Sociology and the Environment

A Critical Introduction to Society, Nature and Knowledge

Alan Irwin

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745613604, 9780745613598
• eBook ISBN: 9780745667331
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Can sociology help us to tackle environmental problems? What can sociology tell us about the nature of the environment and about the origins and consequences of environmental risks, hazards and change? In this important new book Alan Irwin maps out this emerging field of knowledge, teaching and research. He reviews the key sociological debates in the field and sets out a new framework for analysis and practice.

Among the themes examined are constructivism and realism, sustainable development and theories of the risk society. Readers are also introduced to communities at risk, institutional regulation and the environmental consequences of technology. Particular topics for discussion include genetically modified organisms, nuclear power, pesticide safety and the local hazards of the chemical industry. Rather than maintaining a fixed boundary between nature and society, Irwin highlights the hybrid character of environmental issues and emphasizes the role of social and cultural factors within environmental policy.

Combining theoretical discussion and case-studies with a sensitivity to the concerns of environmental policy and practice, Sociology and the Environment provides an excellent introduction to an expanding and immensely important field. It will be a valuable text for students and scholars in sociology, geography, environmental studies and related disciplines.

1

Sustainability as Social Challenge

[I]n the end, sustainable development is not a fixed state of harmony, but rather a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are made consistent with future as well as present needs.

World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p. 9

[S]imply giving something a name does not indicate that it can actually exist viably.

Yearley 1996, p. 131

Having devoted the Preface and Introduction to a discussion of explicitly sociological themes and issues, in this chapter I offer an apparent change of focus: the discourse of sustainable development. However, the point is not to get caught up in the detail of ‘sustainability talk’ nor to offer a definitive history of the concept. Instead, the invitation is to explore one important and contemporary ‘framing’ of environmental issues and to consider the particular construction of ‘society, nature and knowledge’ that it offers.

In addition to providing a general context to environmental discussion, this account of the social–natural relationship will serve as a foundation for discussion in the following chapters. It will be suggested that, whilst the agenda of sustainability opens up an important role for social scientific analysis, it does so within a simple realist model of the need to connect environmental problems (as defined by scientific institutions) with social challenges (especially those of social equity and of co-ordinated international action).

So far in this book, we have considered issues of sociology and the environment only at the most general of levels. In practice, and here we come to one of this book’s main arguments, environmental questions and concerns are not represented to us (nor, indeed, by us) in such an abstract or disembodied fashion. Instead, they are characteristically packaged (or ‘framed’) in particular ways by institutions and organizations such as government bodies, industries and environmentalist groups. It is therefore entirely appropriate that we begin by considering what has become the dominant contemporary framing of environmental issues. As Maarten Hajer presents the underlying issue: ‘Environmental discourse is an astonishing collection of claims and concerns brought together by a great variety of actors. Yet somehow we distil seemingly coherent problems out of this jamboree of claims and concerns’ (1995, pp. 1–2).

In this chapter’s discussion of the Brundtland Report and the concept of sustainable development, it will not be the intention to catalogue international activities in this area. Equally, the chapter is not intended as a critique of sustainability. The aim is rather to explore the discourse of sustainability in broad terms – and, specifically, to consider its treatment of environmental knowledge, institutional practice and social–natural relations. In so doing, we will be in general agreement with Castree and Braun:

[W]hat counts as ‘nature’, and our experience of nature (including our bodies), is always historical, related to a configuration of historically specific social and representational practices which form the nuts and bolts of our interactions with, and investments in, the world. Discourses like ‘sustainability’ are important to the extent that they organize our attitudes towards, and actions on, nature. (1998, p. 17)

Hajer’s more blunt assessment should also be borne in mind:

[T]he present hegemony of the idea of sustainable development should not be seen as the product of a linear, progressive, and value-free process of convincing actors of the importance of the Green case. It is much more a struggle between various unconventional political co-alitions, each made up of such actors as scientists, politicians, activists. (1995, p. 12)

This ‘hegemony’ has taken particular form as a ‘globalist perspective’,¹ which aims to reconcile the perceived need for environmental protection with a desire for continued economic and industrial development. Put differently, sustainable development represents the marriage of developmentalism (the commitment to continued economic development) and environmentalism.² Such a reconciliation is neither obvious nor straightforward – nor is it without its critics, who see it as a centralizing approach, more concerned with ‘business as usual’ than radical change, and as rooted in a Northern perspective on environment and development. The discourse of sustainability emphasizes the notion of ‘commonality’ (what Brundtland terms a ‘human family’). Alternative perspectives have challenged this sense of ‘commonality’ by suggesting that sustainable development might be better understood as a form of environmental imperialism.

This creates a situation where, on the one hand, it is possible to portray sustainable development as a hopelessly divided concept,³ whilst at the same time noting that leaflets and publications from disparate organizations often end up looking remarkably similar. One important characteristic of ‘sustainability talk’ therefore is the way in which an apparently unitary discourse (complete with pictures of dolphins, smiling children, the rainforests and ‘Spaceship Earth’) has been created out of the ‘environmental jamboree’.

To illustrate the ‘sameness’ of sustainability discourse, Myers and Macnaghten quote one environmental leaflet: ‘We all want clean air and a healthy place to live. We all want a healthy environment – not one scarred by the effects of industry. We want to protect the environment from abuse today and in the future’ (1998, p. 339). What is noteworthy here is that this statement could just as readily have been made by Friends of the Earth or a government agency (in fact, the leaflet was produced by the chemical company, ICI). The point is that all these organizations are drawing upon a similar stock of images, concepts and ‘commonplaces’⁴ – at least when dealing with general audiences. However, it is important to be aware of what is left out as well as included within this form of environmental discussion. As Hajer has observed, the language of ‘one big united effort’ may serve a useful institutional role in setting an international agenda but it can also exclude alternative accounts of environmental matters – and perhaps disempower those understandings that do not translate into a globalist perspective (1995, p. 14).

In this chapter, we will be interested in the tensions and ambivalences embedded within this superficially bland term – in other words, in the relationship between the discursive representation of sameness (across environmental problems, issues and concerns) and its underlying strands of difference. In so doing, we will also be acquainting ourselves with the complex social debates and political struggles that lie at the heart of contemporary environmental policy-making.

James O’Connor has described the underlying tensions within the concept of sustainability: ‘behind a seeming convergence of vocabulary is a … gap between green and capitalist discourse, with both sides talking past each other’ (1994, p. 156). Sharachandra Lélé has powerfully made a similar point:

Sustainable development is a ‘metafix’ that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk-minimizing subsistence farmer to the equity-seeking social worker, the pollution-concerned or wildlife-loving First Worlder, the growth-maximizing policy maker, the goal-orientated bureaucrat, and therefore, the vote-counting politician. (cited in Dobson 1998, p. 33)

In this chapter, I want to suggest that, whilst the language of sustainability is undoubtedly slippery, ill-defined and self-contradictory, this should not detract from a consideration of its sociological significance. On the contrary, the variable construction and application of this term within environmental discourse make it all the more suitable for sociological analysis. In particular, I want to consider the institutional definition of sustainability within one important document. The 1987 Brundtland Report focused international debate on sustainable development and provided a new agenda for environmental discussion.

In what follows, I am not going to attempt the heroic (or probably just hopeless) task of tidying up the definitions of sustainability, nor of producing a full intellectual and institutional definition of the term. Rather than seeking to pin down sustainability, the focus will be on what the prevailing discourse of sustainability tells us about the meanings of environmentalism and the character of environmental debate. The tensions within ‘sustainability talk’ can in that way serve as an introduction to the varying and contested construction of contemporary environmental issues and concerns. On that basis, we will be especially sensitive to certain underlying themes within sustainability talk. These include:

• a presentation of the kinds of social and institutional change being required (in terms of both scale and form);
• notions of globality and, linked to this, of togetherness in the face of environmental threat (both embodied within the notion that this is our common future);
• an argument for democracy, empowerment and participation as an essential means of achieving sustainable development;
• and, at the broadest level, an evocation of the crisis with which we are confronted.

In specific reference to the main themes of this book, we will identify:

• a definition of ‘sustainable development’ that explicitly brings together social (especially political and institutional) and environmental concerns – albeit in a form that ultimately maintains a strict social/natural distinction;
• a set of particular science-centred assumptions about environmental knowledges (of how we know what we claim about environmental concerns) which have important consequences for the social element within sustainability discourse;
• the importance of social and institutional practice for social–natural relations.

Taken together, these themes indicate a broadly based ‘global problematique’ (as the Club of Rome termed it), which suggests considerable scope for sociological analysis. Sustainability talk is interesting both for what it includes and for what it omits. What makes this all the more interesting (and again paradoxical) is that one key characteristic of sustainable development has been its explicit commitment to equity and participation.

The Emergence of Sustainability Talk

Sustainable development needs to be set in some historical context in order to explain its emergence and influence. However, in this brief account such contextualization cannot be offered in any detail.⁵ Instead, a short introduction will be offered before we discuss the Brundtland Report itself.

In describing sustainability talk in this and the following two sections, I am aware that parts of the material may be familiar to readers who have already studied the Brundtland Report. However, and as discussed in the Introduction, experience suggests that such material is often unfamiliar (perhaps surprisingly) to many sociologists – as Newby’s comments cited in the Preface also indicated. In such a situation, and given the need to establish sustainability as a basis for future discussion in this book, I can only request the temporary indulgence of Brundtland-aware readers – and threaten them with less familiar material ahead.

Although various claims have been made for the first usage of the term ‘sustainable development’,⁶ it seems likely that the genesis of the concept stems from the 1970s when environmental awareness was becoming established in its modern reincarnation worldwide.⁷ Redclift, for example, traces the term back to the 1974 Cocoyoc Declaration on environment and development (1992, p. 32). This stated that the purpose of development ‘should not be to develop things, but to develop man’ (cited in Reid 1996, p. 45). This emphasis on the social and human, as well as explicitly environmental, challenge certainly anticipated Brundtland’s definition of sustain-able development. Other commentators have identified the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment as the event that first put the environment on the international political agenda.⁸

The Brundtland Report can also be represented as emerging out of a steady stream of international reports on environmental issues, which commenced in the late 1960s. For example, Blueprint for Survival was published in 1972 by The Ecologist magazine. This was followed (also in 1972) by Limits to Growth, which, as the title implies, argued that current patterns of development would lead to major social, industrial and resource problems within the following century – unless, that is, a new condition of ‘ecological and economic stability’ could be established that was ‘sustainable far into the future’.⁹ This report was criticized in a number of ways – and not least for its deterministic model and alleged failure to consider social and political factors. However, it did serve to suggest that there may be a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the limited resources of the natural world.

These concerns about environment and development became the focus of a series of international conferences and meetings, including those held in Stockholm (1972) and Cocoyoc, Mexico (1974). The Stockholm meeting, organized by the United Nations, was attended by representatives of 119 countries and 400 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The Stockholm conference accorded international status to environmental issues – even if in so doing it also opened up a possible conflict between the North and the South. Was the new environmental agenda a covert means of holding back developing nations?

The term ‘sustainable development’ did not actually come to prominence until 1980 when it was proposed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as part of the World Conservation Strategy (WCS). The WCS defined the broad goal as integrating ‘conservation and development to ensure that modifications to the planet do indeed secure the survival and well-being of all people’. In anticipation of the Brundtland Commission’s best-known definition of sustainable development (discussed in the following section), ‘conservation’ was defined as ‘the management of human use of the biosphere so that it may yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations’. In this way, sustainable development is built on the notion that conservation and development are mutually dependent rather than opposed to one another.

As Pickering and Lewis (1994) observe, the IUCN report was criticized in a number of ways. Discussion centred on whether it was ‘anti-development’. Inevitably also, debate considered whether the WCS was attacking the symptoms rather than the causes of environmental degradation (what Redclift calls the ‘political and economic forces behind unsustainable practices’ (1992, p. 21)). The report’s argument that poverty was a key factor working against sustainability also attracted considerable attention: does such a conclusion suggest ‘victim-blaming’?

Reid describes the report more generally: ‘WCS reflects both the utilitarian and moral strands of environmentalist thinking of the 1960s and 1970s’ (1996, p. 41). He continues:

Both world conservation and global environmentalism offer ‘solutions’ that can be applied on a global scale. They tend to be presented as the obviously right thing to do, and therefore non-controversial. However, far from being apolitical, they reflect Northern bias. Their perspective is that of Northern interests … in largely Southern resources; their diagnoses are validated by Northern science on whose findings they are based, and their implementation would require Northern technology and expertise. (ibid., p. 42)

Already we can see that what may appear self-evident to one viewpoint can appear quite different from other perspectives – and especially given the growing debate over the ‘Southern’ perspective on these issues (a category that itself requires some deconstruction).

Very importantly for the institutional history of sustainable development, a fresh international perspective began to fuse with the concept of environmental crisis from the late 1970s onwards. This was driven by the sense of an alternative – but possibly related ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Sustainability as Social Challenge
• 2 The Risk Society Thesis: The End of the World As We Know It?
• 3 Science and the Social Construction of Environmental Threat
• 4 Risks in Context: The Local Construction of Environmental Issues
• 5 Institutional Judgements and Contested Decisions: The Governance of Environmental Problems
• 6 Kamikazes and Chromosomes: Sociological Perspectives on Technology
• 7 Society, Nature, Knowledge: Co-constructing the Social and the Natural
• References
• Index