Fair Trade Flowers: Global Certification,Environmental Sustainability,and Labor Standards

This article analyzes the organization of the fair trade flower industry, integration of Ecuadorian enterprises into these networks, and power of certification to address key environmental and social concerns on participating estates. Pursuing a social regulatory approach, I locate fair trade within the field of new institutions that establish and enforce production criteria in international markets. My research finds that while firm owners and managers support fair trade's environmental and social goals, these commitments are delimited by mainstream market expectations related to production efficiency and product quality. In environmental arenas, certification helps ensure that conditions exceed legal mandates and industry norms. In social arenas, certification helps ensure that labor standards exceed legal and industry expectations and funds important programs benefiting workers and their families. Where unions are absent, fair trade's greatest impact may be in the establishment of workers' committees that can build collective capacity. Although these new labor organizations face numerous challenges, they may strengthen the social regulation of global flower networks, making firms accountable to their workers as well as to nongovernmental organizations, retailers, and consumers.     

National Styles of Science and Technology: A Comparative Model*

This essay articulates a comparative approach to the sociology of science. It suggests that even historically there have been numerous scholars interested in the national components of scientific knowledge. I develop a model which allows me to compare the differences in scientific growth in Sweden and Denmark. My model consists of three interrelated levels: metaphysical bias, national scientific interests, institutional structures. The comparison between the two countries shows them to be markedly different on all three levels. Finally, I suggest how the model can be applied to contemporary material.     

Critical Theory and Critical Sociology: The Second Synthesis*

The syntheses of consensus and conflict theory which were developed during the sixties served as a healthy corrective for traditional functional theory but did not exhaust theoretical debate. The identification of such syntheses with empirico-analytic tradition (and dominant control systems) calls forth a second (critical) synthesis which is not complementary, but competing. Despite the fact that both are parallel in many respects, the two theoretical syntheses are differentiated on a number of levels: value assumptions, emphases, epistemology and the implications each possesses regarding the nature of sociological activity. Conflicting interpretations drawn from the two competing paradigms promise to define the fundamental issues within sociological theory during the seventies.     

Intergenerational Community-Based Research and Creative Practice: Promoting Environmental Sustainability in Jinja,Uganda

This article critically reflects on the methodological approach developed for a recent project based in Jinja, Uganda, that sought to generate new forms of environmental knowledge and action utilizing diverse forms of creative intergenerational practice embedded within a broader framework of community-based participatory research. This approach provided new opportunities for intergenerational dialogue in Jinja, generated increased civic environmental engagement, and resulted in a participant-led campaign to share knowledge regarding sustainable biomass consumption. We term this approach intergenerational community-based research and creative practice. We discuss the advantages of this model while also reflecting throughout on the challenges of the approach.     

Environmental Sustainability and Tourism in European Policy-making

The paper analyses decision-making in the field of European environmental regulation and examines the implications for tourist policy. It is argued that European Union (EU) environmental policy is influenced by three factors: (1) the EU bureaucracy is interested in expanding its influence and power vis-à-vis national bureaucracies and polities; (2) Northern European countries have selectively recruited regulators with environmentally sympathetic ideologies; and (3) a pro-environmental attitude contributes to the societal legitimation of business. These considerations give a unique character to environmental policy-making, which over time has tended to spill over to thematically connected areas, including to tourism policy.     

Marriage Encounter: A Critical Examination*

Marriage Encounter is a two-day marriage enrichment session sponsored by several religious organizations. The following paper attempts to describe one proceeding of a weekend from a participant-observation perspective, offering objective insight and critical discussion. It is suggested that recruitment to the weekend and various proceedings during the encounter are somewhat questionable, given claims for the session made by its proponents. If the majority of such Marriage Encounter sessions approximate the one described, more serious investigation of theory and practice involved should be a major project supported by the therapeutic professions.     

The Origin,Development, and Contemporary Status of Critical Theory*

This paper describes the nature of critical theory, its historical development, its connections to sociology and Marxism, and the central debates over its core ideas.     

Critical Perspectives in Antiracism: An Introduction*

Ce numéro spécial de la RCSA est consacré aux nouvelles façons d'aborder la lutte antiraciste dans des contextes multiraciaux. Les auteurs examinent les pratiques antiracistes selon des points de vue différents qui parfois se chevauchent, et tracent les grandes lignes de la pratique antiraciste, tout particullièrement en ce qui concerne la pédagogie et les ateliers antiracistes. Ils apportent leur contribution à létude de l'antiracisme critique et à son application dans le discours pédagogique. Il est question également dévolution sociale et pédagogique, et ils montrent comment le discours et la pratique anti-racistes peuvent l'accélérer. Même si les fondements théoriques et méthodologiques de l'antiracisme ne sont pas entièrement définis, les auteurs s'efforcent de reformuler l'antiracisme à partir de ses origines propres. Le présent article amorce la discussion en fixant les limites du discours et en précisant l'impact de l'antiracisme sur lévolution pédagogique et sociale. Il examine comment une culture antiraciste peut sépanouir, surtout dans un contexte eurocanadien et euroaméricain. Les répercussions de la mondialisation sur léducation et lévolution sociale sont examinées, tout comme le sont les motifs de ceux qui préconisent une mise en pratique de la pensée antiraciste. This special issue of the CRSA aims to explore new ways of thinking about antiracism praxis in multiracial contexts. The papers in this issue examine antiracism praxis from varying and intersecting backgrounds and positions. They present a broad view of antiracism extending from teacher education to antiracism workshop training. They build on existing scholarship in critical antiracism as a pedagogical discourse and a communicative and political practice. A key question is: How we can ensure that antiracism discourse and practice connect to achieve educational and transformative social change? While the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of antiracism are still in the formative stage, the essays will add to ongoing attempts to (re)conceptualize antiracism from its original formulations. This article begins the dialogue by specifying an antiracism discursive framework and the implications of anti-racism's basic tenets for transformative learning and social change. It explores some of the ways that antiracism knowledge can be constructed, produced and disseminated, particularly (but not exclusively) in Euro-Canadian/American contexts, and highlights some of the challenges that current globalization processes provide for education and social change, and the rationale for engaging in antiracism praxis.     

Between the Global Environmental Regime and Local Sustainability: A Local Review on the Inclusion, Failure and Reinventing Process of the Environmental Governance

Abstract: Japan has undergone drastic changes in ecological policy and practice over the past 40 years. Although this short history began with significant levels of pollution, notoriously termed “kogai”, the country seems to have achieved great ecological improvements, both technologically and institutionally, and now is one of the most highly ecologically modernized countries. But can this process really be posited as a simple, linear one of ecological modernization, a sort of natural, historical progress toward ideal environmental governance? This paper proposes some questions that cast doubt over this view. It focuses on local struggles for environmental governance, particularly in the city of Kamakura, which proclaimed itself an “environmental municipality” in 1993, a designation that seemingly fell by the wayside in 2001. Investigating this 8‐year case we can extract some lessons concerning the contradictions between global and local, and consequently about the inherent difficulties of top‐down environmental ordinances and insufficiently decentralized environmental governance. At the same time, through this case readers may also discover a new type of civic activity: cities with agriculture. After a short sketch of agri‐environmental movements, I will suggest that such movements are converging with more conventional ones and prevailing throughout the country. Therefore, the ecological modernization process can be seen to include a sort of restoration process: an updated return to perma‐cultural sustainability. Consequently, this essay contributes to international environmental discussion, not only by uncovering the cleavages between global and local, but also by suggesting the possibility of environmental governance alternative to technologically and institutionally driven ones.     

Homosexuality,Religion, and Science: Moral Authority and the Persistence of Negative Attitudes*

The liberalization of attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States over the past 30 years is well documented. Despite these changes, substantial resistance to equality for gay men and lesbians remains. Previous studies indicate that beliefs about the etiology of homosexuality are central to this discussion. Those who believe homosexuality is innate are more favorable, while those who believe it is the result of a choice are more negative. Moreover, experimental research indicates that those with negative views actually become more opposed when a natural explanation is proposed. This study highlights the importance of perceived sources of epistemic and moral authority for understanding views of homosexuality. Using stances on culturally controversial issues involving “science and religion” as indicators of where individuals place authority, we outline the connection between perceptions of moral authority and attributions about homosexuality. Analyses of a national survey of American adults show that, net of controls, one’s stance on moral authority is the strongest predictor of attributions about whether homosexuality is chosen or innate.     

Critical Theory and the Hermeneutical Circle*

This paper examines the debate between Gadamer and Habermas concerning the relationship between hermeneutics and critical theory. Formulating the hermeneutical circle in terms of relationship between understanding and interpretation, this paper examines three positions on the circle held by positivism, critical theory and hermeneutics, respectively. A commitment to method and procedure on the part of Habermas is offered as the basis for critical theory's limited acceptance of the hermeneutical circle. This is shown through an analysis of Knowledge and Human Interests as indicative of Habermas's implicit objectivism and his methodical, as opposed to hermeneutical, model of reasoning for social inquiry. The best definition for hermeneutics is: to let what is alienated by the character of the written word or by the character of being distantiated by cultural or historical distances speak again. This is hermeneutics: to let what seems to be far and alienated speak again (Gadamer, 1980a:83).     

Writing the New West: A Critical Review*

Abstract A vast and growing interdisciplinary research effort has focused on the rise of the so‐called New West, purportedly the product of regional socioeconomic, political, and ecological upheavals in states like Montana and Colorado. Reviewing the growing research on this problem in sociology, economics, geography, and conservation science, this article identifies four central questions at the core of this diverse scholarship. Our review demonstrates that none of these central questions has generated consensus conclusions and that there is untapped potential for more structurally robust analyses of the drivers and outcomes of rapid change in the region. Indeed, supporting other analyses that have called the consistency of the region into question, our survey suggests the ways in which this region is not unique, but largely reflective of larger scale socioecological forces playing out in similar ways around the postindustrial world. We conclude, therefore, with a series of crucial questions, which may be unanswerable by assuming the “New West” as a coherent geography.     

Dimensions of Family Assessment: A Critical Review*

A review of the literature on dimensions of family assessment is presented. Assessment strategies are grouped into four types: single concept notions, theoretical notions, broadly based clinical lists, and empirically derived approaches; and each is critically reviewed. A summary of major assessment dimensions and an ordering of these dimensions using cultural and developmental principles as contextual assessment categories is presented.     

Development, Diversity, and Conflict in the Sociology of Science *

The sociology of science has undergone considerable growth and diversification in recent years. Early sociology of science was developed within philosophical debates regarding the nature of science and the social bases of knowledge in general. Karl Mannheim and Max Scheler in the 1920s gave these discussions a specifically sociological bent. In the 1930s, the theme was made into an explicit sociology of science both by Marxists and by the functionalist Robert Merton, and both approaches were followed up during the next 30 years. The takeoff of the sociology of science into a flourishing research area occurred in the early 1960s, with the publication of works by Derek Price and by Thomas Kuhn, as well as important studies by Joseph Ben-David and by Warren Hagstrom. In the 1970s, sociology of science burgeoned into a variety of approaches: citation and network studies, conflict theory, social constructivism, ethnomethologically-influenced studies of laboratory life, and others. The idealized functionalist image of science has largely given way to more critical, relativist, and highly empirical approaches to science.