Title: The Ecocentric Challenge for Society and Sociology
Abstract:Because sociology is arguably the most institutionally porous of social science disciplines, the substantive concerns of social and political movements tend to find their way into the discipline relat...Because sociology is arguably the most institutionally porous of social science disciplines, the substantive concerns of social and political movements tend to find their way into the discipline relatively easily. This has been true of all major twentieth-century social movements in the West. However, there has been something of a time lag in the case of environmentalism with the substantive claims of environmentalists and radical ecologists finding their way into sociological discussions only in the last 10 years or so. This chapter maintains that the primary explanation for this delay lies in the specific nature of the challenge that environmental arguments and ideas pose to the discipline of sociology, which differs in important respects from the substantive issues raised by other social movements. In fact, this chapter suggests that in their strongest incarnations, environmentalism and radical ecology pose a challenge to the continuation of sociology as previously practised. This is because Green politics advocates a fundamental reorientation in social attitudes towards the place of human societies in the wider natural environment, a reorientation that moves in the direction of 'ecocentrism' and away from 'homocentrism' (Merchant 1992). For many sociologists, importing such a reorientation into the discipline is problematic and threatens to dilute the originality of the distinct sociological perspective. To understand why this is so, it is first necessary to grasp the character of the ecocentric perspective.KeywordsEnvironmental IssueSocial MovementPolitical IdeologySociological TheoryGreen MovementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Read More
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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