Environmental Sociology: Capitalism, Sustainability and Social Justice

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 Dickens[1]

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 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 environmentally-sustainable 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 well-known 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)