Environmental Sociology: Capitalism, Sustainability and Social
Justice
Paper to Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, ‘History of Postwar Social
Science’ Lecture Series
Peter Dickens1
Society and Nature: a Developing Sociological Agenda
There is a paradox to environmental sociology. On the one hand it is a discipline that has
often used the natural and physical sciences as its model.
Auguste Comte, usually
recognised as the founder of sociology, referred to the discipline as ‘social physics.’ ‘Physics
envy’ continued to be a feature of sociology and other social sciences such as economics;
such admiration being in part an attempt to give credibility to the new and still-emergent
social sciences. Durkheim’s and Spencer’s analyses of social development from relatively
simple towards more complex forms were, in part at least, modelled on a Darwinian idea of
evolution in the natural world - from more ‘simple’ organisms such as amoeba to more
‘complex’ organisms such as ‘man.’ The positivist agenda for testing and developing
theories were also in part also based on ideas regarding the testing of theories in the natural
and physical sciences.
Yet, as Dunlap and Catton (1994) have pointed out, making these new social science
disciplines resulted in the disconnection of the social and its natural its ecological conditions.
This disconnection may seem surprising but it is perhaps understandable if seen as these
disciplines trying to form themselves as distinct entities during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. But, in light of society’s self-evident contemporary impacts on the environment, it
is a split which is clearly no longer acceptable today.
While the relationships between society and environment have become increasingly fraught
they have come under increasingly active scrutiny by the social sciences. Perhaps most
1
Peter Dickens is Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Cambridge and Visiting Professor of Sociology at the Universities of Essex and Brighton.
e-mail: p.dickens1@ntlworld.com
famously, The Limits to Growth Meadows et al (1992,2005) raised at an early stage the issue
of whether there are physical and ecological limits to the expansion of the human population.
And in Our Common Future, Brundtland (1987) raised the issue of ‘sustainable development’
and whether our current generation was creating an environment which would threaten the
lives and well-being of future generations. These were, and remain, landmark publications
raising landmark questions.
Environmental sociology has now become, however, a rapidly-developing field. This is
largely a result of growing public recognition of deepening environmental problems being
generated by human beings. But the growing awareness that human society is creating
environmental problems raise a number of questions and debates for sociologists and
sociological theory. The assumptions of the ‘limits to growth’ hypothesis seem untenable. Is
an ever-increasing population the real problem? Or is it the kind of society in which people
are located, one placing a premium on increasing levels of consumption, which is the main
issue? Similarly, are resources ‘in general’ the problem? Or are they ‘scarce’ only because
they are privately owned and being consumed by social elites? Is it misleading to talk of
environmental problems as ‘global’ when we should be really asking about whose common
future we should we concerned? These are appropriate questions in a society where social
divides are becoming increasingly wide as a result of neo-liberal economic policies
implemented in many societies over the past 20 years
In short, environmental issues are becoming increasingly ‘social’ and ‘political.’
Nevertheless, there is increasing debate within environmental sociology. One area concerns
the compatibility, or otherwise, between society and environmental sustainability. Can
environmental problems be solved within a market-based, capitalist, society? If so, what
does ‘solution’ mean in the. context of growing levels of social inequality? It is possible to
imagine an ecologically ideal world, but to what extent is this worth aiming for if social
inequalities are maintained or even exacerbated? Alternatively, is a new kind of society
called for? What kind of society might be more sustainable?
There are further important debates here as to what ‘knowledge’ actually consists of. These
acquire particular pertinence with environmental sociology. Is understanding of nature and
of society, as some strong social constructionists would maintain, largely a product of power
and discourse?
Surely there is a material reality to be understood, one independent of
discourse? Similarly, what do we demand by way of ‘proof’ or ‘confirmation’ that a theory
is correct? Are there significant differences between the social and natural sciences as
regards theory-making and the role of evidence? Given the intertwining between ‘the social’
and ‘the natural’ what kind of theory should we be considering? Can the old sociological
models be developed to incorporate a concern with the environment or are new kinds of
theory called for? And are there, as some social scientists now claim, theories or concepts
can be used to understand the complex, interlinked natural and social worlds?
These political and epistemological issues can be pursued by turning to some of the main
themes within environmental sociology. How should the society-nature relation be
understood and how can the problems of environmental sustainability be solved?
Market-based Solutions?
One, often-advanced, ‘solution’ to environmental crises is that market processes and the
consumption-decisions of millions of individuals can on their own create an environmentallysustainable society. It is an argument founded in liberal, and now neo-liberal, economics, one
which focuses on the individual (especially the individual property-owner or consumer), a
decreased intervention by governments and the increased privatisation and commodification
of the environment (Saunders 1995). The central idea is that as one kind of resource starts
becoming scarce, its price will go up. This means that consumers will switch to something
cheaper (say electric cars or low energy light-bulbs) and companies will respond accordingly.
A variant on this argument (one looking to a somewhat increased level of state intervention)
is that the way forward is via taxation - on, say, carbon dioxide emissions. A sustainable
society, according to this view, can be made via environmental legislation and regulation. A
further variant is ‘green consumerism’, in which sustainability is seen as stemming from the
demand from millions of consumers for environmentally friendly products. These positions
again all depend to various degrees on individuals making decisions on the basis of the
information they possess and their own best interests. The market is a self-balancing system,
one analogous to ecological systems themselves, and solutions are to be found more by
relying on the knowledge and intelligence of individuals and much less on state intervention
But if we take policy as reflecting different types of theory, ‘hands off’ intervention is now
merging into a different type of theory, one known as ‘ecological modernisation.’
Ecological Modernisation?
This is the argument that, in combination with governments and civil society organisations,
capitalism is able to modify itself in quite profound ways to cope with environmental crisis
(see, for example, Mol and Sonnenfeld (2000). Science and technology may have been
responsible for getting modern societies into a poor environmental state. But they are equally
capable of getting societies out of that state and into a new environmentally-stable modernity
– one in which environmental standards are gradually being raised. Similarly, new forms of
ecological consciousness and awareness are enabling modern society to adapt itself in such a
way as to environmentally sustainable. New kinds of more ‘flexible’ politics enable NGOs
and others to engage in the policy-process.
Arguably (and allowing for important variations between different countries) society is now
indeed entering a phase of ecological modernisation, though the extent and effectiveness of
this process is widely debated. But there are problems with the view that all remains best in
the best of all possible worlds. State intervention may make matters even worse and national
governments may find their role limited in the context of the global causes and effects of, for
example, climate change. Also the question of social justice is given rather little attention by
an ecological modernisation perspective. Some of these matters are taken on board by Ulrich
Beck’s influential concept of the Risk Society (1982)
A Risk Society?
Beck argues that society now lives in an age of ‘manufactured risk’, one in which risk is no
longer an ‘act of God’ but one in which science-based intervention in the natural world (one
originally designed to solve social and economic problems) is now accidentally creating new
problems and hazards. Science and politics in our ‘second modernity’ is therefore largely
preoccupied with dealing with the risks created by earlier over-optimistic interventions.
‘Chains of problem solution and problem production’ are set up, whereby scientific
interventions aimed at overcoming environmental problems finish up creating new crises.
Meanwhile at a societal level new forms of reflexivity are developing in which people are
losing faith in all forms of authority (including scientific expertise) and create their own
understandings. They increasingly make their own futures, this being not only a result of
distrust of all forms of authority but of a new kind of individualism in modern society, one in
which people are making their own futures.
The risk society thesis is also important as regards current and future forms of social
stratification. Beck suggests, for example, that much contemporary ‘manmade’ risk is
‘democratic’ insofar as it affects all social strata. Recent developments such as ‘Mad Cow
Disease’ and a range of food scares are possible examples of risk in this new kind of
modernity. Perhaps the best example is the radioactive cloud made by the accident in the
Chernobyl power plant. It affected wide sectors of the population. Perhaps this is a sign of
things to come, with the new environmental hazards affecting the life-chances of all the
population.
Beck’s solution to the risk society is ‘cosmopolitan citizenship.’(2006). The nation state, he
argues, is redundant as a scale of politics in any sense useful. Cosmopolitan citizenship is
one in which people reconstitute themselves as not just members of a particular nation but
also as members of a global community. A new form of consciousness is needed which
embraces not only the context in which environmental crises are generated but the wider
context in which they are experienced and reacted to.
Beck’s analysis points very accurately to a number of important tendencies in modern
society, especially the often problematic role of science. His views have been enormously
influential in policy-making as well as academic circles. Nevertheless, for some sociologists
he is not sufficiently critical of the society causing environmental degradation.
‘Green Marxism’ and Anarchism
There is now a considerable ‘Red-Green’ literature, one which suggests, against ‘ecological
modernisation’ and ‘risk society’ theories, that capitalism systematically undermines
environmental sustainability. So, whereas the two perspectives above are reasonably
optimistic about society being able to adapt itself towards environmental sustainability, a Red
Green or anarchist perspective is much more gloomy in that it sees our kind of society as
largely incompatible with environmental sustainability. To put this another way, ecological
disruption is a necessary product of the way in which society is organised.
‘Green Marxism’, as the title suggests, draws on Marx and Engels’ scattered writings on the
relations between society and nature. The contradiction between capital and labour is a wellknown feature of Marxism and historical materialism. But Red-Greens point to what Marx
termed ‘a second contradiction’ being created in which environmental degradation is
threatening the capitalist project of ever-increasing accumulation (Benton 1996, Dickens
2004). Human society is creating a ‘metabolic rift’, one in which ecological and
environmental systems are being overloaded and unable to cope with the amount of waste
being generated.
This contradiction, which was only briefly mentioned by Marx, will probably create the need
for much more intensive state-intervention; including the possible socialisation of the means
of production. Capital will call on government to deal with the metabolic rift which
capitalism itself has created. ‘Green Marxism’ nevertheless recognises that some of the old
communist societies were amongst the worst polluters and that single, government-imposed,
‘top-down’ solutions are unlikely to succeed
Variants on this perspective include ‘the treadmill of production’ model (Schnaiberg and
Gould 1994, Gould et al 2004). This argues that (a) businesses are obliged to expand their
operations to remain profitable, (b) government subsidies support this expansion to maintain
tax revenues and (c) employees support expansion to keep jobs. This ‘treadmill’ is seen,
however, as inherently destructive to the environment. ‘World Systems Theory’ (with its
emphasis on ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ societies) is another variant on Marxism or historical
materialism and there are now signs of adapting this theoretical framework to incorporate
environmental questions. (Roberts and Grimes (eds) 2002, Jorgenson and Kick 2006).
Anarchism has some sympathy with a Marxist position, but attempts to resist all forms of
authority, not just that of dominant classes. According to this position, environmental
degradation, social justice and human fulfilment will only be achieved through projects
generated by people by themselves. State intervention (the state representing all forms of
oppression) is at all costs to be avoided, since the state is the protector of the social order
Some anarchists (in particular Bookchin 1982) see gender as an even more fundamental, and
long-standing, form of oppression than that of class. This view, which has informed at least
some participants in recent the Anti-Capitalist social movement, again strongly implies that
environmental sustainability requires fundamental overhaul to society.
Feminism, Racism and Nature
Ecological feminism also raises fundamental questions about society. It takes a number of
forms. The political demand, unlike those of ‘market based’ and ‘ecological modernisation’
perspectives is again for a different kind of society. Ecofeminism especially points to the
longstanding links between the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of women.
Women have long been equated with ‘nature’ and, as such, have been made into an ‘other’
used to (male-dominated) human ends. A similar process of ‘othering’ applies to race. Such
binary distinctions (more examples are ‘mental’ versus ‘manual’ labour, ‘rationality’ versus
‘animality’, ‘self’ versus ‘other’, ‘subject’ versus ‘object’) are ways in which power is
exercised, one half of these binary divisions deemed as superior, the other inferior. These are
ways in which discourse, often subconsciously, is used as a means of exercising social power
(Plumwood 1993, 2002).
The relationships between these binaries and the environment extend to groups other than
women. They apply also to race. As has long been the case for less-developed countries, and
has recently been made evident by hurricanes in the Texas and Louisiana, it is often the case
that subordinated racial groups are most afflicted by environmental degradation. But there
are some important issues remaining here for sociology. How do these perspectives on
gender and race relate to other divisions such as those of class? And how, if at all, do they
relate to the ‘risk society’ thesis that environmental degradation is ‘democratic’ often
extending on a global scale (Yearley 1996, 2007)
Science, Knowledge and Politics
As signalled at the start of this paper, the above perspectives raise some very important issues
as to the role of science and technology. As the ‘ecological modernisation’ and ‘risk society’
literature insists, ecological crises can be linked to early optimism in science and technology.
Nature could, or so it seemed, be readily controlled and rationalised to human ends. But now
that optimism is science and technology is seriously questioned, where does this leave
science?
Also being raised here is the question; what actually is a ‘scientific’ view of nature? To what
extent can it be relied on? Is ‘science’ just a social construction; a product of language,
politics and scientific elites? Or does it, indeed can it, refer to an objective reality? If so,
what constitutes scientific ‘proof, including proof of environmental change?
These questions particularly stem from feminism, especially ecofeminism. An understanding
of environmental questions should, according to many scholars and activists from
perspective, place less emphasis on ‘rationality’ and official ‘science.’ Instead, it should give
much more credence to qualitative, subjectively-felt and lay understandings. Furthermore,
‘objective’ science and technology have been increasingly harnessed to the needs of vested
interests (examples being corporations making and promoting genetically-modified crops)
and this has served to undermine the supposed impartiality of conventional science.
Re-making science, as seen by this account, is therefore a fundamentally political project, a
democratising process challenging and undermining the kinds of knowledge created and
tenaciously retained by powerful (often male-dominated) vested interests, including the
interests of the scientists themselves. But this again leaves open the question what ‘science’
actually, how it can be changed and how science relates to technology. Is the whole of
science really under question? Surely, as critical realists argues science must be describing
some kind of objective reality which exists independent of power and discourse (Bhaskar
1989, Sayer 1992). The enlightenment ideal of objective knowledge must surely be
retained, even if it does not inevitably lead to ‘progress’ of the kind which many
enlightenment philosophers hoped and argued for. Enlightenment science can be retained as
long as constant criticism is made of the use to which objective science is put, as well as to
criticism of the science itself. This is the ‘critical realist’ position.
Debates between realists and ‘strong’ social constructionist have been a major feature of
environmental sociology. It is difficult to find a consensual resting-place within these
divisions though perhaps the main issue is not so much about whether there is, or can be, an
objective reality. (Presumably even the strongest of strong social constructionists would
agree about this). Rather, the issue is perhaps most about what ‘proof’ consists of; what
counts as confirming evidence ideas in both the scientific and human realms (Sayer 1992
op.cit.).
Finally, a small number of social scientists are now arguably going ‘back to the future’
insofar as they are turning to a set of concepts which originated in the physical and natural
sciences but which seem transferable back to the social sciences ( Byrne 1998, Urry 2003).
Complexity theory as developed in the physical sciences, is concerned with balance between
order and chaos in complex systems. Such systems oscillate between chaos and equilibrium,
with relatively small events having unpredictable and possibly overwhelming impacts,
sometimes affecting the system as a whole. The classical example is that of butterfly wings
flapping in, say, China creating atmospheric disturbances in New York. Social systems at a
number of scales, it is argued, have qualities similar to those apparent in the natural world.
They are nowadays highly connected in ‘network’ forms, meaning that a perturbation in one
part of the social world (for example lending too much money to low income earners in parts
of the USA) can radically effect the global social system as a whole. Furthermore, ‘natural’
and ‘social’ systems are increasingly combined into hybrid forms, this meaning that
perturbations are of natural-cum-social kinds. ‘Bird flu’ in the Far East, for example, may
rapidly spread throughout the world due to mass air travel.
Complexity theory is perhaps a useful heuristic device for understanding contemporary
instabilities which perhaps cannot be adequately understood by conventional social science.
But this kind of analogy-making runs the risk of again ‘naturalising’ phenomena which are
very much the subject of human activity and intentions, even if the outcomes are different
from those expected. Furthermore, such extensions from the physical to the social worlds
seems to be avoiding the issue which has long been central to sociology, that of illuminating
the social power-relations influencing people’s lives. This perspective fusing ‘the social’
with ‘the natural’ within a common, overarching, conceptual device, is therefore
controversial. Nevertheless, if controversy is a sign of health and productive activity,
complexity theory indicates that environmental sociology (like indeed sociology as a whole)
remains alive and well.
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