Seeing the Forest for the Trees Sequel II: An Exploratory Bibliometric Analysis of the Chinese Environmental and Resource Sociology/Social Science Literature

Research on societal–environmental interactions has gained increasing currency in China during the past several decades. Unlike relevant fields of study in the United States, environmentally oriented sociological research in China has not evolved into two separate subdisciplines—environmental sociology (ES) and natural resource sociology (NRS). However, it is not clear how Chinese sociological/social science research communities associated with environmental and natural resource problems are linked with each other. We conducted an exploratory bibliometric analysis to examine scholarly networks in selected Chinese literature. The results reveal the coexistence of two distinct subfields representing the sociological and resource/environmental science traditions in environmental and natural resource social sciences. Closer collaborations across research lineages will not only contribute to the development of integrative environmental and resource sociology/social science in China, but furnish meaningful implications for the ES–NRS dialogue in the United States and global contexts as well.