The Environment E-Book

Philip W. Sutton

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 431

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

How are human societies changing the global environment?
Is sustainable development really possible?
Can environmental risks be avoided?
Is our experience of nature changing?

This book shows how questions about the environment cannot be properly answered without taking a sociological approach. It provides a comprehensive guide to the ways in which sociologists have responded to the challenge of environmental issues as diverse as global warming, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss and marine pollution. It also covers sociological ideas such as risk, interpretations of nature, environmental realism, ecological modernization and globalization. Environmentalism and green politics are also introduced. Unlike many other texts in the field, the book takes a long-term view, locating environmental dilemmas within the context of social development and globalization.
The Environment: A Sociological Introduction is unique in presenting environmental issues at an introductory level that assumes no specialist knowledge on the part of readers. The book is written in a remarkably clear and accessible style, and uses a rich range of empirical examples from across the globe to illustrate key debates. A carefully assembled glossary and annotated further reading suggestions also help to bring ideas to life.
The book will be a valuable resource for students in a range of disciplines, including sociology, geography and the environmental sciences, but also for anyone who wants to get to grips with contemporary environmental debates.

Leseprobe

The Environment

In memory of James Clarke (1921–2006), a gentleman

The Environment

A Sociological Introduction

PHILIP W. SUTTON

polity

Copyright © Philip W. Sutton 2007

The right of Philip W. Sutton to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5406-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 9.5 on 12pt Utopia

by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Longsight, Manchester

Printed and bound in Malaysia by Alden Press, Malaysia

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

1

Natural Environments

Defining Nature and Environment

Humans in Natural Environments

Natural and Artificial Environments

Conclusion

2

Knowing the Environment

Involvement and Detachment

The Scientific Revolution

Social Constructions of Nature

Critical Realism

Conclusion

3

Experiencing the Environment

An Environment of the Senses

Experiencing Environments

Ecological Identifications

Ecological Citizenship

4

Transforming the Environment

Social Development and the Environment

Industrialization

Urbanization

The Treadmill of Production and Consumption

5

Polluting the Environment

Types of Pollution

Awareness and Significance of Pollution

Sensitivity to Risks

Conclusion

6

Defending the Environment

Changing Attitudes

The Modern Origins of Nature Conservation

The Development of Environmentalism

Conclusion

7

Politicizing the Environment

A Politics of Nature

Ecologism: A New Political Ideology

The Emergence of Green Parties

Conclusion

8

Sustaining the Environment

The Idea of Sustainable Development

A Brief History of Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development in Practice

Can Societies Become Sustainable?

Conclusion

9

A Global Environment

What is Globalization?

The Biosphere as Environment

Global Problems, Global Solutions?

Conclusion

Glossary

References and Further Reading

Index

Acknowledgements

This book did not begin life as a great idea looking for an outlet, but gradually evolved into an idea and book project over the last four years or so. Once I began teaching environmental sociology, or the sociology of the environment, I came to realize that ‘introductory’ textbooks (now including my own) didn’t really ‘introduce’ the subject matter, but rather discussed and debated it, assuming a knowledge base that many of my new students simply did not have. Sociologists came rather late to the study of environmental issues and, as a result, the latter have just not been a part of the staple diet of sociology students. Therefore, what seemed to be missing was a fairly concise, reliable and welcoming invitation to the sociological study of environmental issues for all of those with little if any familiarity with sociology, environmental issues or both. A suggestion by Emma Longstaff, my editor at Polity, that I should consider writing my own was the start of the process, which led, eventually, to this book. A special thank-you is due to Emma, as, without her knowledge of the publication needs of the discipline, I would probably have waited for someone else to do it. She also managed the project sympathetically and was a constant source of good advice. After becoming convinced that a brief introduction would be useful for a range of ‘Environment and Society’ courses, a proposal went out for review. I would like to thank David Held and the Editorial Board at Polity, but especially the independent reviewers for their extraordinarily detailed and constructive comments, suggestions and sound advice on the draft manuscript. Stephen Vertigans also read parts of the book and made some helpful suggestions for improvement. I am sure the book is better for these interventions, though obviously I remain solely responsible for any shortcomings that remain.

At The Robert Gordon University, Joyce Lishman has been extremely supportive over a number of years and, importantly for this book, enabled the help of a research assistant over the summer of 2004. A special thank-you to Helen White, who did a brilliant job digging out documentary materials and international examples for the book. I hope that Helen feels a spark of recognition in some of the examples I’ve used, though I guess she will also wonder whatever happened to all the rest! Another time perhaps. Thanks also to Roddy Hamilton for invaluable technical advice in sorting out the book’s image files. A debt of gratitude is again owed to Julian Bell for his usual but inimitable understanding, support and interest, which are always much appreciated. I also acknowledge the contribution of all the students on my Environment and Society course for alerting me to the kind of material that would be most helpfully included in such an introductory-level text.

Lastly, heartfelt thanks to Pat for making the book possible and patiently enduring my seemingly endless revisions to it.

Preface

I make a basic assumption at the outset that anyone picking up this book has an interest in knowing something about the environment, sociology or both. For those interested in the environment, the book will cover some key environmental issues and problems, but will also show them how sociologists think about and carry out research in this area. I will try to convince them that understanding, explaining and solving environmental problems will require sociological knowledge. For those already interested in sociology, the book will try to convince them that they should take environmental issues and problems seriously and that sociologists should be prepared to make the effort to understand evidence from the natural sciences if they are to make their necessary contribution. Of course, should anyone already be interested in both the environment and sociology, they will need no convincing of any of this, but should still find the presentation of material and specific examples helpful.

The book has been written with two specific audiences in mind, namely the (possibly mythical) ‘intelligent layperson’ and the (hopefully real) new undergraduate student. Some of the former may even metamorphose into the latter before, after or possibly during the reading of this book, though this is by no means necessary. Still, self-evidently the book is sociological and contains some of the staple concerns of the discipline. Most of the time, the sociological content, and particularly the theory, is embedded within the discussions of evidence or delivered with a fairly light touch. In this way the sociological contribution builds gradually and is not separated out from the evidence. My hope therefore is that it will be possible for people with no, a little, or some knowledge of sociology to get something useful from the book. New students of sociology, politics, international relations, geography and environmental science should be able to read it without feeling too overwhelmed by social theory, a fair bit of which I readily admit is unnecessarily verbose.

What led to a textbook of this kind was my gradual realization that despite the existence of many introductions to ‘environmental sociology’ and the ‘sociology of the environment’, all of them have been written for the higher levels of undergraduate or postgraduate study. That means anyone approaching sociology to find out what it might be able to add to their existing knowledge of the environment and environmental issues would probably not find the existing literature that useful, simply because it is written at too high a level and makes the assumption of prior sociological knowledge. This book does not make that assumption. To a lesser extent, teaching my own Environment and Society course has also convinced me that a more basic introduction might even provide a service to higher-level students of sociology. This is because, apart from some brief material on risk, environmental politics and the general rubbishing of all things biological or natural, there really isn’t much ‘environment’ in sociology degree schemes. Even though higher-level environmental sociology students may get along perfectly well with the sociology, their previous lack of acquaintance with environmental issues may have left a gap in knowledge which this book should help to fill. Such a lack of acquaintance does not entirely explain a former student who tried to convince us that genetically modified crops might be part of an extra-terrestrial alien conspiracy to wipe out the human species, but it probably didn’t help.

None of this means that the book is undemanding or easy. The issues it deals with require a genuine interest and desire to understand wide-ranging environmental debates, which cross the science of global warming, the history of environmental movements and the long-term development of human societies. But I suggest that this is an entirely worthwhile and rewarding challenge. As many other sociologists have found, trying to make sense of environmental issues and problems takes us all into distinctly ‘alien’ territory. As an undergraduate sociology student seeking out information for my dissertation on the society–environment relationship, I was often found wandering and browsing in parts of the library previously considered no-go areas: general biology, physics, geography (human and physical), economics, history, history of science, anthropology and even theology and religious studies. This was absolutely necessary because the library’s own categorizing of ‘environment’ books was determined by existing disciplinary divisions. In reality, the knowledge and information these books contained not only often failed to match the category, but were also of interest in themselves to a sociological project covering environmental issues. In fact, all of the above library sections have things to offer those who are fascinated by nature, environment and society. I strongly recommend my own research strategy – ‘wandering’ and ‘browsing’ as a way of seeking out implausible connections across disciplines, sadly an under-used research method in the age of qualitative software packages and electronic databases.

Two more important things to note. First, the text uses examples and illustrative materials, drawing on my own ‘local’ knowledge of the British situation and research literature. That means there will be many British examples throughout the text. However, I have drawn on the wider literature whenever possible and particularly when doing so makes for a stronger argument or makes a point especially well. Hence, environmental issues in post-communist Eastern Europe have a place, as do those in India, China, North America, Africa and many more. One pleasing and very satisfying aspect of environmental studies is the recognition that there is no point in restricting the focus to one country or region. The entire natural and human worlds are part of our subject matter and we just have to pursue issues wherever they may take us, both geographically and intellectually. Fascinating stuff! But also, necessarily demanding.

Secondly, the book does not provide another review of sociological ideas on environmental issues, at least not in the conventional way. That is because I have tried to keep the referencing of authors and their work to a minimum so as to distil their key contributions into a coherent and readable whole. One benefit of this method is that it allows the text to concentrate on illustrating theories and arguments with illustrative examples and evidence without the need to fill the book with streams of names and dates. There is nothing wrong with the latter, of course: adopting academic conventions is an essential part of what we do. But not at this level. The focus is also on presenting clear expositions of some central ideas and debates rather than engaging in an extended critique of the field. After all, that is what all of those higher-level introductory books aim to achieve. This book is therefore intended to serve as an entry point into sociological approaches to the environment which will guide readers towards the wider literature should they choose to take matters further. The Bibliography should help with this, and key readings can be found at the ends of chapters. I have also provided a glossary of keywords for practical assistance and keywords are identified thus on first use within each chapter. Of course, readers may not find the answers they are seeking here, but the book will hopefully give them a better idea of where to look.

Structure of the Book

As a whole, the book adopts a long-term perspective which sets current environmental issues into a wider social and historical context. The text also covers as much of the field of society–environment relations as would reasonably fit an entry-level text, though others will no doubt find that some things have been omitted or not covered in enough detail. The separate chapters are parts of what is really a closely intertwined whole, and at times the relatively discrete parts may raise issues which are not adequately dealt with until a later chapter. This is unavoidable, though I have tried to flag upcoming matters whenever possible and readers are advised to hold onto all their unanswered queries until they are discussed more fully in the relevant chapter. For those with an interest in structure, the book is roughly and invisibly divided into three sections, dealing with the socio-historical and cultural, the economic and political, followed by two chapters which work towards a higher level synthesis of all of these at an increasingly global level. To explore this a little further, the chapter breakdown is as follows.

Chapters 1–3 look at ways in which people gain knowledge about the natural environment. Much knowledge can be gained about the environment from academic books, television documentaries, fiction, film and from personal experience. Quite often, some of this knowledge is contested and we have to reach our own conclusions about it. Is the planet really steadily warming or not, for instance? These chapters raise some significant questions about the way that ideas about nature have changed over time. What is ‘nature’ and how might it be studied? Evidently, scientific knowledge has a privileged place amongst the possible knowledge sources, but even though science has displaced and marginalized many other types of knowledge, it has not entirely eliminated them. One issue that continues to trouble modern societies is the question of where human beings fit into the natural environment. Are they part of nature or do they stand outside? The book brings a typically sociological approach to this question, in that sociology sees human beings as naturally evolved and, at the same time, socially developed. The implications of this view are pursued throughout. Finally, sociological methods of gaining knowledge of environmental issues are introduced. These are presented in a polarized form simply because that is the way they have developed chronologically. However, it should be borne in mind that ways around these disagreements are emerging and some of these are included here. Ways of knowing the environment remain a crucially important matter because we act on the basis of what we know about the environment. If global warming really is happening but we are convinced that it is not, then the consequences could hardly be more serious. However, should we be convinced that global warming is real when it is not, then we may spend enormous amounts of the world’s time, effort and money on trying to prevent it at the expense of other genuinely serious problems.

Chapters 4 and 5 examine the transformation of the natural environment by human activities. Again, a long-term view is adopted because we need to have in mind a ‘history of the present’, as it were, if we are to avoid misunderstandings. A brief review of human social development is included before the focus falls on industrialization, urban development and capitalistic production and consumption patterns. The combination of these is shown to have had revolutionary consequences for both human life and the natural environment on which they depend. The incalculable consequences of these transformations are then explored alongside current debates on risk and risk-awareness. Over recent years, people do seem to have become more aware of the risks of living in the modern world. These are not all to do with the environment of course, though many of the more serious and hard-to-tackle hazards have been defined in environmental terms. For example, one central environmental issue is industrial pollution and its effects on the health of human beings and the environment. This section outlines some important questions and introduces some of the ways in which pollution levels might be reduced.

Chapters 6 and 7 take stock of environmental politics, looking at the development of conservation and environmental groups, Green political parties, environmental ideologies and the greening of party political systems. Environmental politics is part of a much wider environmental movement that can be studied alongside other social movements such as feminism, disabled people’s movements, peace and anti-nuclear movements and so on. Sociologists have to take social movements seriously because they have been and still are the source of new ideas, activities and values in societies. It is hard to imagine that ‘the environment’ would be quite such a widely recognized political issue without the relentless campaigning of environmental organizations such as Greenpeace or the commitment of environmental activists and supporters. Nevertheless, it is the case that more than this is required to bring the state of the natural environment into people’s conscious awareness. Wider social and economic changes can affect and shape attitudes and beliefs in ways that are more or less conducive to environmentalist arguments and protests, so we have to be sensitive to this. If we are not, then we could run away with the (false) idea that the activities of a few people can change societies at any time of their own choosing. They cannot. Karl Marx once told us that of course ‘people make history’, people bring about revolutions or prevent them. But they do not do this under conditions they have freely chosen. They are simply born into a particular moment in the stream of historical development. For environmentalists, it took over a century for their ideas to gain widespread currency and be taken seriously.

Chapters 8 and 9 then tackle the thorny issue of how to align economic development with environmental protection through the concept of sustainable development; the global aspects of environmental issues complete the book. The dominant framework of sustainable development is discussed, and some examples of this show why it has become so central to international environmentalism. A notable feature of sustainable development is the way that it has tried to connect environmental problems with social justice and poverty in the developing countries. Although separate matters on the face of it, sustainable development advocates believe that unless global social justice issues are tackled, there is no hope for a sustainable future. This argument is outline and debated. Global warming is also introduced here as a global environmental issue par excellence, and a survey of the science and social debate on the issue attempts to assess its potential significance for the future. Chapter 9 also introduces some constructive solutions to global problems under the name of ‘ecological modernization’.

By the end of the book my hope is that readers will understand better some of the distinctively sociological approaches to environmental issues and appreciate why these have to be part of all attempts to grasp and tackle the environmental problems of the future. More than this however, I hope that those who came along with an interest in the environment go away with an emerging sociological imagination, and those whose sociological interest brought them here leave with a clearer sense of the vital significance of environmental issues for the future of the discipline.

1

Natural Environments

Defining Nature and Environment

A good place to start any enquiry is simply with dictionary definitions of key words, which will hopefully give us an insight into their currently dominant meanings as well as previous usage. In my own dictionary, I see that ‘environment’ is defined as, ‘external conditions or surroundings’, but ‘particularly those in which people live or work’. Obviously this is a human-centred definition of environment, taking people as its central concern and starting point. Environments, then, are those external conditions or surroundings around people. This is a reasonable start, though this definition, in itself and without further elaboration, could refer to a whole series of very different environments. For example, it could refer to the working environment of factories and office buildings within which people earn their living. It could mean the wider economic environment of wages, interest rates, mortgages and trade which influence the opportunities for people to make a living and whether they prosper or struggle. There is also the urban environment, sometimes pejoratively described in literature as the ‘concrete jungle’, and in which the majority of the world’s people now live. It could also refer to the political environment of parties, interest groups and decision-making, which affects every aspect of people’s existence. These are all environments – things that surround people – of varying kinds.

However, when people think about and discuss the state of the environment today, I think they are unlikely to have any of these specific meanings in mind. What was your own assumption about the environment as described in this book’s title? What were you expecting from the book and what kind of information did you expect to find within its pages? I hope (for the sake of the book’s sales figures) that you were looking for discussions of pollution, the science of climate change, animals and animal welfare, flora and fauna, environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Green political parties and much more. If so, then not only will you not be disappointed, but we can conclude that for many, if not most, people in today’s modern world, the environment has a very special and specific meaning, namely non-human natural conditions and surroundings. This meaning comes close to another key word that we all use regularly without too much reflection – namely, ‘nature’. Do these two words then simply have the same meaning?

Again, I consult my dictionary for advice. But this time the answer is much more complicated, as I find that there are no fewer than twelve distinct meanings attached to the word ‘nature’. This shows that nature is one of the most complex and difficult to explain words in the English language, in large part because its dominant meaning has changed several times alongside major periods of social change in the development of societies. We have been left, therefore, with multiple meanings of nature, three of which stand out as being the most significant and most widely used.

First, nature can mean something that is essential to a person or a thing. ‘Why did she do that?’ we might ask of a person’s action that we don’t understand. Well, we may be told, it’s just ‘in her nature’. That is, her behaviour is something that flows from her essential being and she just couldn’t help doing it. This meaning can also be applied to animals and plants. Why do some birds build their nests at the same time every year? Again, we will be told that it is an essential part of their being and it is therefore entirely proper for them to do so and we should not expect them to build nests at any other time of year. This particular meaning of nature was still very widespread well into the seventeenth century. Of course, explanations that are rooted in this definition of nature tell us very little as explanations of the phenomena in question. How do we know what is and is not ‘essential’ to the nature of people and birds? More investigation than this would clearly be required to find out exactly what makes nest-building such an essential attribute of bird species. And for people, it seems to underestimate their capacity to change what they do and to make choices that alter their behaviour.

During the fourteenth century in Europe, the meaning of nature was undergoing change and a relatively new meaning emerged as the dominant one. People came to see nature as a series of forces, or indeed the force, that directed the world and ultimately explained why things happen when they do. This meaning is of course still with us whenever we talk about natural forces being at work in the direction of human affairs. Many people still consult astrological charts looking for their birth date-based ‘star sign’, which promises guidance on life strategies and what to expect in the coming days, weeks and months. Astrologers observe the movement of celestial bodies through patterns of stars called constellations, in order to forecast the most favourable and unfavourable times for certain actions. In doing so, they implicitly draw on the same basic idea that natural forces really do ultimately direct human life. Of course, many people do not believe everything that astrologers tell them and some undoubtedly pore over their own daily charts as a bit of fun to make a boring day at work pass more quickly. Nevertheless, astrology remains rooted in the idea that natural forces ultimately hold the key to understanding why events occur when they do and, as such, even in the twenty-first century, the fourteenth-century meaning of nature is still with us. As far as it is possible to tell, this is no longer the most significant meaning within modern societies.

By the seventeenth century, the dominant meaning of nature was in flux yet again. Gradually, nature was coming to be defined in terms of the whole material world of things rather than as an ultimate directing force. It would not be inaccurate to say that this change represented the movement away from seeing nature as a process (natural forces) towards the view that nature was much more ‘thing-like’ (the natural world). Defining nature as the whole material world meant that people came to see nature as a world full of fairly static natural things – fields, mountains, beaches and so on – rather than a world of moving natural forces and processes. We can see this emerging meaning in the trend towards seeing and describing nature as ‘scenery’ and in many artistic works, which literally ‘framed’ nature in a series of landscapes and pictorials. For some people, these pictorial landscapes were in many ways even preferable to the real natural world: they were less dirty, much neater and more pleasurable to look at. Humanly created representations could now be seen as in many ways better than the natural reality on which they were based. In addition, the farmed countryside and rural life came to be seen as more natural when compared to the artificial world which humans lived amongst in the growing towns and cities. Wild places untouched by humans, living wild plants and creatures other than humans were seen as genuinely natural, whilst human creations and constructions, however impressive they might be, were still somewhat less than authentic. Nature was coming to be defined in oppositional terms; as in many ways opposed to human society and culture. Of course, if nature was the opposition and an obstacle to society, then it also had to be overcome and its obstacles cleared to make way for human progress.

The majority view at the time was that nature was clearly deficient compared to culture and society. Nature ‘in the raw’ and nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ needed to be tamed and cultivated by people rather than left wild, uncultivated and barren. In 1850, Britain’s Prince Albert gave a speech that represented this latest interpretation of ‘nature’. He said:

Man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs his creation, and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use; himself a divine instrument.

(Cited in Golby 1986: 2)

‘Man’ has ‘reason’ and is a creation in the ‘image of God’. He must therefore use this gift to discover nature’s ‘laws’ as a prelude to ‘conquering nature’ to his own ends. By today’s standards, this is a very strong statement and may strike you as optimistic, even somewhat arrogant, though if we think of some of the environmental problems currently afflicting the world then the power of human societies to affect the rest of nature is evident.

For a significant minority of people in the nineteenth century though, nature was in many ways better than human society and culture. In its natural (that is pre-human) state, nature was clean, pure and inherently beautiful. It did not need to be conquered, nor was Man a ‘divine instrument’ of God. For this vocal minority, human societies polluted and wasted nature to feed their increasingly overly civilized urban lifestyles. Rather than yet more economic and urban ‘development’, people actually had much to learn from the natural world if only they would treat it with more respect.

Notice though, that for both groups of people, nature and society had come increasingly to be seen as separate things, and in philosophical language they continue to form a basic modern dualism. That is, despite their opposition, they have come to be defined in terms of each other. Nature is that which society is not, and society is that which nature is not. This meaning probably remains the dominant one today, though one difference is that more people would now agree with the nature-lovers and fewer people would support the nature-conquerors.

Time to return to the dictionary! As it confirms, then, today nature is a word of many meanings, some of which are more widely used than others. More importantly, the dominant oppositional meaning of nature is now itself being challenged in a variety of ways. For our purposes in this book, environmental issues pose a serious challenge to such an opposition because they demand that nature and society are understood together, rather than holding them separate. By now, it should be easier to see just why nature is such a complicated word.

The natural environment

In order to be as clear as possible about my own use of these difficult terms, throughout the book I will use a phrase which combines them – the natural environment. The term ‘natural environment’ is chosen to avoid some of the possible misunderstandings when using ‘environment’ or ‘nature’ separately. The natural environment refers to the nonhuman world within which human societies and their products exist. At the local level, a natural environment can be a particular and identifiable area such as a park or a beach. In its most expansive interpretation, the natural environment is simply planet Earth itself. I use this very much as a working definition, not an absolute or fixed one, but the meaning in use should be evident from the context of use.

All this should not be taken as implying that human beings and human societies are somehow not natural. My assumption is that they are just as natural as any other animals or animal groups; it is merely that this book is written from the standpoint of the discipline of sociology, the science of specifically human societies. In practice, this means that I will be particularly concerned to explore the human consequences of environmental issues and the things that people in human societies can do to resolve environmental problems and dilemmas.

For sociologists, human beings are an animal species that has evolved and developed over time, as have all others. But the human species remains the only one so far identified in which the balance between behaviour based on inherited instincts and behaviour based on learning has been tilted decisively towards the latter. Of course, many other animals learn, but for humans, learned behaviour is not optional or an addition to their basic inherited behavioural pattern. Human beings not only can learn, but also have to learn how to behave in order to survive and thrive within societies. This basic fact makes human individuals in some ways more vulnerable, as they are very dependent on other people for transmitting knowledge and behaviour. At the same time, though, it has also given humans the collective capacity to adapt to changing natural environments and social events without any need for a corresponding transformation in their biological structure. People can learn from each other and transmit their successful knowledge and practices over long distances, thereby sharing it across almost the entire human species. If people in other societies then use it to transform their own behaviour and social life, this has little to do with biologically inherited behavioural patterns, but is, rather, a social process of development based on learning from a shared fund of knowledge.

The long-term development of human societies has therefore been shaped by both biological evolution and social development. This crucial difference between human societies and most other animal groups is often misunderstood as demonstrating the superiority of humans. However, it is not really superiority but difference. And this clear difference makes the study of human societies a distinctly sociological enterprise, because we need to understand the distinctively social-developmental as well as the biological-evolutionary history of human beings – that is, how societies have changed and developed in different ways as well as how the human species has evolved. Without the sociological analysis of long-term social development, we can seriously misunderstand the nature of human nature, as it were.

Industrialization, urbanization and natural environments

Changes in the dominant meaning of nature in society take a long time to become established and are best seen as part of the long-term process of social change, closely connected to the transformation of people’s ways of living. The historian Keith Thomas (1984) investigated changes in social life and people’s attitudes in England between 1500 and 1800, the key period when dominant ideas of nature were in flux. The conclusions he arrived at are not restricted to England, as many of the same social changes were also spreading to many other national societies, first in Europe and later across the world. By examining literary and documentary sources, including personal diaries, Thomas showed that attitudes towards the natural environment and the treatment of animals slowly changed during this period. The change was not random, though, but in a clear direction moving away from perceiving nature as something to be used and exploited by people with no regard for the damage caused, towards attitudes of respect for natural environments, leading people to enjoy natural scenes and things. Appreciation of nature’s wildness and heightened feelings of sympathy for animals were the result. Rather than continuing to see nature as God’s creation for humans, which they could therefore legitimately use at will, a concern for the well-being of non-human animals gradually came to be expressed, along with a growing interest in the effects of human actions on the integrity of the natural environment.

Thomas says that there is a connection between the processes of industrialization and urbanization and people’s attitudes to natural environments. As more people left the countryside to work in industrial factories they no longer worked directly with animals or on the land (see below, chapter 4). The working day, month and year were no longer strictly governed by natural cycles as they had been, and in many places still are, in societies that are reliant on agricultural work. They now lived amongst larger numbers of people, initially in dirty, polluted conditions with poor sanitation, much disease and ill health. They returned to the countryside for their relaxation and leisure pursuits. The countryside therefore became associated with peaceful and pleasurable enjoyment rather than hard work and drudgery. The growing towns and cities provided better incomes, but in terms of the quality of life compared unfavourably to country living, which came to be widely seen as health-creating, authentic and even beautiful. More people began to be emotionally moved by the sight of mountains that had previously been thought of as hideous and barren outcrops unworthy of the attention of civilized people. Artists, and especially painters, began flocking to paint the barren scenery and wild environments which had now found a new audience which demanded them. In a parallel development, the humane treatment of animals emerged as an issue for many people and visible animal cruelty was no longer deemed acceptable. Traditional pastimes such as bear-baiting, dog-fighting and cock-fighting were banned. Fox-hunting continued – but that is another story, too long to be covered here (see Tester 1991).

Sociologically, Thomas is describing the psychological and emotional effects of a gradual alteration in people’s orientation to the natural environment brought about by fundamental changes in social organization and the rise of a modern scientific worldview (see below, chapter 2). The sociologist, Norbert Elias, argues that over the long term:

as humans have gradually come to understand natural forces more, fear them less and use them more effectively for human ends, this has gone hand in hand with specific changes in human relationships. More and more people have tended to become more and more interdependent with each other in longer chains and denser webs.

(Cited in Mennell 1992: 169–70)

Social organization has become more complex, more internationally connected and effective. Applications of science in transportation and communication technologies have also made the world seem smaller and opened up new ways of understanding natural events and disasters that counter beliefs that these are punishments from God. As a result, people have also become less frightened of natural environments and more sympathetic attitudes towards nature have emerged. In time, most industrialized societies have also seen the emergence of many conservation and preservation organizations that campaign to protect and defend natural environments, birds and animals. Many of them, and more, continue to do so today (see chapter 6).

These transformations of attitudes and beliefs in relation to natural environments have spread widely. Everywhere that industrialization and urban development took place has witnessed some similar changes, though there are noteworthy differences across countries and regions of the world. In the UK, conservation and management of the natural environment was the typical response, whilst in America with its large areas of wilderness and history of pioneer settlement, a less managerial ‘wilderness preservation’ set the tone for a democratically inspired population. In parts of Southern Europe, the British sensitivity towards animal welfare was and still is seen as taking things rather too far. In many developing countries of the world, natural environments are seen in yet different ways as the traditional home of indigenous peoples who have rights to the land that should be protected from the multinational corporations and national governments seeking to develop it for profit. Urban living and industrial production have distanced people from their previously more immediate and lived reliance on the natural environment. Once freed from this immediately evident dependence, it became possible to look back with a romantic fondness and appreciation for the countryside and for nature.

Humans in Natural Environments

During much of human development, early hominid groups struggled to secure enough food and shelter from the natural environment for their groups to survive into the next generation. Knowledge of natural environments was relatively localized with little systematic contact amongst geographically disparate groups of people. The spread of useful knowledge was therefore a slow process. Small-scale societies often felt at the mercy of natural forces, sometimes worshipping nature in the form of the Sun, Moon or spirits in attempts to gain favour over the natural forces they believed controlled their destiny. Of course, such forces were not experienced as ‘impersonal’ and ‘natural’ in the same way that many people today perceive them to be. Over a prolonged period of many thousands of years, human beings learned how to exert more control over their interchange with the natural environment and were able to pass on this useful knowledge across space and time. That means, to other groups who lived geographically distant from them as well as to younger generations within their own groups.

One especially significant development in human history was the discovery of fire and the invention of techniques for making, managing and keeping it under control (Goudsblom 1992). These techniques were passed down through generations who had to learn the same methods as well as how to stay safe from the dangers of fire. From small domestic fires used for keeping warm and cooking food, all the way to modern central heating systems and large power plants, the gradual expansion of fire-making has enabled, and indeed necessitated, a more complex form of social organization. All human societies now use fire. In the process, more people came to rely more than ever before on the ready availability, control and use of fire. Goudsblom’s developmental history of fire use illustrates, in a specific area, the way that human societies generally try to manipulate and manage the natural environment to their own advantage. In the process of managing their relationship with the natural environment, pressure is also exerted on societies to change their own forms of social organization. When early humans learned how to make and manage small fires, they had to organize themselves to keep fires going, to monitor them and, at the same time, to stay safe. Much later, with the introduction of domesticated forms of fire into people’s homes, societies needed specialists in fire control, fire brigades and fire prevention advisers. With the advent of large power-generating stations, it becomes important that these are protected from attack by others and are militarily defended if necessary. The point here is that changes in the methods of manipulation of the natural environment always go hand in hand with changes in social organization.

But there is one further element to be considered, and this is the changing psyche of individuals. In order to be able to use fire, people had to overcome their previous fear of it, borne of witnessing naturally occurring bush fires, lightning strikes and volcanoes. This was not an easy task, as it meant controlling their immediate emotional responses long enough to be able to take advantage of the possible benefits of using fire. Such emotional control takes place within the individual’s mental apparatus and, over time, comes to be experienced as ‘second nature’ to them. They hardly ever think about how long it has taken for people to arrive at the present level of emotional control over their own feelings and deep-seated fears. It may well be that people never entirely lose their fear of fire, which today is often described as a ‘healthy fear’, particularly for children who have yet to learn about fire management. This is because, even today, fires can still cause harm, destroying people’s homes, families and livelihoods. Fire is always threatening to escape the control of human societies, however firmly established that control may seem. The lesson we can take from this example is that the relationship between human societies and the natural environment inevitably takes the form of a two-way process and it is a relationship that cannot be broken if human beings are to continue to survive and thrive.

The powers of humans and natural processes

For modern people, the natural environment is often perceived as both their beautiful home which has to be protected and, at the very same time, the source of death, destruction and misery from which people have themselves to be protected. Such an apparent contradiction stems from the fact that human beings, like all other animals, depend on the natural environment for their very existence and can never opt out of their relationship with it. Unlike other animals, however, human beings have intentionally tried to exert more and more control over the natural environment to make their social life together safer and more predictable, even if this has been at the expense of destroying some of the environments on which other animal species depend. Rather then seeing these attitudes as contradictory, it is more accurate to say that there exists a tension between the modern appreciation (and often defence) of nature and human society’s attempts to control natural processes and events. This tension is in fact a fundamental feature of modern life with which, given a few moments reflection, we are all familiar, even if in apparently trivial ways.

When gardeners admire the natural beauty of their back gardens, but also take steps to remove natural things called weeds and poison animals called slugs, which threaten to spoil their carefully constructed plans, their admiration for natural beauty is closely connected to their attempts at nature control. People may well take great pleasure in seeing small rodents whilst out walking in the countryside, but also be prepared ruthlessly to kill those same animals should they find them out of place in their own homes. Pet owners will often describe themselves as ‘animal lovers’ (at least in Britain) and feel genuine affection and closeness to their pets, being grief-stricken and emotionally devastated when they die. At the same time, the same owners will clip the wings of their pet birds, castrate their cats and dogs and keep fish in small tanks of water which leave very little room for movement. They may well see nothing wrong with any of these practices. People both love and seek to control the natural creatures that live out their lives with them. Such behaviour is characteristic of that tension between appreciation and control attempts in relation to natural things.

Sociologists, anthropologists and historians have found that people’s attitudes towards the natural environment are variable. Not all societies exhibit the same attitudes as those with which we are familiar today and recognize from the descriptions above. There is a connection between the real extent of society’s control over the natural environment and people’s attitudes towards it. It seems that the more successful societies are in exerting a measure of control over the natural environment on which they depend, the more they come to appreciate parts of it as beautiful and as sources of value. The more that people’s knowledge of natural environments allows them to manipulate these for their own ends, the less frightened they are of natural processes and objects. The less frightened people are of natural forces and processes, the more they are able to appreciate them as sources of beauty. And the more they appreciate natural environments as beautiful, the closer they feel themselves to be to their own ‘natural’ selves. Even in the early twenty-first century, though, the natural processes underlying this beautiful environment continue to demonstrate just how fragile societies’ achievements in exerting this measure of control can be.

The year of 2005 saw a series of natural disasters across the world that led to the deaths of more people than the invasion of Iraq and recent terrorist activity combined. Newspapers around the world reported that 2005 was the year that nature ‘took revenge’ on human beings, and you could be forgiven for thinking that these natural disasters were battles in a long-running war between human societies and the natural environment. In earlier times, natural disasters were often referred to as ‘acts of God’ because they were so clearly outside the control of human beings. Even today, most insurance companies use this same language to cover those risks such as floods, earthquakes, lightning strikes and so on, that are plainly not predictable or under control. The Bible tells us of 40 days of rain causing a great flood, brought about by a God angered at human wickedness and determined to cleanse the Earth and start again with Noah and his family. Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) dated the start of this event precisely, at 7 December 2349 BCE. Working to a different timescale, some modern scientists argue that 65 million years ago, a large meteorite some 10 kilometres in diameter, struck the Earth and, as a result, the climate was so rapidly altered that it brought about the mass extinction of life, including the large dinosaurs. Natural events and disasters have long been the subject of concern in human societies around the world.

China has suffered many disastrous earthquakes, none more destructive than the one that hit Shensi on 2 February 1556. Because of the high density of population and the pattern of living within cave homes carved in the sides of cliffs, a staggering 820,000 people are estimated to have died. On 16 December 1920 another earthquake in Kansu, China led to the deaths of around 200,000 people. And even as late as 28 July 1976, a night-time earthquake under the city of Tangshan lasting just 23 seconds destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed between 242,000 (official estimates) and 750,000 (unofficial estimates) people. One outcome of such catastrophic events is that China is today one of the leading countries attempting to develop earthquake prediction methods.

Volcanic activity has long been seen as ‘the fire of the Gods’. When Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy erupted in AD 79, the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae were destroyed and hidden under several metres of molten lava and mud, killing between 16,000 and 20,000 people. On 27 August 1883 the small, uninhabited Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa exploded. The bang was so loud it is said to have been heard 4,800 kilometres away. Raining ash and rocks, molten lava, fire and tidal waves killed at least 36,000 people in the neighbouring area. Indonesia is one of the worst affected regions in the world with around 80 recorded volcanic eruptions. Little wonder that human beings had a healthy respect for fire and tried to stave off disasters through their religious practices.