Viewpoints and Comments ‘Environment’ in Sociological Theory

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VIEWPOINTS AND COMMENTS

 

'Environment' in Sociological Theory

 

Indra Munshi

 

Introduction

 

It  has been observed that 'contemporary forms of environmental 

degradation present one of the most, if not the most, complex and 

catastrophic dilemmas of modernity' (Goldblatt 1996: Preface). There is 

a general agreement that the economic expansion of a century and half 

has had alarming consequences for the global environment. Depletion of 

the ozone layer, air pollution, loss of forests and bio-diversity, extinction 

of plant and animal species, loss of marine life, soil and water pollution 

have occurred at an alarming rate. Especially in post-war years, release 

of toxic matters into the environment, world-wide expansion of nuclear 

energy, acid rains, new chemical pesticides, non-biodegradable plastics 

and other harmful chemicals have come to pose a threat to life itself. In 

the recent decades, however, we have witnessed the growth of 

environmental movements/conflicts, of environmental politics, which 

may play an important role in checking the deterioration of our 

environment at the local and global levels.

 

The seriousness of the situation has led scholars to predict that the 

21st century will be characterised by a massively endangered  natural 

environment if the present trends of ecological devastation continue. 

Further, it is predicted that this aspect will become increasingly dominant 

in all fields-politics, foreign affairs, development policy, education, 

technology and research. In what Weizsacker calls the Century of the 

Environment, the ecological imperative will determine law and 

administration, city planning and agriculture, arts and religion, 

technology and economy. Intervention for a radical transformation in the 

contemporary situation, which he terms Earth Politics, alone can salvage 

the future (Weizsacker 1994:10).

 

In  this  context,  two  important  issues  emerge:  the causes  and 

consequences of environmental degradation in modern societies, and the 

Indra Munshi is on the faculty of the Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai, 

Mumbai.

 

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 49 (2), September 2000

 

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role environmental politics can play to curb environmental degradation. 

Scholars have pointed to the limitations of the theoretical legacy of 

classical social theory of Marx, Weber and Durkheim for examining the 

issues mentioned above.

 

Weber's work shows the least engagement with the natural world. 

Even Marx and Durkheim, Goldblatt argues, who saw the relation 

between human societies and the natural world as central to historical 

change, did not pay much attention to the impact of economic and 

demographic processes on ecosystems. In fact, classical social theory 

was concerned more with how pre-modern societies had been 

constrained by their natural environments than with how industry in 

modern society led to environmental degradation. Nor could it see at the 

time that capitalism would prove to be environmentally problematic in a 

fundamental sense.

 

Others like Ted Benton do, however, argue that there is much in the 

corpus of Marxian historical materialism which is compatible with an 

ecological perspective(Benton 1989:63). According to them, Marx and 

Engels did recognise the historical necessity of human dependence upon 

external conditions in nature and limits to their social activity. Textual 

evidence suggests that Marx quite explicitly advocated ecological 

sustainability as a 'regulating law' which would govern socialist 

agriculture as different from its capitalist form  {Ibid:  83). It is often 

pointed out that one of Engels' earliest works  The Condition of the 

Working Class in England  was a denunciation of the environmental 

consequences of capitalist industrialisation'.

 

David Pepper's view is that Man-Nature dialectic is central to 

Marxism. Man (read human being) transforms nature by means of 

labour. Because this process of transformation is a social one, human 

beings shape their own society and their relations with their fellow-

beings by shaping nature. In the process of knowing nature in order to 

transform it, human beings transform themselves to a higher intellectual 

plane (Pepper 1986:163). Social development, observes Pepper, with its 

changes in the relations of production, is closely bound up with the social 

action of transforming nature in organised labour, 'acting upon socially-

derived knowledge of nature's laws, and upon socially-based perceptions 

of what is needed from nature and what nature can offer' {Ibid: 163).

 

The time element, therefore, Pepper argues, cannot be left out of 

Marxist discussion on human-nature relationship. 'Different forms of 

perception and modification of nature correspond to specific historical 

stages of human development. This, then, is what is meant by the term 

historicity of nature, and we see today a nature that almost entirely bears 

testimony to the intimacy of the man-nature relationship over time: a

 

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historically-produced nature....(Ibid:  163). In the dialectic between 

nature and humans, according to Pepper, there is no separation between 

the subject or the object, they exist in an 'organic intimacy of constant 

interaction;(Ibid: 163).

 

Nevertheless, it is this limited legacy in social theory of an 

inadequate conceptual framework to understand the complex interaction 

between societies and environment and to recognise the negative impact 

of the interaction on the environment, that is considered partially 

responsible for the neglect of environmental concerns in mainstream 

sociological theory. Redclift argues that in the light of these intellectual 

precedents, it is not surprising that ecological variables are not 

incorporated in sociological analysis (1987:9).

 

Giddens, too, observes that although all three authors, Durkheim, 

Marx and Weber saw the degrading consequences of industrial work 

upon human beings, none foresaw that the furthering of the 'forces of 

production' would have large-scale  destructive potential in relation to the 

material environment. 'Ecological concerns', he concludes, 'do not 

brook large in the traditions of thought incorporated into sociology, and 

it is not surprising that sociologists today find it hard to develop a 

systematic appraisal of them' (Giddens 1990:8).

 

Murphy points out that the theme of the embeddedness of social 

action in the processes of nature is still poorly integrated into mainstream 

sociology. The research on this theme has not yet influenced general 

sociological theory, which continues to proceed 'as if nature did not 

matter' (Murphy 1997:19). Sociology, he observes, has correctly 

emphasised the importance of the social, but this has been so exaggerated 

that there is a blindness to the relationship between the processes of 

nature and social action. The assumed dualism between social action and 

the processes of nature, with sociology focusing solely on the former as 

independent variable has resulted in sociology ignoring the dialectical 

relationship between the two. This kind of sociology misses the crucial 

distinguishing feature of our times which is the manipulation of nature 

by means of science and technology in order to attain our material goals, 

and thereby disrupting the equilibrium in nature which in turn reacts 

upon and threatens human constructions {Ibid: 8-9).

 

In recent times, however, environmental concerns, both the origins 

and nature of environmental deterioration, and the emergence of 

environment centred politics have been articulated in sociological 

writings. Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck, Clause Offe, Jurgen Habermas 

and others have addressed themselves to these issues. After an overview 

of the ideas developed by some of the thinkers, I will attempt to outline 

the environmental concerns of social scientists in India, and end with

 

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some   suggestions   on   how   environment 

sociology teaching and research in India.

 

Sociological Bulletin 

could   be   incorporated   in