Abstract
The series of special feature articles presented in this journal, including this paper, were written to follow up topics insufficiently discussed at the symposium entitled “Where Environmental Sociology and “Social Movement" Research Intersect: Current themes in environmental movement research" which took place at the 56th conference of the Japanese Association of Environmental Sociology. This paper acts as an overview and attempts to answer the questions, “What should be the focus of environmental movement research today?" and “What is it that only environmental movement research can accomplish?"
First, the paper highlights two perspectives of environmental sociology : the sociological study of environmental issues, and the study of the interaction between “environment and society". Second, the paper demonstrates how environmental studies were developed with these two perspectives in mind, to explain the characteristics and meaning of environmental movements and to examine the advantages and disadvantages of environmental movement research.
The paper draws four tentative conclusions: first, problem construction in environmental issues is more challenging than in other issues. With the framing of “environmental justice", however, this difficulty can be overcome. Second, practicability in environmental movement research could make its position in contrast to social movement research much clearer. Third, the uncertainty of nature can be a significant issue in the case of “human-nature" type environmental movements. Fourth, the perspective of adaptive governance can strengthen environmental movement study.
