Sociology

Abstract The authors examine environmentalists' attribution of responsibility for addressing climate change and their beliefs about solutions to this problem. Their analysis is based on responses to open-ended questions completed by 1,227 members of nine different environmental organizations. For these environmental movement participants, the federal government is seen as most responsible for addressing climate change. Government leadership is necessary because it has the power to set regulations and lead corporations ...

This chapter examines a collaborative process in which two student-led initiatives were used to help build capacity in students for publicly engaged work, thus building capacity for broader student public engagement. A set of foundational competencies and core skills emerged from this process, which situated a core team of five students and two administrators as collaborators in program planning and implementation. Through a reflective lens that examined the process, three broad competency areas emerged—project management, communication, and self-awareness—each encompassing a core set of skills. Through collective reflections, it became evident that the process itself provided a framework to highlight key competencies and essential skills that are critical for best practices in public engagement.

The mass media play an important role in constructing images of drug trafficking and use that circulate through society. For this project, discourse analysis was used to examine 52 comic books and graphic novels. Comic books reproduce a dominant discourse of negative drug use which focuses on hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. These drug narratives set up a dichotomy between victimized drug users and predatory drug dealers. Drug users are depicted as victims who may be saved rather than criminalized. By contrast, drug dealers are constructed as villains who are subjected to the ritualized violence of comic book heroes. The construction of drug users and drug dealers is also marked by gendered, racialized, and class-based patterns of representation.

This paper analyses the Vancouver Sun’s coverage of the Working Forest Initiative, which the provincial government of British Columbia (BC), Canada, introduced in 2002. The Working Forest originally defined forestry as the primary use of all forested Crown land in BC that was not within protected areas. By 2003, this
policy initiative was transformed into a largely symbolic recognition of the importance of the forest industry. Through the Sun, the debate over the Working Forest is simplified into a conflict between a discourse of ‘certainty and stability’ for
the forest industry and an oppositional discourse that challenges the conflation of the interests of forestry corporations with a reified ‘general interest’. In the Sun, debate over the Working Forest is dominated by sources from government, environmental
organizations and the forest industry. Other important news sources are rendered silent, including First Nations and forestry labour voices.

Sport sociology has provided a significant body of critical research on gender and social inequality within outdoor sport. Less attention is given to how the social construction of sport landscapes shapes gendered power relations. This article examines how skiing landscapes are constructed as masculinized spaces. The mountainous sublime is a site for performing athletic, risk-seeking masculinity. The backcountry and advanced terrain at ski resorts also appear as masculinized places. By contrast, less risky areas of the skiing landscape may be interpreted as ‘gender-neutral’ or feminized space. Through skiing, participants construct the meaning of gender and place, privileging masculinized versions of the sport.

Media coverage from major provincial and national newspapers is used to examine two Canadian sites where leisure and tourism become objects of environmental movement mobilisation: the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort ski development (British Columbia), and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area (Nova Scotia).
In both cases, environmentalists and government appear as central news sources. A dominant discourse defines both of these places as wilderness landscapes that need protection from ecologically inappropriate modes of outdoor recreation (downhill skiing and off-highway vehicle use). There are also key differences between the two cases. First, while motorised recreation is defined as inherently incompatible with the wilderness values of the Tobeatic, environmentalists ally with heli-ski operators at Jumbo Pass in their opposition to resort
development. Second, news coverage of Jumbo Pass offers more space to environmentalist opponents to question the ‘wilderness’ status of the region. Finally, in the Jumbo case, tourism is linked to economic development in opposition to ecological protection. By contrast, tourism in the Tobeatic is interpreted as a pro-environmental alternative to extractive development. Despite differences between these conflicts, both demonstrate that the relationship between outdoor recreation and environmentalism may be conflictual, rather than mutually supportive.

In this paper, I will explore the idea of 'generalizability' as a methodological concept in the social sciences. First, I will look at how generalizability is depicted as a folk notion of science. In particular, I am interested in how generalizability has been constructed as a problem for qualitative research. Second, I will review the attempts of Robert Prus and Howard Becker to construct a uniquely qualitative model of generalizability. This is a
model of 'generic social processes', which attempts to generalize about social processes, rather than populations. Third, I will discuss generalizability as an ideal that has been undermined by postmodern theory. Through this discussion, I will argue that the notion of 'generalizability' remains useful for qualitative research in a postmodern era.

For over a century, social theorists have attempted to explain why
those who lack economic power consent to hierarchies of social
and political power. They have used ideology, hegemony and
discourse as key concepts to explain the intersections between
the social production of knowledge and the perpetuation of power
relations. The Marxist concept of ideology describes how the
dominant ideas within a given society reflect the interests of a ruling economic class. In this paper, I trace the movement from this concept of ideology to models of hegemony and discourse. I then trace a second set of ruptures in theories of ideology, hegemony and discourse. Marx and others link ideology to a vision of society dominated by economic class as a field of social power. However, theorists of gender and “race” have questioned the place of class as the locus of power. I conclude by arguing that key theorists of gender and “race”— Hall, Smith, hooks and Haraway — offer a more complex understanding of how our consent to networks of power is produced within contemporary capitalist societies. This argument has important implications for theory and practice directed at destabilizing our consent to power.

"Mountains bear the imprint of human activity. Deep scars from logging and surface mining crosscut the landmarks of sports and recreation -- national parks and lookout areas, ski slopes and lodges. Although the environmental effects of extractive industries are well known, skiing is more likely to bring to mind images of luxury, wealth, and health.

In Making Meaning out of Mountains, Mark Stoddart draws on interviews, field observations, and media analysis to explore how the ski industry in British Columbia has helped transform mountain environments and, in turn, how skiing has come to be inscribed with multiple, often conflicted meanings informed by power struggles rooted in race, class, and gender. Corporate leaders promote the skiing industry as sustainable development, while environmentalists and some First Nations argue that skiing sacrifices wildlife habitats and traditional lands to tourism and corporate gain. Skiers themselves appreciate the opportunity to commune with nature but are concerned about skiing's environmental effects.

Stoddart not only challenges us to reflect more seriously on skiing's negative impact on mountain environments, he also reveals how certain groups came to be viewed as the "natural" inhabitants and legitimate managers of mountain environments."

I examine how four distinct episodes of environmental policy debate have been depicted in the Vancouver Sun, British Columbia's largest daily newspaper. Discourse analysis is applied to the Protected Areas Strategy, the Forest Practices Code, the Working Forest and the Results-based Forest Practices Code. The network of power/knowledge constructed through these texts limits debate to the hegemonic alternatives of "ecomanagerialism"
and "eco-capitalism." This textual reality is constructed from three major organizational standpoints: government, industry and environmentalists. The voices of First Nations and forestry labour are marginalized, as are discourses that challenge the hegemony of the "treadmill of production."

This article examines several ways in which animals are brought into skiing in British Columbia, Canada. Discourse analysis, interviews with skiers, and field observation are used to analyze how skiing joins together skiers, mountain landscapes, and non-human animals. First, animals enter ski industry discourse primarily as symbols of nature, or as species that ski corporations manage through habitat stewardship. Second, environmentalists recruit animals—particularly bears and mountain caribou—into a discourse of wildlife and wilderness values that are threatened by ski industry expansion. From this standpoint, skiing landscapes transform wildlife landscapes to meet the needs of a global tourist economy. Finally, skiers’ talk about their own encounters with animals illustrates how embodied animals also shape skiers’ experience of mountainous nature.

Mountains bear the imprint of human activity. Deep scars from logging and surface mining crosscut the landmarks of sports and recreation -- national parks and lookout areas, ski slopes and lodges. Although the environmental effects of extractive industries are well known, skiing is more likely to bring to mind images of luxury, wealth, and health.

In Making Meaning out of Mountains, Mark Stoddart draws on interviews, field observations, and media analysis to explore how the ski industry in British Columbia has helped transform mountain environments and, in turn, how skiing has come to be inscribed with multiple, often conflicted meanings informed by power struggles rooted in race, class, and gender. Corporate leaders promote the skiing industry as sustainable development, while environmentalists and some First Nations argue that skiing sacrifices wildlife habitats and traditional lands to tourism and corporate gain. Skiers themselves appreciate the opportunity to commune with nature but are concerned about skiing's environmental effects.

Stoddart not only challenges us to reflect more seriously on skiing's negative impact on mountain environments, he also reveals how certain groups came to be viewed as the "natural" inhabitants and legitimate managers of mountain environments.

Environmental movements depend on mass media to reach the public and shape political decision-making. Without media access, social movements experience political marginality. In this paper, we examine whether the internet is a more open space than traditional media for activists to speak on behalf of nature. Our analysis is based on newspaper coverage and environmental organization websites that focus on the conflict over the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort ski resort in British Columbia. Environmental websites and mass media texts both define Jumbo Pass as wilderness and grizzly bear habitat, while focusing on ecological concerns as well as questions of local democracy. However,
environmental group websites discuss a greater range of environmental risks and provide more detailed discussion of these issues. Environmentalist websites also integrate scientific experts and celebrity supporters to a greater degree than mass
media texts, which are dominated by environmentalist, ski industry, and provincial government news sources.