SOC100 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Infant Mortality, Greenwashing, Overconsumption
14 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
Environmental sociologists study exactly what it sounds like, the interrelationship between society and the environment. Demography is the study of human populations, which is now focussed on attempting to determine exactly how many people this planet can permanently sustain. Currently the consumptive footprint of the global population is equivalent to 2. 6 earths, and the renewable resource portion of that is still equal to 1. 8 earths. Malthus wrote an essay on the principals of population in 1798, predicting the eventual population growth beyond the planet"s food supply in the absence of war and disease to curb it. Technological advancement in agriculture has allowed populations to increase beyond his calculated limit, but the principle remains applicable. The infant mortality rate is used as an easy, rule of thumb" way to indicate a country"s level of economic and social development in terms of factors like health care, education, and proper sanitation. Landry (1934) and notestein (1945) proposed demographic transition theory.
