The concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” was proposed in Yucun Village, Anji County, Zhejiang Province.Photo: TUCHONG

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As China’s modernization progresses, tensions between economic growth, environmental protection, and social development have gradually eased and are trending towards harmony. Throughout this process, Chinese environmental sociology has continuously responded to the changing times. Since 2012, the field has witnessed a series of new research trends that are facilitating constructive interactions between academia and society. 

Topic shift 

The interaction between the environment and society possesses distinct spatial and temporal characteristics. The research topics in environmental sociology are not fixed and vary across regions and countries. Since the 1980s, ecological degradation and environmental pollution in China have become severe at times. Issues such as grassland degradation, deforestation, energy crises, river pollution, soil contamination, air pollution, waste disposal and the ensuing environmental migration, ill health, social conflicts, and policy adjustments entered the purview of Chinese environmental sociology. During this period, the field concentrated on environmental issues and examined their causes and social impacts as well as policy responses. 

Since 2012, China has increasingly emphasized environmental protection and actively addressed environmental issues by reshaping development concepts, optimizing industrial structures, improving environmental policies, and reforming governance systems. With significant changes in the beliefs and behavior of the government, the market, and the public, the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions contributing to environmental issues are becoming less prevalent. 

Due to policy incentives and constraints, China has entered a period of accelerating green transformation. Environmental governance targeting grasslands, forests, rivers, soil, air, and waste has gradually become central to environmental sociology. Researchers analyze the inherent mechanisms, path choices, practical challenges, and successful experience of environmental governance through the prism of political and economic systems, social structures, local culture, urban-rural relations, regional differences, historical traditions, public awareness, and civil society organizations. 

Orientation shift 

Environmental sociology pursues two main intellectual interests: cognitive interest and practical interest. The former seeks to explain “what” and “why,” while the latter addresses “how.” Before 2012, Chinese scholars, primarily based on cognitive interest, described and explained the composition, characteristics, causes, and impacts of environmental issues through the lens of relationships between the environment and society, tradition and modernity, China and the world, the central and local governments, urban and rural areas, eastern and western regions, as well as text and practice. 

Since 2012, Chinese environmental sociology has gradually concentrated on the refinement of experience, theoretical reflections, and policy advice regarding good environmental governance. Studies based on practical interest mainly involve three aspects. First, they analyze the driving mechanisms and specific conditions for green transformation through local environmental case studies such as in Anji, Zhejiang Province, Changting, Fujian Province, and Dingzhou, Hebei Province. Second, they reflect on the direction and path choices of China’s environmental governance by drawing upon the experience of developed countries. Third, they actively promote dialogue and cooperation among various stakeholders in the process of environmental governance using civil society organizations, media outlets, and academic projects as intermediaries. 

Expanded horizons 

The interaction between society and the environment becomes increasingly complicated with the complex evolution of environmental issues, the advancement of environmental governance, and particularly the widespread application of digital technologies such as big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. This poses challenges to the presuppositions, theoretical paradigms, and methodological systems of environmental sociology. 

Considering that no single discipline can comprehensively and effectively address highly complex environmental issues, Chinese environmental sociology has actively engaged in dialogue with other disciplines since 2012. For instance, the “China Humanities and Social Sciences Environment Forum,” established in 2013, provides a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue. The Collected Papers of Environmental Sociology, founded in 2021, offers a venue for in-depth exchanges between different disciplines. More and more Chinese environmental sociologists are consciously borrowing from research outcomes and methodological systems of other disciplines, thus expanding the horizons of environmental sociology. 

Chen Zhanjiang is a professor from the Department of Social Work at Zhejiang Normal University. 

Edited by WANG YOURAN