Agent, Public Space & Urban Environmental Problem

Since the reform and opening-up policy, the environmental situation in China has been deteriorating with the development of socialist market economy. Therefore, environmental problems have been one of the major social problems that severely hinder the modernization construction in our country. From the new theoretical view of agent's environmental behaviors, this paper comes up with an elementary answer and theoretical explanation to the urban environmental problems by illuminating the relationship between environmental behaviors and environmental problems.Based on the field study on one of the central districts in Shanghai—District A, this paper, starting from sufficient investigation and literature collecting, carries out field-work observation, detailed interviews and major events related with environmental behavior. Meanwhile questionnaires are made to collect more accurate and universal data.Contrary to the traditional environmental sociological research which were almost too general, this paper takes a unique research method that attempts to disclose the deep causes of urban environmental problems in China on the basis of people's normal environmental behavior and life experience. The basic point view this paper holds is that all of the environmental problems are caused by human beings and are somewhat related with human beings' behavior in various ways. Therefore the theoretical framework is constructed from the theoretical viewpoint of "agents and their environmental behaviors" and based on the three central variables: agent, space and environmental behavior. This unique viewpoint and theoretical framework are expected to help us realize and solve urban environmental problems in China and also turn out to be a new attempt to broaden the research realm of environmental sociology.This paper describes various representative pollutions in details in the district A and explains the complex social process of how the urban environmental problems arise, evolve and are settled, mainly through analyzing and investigating the environmental behaviors of the individuals, enterprises, government and other relative agents and their interaction in different social space. The focus and traits of this research appear to be uncovering the action strategies and action logic of the various agents as well as a series of social relationship, benefit conflicts, power structure, coordination mechanisms etc that result from the interaction among the agents.The above-mentioned viewpoints are demonstrated in seven chapters, which can be summed...