Environmental Sociology – The Early Years

Dr. Riley Dunlap is Regents Professor Emeritus and Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Association, Dunlap is also Past -President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Environment and Society. He co-authored a series of early articles that helped codify environmental sociology as a distinct area, and he continues to contribute to theoretical and conceptual debates in the area. Dunlap’s empirical work has long focused on environmental attitudes, beliefs, and values—including cross-national comparisons—and he serves as Gallup Scholar for the Environment with the Gallup Organization. His most recent work has emphasized political polarization over climate change and organized climate change denial. He is Co-Investigator on a National Science Foundation EPSCoR Project entitled “Enhancing the Resilience of Socio-Ecological Systems to Climate Variability in Oklahoma.”