Environmental sociology
Environmental sociology is typically defined as the sociological study of societalenvironmental interactions, although this definition immediately presents the perhaps
insolvable problem of separating human cultures from the rest of the environment.
Although the focus of the field is the relationship between society and environment in
general, environmental sociologists typically place special emphasis on studying the
social factors that cause environmental problems, the societal impacts of those problems,
and efforts to solve the problems. In addition, considerable attention is paid to the social
processes by which certain environmental conditions become socially defined as
problems.
Although there was sometimes acrimonious debate between the constructivist and realist
"camps" within environmental sociology in the 1990s, the two sides have found
considerable common ground as both increasingly accept that while most environmental
problems have a material reality they nonetheless become known only via human
processes such as scientific knowledge, activists' efforts, and media attention. In other
words, most environmental problems have a real ontological status despite our
knowledge/awareness of them stemming from social processes, processes by which
various conditions are constructed as problems by scientists, activists, media and other
social actors. Correspondingly, environmental problems must all be understood via social
processes, despite any material basis they may have external to humans. This
interactiveness is now broadly accepted, but many aspects of the debate continue in
contemporary research in the field.
Five Paradigms and Research Methods in Environmental Sociology
According to Buttel (2005), there are five basic epistemologies in environmental
sociology. In practice, this means five different theories of what to blame for
environmental degradation, i.e., what to research or consider as important. In order of
their invention, these ideas of what to blame build on each other and thus contradict each
other.
Neo-Malthusianism
Works like Hardin's The Tragedy of The Commons (1968) reformulated Malthusian
thought about abstract population to a model of selfishness as causing environmental
degradation of the use of common property goods like the air, water, or general
environmental conditions. Hardin offered mass privatization or a tyrannical state to
induce presumed environmental solutions. Many other sociologists shared this view of
solutions well into the 1970s (see Ophuls). There have been many critiques of this view,
particularly sociologist Elinor Ostrom or economist Amartya Sen. Even though much of
mainstream journalism considers Malthusianism the only view of environmentalism,
most sociologists would disagree since social organizational issues of environmental
degradation are more demonstrated to cause environmental problems than abstract
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population per se. For instance, countries with low numbers of people can "outconsume"
countries with high numbers of people and have a higher environmental impact this way.
New Ecological Paradigm
In the 1970s, The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) conception critiqued the claimed lack
of human-environmental focus in the classical sociologists and the Sociological priorities
their followers created. This was critiqued as the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm
(HEP). The HEP viewpoint claims that human-environmental relationships were
unimportant sociologically because humans are 'exempt' from environmental forces via
cultural change. This view was shaped by the leading Western worldview of the time and
the desire for Sociology to establish itself as an independent discipline against the then
popular racist-biological environmental determinism where environment was all. In this
NEP view, human dominance was felt to be justified by the uniqueness of culture, argued
to be more adaptable than biological traits. Furthermore, culture also has the capacity to
accumulate and innovate, making it capable of solving all natural problems. Therefore, as
humans were not conceived of as governed by natural conditions, they were felt to have
complete control of their own destiny. Any potential limitation posed by the natural
world was felt to be surpassed using human ingenuity. Research proceeded accordingly
without environmental analysis.
In the 1970s, sociological scholars like Riley Dunlap and William R. Catton, Jr. began
recognizing the limits of what would be termed the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm.
Catton and Dunlap (1978) suggested a new perspective that took environmental variables
into full account. They coined a new theoretical outlook for Sociology, the New
Ecological Paradigm, with assumptions contrary to HEP.
The NEP recognizes the innovative capacity of humans, but says that humans are still
ecologically interdependent as with other species. The NEP notes the power of social and
cultural forces but does not profess social determinism. Instead, humans are impacted by
the cause, effect, and feedback loops of ecosystems. The earth has a finite level of natural
resources and waste repositories. Thus, the biophysical environment can impose
constraints on human activity. They discussed a few harbingers of this NEP in
'hybridized' theorizing about topics that were neither exclusively social or environmental
explanations of environmental conditions. It was additionally a critique of Malthusian
views of the 1960s and 1970s.
Dunlap and Catton's work immediately received a critique from Frederick Buttel who
argued to the contrary that classical sociological foundations could be found for
environmental sociology, particularly in Weber's work on ancient "agrarian civilizations"
and Durkheim's view of the division of labor as built on a material premise of
specialization/specialization in response to material scarcity. This environmental aspect
of Durkheim has been discussed by Schnaiberg (1971) as well.
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Eco-Marxism
In the middle of the HEP/NEP debate, the general trend of Neo-Marxism was occurring.
There was cross pollenization. Neo-Marxism was based on the collapse of the widespread
believability of the Marxist social movement in the failed revolts of the 1960s and the
rise of many New Social Movements that failed to fit in many Marxist analytic
frameworks of conflict sociology. Sociologists entered the fray with empirical research
on these novel social conflicts. Neo-Marxism's stress on the relative autonomy of the
state from capital control instead of it being only a reflection of economic determinism of
class conflict yielded this novel theoretical viewpoint in the 1970s. Neo-Marxist ideas of
conflict sociology were applied to capital/state/labor/environmental conflicts instead of
only labor/capital/state conflicts over production.
Therefore, some sociologists wanted to stretch Marxist ideas of social conflict to analyze
environmental social movements from this materialist framework instead of interpreting
environmental movements as a more cultural "New Social Movement" separate than
material concerns. So "Eco-Marxism" was based on using Marxist conflict sociology
concepts applied to environmental conflict.
Two people following this school were James O'Connor (The Fiscal Crisis of the State,
1971) and later Allan Schnaiberg.
Later, a different trend developed in the Marxist historical revisionism of John Bellamy
Foster). By his delving within Marx's Third Book of Das Kapital, Foster argued (1999)
that environmentalism didn't have to be imported into Marx's thought because Marx
himself was the original "eco-communist" who wanted to remove the exploitation of the
urban factory worker simultaneously with the removal of the rural exploitation of the
landscape instead of Marx by the end of his life showing a clear preference of the former
over the latter. Foster argues the ecological concerns don't have to be "imported" into
classical Marxism, only merely rediscovered in Marx's analysis of the British
Agricultural Revolution. In 'traditional Marxist' interpretations that eco-Marxist scholar
John Bellamy Foster critiques, there was a Promethean view of Marx--so similar to the
Human Exemptionalism Paradigm. Foster argued Marx himself was an 'eco-communist'
concerned about the "Metabolic Rift" of industrial societies with the environment
particularly in industrial agriculture destroying the productivity of the land and creating
wastes in urban sites and destruction of urban health simultaneously. By this, Foster
critiques the idea that the original classical sociological thinkers like Marx were
supportive of the "Human Excemptionalist Paradigm" and neglectful of environmental
conditions.
Societal-environmental dialectic
In 1975, the highly influential work of Allan Schnaiberg transfigured environmental
sociology, proposing a societal-environmental dialectic. This conflictual concept has
overwhelming political salience. First, the economic synthesis states that the desire for
economic expansion will prevail over ecological concerns. Policy will decide to
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maximize immediate economic growth at the expense of environmental disruption.
Secondly, the managed scarcity synthesis concludes that governments will attempt to
control only the most dire of environmental problems to prevent health and economic
disasters. This will give the appearance that governments act more environmentally
conscious than they really do. Third, the ecological synthesis generates a hypothetical
case where environmental degradation is so severe that political forces would respond
with sustainable policies. The driving factor would be economic damage caused by
environmental degradation. The economic engine would be based on renewable resources
at this point. Production and consumption methods would adhere to sustainability
regulations.
These conflict-based syntheses have several potential outcomes. One is that the most
powerful economic and political forces will preserve the status quo and bolster their
dominance. Historically, this is the most common occurrence. Another potential outcome
is for contending powerful parties to fall into a stalemate. Lastly, tumultuous social
events may result that redistribute economic and political resources.
Treadmill of production
In 1980, Schnaiberg developed a conflict theory on human-environment interaction. The
theory is that capitalism is driven by higher profitability and thereby must continue to
grow and attract investments to survive in a competitive market. This identifies the
imperative for continued economic growth levels that, once achieved, accelerate the need
for future growth. This growth in production requires a corresponding growth in
consumption. The process contains a chief paradox; economic growth is socially desired
but environmental degradation is a common consequence that in turn disrupts long-run
economic expansion (Schnaiberg 1980).
Ecological Modernization / Reflexive Modernization
By the 1980s, a critique of Eco-Marxism was in the offing, given empirical data from
countries (mostly in Western Europe like the Netherlands, Western Germany and
somewhat the United Kingdom) that were attempting to wed environmental protection
with economic growth instead of seeing them as separate. This was done through both
state and capital restructuring. Major proponents of this school of research are Mol and
Spaargaren. Popular examples of ecological modernization would be "cradle to cradle"
production cycles, industrial ecology, biomimicry, permaculture, and agroecology--all
implying that economic growth is possible if that growth is well organized with the
environment in mind.
Reflexive Modernization
The many volumes of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck first argued from the late
1980s that our risk society is potentially being transformed by the environmental social
movements of the world into structural change without rejecting the benefits of
modernization and industrialization. This is leading to a form of 'reflexive modernization'
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with a world of reduced risk and better modernization process in economics, politics, and
scientific practices as they are made less beholden to a cycle of protecting risk from
correction (which he calls our state's organized irresponsibility--politics creates
ecodisasters, then claims responsibility in an accident, yet nothing remains corrected
because it challenges the very structure of the operation of the economy and the private
dominance of development, for example. Beck's idea of a reflexive modernization looks
forward to how our ecological and social crises in the late 20th century are leading
toward transformations of the whole political and economic system's institutions, making
them more "rational" with ecology in mind.
Social Construction of the Environment
Additionally in the 1980s, with the rise of postmodernism in the Western Academy and
the appreciation of discourse as a form of power, some sociologists turned to analyzing
environmental claims as a form of social construction more than a 'material' requirement.
Proponents of this school are Hannigan, particularly in Environmental Sociology: A
Social Constructionist View (1995). Hannigan argues for a 'soft constructionism'
(environmental problems are materially real though they require social construction to be
noticed) over a 'hard constructionism' (the claim that environmental problems are entirely
social constructs).
Events
Modern environmentalism
United States
The 1960s built strong cultural momentum for environmental causes, giving birth to the
modern environmental movement and large questioning in sociologists interested in
analyzing the movement. Widespread green consciousness moved vertically within
society, resulting in a series of policy changes across many states in the U.S. and Europe
in the 1970s. In the United States, this period was known as the “Environmental Decade”
with the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and passing of
the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and amendments to the Clean Air Act.
Earth Day of 1970, celebrated by millions of participants, represented the modern age of
environmental thought. The environmental movement continued with incidences such as
Love Canal.
Historical studies
While the current mode of thought expressed in environmental sociology was not
prevalent until the 1970s, its application is now used in analysis of ancient peoples.
Societies including Easter Island, the Anaszi, and the Mayans were argued to have ended
abruptly, largely due to poor environmental management. This has been challenged in
later work however as the exclusive cause (biologically-trained Jared Diamond's
Collapse (2005); or more modern work on Easter Island). The collapse of the Mayans
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sent a historic message that even advanced cultures are vulnerable to ecological suicide-though Diamond argues now it was less of a suicide than an environmental climate
change that led to a lack of an ability to adapt--and a lack of elite willingness to adapt
even when faced with the signs much earlier of nearing ecological problems. At the same
time, societal successes for Diamond included New Guinea and Tikopia island whose
inhabitants have lived sustainably for 46,000 years.
John Dryzek et al. argue in Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the
United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway (2003)[1]that there may be a
common global green environmental social movement, though its specific outcomes are
nationalist, falling into four 'ideal types' of interaction between environmental movements
and state power. They use as their case studies environmental social movements and state
interaction from Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. They
analyze the past 30 years of environmentalism and the different outcomes that the green
movement has taken in different state contexts and cultures.
Recently and roughly in temporal order below, much longer-term comparative historical
studies of environmental degradation are found by sociologists. There are two general
trends: many employ world systems theory--analyzing environmental issues over long
periods of time and space; and others employ comparative historical methods. Some
utilize both methods simultaneously, sometimes without reference to world systems
theory (like Whitaker, see below).
Stephen G. Bunker (d. 2005) and Paul S. Ciccantell collaborated on two books from a
world systems theory view, following commodity chains through history of the modern
world system, charting the changing importance of space, time, and scale of extraction
and how these variables influenced the shape and location of the main nodes of the world
economy over the past 500 years.[2][3] Their view view of the world was grounded in
extraction economies and the politics of different states that seek to dominate the world's
resources and each other through gaining hegemonic control of major resources or
restructuring global flows in them to benefit their locations.
The three volume work of environmental world systems theory by Sing C. Chew
analyzed how "Nature and Culture" interact over long periods of time, starting with
World Ecological Degradation (2001)[4][5][6] In later books, Chew argued that there were
three "Dark Ages" in world environmental history characterized by periods of state
collapse and reorientation in the world economy associated with more localist
frameworks of community, economy, and identity coming to dominate the nature/culture
relationships after state-facilitated environmental destruction delegitimated other forms.
Thus recreated communities were founded in these so called 'Dark Ages,' novel religions
were popularized, and perhaps most importantly to him the environment had several
centuries to recover from previous destruction. Chew argues that modern green politics
and bioregionalism is the start of a similar movement of the present day potentially
leading to wholesale system transformation. Therefore, we may be on the edge of yet
another global "dark age" which is bright instead of dark on many levels since he argues
for human community returning with environmental healing as empires collapse.
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More case oriented studies were conducted by historical environmental sociologist Mark
D. Whitaker analyzing China, Japan, and Europe over 2,500 years in his book Ecological
Revolution (2009)[7]. He argued that instead of environmental movements being "New
Social Movements" peculiar to current societies, environmental movements are very old-being expressed via religious movements in the past (or in the present like in
ecotheology) that begin to focus on material concerns of health, local ecology, and
economic protest against state policy and its extractions. He argues past or present is very
similar: that we have participated with a tragic common civilizational process of
environmental degradation, economic consolidation, and lack of political representation
for many millennia which has predictable outcomes. He argues that a form of
bioregionalism, the bioregional state[8], is required to deal with political corruption in
present or in past societies connected to environmental degradation.
Interestingly, after looking at the world history of environmental degradation from very
different methods, both sociologists Sing Chew and Mark D. Whitaker came to similar
conclusions and are proponents of (different forms of) bioregionalism
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Sociology of Environment
Introduction:
Sociology is a science that studies the society and its different incidents. It has many
branches. Sociology of environment is one of them. Sociology of environment is a
largely discussed new phenomenon. It deals with society and its relationship with
environment.
Environmental sociology studies the social rule and processes that bind, and separate,
people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, and institutions. It
is a field of sociology which encompasses the interactions between humans and nature or
natural environment.
A typical textbook definition of sociology calls environmental sociology as the study of
the social lives of humans, groups and societies. Sociology is interested in our behavior
as social beings; thus the sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short
contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social
processes.
At present considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which certain
environmental conditions become socially defined as problems. So it also studies the
factors that cause environmental problems, the societal impacts of those problems, as
well as efforts to solve the problems.
The concept of Sociology of Environment:
Sociology of environment typically defined as the study of societal-environmental
interactions, or the relationships between modern societies. A society is a group of
individuals that form a semi-closed system, in which most interactions are with other
individuals belonging to the group. A society is a network of relationships between
people. A society is an interdependent community. The casual meaning of society simply
refers to a group of people living together in an ordered community. Societies are the
main subject of study of the social sciences.
Environmental problems are not only physical or material; they are societal and cultural
as well. Therefore, in order to develop useable ways of coping with environmental
problems we also have to know about our society and culture. – About the different
actors and their relations to each other and to society. About their ways of thinking and
acting. About social changes and the motives behind. About barriers and possibilities for
solutions. And also about experiences with strategies, organization structures and
methods in the effort to advance a sustainable development. Environmental sociology
research is about procuring this kind of knowledge. The analyses cover superior
development tendencies in society to concrete subjects and it is stressed to illustrate how
the often many different relations interact or counteract. The perspective is to understand
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and explain the connections that the environmental problems are part of and thus create a
better basis for the decisions of the environment policy.
Environmental Sociology tends to focus on the social forces producing environmental
change, especially untoward environmental impacts, and on the causes and consequences
of threats to environmental sustainability. The core objective of many in environmental
sociology to elucidate the roles played by natural forces that are not apparent, at least in
their full essence, to social actors further complicates the task of conceptualization. This
objective implies a commitment to a realist (as opposed to a nominalist) ontology, in
which it is posited that there exist underlying (sociophysical or ecological) phenomena
which cannot be directly measured or experienced, but that essentially operate, at least in
part, “behind the backs” of social actors.
The Roots of Sociology of Environment:
We know there is an interrelationship between Society and environment. But in sociology
environment got an important place very recently because most of the sociologist used to
think environment irrelevant to study mankind, although they did not think it
unimportant. Sociologists have discussed fundamental issues such as- social norms and
values, cultural symbolism, social institutions, classes, their roles, power etc. to discuss
social interactions but they did not show adequate attention to major environmental
problems related to society such as- exhausting of natural resources, air, water and sound
pollution, deforestation etc.
When Earth Day inaugurated the ‘Environmental Decade’ of the 1970s, sociologists
found themselves without any prior body of theory or research to guide them towards a
distinctive understanding of the relationship between society and the environment.
While each of the three major classical sociological pioneers- Emile Durkheim, Karl
Marx and Max Weber – arguably had an implicit environmental dimension to their work,
this had never been bought to fore, largely because their American translators and
interpreters favoured social structural explanations over physical or environmental ones.
For this reason the priority of several geographers has been seen in the field of
environment in the 19th century. At this time, Buckle’s geographical theory of social
change was widely read and quite influential in intellectual circles. As Sorokin says “any
analysis of social phenomena which does not take into consideration geographical factors
is incomplete. In this period we can see the discussion of natural environment in
sociology when it was necessary to highlight the relation of nature with mankind.
However, near the end of the decade 60s the socio-political studies of environment
started for the consequence of environmental movements. At that time considerable
attention was paid to the social processes by which certain environmental conditions
become socially defined as problems, particularly by scholars with a “social
constructivist”. Social constructionism is a school of thought introduced into sociology
by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann with their 1966 book on The Social
Construction of Reality.
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William R. Catton and Riley E. Dunlap established the earlier works on human ecology
(a part of human environment) by Chicago School. One main idea of Catton and Dunlap
was to go away from the Durkheimian. Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15,
1917) was a founder of the science of sociology, along with Max Weber. He was also the
founder of the first journal devoted to social science, the Année Sociologique. He was
concerned primarily with what he perceived to be the breakdown of social norms and the
increasingly impersonality of social life. Incidentally, in developing explanations of these
phenomena, Durkheim is credited with attempting the first scientific approach to social
phenomena, coining the sociological term social fact to describe distinct units of social
information.
In sociology, the Chicago School refers to the first major attempt to study the urban
environment by combined efforts of theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago. The
major researchers in this school include Robert Park, Lous Wirth, Ernest Burgess, and
Robert MCKenzie.
The Sociology Department at Washington State University was both one of the founding
institutions of the field of Environmental Sociology while concurrently contributing to
the transformation of the field of Human Ecology to its modern orientation over a quarter
of a century ago. The department continues to be a national and international leader in
these fields, making significant contributions to the cumulative knowledge of these fields
while training the top-flight environmental researchers of the next generation.
Theoretical approaches to Sociology of Environment:
Environmental sociology did not emerge 25 or so years ago de novo, but rather was a
field created in substantial measure through the amalgamation of several pre-existing
areas of scholarship, most of which were actively contributed to by, if not coterminous
with, rural sociology. For example, what is now thought of as natural resource sociology
(sociological research on parks and leisure, public lands management and policy, land use
planning, and the like) predated contemporary environmental sociology, and became one
of its earliest tributaries during the early 1970s (Burch 1979). Much of the natural
resource sociology community shifted its attention to social impact assessment by the
mid to late-1970s. Likewise, much of the community studies tradition in rural sociology
that survived the behaviorist turn of sociology and rural sociology in the 1950s and 1960s
(Buttel et al. 1990) had been focused on resource-dependent communities such as
farming, logging, and fishing communities.
A continuing problem for sociologists researching the environment has been to define
what constitutes the main object of study. Buttel (1987) cited five key areas of
environmental sociological scholarship:
1.
Catton and Dunlap’s ‘New Human Ecology’;
2.
Environmental attitudes, values and behaviours;
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3.
Environmental movements;
4.
Technological risk and risk assessment; and
5.
The political economy of the environment and environmental politics.
There are two distinct problems that are centrally addressed in the existing literature on
environmental sociology:
1.
The causes of environmental destruction, and
2.
The rise of environmental consciousness and movements.
Environmental sociology is ultimately a sociology built on recognition of the material
bases of social structure and social life. Rural sociologists, because many of the
phenomena they study such as resource management, resource extraction, the exigencies
of space, and the genesis and impacts of technologies are material and/or biophysical
ones, were more prepared than their counterparts elsewhere in sociology to embrace a
view of social structure and social life as having crucial material and biophysical
dimensions. Rural sociological receptiveness to the notion of material embeddedness of
social life is illustrated by the fact that environmental sociology was able to legitimate
itself and achieve recognition as a serious area of work earlier in the Rural Sociological
field.
Environmental sociology is directly or indirectly anchored in a conception of the material
embeddedness of social life. Today, the two most influential components of the
environmental sociology literature remain those originally contributed by Dunlap and
Catton and by Schnaiberg during the mid to late 1970s. While there are many significant
differences between these two traditions of scholarship, each of these two main traditions
is based on a definite conception of the material or biophysical embeddedness of social
processes.
Marxist and Durkheimian sociologies are characterized by realist ontologies. It is
therefore not surprising that there has been some affinity between paradigmatic versions
of environmental-sociological theory and neo-Marxism (e.g., Dickens 1992; J. O’Connor
1994; Schnaiberg 1980) or Durkheimianism (e.g., Klausner 1971). Thus, ironically, the
representatives of the classical tradition that are most often criticized by environmental
sociologists for their “exceptionalism” (i.e., Marxism and Durkheimianism) share a
certain ontological background with the core of environmental sociology. This
ontological kinship is among the reasons why environmental sociology has had such a
contradictory relationship with Marxism. Environmental-sociological criticism of
Marxism is commonplace (e.g. Murphy 1994). At the same time, there is a vast neoMarxist literature in environmental sociology, and there are few other areas of sociology
today that remain so strongly influenced by Marxism.
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Dunlap and Catton, as well as Schnaiberg have been the most influential contributors at
the theoretical core of environmental sociology. A brief summary of their theoretical
systems will help to illustrate the arguments that are most central to the core of
environmental sociology scholarship.
Dunlap and Catton’s environmental sociology (Catton 1976, 1980; Catton and Dunlap
1978; Dunlap and Catton 1994) is built around several interrelated notions: first,
environmental problems and the inability of conventional sociology to address these
problems stem from worldviews (the dominant western worldview in society at large, and
the related human exceptionalist paradigm in sociology) that fail to acknowledge the
biophysical bases of social structure and social life; second, modern societies are
unsustainable because they are living off of what are essentially finite supplies of fossil
fuels (what Catton [1976] has called “ghost acreage”) and are using up “ecosystem
services” much faster than ecosystems can produce or replenish them; at a global level
these processes are being exacerbated by rapid population growth; third, societies are to a
greater or lesser degree faced with the prospect of ecological vulnerability, if not “crash,”
particularly with the exacerbation of global environmental problems; fourth, modern
environmental science has amply documented the severity of these environmental
problems and is making it clear that major adjustments and adaptations will need to be
undertaken, if environmental crisis is to be averted; fifth, recognition of the dimensions
of looming environmental crisis is contributing to “paradigm shifts” in society at large, as
well as in sociology (toward rejection of the dominant western worldview and acceptance
of a new ecological or environmental paradigm); and sixth, environmental improvement
and reform will be engendered through the spread of the new ecological paradigm among
mass publics, and will be catalyzed by comparable paradigm shifts among social (and
natural) scientists.
Schnaiberg’s environmental sociology (Schnaiberg, 1980; Schnaiberg and Gould, 1994),
by contrast, centers around two key notions: that of a “treadmill of production,” and that
this treadmill tends to result in environmental degradation (through “withdrawals” [i.e.,
scarcity of energy and materials] and “additions” [i.e., pollution]). The treadmill of
production concept is very closely related to the notion of fiscal crisis of the state
developed by O’Connor (1973). The treadmill of production holds that modern capitalism
and the modern state exhibit a fundamental logic of promoting economic growth and
private capital accumulation, and that the self-reproducing nature of this process causes it
to assume the character of a “treadmill.”
In part, according to Schnaiberg, the tendency to growth is due to the competitive
character of capitalism, such that corporations and entrepreneurs must continually expand
their operations and their profits lest they be swamped by other competitors. But there is
also complementary growth logic within the sphere of the state. State agencies and
officials prefer growth over stagnation in order to ensure tax revenues (the essential fiscal
basis of the state) and to enhance the likelihood of re-election or continuity of power. In
order to enhance private accumulation, the state undertakes spending aimed at
subsidizing or socializing the costs of private production and accumulation (e.g., through
public subsidy of research and development, transportation infrastructure, military
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procurement, tax incentives). The accumulation that is fostered tends to be capital
intensive, and thus leads to automation, unemployment, and potentially to demands for
job-creation or welfare-state-type programs on the part of those displaced or marginalized
by capital intensive accumulation. This tendency to legitimation crisis in turn dictates that
progressively more subsidy to private capital accumulation be undertaken in order to
provide employment and state revenues sufficient for paying the “social expenses”
associated with the dislocations of private accumulation. Capital intensive growth
creating the dislocations and political demands that drive even more state expenditure on
and encouragement of capital intensive growth is the essence of the treadmill character of
modern industrial capitalism. Further, Schnaiberg argues that the treadmill of production
is directly linked to ecological crisis, since this accumulation process typically requires
resource extraction (“withdrawals”) and contributes to pollution (“additions”).
While there are some key differences between the explanatory frameworks of Dunlap and
Catton and of Schnaiberg especially in the causal emphasis on culture/worldviews and on
class/political economy, respectively they have several strong commonalities. One is that
both perspectives involve realist ontologies in which dynamics that are not directly
observable to human actors (e.g., ghost acreage, treadmill of production) play a key role.
The second is that both have a relatively singular conception of the environment (i.e., that
“the environment” can be characterized in an aggregate way as reflecting a greater or
lesser degree of scarcity, degradation, finiteness, depletion, and so on). Both conceptions
are basically variants of the concept of the “unity of ecological scarcity “the notion that
environmental dynamics are all ultimately linked into an overarching unity because in an
expansionist economy and society efforts to respond to one environmental problem
invariably exacerbate others elaborated by Ophuls (1977). Further, both theories posit
that the essential dynamic of modern industrial-capitalist societies has been toward
environmental degradation. Finally, both of these styles of analysis are geared primarily
to understanding the material substructure of societies; while Dunlap and Catton and also
Schnaiberg devote considerable attention to environmental movements and beliefs, the
overall thrust in both styles of analysis is to give priority to material-ecological
substructure over beliefs and behaviors that are self-consciously environmental.
Sociological Theory and Environment:
We shall now discuss some sociological theories related to environment.
Ø Paradigms of Environmental Sociology:
The word paradigm comes from the Greek word παράδειγμα (paradeigma) which means
“pattern” or “example”, from the word παραδεικνύναι (paradeiknunai) meaning
“demonstrate” of explaining social facts only with social facts. Instead, they included
physical and biological facts as independent variables influencing social structure “Social
structure” refers to the idea that society is grouped into structures with different
functions, meanings or purposes. Family, religion, law, economy and class are all social
structures.
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Catton and Dunlap described two paradigms in environmental sociology:
(a) Human Exceptionalism Paradigm or HEP: There are several paradigms in
sociology but we can not say them different, because their main theme is human
anthropocentrism which is called the fundamental world view of sociology. In fact this
world view is called the Human Exceptionalism Paradigm (HEP). This classical
paradigm gives importance on social environment but not on natural environment.
(b) New Ecological Paradigm or NEP: According to NEP, humans are no longer
exceptional species. Man is one of the species depending on each other surrounding our
social life. The nature is influenced by human activities. There are limitations in natural
and biological factors. A conflict line between this new paradigm and the classical
sociological approach is the de-valuating of society and culture. Human ecology views
human communities.
Ø Women, Environment and Development (WED):
Women, Environment and Development as a theme within the development debate has
increasingly attracted international attention during the last two decades and has been
taking shape in a number of different streams of thinking.
One stream stresses the managerial aspects of minimizing negative effects of the process
of economic development by targeting women as recipients of development assistance
and simultaneously considering the effects of development on the environment. The
approach is propagated by development agencies. Other approaches tend toward antidevelopment or transformational stances and assert that the model of western
development is fundamentally flawed, as its effect on women, the environment and the
South’s people’s makes evident.
Ø Gender and Environmentalism:
Gender refers to the socially constructed role of women and men. The early concept
Women in Development (WID) promoted separate development for women from men.
Unlike the WID, the Gender and Development (GAD) approach is not concerned with
women as a separate group of social agents. It views women and men of various working
classes as interrelated in specific contexts. It emphasizes the need to understand the role
and responsibilities of women and men in a given environment.
Some Basic concepts and Their Relationship with Environment :
Ecology is the branch of science that studies habitats and the interactions between living
things and the environment. The term was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst
Haeckel from the Greek oikos meaning “house” and logos meaning “science.”
To ecologists, the environment includes both the abiotic environment — non-living
things like climate and geology — and the biotic environment — living things like plants
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and animals. Much of ecological research is concerned with the distribution and
abundance of organisms and how they influence and are influenced by their environment.
It’s disputed if human ecology is a sub-discipline of sociology, or if it is a sub-discipline
of ecology. A point that strengthens the latter position is the methodological approach of
human ecology that is orientation rather along the lines of natural science then along the
lines of social sciences. The inclusion or exclusion of human ecology in to sociology
proper varies between countries and schools of sociological thinking.
In the most common sense of the word, a population is the collection of people, or
organisms of a particular species, living in a geographic area. Populations are studied in a
wide variety of disciplines. In population dynamics size, age and sex structure, mortality,
reproductive behaviour and growth of a population are studied. Demography is the study
of the human population dynamics. Other aspects are studied in sociology, economics
and geography. Plant or animal populations are studied in biology and in particular,
population biology, a branch of ecology, and population genetics.
There are several promising areas of research for exploring the interrelations among
substructural and intentional environmental phenomena. One example is research on how
social behaviors undergo shifts from one class of phenomena to another. It should be
stressed that because social movement organizations focus on particular environmentallyrelated behaviors and phenomena does not necessarily mean that these are the most
important or fundamental ones from an ecological-scientific perspective. Likewise,
among the major tactics of groups that resist environmental reforms are actions serving to
obscure or downplay the environmental relevance of phenomena or behaviors, and thus
to “de-environmentalize” (or render “ordinary”) these phenomena and behaviors.
The political-dialectical relations among the two classes of environmentally-relevant
practices can also be explored through research on the social bases of environmentalism
and environmental activism. Environmental-sociological treatments of environmentalism
have arguably tended to de-emphasize both the complexity of environmentalism and the
obstacles to mobilization. Environmental mobilization is typically portrayed as a more or
less direct response to environmental degradation, threats of environmental degradation,
and growth of environmental knowledge. Extensions of this line of argument suggest that
societies are increasingly being restructured into “environmental classes”: an
environmentally privileged class that has comfortable environments, benefits from
environmental destruction, and tends to resist environmental reform, -on one hand, and
an environmentally exploited class that suffers from low quality environments, pays for
the costs of environmental degradation, and has an interest in environmental
improvement, on the other. Environmental mobilization and conflict are conceptualized
to flow from this “environmental class structure” (Murphy 1994).
Major Environmental Issues:
1.
Industrialization,
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2. Urbanization,
3. Land, soil and landscape,
4. River, water and wetlands,
5. Agriculture,
6. Forests,
7. Coastal environment,
8.Energy consumption,
9. Fisheries & shrimp cultivation,
10.
Wildlife biodiversity,
11. Health.
The above environmental issues are closely related with human ecology as well as human
society.
Environmental Hazards and Disasters:
1. Greenhouse Effect,
3. Air pollution, water pollution,
2. Deforestation,
4. Arsenicosis,
5. Floods, cyclones, rise of river beds
6. Earthquake,
7. Poverty etc.
These environmental hazards and disasters interrupt the ecological system. So they are
the important fields of research for the environmental sociologists.
Management of Environmental Hazards and Disasters:
Different strategies are suggested by the environmental sociologists to control and
management environmental hazards and disasters. They are:
1.
Flood control and cyclone management,
2.
National forest and afforestation,
3.
Community and social forestry,
4.
Poverty alleviation,
5.
Control of arsenicosis,
6.
Strategies for sustainable development,
7.
Restructuring industrial system,
8.
International efforts etc.
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Environmental sociologists emphasis on the involvement of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations to get the benefit from the above managements.
The current situation of environmental management is one of transition, opportunity,
uncertainty and perhaps paradox. Conditions remain among the most difficult in the
world in which to develop effective and implementable environmental policy and
effective regulations, for a set of interrelated reasons: mass poverty, immense pressure,
low resource availability, institutional weakness, poor information base, large projects
etc.
The Study of Environmental Sociology in the Context of Bangladesh:
In Bangladesh the concern for environmental sociology is a recent trend. As a country of
third world Bangladesh is facing a great environmental hazards and disasters. The cause
is lake of socio-environmental policies in proper time.
Recently socio-environmentalists are giving much attention in this issue. Side by side,
governmental and non-governmental organizations are involving in this field. The main
environmental issues and problems in Bangladesh are: population growth, arsenicosis,
agriculture, polythene, water, air, land, deforestation, flood, cyclone, industrialization,
urbanization, greenhouse effect etc.
However, there are some signs of change, with an increase in activities relating to the
environment, particularly, in the last few years. These include:
§ Political Commitment:
At the political level, there has been an expressed commitment to the environment, even
if it is yet to find a clear direction.
§ Government Policy and Planning:
At the official level, a Ministry of Environment and Forests and as upgraded
Department of Environment have been formed. A National Conservation Strategy
exists, an Environmental Policy has been formed and a National Environmental
Management Action Plan (NEMAP), however inadequate is in the pipeline. Their
implementation is awaited and some concerns have been expressed as to the limited
scope and lake of an effective public discussion on these.
§ Increasing NGO Activities:
There is growing expertise and emergence of effective non-government organizations and
advocacy groups such as: Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan (BAPA), Forum of
Environmental Journalists of Bangladesh (FEJB) etc. are raising environmental issues
and developing data based on natural resources and evaluating people’s perceptions on
the environment.
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Side by side, some articles and essays have been published on environmental sociology in
some standard journals, such as: ‘Samaj Nirikkhon’, ‘Journal of Social Studies’,
‘Dhaka University Studies’, ‘Social Science Review’, ‘Grassroots Voice’ etc.
‘Environment’ as well as ‘Sociology of Environment’ is studied at some Universities
including Dhaka University as course.
Several conferences have been also held on Environment of Bangladesh. For example:
‘The International Conference on the Environment of Bangladesh’ was held in
January, 2000 which was arranged by about sixty organizations, in which the historical
‘Dhaka Ghushona’ was accepted based on some suggestions on environment.
Conclusion:
All societies are simultaneously organized social systems and complex ecosystems. Each
is intimately dependent upon the other; society cannot function without ecosystem.
Capital, services and ecosystems cannot remain viable if societies are unmindful of their
dependency on ecosystems. Environmental Sociology seeks to understand the
interconnections between the social and biological features of society, between societies
as functioning entities and the ecosystems upon which they are dependent for survival.
Environmental sociology has gone through several phases. Originally something of a
faddish response to public attention to environmental problems, the field for several years
was essentially a repackaging of several pre-existing literatures. Within a decade,
however, environmental sociology came to be unified to a significant degree around the
contributions of Dunlap and Catton, Schnaiberg, and a handful of others. The rise of
global environmental change in the late 1980s promised even greater convergence. Since
that time, however, the declining persuasiveness of Marxism and the cultural turn of
sociology and environmental sociology have thwarted the expectation of unity.
Environmental sociology studies the factors that cause environmental problems, the
societal impacts of those problems, as well as efforts to solve the problems. In addition,
considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which certain environmental
conditions become socially defined as problems. Environmental sociology obviously has
a responsibility to respond to changes in the natural-scientific, public policy, and social
bases of environmental issues, but this flexibility can come at the expense of sustained
research on crucial resource issues
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