Commonly, the reasons for undertaking a lengthy social science investigation are as deeply rooted in personal commitments as they are in the problematics of any discipline. This is trivially true, but no more or less admirable, when the commitments are to the problematics themselves, as in basic science research. But the point is especially noteworthy when the commitments underlying the work are to knowledge in the ultimate service of some socially desired end. One's values provide the question and energize the long effort, while the requirements of theory and method quite literally discipline the search for answers. If this book succeeds, my hope is that it is because it contributes in some useful way to the critical quest for environmental protection and social justice while keeping faith with core analytics in social science.

As a college student twenty years ago, I was wholly dispassionate about the cause of environmentalism, even in the face of Earth Day in April 1970, which galvanized and focused the ecological concerns of millions of Americans, particularly the young on campuses across the country. Now, firmly in the grip of midlife, I find my youthful distance from the matter curious and even embarrassing. When I look out on the signs warning of the toxicity of the fish in the pretty Sudbury River near my house, my deepest sense is of injustice, and of loss. Becoming a parent has surely contributed to this sense.