Sociology And Nature

Social Action In Context

Raymond Murphy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813366616
• eBook ISBN: 9780429976896
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sociology as if nature did not matter has been the sociological expression of modern societies negligent of the processes of nature. In response to this ?ecological blindness,? Raymond Murphy examines the limitations of sociology that have resulted from this neglect.Humanity's success in manipulating nature destabilizes the natural support system of society on a planetary scale and, in turn, destabilizes all of society's institutions. Because the manipulation of nature has become so central to modern society, society, Murphy argues, can now be understood only in terms of the interaction between social action and the processes of nature. The growing awareness that social constructions unleash dynamic processes of nature?processes beyond human control that bear on social action?has the potential of radically transforming sociology. Sociology and Nature proposes the reconstruction of sociology in which nature does matters, developing a novel sociological approach that situates social action in its natural context.

PART ONE
Social Action Abstracted from Its Context

1
Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter: An Ecological Critique

The discipline of sociology has a complex relationship with the natural sciences. On the one hand it shares the same goals of verifiable affirmations, empirical documentation, and construction of theory. On the other hand sociology has won its autonomy by contrasting itself to the natural sciences. Whereas the natural sciences seek to show the effects of the processes of nature, sociologists have carved out their field by demonstrating the importance of the social. This well-intentioned and indeed understandable effort to establish the discipline by highlighting the social has none the less had the perverse effect of deflecting the attention of sociologists away from the relationship between the processes of nature and social action. This is a serious deficiency of sociology as ecological problems and ecological risks become increasingly prominent: '"ecological blindness' is a congenital defect of sociologists" (Beck 1995b: 41).

Pre-Ecological Sociology: Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter

The social ecologist Bookchiri (1987: 72) argues convincingly that "the view we hold of the natural world profoundly shapes the image we develop of the social worlds, even as we assert the 'supremacy' and 'autonomy' of culture over nature." His argument applies with force to sociology. The assumptions made by sociologists about the natural world have profoundly shaped sociology itself.

Berger and Luckmann summarized the core argument of their influential book The Social Construction of Reality as follows.

The basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and subtitle, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyze the processes in which this occurs. ... It will be enough, for our purposes, to define 'reality' as a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition (we cannot 'wish them away').

(Berger arid Luckmann 1968: 1)

In short, phenomena that we recognize as beyond being "wished away" are socially constructed. Nature is conspicuous by its absence in this sociological construction.

This thesis is based on the following assumptions: "the human organism manifests an immense plasticity in its response to the environmental forces at work on it.... While it is possible to say that man has a nature, it is more significant to say that man constructs his own nature, or more simply, that man produces himself" (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 48-9). This in turn is based on the premise of a radical discontinuity between humans and non-human animals.

It refers to the biologically fixed character of their [non-human animals] relationship to the environment, even if geographical variation is introduced. In this sense, all non-human animals, as species and as individuals, live in closed worlds whose structures are predetermined by the biological equipment of the several animal species. By contrast, man's relationship to his environment is characterized by world-openness.

(Berger and Luckmann 1967:47)

Catton and Duruap (1978:41-9) concluded that sociology has been based on the assumption that the exceptional traits of humans have rendered them exempt from the constraints of nature. For example, Lipset (1979:1-35) and Nisbet (1979: 2-6,55) wilfully neglected ecological limits and Bell (1977:13-26) claimed that limits to growth are social not ecological. "The search for intelligible connections between the two 'sides' of human nature—between what we share with other animals, and what makes us distinctive—was to be replaced by a view of human nature as constituted by the latter" (Benton 1991:11).

This supports Bookchin's (1987:51) conclusion that "sociology sees itself as the analysis of 'man's' ascent from 'animality,' ... these self-definitions ... [try to] impart a unique autonomy to cultural development and social evolution." And try they do. In the epistemology of the social construction of knowledge,

truth and objectivity are seen as nothing but human products and man rather than Nature is seen as the ultimate author of 'knowledge' and 'reality.' Any attempt to appeal to an external 'reality' in order to support claims for the superiority of one way of seeing over another is dismissed as ideological.

(Whitty 1977: 37)

Prus (1990:356) argues "that there are as many varieties of reality as might be experienced by people." Baldus (1990: 470) suggests that this "sociology assumes that reality exists only in human experience." Fox observed that

sociology has been suspicious of anything claiming to be grounded in nature, and its positioning has been in direct opposition to any claims that the natural has influence over human relations. ... Sociology typically 'brackets' the natural world.... Either 'nature' is asserted to be ineffectual in influencing social relations .... [or] it is asserted that basically the natural world is unchanging. Fox

(1991:23-4)

Hence Sessions (1985: 255) concludes that "the dominant trend of the academic social sciences (especially psychology and sociology) have by-and-large both reinforced anthropocentrism and promoted a view of humans as being malleable and totally conditioned by the social environment."

The classical illustration of the argument for ignoring nature, presented in sociology textbooks (Spector and Kitsuse 1977: 43), is the case of marijuana. In the United States, marijuana was officially classified as dangerous and addictive in the 1930s, but was no longer classified as addictive in the 1960s. This changing classification cannot be explained by the chemical nature of marijuana, since it did not change, and can only be explained by changing notions of addiction and political strategies and tactics.

An area that, one would think, would deal with the relationship between social action and the processes of nature is that of the sociology of science. Yet most contemporary studies in the sociology of science have focused solely on how scientific knowledge is socially constructed and neglected the role of nature as a source of that knowledge (see Murphy 1994a: Chapter 9 and Murphy 1994b).

Even the sociology of environmental issues has often not investigated the relationship between the processes of nature and social action. Instead much of it has interpreted environmental issues as socially constructed 'social scares' and has deflected attention away from their connection to changes in ecosystems (Dunlap and Catton 1994a). Where the social-natural relationship has been discussed, it has been in terms of unidirectional causality from the social to the natural. "There may have been a time when human ecological systems were embedded in natural ecosystems; today the opposite is the case: all existing natural ecosystems are embedded in the global human ecological system" (Carlo Jaeger quoted in Brulle and Dietz 1993: 2).

An Ecological Critique of Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter

These postulates are far removed from an ecological emphasis on what humans share with other forms of life (Devall and Sessions 1985; Sale 1988: 670-5; Ehrlich and Ehrlichl983; Blea 1986:13-4; Catton 1980; Naess 1988; Fox 1990), on the finite character of our planet as a stock of resources and sink for waste (Meadows et al. 1972; Ophuls 1977), on the requirements of a human-sustaining ecosystem (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987; Bookchin 1971, 1980, 1987; Commoner 1971; Dryzek 1987), and hence on the implasticity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment (Perrow 1984). The supposedly holistic discipline of sociology has been quite partial, abstracting social action out of its context within the processes of nature (Benton 1991).

Although social constructions are particularly important, focusing only on them results in theoretical myopia. The feminist Biehl (1991:19) has now concluded that "in dissolving 'women and nature' into metaphors or subjective attributes, social-constructionist ecoferninists obscure both nonhuman nature and women's relationship to it."

The problem is greater than that of self-aggrandizing exaggeration of the social by sociologists. The exemptionalist emphasis on what distinguishes humans from other species obscures what we share—ecosystem-dependence—and this too is crucial for understanding social action (Catton and Dunlap 1978; Dunlap and Catton 1994a). Sociology as if nature did not matter mystifies what Benton (1991: 7) refers to as "the causal importance of the non-social materials, objects and relations which fall within the spatial limits of human societies." The assumption that the embeddedness of human society in nature was true only in the past is a false assumption. The mutual exclusiveness constructed by some sociologists—between human embeddedness in nature and nature's (or more accurately that infinitesimal fragment of it on planet Earth) growing embeddedness in social constructions—is equally false. Social constructions remain grounded in a dynamic ecological system, even as Earth's ecosystems become increasingly affected by human constructions. Human constructors who neglect the ecological system operating behind their backs do so at the risk of unintentional human self-destruction.

Sociological theory that deflects attention away from this part of reality, which cannot be reduced to a social construction but which interacts with social constructions, takes sociology in a misleading direction. Weber was well aware of this, and hence, despite his emphasis on values and agency, he did not propose a reductionism to the social. He held that "culture was grounded in, even if not determined by, nature and to take the social out of the realm of natural causality altogether was to confuse the ideal and dogmatic formulations of jurists [and we might add, sociologists] with empirical reality" (Albrow 1990: 257).

Humans do reshape nature more than other species and thereby influence their own nature. Humans are, nevertheless, creatures of nature dependent on its processes, like other forms of life. By focusing on differences between humans and other animals, sociologists have lost sight of all that we share with them. For example, the social-construction-of-reality premise has, as its name indicates, been particularly one-sided. Constructivist sociologists have excluded nature in order to construct their purely social sense of reality.¹

Woolgar (1983: 251-3) concludes that the marijuana illustration (paraphrased above) presented in sociology textbooks reveals a profound commitment to epistemological realism—the unchanging character of nature—that is hidden by proclamations of relativism. But a very different conclusion is warranted, namely, that this misleading illustration and others like it are used as rhetorical devices by sociologists to treat nature (in this case, marijuana) as a constant and therefore to ignore it. Sociologists have selected such examples in isolation in order to avoid the incorporation of nature into sociological theory. Had researchers used a comparative approach, for example comparing heroin with water, they would have been forced to conclude that the chemical nature of these two substances tends to affect notions of their addictive effect as well as the social construction of laws forbidding their ingestion. It is through rhetorical avoidance devices such as these that sociologists have constructed their sense of reality, one which excludes nature. Furthermore, selective illustrations of the unchanging character of nature have misled sociologists into ignoring the dynamic character of nature.

Burns and Dietz conclude that sociological indifference to the effects of nature, as well as the overbearing emphasis of contemporary sociology on agency, have left it unconvincing.

In the short run, deciding that lead in drinking water is harmless is within the scope of agency, but in the long run individual and collective actors who adopt such a rule tend to be at a strong disadvantage compared to those who believe otherwise, and it will be hard for the rule to persist.

(Burns and Dietz 1992: 274)

Disadvantage to be sure, since proponents of such water who believe their own rhetoric and drink it will get confused or die off, leading to a shortage of proponents. This defect has rendered sociology indifferent and mute concerning important socio-environmental problems. Deconstructing particular representations of environmental problems has been the facile sociological substitute for solving such problems (Dunlap 1993).

People can have the erroneous conception, and even perception, that they will live forever in their bodily form. Such conceptions and perceptions tend to be extremely rare because they are tangibly contradicted by the processes of nature: all living organisms constructed by nature, including the human body, have a finite existence. Processes of nature influence perceptions and conceptions. Sociological theory that fails to incorporate this fundamental insight is a very partial theory indeed.

Sociology as if nature did not matter is theory in a vacuum, interactive and interpretive work having nothing to work with, on, or against. It is a sociological theory of Disneyworld: a synthetic world inhabited by artificial creatures, including humans, constructed by humans. It postulates all-powerful interpretation that creates what little reality it perceives. It is a contemporary variant of idealism, of the almighty role of ideas in history and of "an idealist or dualist anthropocentrism" (Benton 1991:18). Nature as a dynamic force has thereby been evacuated from sociology.

Humans only gradually become aware of the interaction of their constructions with nature's constructions. The depletion of the ozone layer was occurring before humans observed it. There might well be something now occurring in nature, including nature's reaction to what humans are doing, that will affect or is affecting our lives, but of which we are presently unaware. What exists is not limited to what we are conscious of. Sociologists who construct theory as if nature did not matter are like the Berkeleyian philosopher sitting under a tree in a storm, meditating on the idea that reality consists of what humans construct conceptually, unaware of the lightning bolt about to strike.

The misconception that reality is socially constructed, and the illusion that the relationship between the social and the natural can be characterized by plasticity, have taken on a life of their own in sociology as objective, taken-for-granted facts. Sociological overstatement of the social construction of reality has resulted in as much reification in sociology as its understatement ever did.

Sociology as if nature did not matter misses the distinguishing feature of the contemporary period, namely, the manipulation of nature by means of science and technology to attain material goals, thereby disrupting the equilibrium constructed by nature and unleashing nature's dynamic reaction, which in turn threatens human constructions. Beck (1992: 80-1) argues that "nature can no longer be understood outside of society, or society outside of nature. ... in advanced modernity, society with all its subsystems of the economy, politics, culture and the family can no longer be understood as autonomous of nature."

Sociology has correctly emphasized the importance of the social. But there is a point beyond which the rightful place of the social becomes the exaggerated sense of the social, beyond which the enlightened focus on the social becomes a blindness to the relationship between the processes of nature and social action, beyond which sociology becomes sociologism. The assumed dualism between social action and the processes of nature, with sociology focusing solely on the social as independent variable, has misled sociology into ignoring the dialectical relationship between the two.

The evolution of society out of nature and the ongoing interaction between the two tend to be lost in words that do not tell us enough about the vital association between nature and society and about the importance of defining such disciplines as economics, psychology, and sociology in natural as well as social terms.

(Bookchin 1987: 59 fn.)

By confronting sociological theory with the growing recognition of the importance of the processes of nature for social action, environmental problems and the ecological movement can help correct the excesses of sociologism in sociology.

A synthesis of both the social and natural construction of reality involves going beyond Durkheim's narrow fixation with the social to a more inclusive Weberian perspective: "unlike his contemporary Durkheim, Weber had no reluctance to admit the causal significance of non-social factors for social processes" (Albrow 1990:146).

The neglect of nature is one important element of the dissolution of sociology into relativistic discourse focused on the social contingencies of the human observer, rather than on what he or she is observing. "If social reality exists only in the perception of the observer, there are no other criteria to rank one perception against the next" (Baldus 1990: 474). Since "any particular claim to the truth is merely one alternative among several such possibilities" (Cheal 1990:133), the proper academic credentials and apprenticeship of the sociologist (Prus 1990: 361) become the sole basis for evaluating affirmations in this sociological discursive practice unfettered by external criteria of truth. Sociology thereby degenerates into the field par excellence where R. Collins's (1975, 1979) theory of credentials as pseudo-ethnicity, political labor, professional closure, and status-cultural sinecures holds true. This

is the ultimate step in the conversion of sociology into a self- policing professional paradise whose inhabitants are safely sheltered from the ill winds of criticism. But it also takes no special predictive powers to see that such a sociology is on its way toward becoming utterly irrelevant.

(Baldus 1990:474)

The utter irrelevance of sociology constructed as if nature did not matter has recently been dramatically underscored by increasingly severe environmental problems resulting from the interaction of social constructions with nature's constructions, as well as the looming s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• PART ONE SOCIAL ACTION ABSTRACTED FROM ITS CONTEXT
• PART TWO THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL ACTION
• PART THREE THE RISK SPECIES
• PART FOUR TRANSFORMING RISK INTO OPPORTUNITY
• PART FIVE FURTHER ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTION IN ITS CONTEXT
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Book and Author