Where is sociology? Global environmental change and the social sciences

[Extract] Sociologists often complain that our potential contributions to environmental research and governance are ignored; that participation in key assessment and policy-making processes skews towards the natural sciences; and that, when we are consulted, it is usually to answer narrow questions about "social impacts" or "barriers to adoption." Even more gallingly, we see non-social scientists – people like biologists and engineers – popularize frameworks for conceptualizing the social dimensions of environmental change lifted straight out of systems ecology and cybernetics. How can we explain this apparent disregard for sociological expertise and insight? Disciplinary prejudice certainly explains some of this, but the inconvenient questions sociologists ask about power, inequality and democracy, I think, explain more. But how much of the explanation actually lies with us? With the knowledge we produce? The audiences we attempt to engage