Riley Dunlap

editor of "Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives"

November 4, 2015

Riley E. Dunlap is Regents Professor and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University, and previously served as Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology at Washington State University. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association, Dunlap is also past president of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Environment and Society. One of the founders of environmental sociology, Dunlap's recent work has focused on the socio-political controversies surrounding climate change. He chaired the American Sociological Association's Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change, and is senior editor of the volume produced by the task force: Society and Climate Change: Sociological Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2015. His prior books include the Handbook of Environmental Sociology, Greenwood Press, 2002 and Sociological Theory and the Environment, Rowman-Littlefield 2002, both of which he co-edited. Dunlap has received a number of awards for his scholarly work, most recently the William R. Freudenburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, and OSU's Regents Distinguished Research Award, both in 2012.

"Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives" is the product of four year's of work by the American Sociological Association's Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change, and provides an overview of sociological insights into key aspects of climate change. These include the importance of focusing on the social-structural conditions and not just individual behaviors that both contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and affect societal response to climate change; the driving forces, or causes, of climate change, particularly their complex societal origins; the impacts of climate change, especially their inequitable distribution; and the factors affecting societal response in the forms of mitigation and adaptation. Special attention is given to the socio-political conflicts over climate change that hinder effective societal response.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2016-honorees/riley-dunlap

Last Updated: 12 January 2022