Lecture 2-HS-200-11-3-14 Ecological Transformation and the environmental field in the sociological imagination
• Methodologically, sociologists define the field of environmental studies as the “study of interaction between the environment and society, using social as well as environmental variable as both cause and effect to account for environmental transformation [see Dunlap and Catton, 1978]
- • We observed various aspects of societal readjustment in the quest for sustainable development as an ongoing societal process of ecological transformation. • We have defined ecological transformation As an ongoing process with distinct thoughts and actions , an interactive cluster of wide ranging ideas and activities (A. Jemison, 2000)
Environment as a field • What is important to recognize that those activities are, for the most part, governed by different logics, rationalities, motivations, and interests. The political representations of ecological transformation often differ from more traditional forms of political activity Top-down strategies compete with bottom-up approaches in the integration of an environmental awareness into social and economic life. • Dominant/hegemonic as well as strategies and movements that are planted from below.
A form of critique • Environmental approaches are more differentiated rather than unified; more widespread than a field of knowledge confined to expert’s domain of activities. • Now the focus of attention can not remain primarily on the relatively formalized domain of the • Not only state but also many non- state actors influence the policy decisions. The environmentalism , which emerged in the 1960s as part of a counter-cultural critique of the ‘technocratic society’, has become more diffused with conflicting goals with respect to environmental transformations.
Environmental challenges as opportunities or constraints ? • Meanwhile, instead of being viewed by those in powerful positions primarily as a threat to the further expansion of industrial society, environmental concern has come to be seen, by many influential actors in both business and government, as an important contributor to economic recovery and rejuvenation, and, for some, even as an interesting source of profit (Frankel, 1998).
Change in the Policy orientation • Reorientation in much environmentally related knowledge production Earlier the primacy was given on pollution • treatment, but now more on the preventive principles which seek to integrate environmental concern into ever more areas of social and economic life. • Rather than delimiting environmental protection to a separate policy sector or a specialized area of scientific– • technical competenc e , there is a growing awareness that changes need to take place throughout the entire society if there is to be an adequate alleviation of environmental problems
• The different understandings are thus in need of synthesis and integration • A fundamental feature of the new environmental politics is that there is no one true, or trusted, form of expertise. • It is increasingly recognized that all experts have their own interests which, in complicated ways, exert an influence on their expertise. •
• In view of what we have discussed in the previous class , and following the general trend in environmental thinking we see that there are a number of competing responses to the new environmental challenges . • Both conciliatory and conflictual, • reformist and radical responses to the new environmental challenges.
• There is, on the one side, a powerful process of incorporation going on in bringing at least some environmental knowledge and expertise into the political and economic mainstream, • • while there is also a visible process of resistance , often combining environmental protest with issues of human rights and social and economic justice.
Process of incorporation and innovation in the environmental field • Process of incorporation comes from the world of business. • In response to environmental challenges, the business world has developed a growing market of environmentally friendly products; and have taken up technological development projects. • Their response has generated a number of management and organizational concepts. • The general idea has been to try to build environmental concern directly into established economic practices.
- • In other words, environmental concern is being integrated into corporate planning and innovation strategies, • For instance, many management and engineering schools have begun to provide courses in environmental economics, as well as in new methods of ‘cleaner’ production. • In many respects, these new forms of green expertise can be seen as a convergence of interests between environmental organizations, governmental agencies and business firms.
Environmental responses as actions and thoughts at various levels • The shifts in orientation have manifested themselves both on a discursive level, where new principles of environmental science, technology and management are being formulated, as well as on a practical level, where networks of innovators are serving to link universities, business and government agencies in new configurations.
- • Environmental politics cannot be adequately understood without considering the institutional and scientific– technical activities that are also taking place. • Some experts focus their attention on the material, or economic aspects, of social life—primarily what companies do—while others focus on the more symbolic, or cultural aspects
Policy domains/practices • Both with respect to Type of Practices[discursive, institutional and technological ] • And field of actions [ State, Industry and Civil Society] there are significant variations in the environmental thoughts and actions. • For instance, Sustainable Development, Ecological Modernization, and life style issues as environmental agenda operate respectively at the level of state, industry and civil society.
Policy domain –institutional • Similarly at the institutional level, policy responses are different: • For instance, responsive regulations are initiated at the level of State [environmental laws and regulation], • At the industry level, policy responses are managerial , whereas at the civil society level , emphasis is laid more on public participatory approaches [ ie., citizen participation].
• At the Technological level, • Innovative responses are: -Ecological Procurement [state level] Cleaner Production [industry] and issues involving issues of Green Consumption [civil society].
New forms of expertise • New forms of expertise have developed, both in the action repertoires of protest groups, as well as in communicating with the media and mobilizing support. • There is also an emergent expertise in understanding the connections between cultural traditions, belief systems, and ways of life and environmental problems • Entire sub-fields of anthropology and sociology have emerged, with at least some academic researchers applying their insights to the needs of ecological resistance.
- • A kind of partisan, or ‘citizen’ science of counter-expertise has also developed, both in environmental organizations, but also at the interface between environmental groups, political organizations , local government and universities.
New Environmental `think tanks’ • Even more significant, perhaps, are the new environmental ‘think tanks’ that have developed around the world to provide an alternative form of expert knowledge in relation to environmental politics. • In India, for example, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has been at the forefront of this new form of knowledge production; with an endless stream of books, reports, and, more recently, a journal, Down to Earth .
Think tank • In the United States, the Worldwatch Institute has been producing a State of the World Report since the mid 1980s. • Located at some distance from the academic world, the Worldwatch Institute produces an expertise that is to be put into practice, a mediating expertise that translates the findings of scientists into a more directly political language (Jamison, 1996).
Competing claims and proposed solutions • So, there are growing environmental literatures of competing, even conflicting, explanations and proposed solutions to the new environmental challenges. • Broadly, these trends can be divided into two main frameworks of interpretation have come to the fore:
Green business versus critical orientation • The one approach is generally optimistic, progressive, and business-oriented, and in some of its variants, has been characterized as signalling a new stage of capitalism (cf. Frankel, 1998). • The other is generally critical, often pessimistic, and, in some of its variants, puts in question the very idea of modernity and the myth of progress that is so central to modernist thinking. • A central assumption of this critical school of thought is that contemporary industrial societies are still governed by an overriding capitalist, or accumulative logic.
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