Conclusion: Envisioning Futures with Environmental Sociology

In the final chapter of this far-reaching handbook, we turn to the future of the field, giving special attention to the most exciting and promising developments in theory and practice. But first, we want to retrace our steps to remind the reader of our intentions in putting together this collection. Environmental sociology has become quite broad and highly multifaceted in a short period of time. As one of us has noted elsewhere (Bell & Ashwood, 2016), in the late 1990s social scientists had just begun thinking about environmental questions. Now, however, the idea that the social sciences have something to offer to the study of environmental problems is unlikely to give one pause.