主义,都长期在探讨个人—社会关系中的行动、理性、结构、系统4个方面,因此,安全社会学同样需要研究安全行动、安全理性、安全结构、安全系统。基于4个视角而不断涌现的社会问题说、哈贝马斯沟通行动论和系统-生活世界理论、吉登斯和贝克的风险社会理论、越轨社会学、社会冲突论、集合行为理论、女性主义和社会性别学等都直接为安全社会学提供了社会学的理论依据。     

Knowledge-based Journalism in Science and Environmental Reporting: Opportunities and Obstacles

Recent calls for knowledge-based journalism advocate a new level of formal knowledge in news reporting to meet the professional challenges caused by rapid change in the news industry. Scientifically knowledgeable journalism has the potential to redefine the existing science–media relationship. However, the audience for such journalism is unclear, nor is it known how this new journalism would function within rapidly changing newsroom practices. Implementing knowledge-based journalism requires theory-based propositions to show the actual benefits of improved scientific understanding for news consumers and an understanding, from research into professional cultures, of why new practices in journalism are adopted or abandoned. This paper develops that theoretical basis by examining knowledge-based journalism’s potential and some of the intellectual and institutional barriers to it.     

Analysis on Problems during Evaluating and Compensating of Environment/Resources

The process of evaluation and compensation for environment or resources is a complex research field involving environment science, sociology, and economics. This essay mainly discusses the process from the sociological view and proposes the related paradigm. The possible problems during the process were pointed out: acceptor/donor may make an immoderate price by taking the advantage of the specialty of the environment/resources, using information asymmetry, or colluding with middleman; may cause behavioral transformation; may lead to unexpected results when the policy was not effectively making and evaluating; may result in insufficient supply of products with positive externalities being lack of enough physical or symbolic inspiration. The following methods might be helpful to improve the situation: establishing an effective supervising system, encouraging the development of cross-bencher evaluating organizations, encouraging the development of Non-Governmental Organizations, encouraging the public participation, and setting up the effective market.     

AN INTERPRETATIVE ANALYSIS OF FAMILY AND INDIVIDUAL ECONOMIC COSTS DUE TO WATER RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT1

ABSTRACT This article reports information on the economic costs not covered by resettlement procedures to forced migrants from a flood-control reservoir. Data come from a sample of 200 families relocated due to construction of the Carr Fork Reservoir in the Coal Regions of Eastern Kentucky (Knott County). Responses indicated that economic costs were greater than the monetary settlement provided by the Corps of Engineers and that economic loss was not randomly distributed among the relocated persons. Analysis showed that persons who were more likely to be victims of greater economic costs due to relocation were landowners, older families with one or two members, persons with lower incomes and persons who were long time residents of the area. It is suggested that change angencies not only include property purchased by necessity in the cost-benefit ratio, but also other costs that have a direct affect on the welfare of the target population. In addition, it is suggested that case workers visit migrants during and after the relocation process to assist in solving various adjustment problems.     

WICKED WATER PROBLEMS: SOCIOLOGY AND LOCAL WATER ORGANIZATIONS IN ADDRESSING WATER RESOURCES POLICY1

ABSTRACT: Water policy problems are wicked, not in an ethically deplorable sense, but in the sense that they present us with especially difficult challenges of becoming more effective in our interdisciplinary collaboration, of integrating two very different types of knowledge, of working across several socio‐political units of analysis simultaneously, and of better organizing water as a common property resource. Sociology, as a discipline, does not have a particularly rich history of successful interdisciplinary collaboration on water resources research and teaching, but it potentially has a most useful contribution to make by focusing on the analysis of local common property resource organizations that operate in the interface between individual resource users and State‐Federal entities. These organizations (e.g., water user associations, mutual companies, irrigation districts, acequias, conservancy districts) have been the orphans of water policy discourse but their operations are critical to undertaking more effective 21st century social analysis, research work, and action programs. Sociologists who work to better comprehend the operations of, and constraints upon, these organizations build a sociology that can better collaborate with other water‐related disciplines in addressing the challenges posed by the wickedness of our water problems.     

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF WESTERN WATER DEVELOPMENT1

ABSTRACT: Social scientists were included in the planning and design for an integrated, trans-basin water resource project. Within this complex project, a socioeconomic impact assessment (SIA) concentrated on identifying the social, political, and economic issues and potential impacts inherent in developing a city's water rights. Before the SIA began, some of the development alternatives had already generated widespread hostility and organized opposition from communities within the watershed. The SIA involved residents of affected communities in the study design and project planning. The study found a number of components that constituted the concerns, beliefs, and expectations about perceived, potential impacts that might result from the different alternatives. In most cases these issues constituted threats to valued environmental resources, valued community resources, the social environment, the economic base, and a secure future. The social science component was a key factor in the ultimate decision to pursue a particular alternative which was sensitive to the social and political issues, minimized environmental and socioeconomic impacts, and ultimately had support among the communities potentially affected. The experience from this case study suggests that the approach used can be applied successfully in the planning of other water development projects and result in cooperation from the wide range of interest groups that often present costly obstacles to such projects.