realities of developing-country firms. At a minimum, developing-country firms seem to differ from their
industrialized-country counterparts in the relative importance of transnational dynamics. Extra-local
resources—be they technology, environmental management templates, financing or expertise—seem essential
to environmental innovation by developing-country firms (Pulver 2007).
- Orienting research in the development and political sociology subfields towards climate change
concerns: The research contributions of comparative development and political sociologists should be
oriented towards environmental concerns. The patterns and drivers of economic growth and redistribution,
that are the focus of research on comparative development, are relevant to understanding processes of
transition to a low carbon economy. Development sociologists, concerned with the dependent variables of
economic growth and redistribution, have theorized how state, market and civil society actors collaborate
to promote leading sectors (Evans 1995) and pursue particular development outcomes (Haggard 1990).
Likewise, world systems approaches and related perspectives offer insights into the long-term structural
tendencies of capitalism, its crises, cycles, and regional shifts (Koehler and Chaves 2003). Finally, economic
sociologists and others have studied the processes and dynamics of technology transitions in the early
industrial age (Moe 2007) and the more recent IT revolution (Saxenian 1994). Research findings in these
other sociological sub-disciplines can help environmental sociologists analyze the obstacles and pathways
to promoting clean energy technology sectors and to moving economies away from fossil fuels. Questions
to be addressed could include: When and how do state-private sector partnerships succeed in promoting
clean energy sectors? What is the role for civil society? What are constraints on clean energy development
imposed by globalization? Etc.
- A sociology of global climate governance and global carbon markets: A basic insight of economic
sociology is that social and legal environments underpin and structure markets (Fligstein 1996, 2002). A key
venue for the creation of global carbon markets are the ongoing international climate change negotiations
under the auspices of the United Nations. The interactions of state, market and civil society actors in
international negotiations and intergovernmental organizations have historically been a domain of research
in political science—in the environmental arena see for example the journal Global Environmental Politics
and the MIT Press series on Global Environmental Accords—yet there are numerous opportunities for
sociological contributions. Institutional, world systems, and social movements perspectives have much
to contribute to a better understanding of international climate politics. For example, sociology’s new
institutionalism has been integrated into analyses of global environmental regimes (Meyer et al. 1997), global
trade regimes (Chorev 2005), and global norm change (Finnemore 1996). World systems perspectives explain
persistent inequities in international negotiations (Roberts, Parks, and Vasquez 2004). Social movements
concepts like “framing” and “political opportunity structure” are used to explain movement effectiveness at
the international level (Kay 2005; Evans 2005). However, with the exception of the recent volume by Roberts
and Parks (2007), questions of global climate politics and global carbon markets have been ignored by
sociologists.
In summary, I argue that sociology is central to revealing the pathways and obstacles to transitioning
to a low-carbon economy. Environmental and economic sociologists have established robust models of firm
environmental behavior. More research is needed to assess the connections between firm-level greening and
the ecological restructuring of economies. In particular, I advocate for four new research directions: 1) sector-
wide studies of firm climate practices; 2) research on developing-country firm environmental behavior; 3) the
application of insights from development and political sociology towards the environmental restructuring of
