Dominant Social Paradigm and Its Impacts on Environmental Policies in the United States

Since the early 20th century the environmentalism movement has migrated from the struggles of consumers versus producers, or saving the planet as a whole as shown by Donald Worster in Nature’s Economy to a more socio-economic view based on urban growth and industrial health. Robert Gottlieb’s book Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement argues that as society goes so too does the environmental movement. As the emphasis on working environments and commercial goods we buy including food changes so too does the environmental movements. It did not matter whether it was large politically prominent environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club or the Audubon Societies or any other numbers of local grassroots

Environmental sustainability is the rates of renewable resource harvest, pollution creation, and non-renewable resource depletion that can be continued indefinitely. If they cannot be continued indefinitely then they are not sustainable (Daly 1990). It is a state in which the demands on the environment can be met without reducing its capacity to allow all people to live well, now and in the future. The question here is whether the United States is environmentally sustained, my answer would be yes, to the best of their ability. In order to do this, they are environmental sustainability laws in the United States which include

Normative societies score diminutive on this dimension. For example, choose to keep up time-honored traditions and customs while observing societal change with suspicion. Individuals with a high score with culture, on the other hand, take a more realistic attitude: they encourage economical means to prepare for the

Since the inception of human civilization there have been countless cultures and societies which have helped shape the current world today as we know it. The modern human race dates back more than 200,000 years and in that time frame many cultures have risen to great virtue and success only to deteriorate or cease to exist altogether. First before examining one of these cultures we must know what culture truly means. The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Culture Center defines culture as a “dynamic social system,” containing the beliefs, behaviors, values and norms of a “specific organization, group, society or other collectivity” learned, shared, internalized, and changeable by all members of the society (Watson, 2010). In

In contrast, Guha compares deep ecology to the German environmental movement known as the Green program. He states that the Green has realised that the American economy has a direct negative effect on the Third World. This is due to the industrialization, militarization and the American history of subordination beginning with colonization. This has lead to a distorted distribution of resources in the world and as a result has increased the lower class population. The Green responds to this issue with the theory of a “no growth economy” through a re-evaluation of the consumerist ethic concerning self-limitation.

A central principle of morality or values; “Shared ideas about what is good and desirable.” An example of value is the way by which people adjudicate facets of shared existence. The Normative characteristics encompass religion, a connotation of “a set of beliefs and practices pertaining to supernatural powers and the origins and meaning of life.” (gb) The most obvious example of religion being the self-identification with organized religion. Moving on, one must become accustomed with norms, or more simply “Shared rules and expectations about behavior.” (gb) Norms being seen in the forms of Folkways and mores, folkways being customary mannerisms and norms. Whereas, mores are norms that are elevated in importance in keeping with values of law and order. Supplementing norms are sanctioned, which society uses to achieve “A reward or punishment for conforming to or violating cultural norms.” (gb) Both “reward” and “punishment is easily palpable in the forms of upward social mobility and criminal proceedings made to include criminal punishments. Finally comes artifact, which manifests as “A physical product of a culture.” (GB) An archetype of artifact is a relic of any given culture. In summary, major characteristics of a culture create a commonality among regions, while allowing

Throughout the course of history it is evident that the values of society have dramatically changed over the years. The values that people posses change depending on what’s occurring around the world at the time, whether a fierce, bloody war resulting from a calamity or a time of peace and renaissance. The choices people make can either help change society for the better or they can help bring society down. Many different factors lead to the events that can change entire societies such as education or discrimination, both of which can have negative repercussions.

In order to fully survive, it is very crucial to constantly maintain the environment at a healthy rate. The main aspect that truly affects and drives our environment is the economy. The environment is always brought up within social political debates across the country as it is very difficult for Americans to come to a consensus since we have the right to speak our every thoughts. Two of the major political parties, Republicans and Democrats, are two completely different parties that constantly struggle to settle on the same position. In this essay, I will discuss the political parties’ beliefs about the environment.

Traditional societies begin with a small number of people living in one particular geographical region. Their traditions help them to achieve a flourishing society over time. They do so by passing their ideas and practices on from one generation to the next. Some of these traditions include cultural values and practices defined through the people group’s economic activities, social arrangements, and political organization.A traditional society flourishes using these passed on values and practices, rather than through impact of practices from other rival or complex civilizations.

Under a staggering development of economy, many people immigrate to foreign country, such as USA, UK and Australia. Therefore, they promote development of economic of these countries, as well as bringing to negative effects. In this essay, I will discuss that how influence the economic of developed countries. For example, population of America will be twice in this century. Especially, the number of children increased sharply. So that need as twice as houses, cars, roads, prison, hospitals, schools water treatment facilities and so on. Therefore American needs more nature resource than before.

Although many of us have used the words culture and civilization interchangeably, Huntington spends a great deal of time differentiating between the two. Cultures have a commonality; ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. These commonalities will define cultural groups; and the largest cultural group possible, at the broadest level, is a civilization. “Culture is the common theme in almost every definition of civilization”.

This essay will discuss the influence of cultural dimensions on behavior. A cultural dimension is defined as a perspective of a culture based on its values and cultural norms. In particular, Hofstede’s cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism will be discussed. Individualism vs collectivism is defined as the preference of a person only being concerned about oneself and looking after oneself, compared to a person who wants to remain in a closely knitted network. These are some terms with definitions which will be used in this essay: the Asch paradigm, which refers to the studies conducted by Solomon Asch, in which he showed his participants different lines and asked them to verbally judge and respond as to what the length of the

In the past, economic school of thought regarded the resources as unlimited and focused on more production under the light of the unlimited growth assumption. Every economic action was suggested to only consider about making more profit. While the economy and the human population are growing; more natural resources are used and more pollution is observed. Human become to deal with the results of its production such as enviromental problems and resource scarcity. A debate has emerged in economics and the mainstream economics is brought into question since its unlimited growth assumption is collapsed. Ecological economists argues the neoclassical welfare economics for ignoring the enviromental and ethic values by only focusing on the cost-benefit analysis. It also claims that the neoclassical economics fails to calculate the value of the enviromental capital and the loss of the economic activities on the environment. This paper is going to explain the problems with the neoclassical welfare economics and the alternatives offered by the ecological economics in terms of economic growth and environment.

Development processes is connected with environmental degradation and use of natural resources. Rudel et al. (2011) assumes the present of two distinct waves of development power which control environment. The first wave of political economy deals with the power of capitalism as the main agent for environmental degradation, while the second wave concern with the social power (community) to control the use of natural resources.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,