The corporation and the land

Abstract

There seems to be plenty of agreement that environmental sociologists ought to consider corporations in their work. Yet, in this chapter, I ask, is the corporation, as a social institution, really a core element of environmental sociological analysis? I argue that the corporation is seldom addressed, in itself, as an overwhelming influence. To remedy this, I draw from environmental sociology and economic sociology to outline the corporation as the key meso-level institution at the interface between humans and their environment in capitalist societies.