| Summary: | Two competing perspectives of society's relationship to nature have risen to prominence,
both in environmental social theory, and, in modified form, in current political discourse. Risk
society theory proposes that society is shifting from one organized around the distribution of
wealth to one organized around the distribution of risk, and that our current industrial society is
unsustainable as currently structured. Ecological modernization theory proposes that as
environmental issues increase in importance, ecological criteria will be incorporated into
industrial production through a continuous process of adaptation and re-integration of nature.
Ecological modernization, then, is offered as an alternative to a descent into a risk society, as
described by Ulrich Beck.
While there has been much debate between ecological modernization and risk society
theorists as to industrial society's potential for ecological reform, few empirical studies exist that
test the strength of ecological modernization theory in practice. Salmon farming in British
Columbia has been subject to rigorous environmental debate in its short history. This thesis
investigates the development of salmon farming policy in B. C. as a test case for the propositions
of ecological modernization theory. Through an examination of theoretical literature, indicators
of ecological modernization and risk society processes were derived. Salmon farming policy
developments were analyzed for evidence of ecological reform and for the processes that
accompanied these reforms.
The results of the analysis revealed increasing evidence of certain ecological
modernization processes, primarily ones associated with scientific and technological
developments. Other indicators were consistently absent. Still others, such as stakeholder
incorporation processes, were found to be in evidence in fact but not in spirit. The ecological
modernization process described by theorists was not occurring in whole, but in part. However,
economic interests persisted in dominating ecological ones. Counter interpretations found institutional and interest group factors, as well as changes
in background conditions, to be highly influential on ecological reforms. The greatest weakness
of ecological modernization as an explanatory theory was found to be its inability to incorporate
issues of power and inequality into its framework. This, and ecological modernization theory's
assumptions of consensus towards its goals, are the greatest impediments to its translation from a
social theory into a political program. === Arts, Faculty of === Sociology, Department of === Graduate
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