Environmental and Resource Sociology: Theoretical Issues and Opportunities for Synthesis1

Abstract Rural sociologists have been disproportionately represented among the major contributors to environmental sociology. In part, this is because several areas of longstanding rural sociological interest (e.g., sociology of resource management and outdoor recreation, studies of resource-dependent communities) essentially came to be redefined as environmental sociology during the 1970s. The most significant role of rural sociologists in building environmental sociology, however, has perhaps been the fact that the material and biophysical nature of the phenomena they have traditionally studied contributed to a general predisposition to recognize the “materiality” of social structure and social life. I assess the major strategies that have been developed for theorizing this materiality, and then indicate some of the most critical lines of debate and dissension. I argue that if these debates are examined in their specifics—rather than as incompatible perspectives or “paradigms”—some opportunities for synthesis become apparent. Some suggested avenues of synthesis are set forth.     

Emotional impacts of environmental decline: What can Native cosmologies teach sociology about emotions and environmental justice?

This article extends analyses of environmental influences on social action by examining the emotions experienced by Karuk Tribal members in the face of environmental decline. Using interviews, public testimonies, and survey data we make two claims, one specific, the other general. We find that, for Karuk people, the natural environment is part of the stage of social interactions and a central influence on emotional experiences, including individuals’ internalization of identity, social roles, and power structures, and their resistance to racism and ongoing colonialism. We describe a unique approach to understanding the production of inequality through disruptions to relationships among nature, emotions, and society. Grief, anger, shame, and hopelessness associated with environmental decline serve as signal functions confirming structures of power. The moral battery of fear and hope underpins environmental activism and resistance. More generally, we expand this concern to argue that neglecting the natural world as a causal force for “generic” social processes has limited not only work on Native Americans, but also work sociology of emotions and theories of race and ethnicity, and has masked the theoretical significance of environmental justice. Taking seriously the experiences of Native people and the importance of the natural environment offers an opportunity to extend sociological analyses of power and to move sociology toward a more decolonized discipline.     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.     

“Live Social Work”: How to Bring Life Back into Social Work

Abstract

In this article I discuss how professional social work can entail critical, reflexive work. This is accomplished by adapting the concept of “live sociology”. It is mainly an exploratory article, trying to raise suggestions that can be adopted and be further developed. I argue that people coming into contact with contemporary social work are sometimes reduced to being “dead” objects, as they are pinned down into static categories. The demand for developing evidence-based social work risks substantiating this tendency even further. In contrast, I claim that social work needs to move away from these kinds of explanations and instead turn towards developing “live social work”; that is to say, social work where everyday life, agency, and what people do in what context needs to be the focus, not what people are.     

Beyond the Comtean Schema: The Sociology of Culture and Cognition Versus Cognitive Social Science

In this essay, I argue that the very form of the grammatical construction “a sociology of culture and cognition” (which is a specification of the more general schema “a sociology of [X]”) is symptomatic of a deeply entrenched form of “Primitive Classification” (which I will refer to as the “Comtean schema”) that governs the way in which sociologists conceive of their place in, and engage with other denizens of, the social science landscape. I will also argue that while this style of disciplinary engagement might have worked in the past when it came to dealing with the standard (nineteenth‐century) social science disciplines and even some late‐twentieth‐century upstarts, it will not work as a way to engage the now‐sprawling postdisciplinary field that I will refer to as “Cognitive Social Science” (CSS). The takeaway point is that if sociologists want to be part of CSS (and it is in their interest to be part of it because this constitutes the future of the behavioral sciences), then they will have to give up the Comtean‐schematic thought style.     

From the New Ecological Paradigm to Total Liberation: The Emergence of a Social Movement Frame

Drawing on theories of social movements and environmental sociology, this article considers a frame transformation that is taking place within ecological social movements. This transformation produced a new frame: “total liberation.” We explore this phenomenon by analyzing interviews with activists, fieldwork observations, and documents from radical environmental and animal rights movement networks in the United States. Beyond introducing the total liberation frame, the article expands current understandings of how and why frame transformations occur through a consideration of how multiple frames, as well as intra‐ and intermovement tensions and influences, shape frame transformation.     

“An Army of Civil Servants”: Max Weber and Émile Durkheim on Socialism

This paper is a comparison of the views of Max Weber and Émile Durkheim on socialism; these two have yet to be compared on this topic. They offered shared critiques of socialism, but differed in assessment of its overall worth, with Durkheim being more welcoming. After considering possible explanations for this divergence I argue it reflects the contrasting methodologies adopted by both. Whilst Weber places questions of the “value” of socialism solely in the conscious of the individual, and therefore beyond sociology, Durkheim sees this as a social question and therefore part of the practical concerns of sociologists.     

Trust,scepticism, and social order: A contribution from the sociology of scientific knowledge

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), which studies the organisation and content of science, has made two original contributions to the understanding of social order at large. First, SSK scholars regard social order as a problem of establishing “cognitive order” and knowledge. A wealth of case studies has demonstrated that interpersonal trust is necessary to achieve agreement and shared perception among particular collectives of specialists. Second, SSK scholars insist that all types of cognitive order and knowledge, whether “scientific” or “lay,” are the result of socially organised scepticism being parasitic upon existing trust and background expectations (an argument that I call “the Parasitic View of Scepticism”). Sociologists with an interest in today's so‐called “knowledge” and “information” societies, and more specifically, in the social distribution and political uses of doubt and unknowns (including “post‐truth”), would benefit from adopting the Parasitic View of Scepticism and investigating the corrosive and generative consequences of scepticism on the trust relations and the cognitive/social order upon which it is based, in line with insights from the emerging fields of agnotology and the sociology of ignorance.     

Copresence in Virtual Environments

Copresence, the sense of “being together” with others, is at the center of theories about social interaction. It is an intra‐individual sense that stems from and shapes the social context. Recent research on copresence in virtual environments (VEs), synthetic simulations of existing experiences (e.g., desktop computer environments, “virtual reality”), demonstrates the variability in which people experience copresence with others who are not sharing in the same time or space. At the same time, experimental researchers in sociology are using VEs as a methodological tool, yet remain unaware about the ramifications of varying levels of copresence for the social processes under investigation. The goal of this review is to introduce sociologists to the research on copresence, specifically highlighting findings and gaps important for those who use VEs in their research practice. An understanding of how copresence occurs in VEs can improve how well sociologists design experiments to advance theories about interpersonal behavior.     

Introduction: Human Longevity,Utopia, and Solidarity

Biomedical and geriatric technologies are having major impacts on the development and management of human longevity. Our contention in this special issue is that longevity should be considered as a point of departure for new forms of politics in which social sciences, in particular sociology and politics, can play an important role. In this introduction, we argue that emerging consumer markets in biomedicine are incrementally redefining the relationship between old age and society. Techno‐economic transformations are creating new sites of vulnerability that are masked by medical utopias of good health and “living forever.” In this context, it is unlikely that such technologies will be able to overcome inequalities in distribution and may well exacerbate various forms of injustice. By drawing on notions of institutional precariousness and scarcity, we conclude that to maintain any degree of social solidarity, increasing longevity will force the emergence of a “sociology of limits.”     

Toward a Historical Sociology of COVID-19: Path Dependence Method and Temporal Connections

Encountering the unprecedented social crisis of COVID-19, an increasing number of sociologists are calling for historical sociology to engage empirically with the dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis. I present the “path dependence method” and the “temporal connections” to interpret social life during the COVID-19 pandemic. By using the path dependence method, I show how the personal, social, and national problems created by the COVID-19 crisis initiate a new path and furthermore how this newly created path is justified in a society. Through the temporal connections, I will show how non-Western countries responded more reasonably and quickly than most Western countries to the COVID-19 crisis. The overall aim of this research is to disclose effectiveness of historical sociology, to encourage researchers to think time variable, and to argue that linking historical-sociological knowledge to the COVID-19 crisis would be a positive step for an in-depth COVID-19 sociology.     

Saving the Savior

This article begins with an autobiographical reflection about what sociology has meant to me as an Iranian intellectual. Sociology has enabled me to think critically about my country's politics and culture, appreciating its strengths without overlooking its unjust and injurious aspects. That experience shapes my answer to the question “Saving Sociology?” If there is anything in sociology that I would like to save–in both senses “to keep” and “to rescue”—it is sociology as a critical, reflective discipline, a discipline that not only studies society but also contributes to its change. As the contemporary world moves toward a “global” society, we are increasingly facing the dilemmas of multiculturalism. Sociologists often investigate other societies or (like myself) look back at their own from a spatial and cultural distance. This situation has created a dilemma for many scholars: Should we criticize problems stemming from “indigenous” beliefs and practices of other societies? Cultural relativism argues that different cultures provide indigenous answers to their social problems that should be judged in their own context. While this approach correctly encourages us to avoid ethnocentrism, it has led to inaction towards the suffering of oppressed groups. Reflecting on the relativist approach to sexual dominance, I question some cultural relativist assumptions. Discussing how “indigenous” responses to male domination in many cases disguise and protect that domination, I will challenge the “localist” approach of relativism and argue for a universalist approach.     

Relational Troubles and Semiofficial Suspicion: Educators and the Medicalization of “Unruly” Children

Using an interview‐based analysis of the accounts of interactions between educators, parents, and clinicians, this study explores educators' roles in interpreting childhood troubles as the medical phenomenon of attention deficit‐hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The analysis of interviews shows how children's “personal” troubles become understood as “relational” ones, prompting increasingly sophisticated social responses. I argue that the institution of education, operating in a clinical capacity but lacking the legitimate authority to assign ADHD diagnoses, plays a hybridized, semiofficial role in the medicalization process. This assertion informs a critique of the “informal/official” dichotomy found in the sociology of deviance lexicon, and furthers previous positions in the sociology of mental health that have implicated school representatives in the social construction of behavior disorders.     

System Theory as Global Sociology-Japanese Ramifications of Parsonian and Luhmannian Thought

This article explores various engagements of system theory with Germany and Japan, looking in particular at the theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann. Talcott Parsons based his sociological theory on the idea of a system of the values of a given society. Niklas Luhmann’s extended version was based on the idea of self-reproduction (or “autopoiesis”) of social systems within all modernized societies. Two studies have recently re-examined system theory on basis of its engagement with Japan: Günther Distelrath has subjected Parsonian theory on Japanese modernity to a structural revisioning in Die japanische Produktionsweise (1996); and Peter Fuchs has reconciled what he calls the “dividualism” of the Japanese psyche with the Luhmannian theory of functional differentiation in Kommunikation — Japanisch (1995). Distelrath critiques the Parsonian school of thought for giving Japan the status of a backward “follower” of the West. Fuchs, in contrast, endorses the universalist premise of Luhmann’s concept of society and makes Japanese “dividualism” the paradigm of effective modernization. Following on from Fuchs, I argue that system theory has the potential to overcome cultural limitations and become a global sociology. Its theoretical agenda in the twenty-first century includes the refinement of its concepts of the psychical system, the revision of its notion of the public and the mass media, as well as a systematic contribution to environmental protection and ecological communication in a functionally differentiated world society.     

The Enduring Social Psychology of Robert K. Merton: Motivating Sentiments,Reference Groups and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) gained renown as a distinguished sociologist, especially in connection with the paradigm of “structural-functionalism” and he publicly self-identified as a “structuralist.” This paper calls attention to an emphasis in Merton’s work that sociologists have often overlooked, namely, his social psychology. I argue that, throughout his long career, Merton consistently pursued social psychological issues, including how non-logical action, appeals to shared sentiments and collective definitions of situations affect life in organized groups. I shall characterize his earlier analyses as “Harvard style,” and his later social psychological works as “Chicago style,” as a heuristic means of calling attention to interesting variations in framing. Merton’s formulations have impacted numerous subfields of sociology, and some (e.g., “self-fulfilling prophecies,” “the Matthew Effect”) remain influential even today. Examining Merton’s social psychology will contribute both to a fuller appreciation of his career and also to a more complete history of social science in the United States.     

Naturalistic Observation in the Laboratory

Symbolic interactionists generally eschew laboratory research in favor of naturalistic observation in field settings. This is consistent with the recommendations of Blumer, who argued that social processes and relationships, which are the appropriate subject matter for sociology, cannot be studied adequately within the laboratory. In this statement, I argue that when the laboratory is used as a “provocative stage,” the integrity of social action and social relationships as they are manifest in social process can be as adequately studied in the laboratory as they can be in the field. I further argue that when the laboratory is used in the manner specified here, Blumer's recommendations are more adequately met than they are in field studies.     

Inventing the axial age: the origins and uses of a historical concept

The concept of the axial age, initially proposed by the philosopher Karl Jaspers to refer to a period in the first millennium BCE that saw the rise of major religious and philosophical figures and ideas throughout Eurasia, has gained an established position in a number of fields, including historical sociology, cultural sociology, and the sociology of religion. We explore whether the notion of an “axial age” has historical and intellectual cogency, or whether the authors who use the label of a more free-floating “axiality” to connote varied “breakthroughs” in human experience may have a more compelling case. Throughout, we draw attention to ways in which uses of the axial age concept in contemporary social science vary in these and other respects. In the conclusion, we reflect on the value of the concept and its current uses and their utility in making sense of human experience.     

Class,gender and generation matter: using the concept of social generation to study inequality and social change

This article highlights how concepts from the sociology of generations can facilitate new understandings of the processes by which social inequalities are made and perpetuated in the lives of young people. There is a tendency in some youth research for inequality to be conceptualised too simplistically, as a process of reproduction that remains stable over time. Hence, continuing inequality is weighed as evidence against theories proposing social change. Using the sociology of generations, the article argues that social change and new risks are not facades behind which more real, and long-standing, forms of inequality are hidden, but are central to the way inequalities, including but not only by class, gender and race, are made in the conditions facing emerging generations of young people.     

What is new with old? What old age teaches us about inequality and stratification

Aging is remarkably unequal. Who survives to grow old in America and the circumstances they face once there reflect durable racial, socioeconomic, and gender inequalities that structure our lives from birth. Yet within the field of social stratification and mainstream sociology proper, examinations of the rapidly growing population of older Americans are often relegated to a “gerontological” periphery. This essay posits that the failure to place aging as a core concern in stratification and inequality is a missed opportunity. We argue for the importance of reintegrating studies on the stratification of aging and explain why such a move is necessary. Specifically, we posit that (a) examining the aging population is necessary for understanding American inequality because aging is an outcome that is ubiquitous yet highly stratified; (b) aging and being seen as “old” in a youth‐focused society are stratifying processes in their own right; and (c) later life provides for analytical comparisons that are illustrative of how key mechanisms of inequality structure and stratify. After examining insights provided by a new wave of research on the aging U.S. population, we revisit the implications for understanding inequality and stratification in a graying and unequal America.     

Outsider Scholars and Outsider Sociologists

If we take the time to look at the academy writ large and sociology as a discipline specifically, we can readily find the evidence to confirm a long‐standing exclusion of certain scholars from the academic mainstream. This exclusion is especially evident in the case of scholars of color, but also includes women, nonelites (e.g., college and graduate students who lack academic social capital from elders who have been through it and could help), and those who wish to push for a more humanist scientific agenda over purist positivist science. Sexism and racism keep us from seeing the best of our ideas emerge to bring the discipline forward. As if the pursuit of good work and good works are mutually exclusive, an embrace of purist positivism leads us to shun antiracist, antisexist, nonhumanist science, labeling it “advocacy” or worse, “activist,” and conversely, ceding ground to those who wrap themselves in “objectivity” even as they may further regressive agendas. This article makes a case for the existence of an “outsider scholar,” and outlines sociology's outsider problem. I argue that this problem endures at all levels of the academic endeavor, from undergraduate education all the way through to the ranks of administration. I conclude by offering remedies to lead us toward a more inclusive and social justice‐oriented sociology.