432 Localized Food Systems
and environmental policy (see, for instance, the contributions to The Environmental
Sociology Handbook, edited by Redclift and Woodgate, 1998; and Buttel, 2000).
Some may suggest that these developments represent something of a chaotic
and disparate set of conditions which tend to diminish, rather than enhance, the
true innovative character of the rural sociology of advanced economies. This paper
will aim to demonstrate, alternatively, how a wider theoretical and conceptual
landscape, based around environmental social theory, can help to assist contempo-
rary rural sociology in progressing its agenda (Milbourne, 2003). Of particular
relevance here is an assessment of rural sociology by Buttel (2001), where he makes
the point that in the past decades work on aspects of regulation and globalization,
for instance, has tended to be quite the reverse of the earlier theoretical develop-
ments of the 1970s and 1980s (what was then termed the ‘new rural sociology’).
He argues for more theoretical innovation to be undertaken. While the past decade
or so has demonstrated quite a flurry of rich empirically engaged work (on areas of
globalization, for example), actual theoretical development has reached, he argues,
something of a hiatus; with various ‘schools’ tending to adopt a position along the
actor-oriented–political-economy axis. At the very least we may have witnessed a
period of more theoretical pluralism; which, in turn, may be perceived by some as
reducing the power of meta-theory. Moreover, as Buttel also alludes, this can lead
to the rather random/chaotic choice of micro-empirical case studies; with the sug-
gestion that this can begin to lose sight of ‘the big picture’. A key question here
then is how can a more meta-theoretical agenda be established?
Ecological Modernization and More Sustainable Rural
Development: Towards New Rural Eco-realities
However critical one might be about arguments associated with the rhetoric of
sustainability, it is also the case that writers have pointed to the development,
albeit fledgling in some cases, of a more ecologically modernizing agenda built
upon a diverse theoretical base (see Buttel, 2000; Gibbs, 2000; Mol, 2000; Mur-
phy, 2000). This is centrally associated with a European perspective on the devel-
opment of clean industrial technologies, and the ways in which environmental
coalitions and movements begin to affect reluctant state agencies. So far, they have
only partially been applied to the rural sphere (see Frouws and Mol, 1999; Buttel,
2000), having been confined to the focus upon ‘win–win’ solutions in the business
context (see Andersen and Massa, 2000). However, the degree to which we might
be entering a new phase of modernization which would be much more autono-
mously ‘ecological’ is becoming a central theme in rural and agrofood studies (see
Goodman, 1999, for instance), and the rural domain is becoming a central field for
exploring the role and meaning of social nature debates (Milbourne, 2003). This
could represent a new surge of creative and critical connections between environ-
mental social theory as represented by the broad church of ecological moderniza-