Abstract
The book under review took shape from a discussion among a small group of environmental sociology professors who visited Akwesasne, the St Regis Mohawk reservation in New York state, to learn more about the people’s struggle against the release of toxic contamination from nearby industrial plants. The objective of bringing out this reader on environmental sociology was to pull together all the exemplary publications in a coherent manner putting the wide range of ideas, concepts, theoretical perspectives and empirical research findings together so that students need not read or refer to large numbers of individual publications.
Hence the authors of this reader decided to address only the requirements of undergraduate students of environmental sociology. They developed a module by incorporating the themes most relevant to classroom professor-to-student communication lectures. The contributors were asked to write up their classroom lesson notes preserving as closely as they could the way they actually teach in the class.
The reader contains 20 papers broadly divided into four theoretical and empirical areas. Definitional issues on environmental sociology are dealt with by the editors in the introduction. According to them ‘Environmental Sociology remains as a subfield of Sociology, one in which its practitioners are more open to include ecological variables within their analysis and who have chosen to apply and develop sociological analysis precisely where social systems and ecological system intersect’.
Part 1 deals with theory. Capek argues that the task of environmental sociology is to make social structure visible – that is to identify the stable, persistent, often hidden patterns of social relationships that become established over time. Environmental sociology is about understanding the two-way relationship between society and environment (p. 11). Barbosa, on the other hand, delineates the various theoretical discourses and their positions in the context of environmental degradation. He emphasizes that climate change has become a reality and current sociological theories do not address such changes sufficiently. He raises valid questions in relation to the population living in low lying countries with rising sea levels and the quite sizable population who are mobile and impoverished.
Part 2 of the reader contains six papers. These papers implicitly or explicitly emphasize the causes of environmental disruption. Pellow describes the role of the state, most particularly the USA, as a state and as an imperialist government that has caused environmental change – through massive siphoning of natural resources and economic wealth from what Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano calls ‘the open veins of Latin America’. The USA has extracted copper from Chile, hard woods from Brazil, oil from Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador, tin from Bolivia, bananas from Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras, sugar from Cuba and beef from Argentina. The extraction of these resources has resulted in great poverty in Latin America but also ecological imbalances such as deforestation, oil spill, air pollution, soil erosion and extension of spices. Schaumberg’s paper discusses how intensification of corn production by the heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and the release of excess contaminated water to the local streams and rivers has caused severe environmental pollution in the local area. Campbell’s paper takes a discursive view of how technology becomes instrumental in understanding the process of change in society. But the moot question is who owns these technologies and how the technology is mediated or used in understanding social reality. York, on the other hand, argues that science has given unprecedented powers to manipulate nature and this has contributed to a growing suite of technologies that generate new and greater threats to the ecosystem. He still hopes that understanding will help to bring about a just and sustainable world. In his paper, Gould tries to understand the dynamic relationship between the social system and the ecosystem; and how technology contributes to shaping the relationship between the two. He further argues that government, corporations and other social organizations appropriate technological developments for specific objectives. He emphasizes the impact of technology in agriculture and industry on the transformation of the ecosystem. Bates postulates a relationship between population growth and environment. By contrast with the Malthusian theory that population growth would lead to famine, disease and warfare; she argues that although the green revolution has solved food problems of teeming millions in the world, it has created problems such as the salinization of land, the pollution of water, as well as severe health hazards and a general degradation of the environment. Hence she observes that ‘global environmental problems such as climate change and atmospheric ozone thinning point toward more serious concern for the future’ (p. 123).
Five papers in Part 3 deal with the social consequences of environmental disruption. Mascarenhas’s paper refers to the 1970s when documentation began on environmental-related inequalities encountered by minority communities, aboriginal groups and impoverished communities. He narrates the experiences of Canada, Ethiopia, Mexico and Brazil and the Bhopal gas tragedy of India. McCormick looks into the emerging conflict between the biomedical model and broader public health paradigms. Drawing lessons from the Bhopal gas tragedy (1984), the Minamata Bay event (Japan, 1950) and global death induced by global warming, etc., she argues for providing compensation to the victims irrespective of their racial, class or gender affiliation. By contrast, Edwards and Driscoll look at the historical development of the pork industry in North Carolina, emphasizing the extent this industry contributes to the pollution of American waterways. Multinational interests formed part of the process of transforming the hog industry from a sustainable small-scale system into a corporate ‘swine factory’. The environmental danger of this industry can have global implications. In her lesson, Youngman observes that although changes in the Earth’s physical system are dubbed ‘natural disasters’, other kinds of disasters are human-made and result from a failure to understand the sociocultural issues related to planning and development. Citing the case of Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans), she shows that victims are from the lower socioeconomic strata, usually the poor, the elderly, women and children. Roberts looks at climate change and, drawing examples from the USA, Australia, China and India, insists that a workable solution to the problems is not in sight. She further argues that inequality and development need to be addressed to prevent disastrous effects, and suggests a new comprehensive approach to deal with climate change for a just society.
Part 4, with six papers, reviews some social responses to environmental disruptions. Brulle begins by citing the overwhelming number of organizations in the US environmental movement. In order to understand the direction and nature of environmental movements, social scientists, especially sociologists, have adopted three different approaches. The author has very succinctly tried to give historical accounts of environmental movements such as Wildlife Management, Conservation, Deep Ecology, Environmental Justice, Environmental Health and Eco-Feminism, etc. Clearly the US environmental movement is not monolithic in structure, but is, rather, composed of different discursive communities each with specific issues and agenda. Obach discusses the relationship between labour and environment because in the USA environment regulations have created extensive employment opportunities. On the other hand, environment measures have caused high profile conflicts that allegedly pitted ‘jobs versus the environment’. Most notorious among these are the ‘timber wars’ of the 1980s and the 1990s (p. 232). Lewis describes people’s ongoing reactions to environmental issues in the Global South showing that the term ‘environmentalist’ means different things to different people. In North America, someone who recycles and buys ‘green’ products might call him or herself an ‘environmentalist’, while others insist that ‘capitalism destroys nature’. Several case studies drawn from countries such as India, Nigeria and Bolivia demonstrate struggles of the poor to preserve resources for a livelihood and protect the environment. The author ends by quoting from Ramachandra Guha, who emphasizes the need to examine the relationship between ‘environmental issues’ and ‘social issues’. Bahram situates the arguments anthropologically by posing a cross-cultural question about how ‘nature’ is conceptualized by different categories of people in society and how flora, fauna, terrain and energy of the physical environment are put in practice. The author further emphasizes that there is a close relationship between ‘indigenous people and nature’ but laments the fact that many indigenous people have been the ‘victims of progress’ – what is called the ‘development paradox’. The author supports the arguments by citing the case of the Pashtuns of the Swat district in Pakistan. Gould and Lewish observe that, like sustainable development, the concept of ecotourism is full of hidden conflicts and contradictions. Drawing on two case studies, the authors put forth their views that sustainable development can be achieved only by making difficult collective decisions about what will be sustained and for whom, with what ecological cost, and how the benefit will be distributed across the sections of the society. They observe further that collective decisions are purely political, and argue that sustainable development policy decisions need to focus on the extent to which natural resources will be preserved to support citizens, pay debts and see to overall growth. This is a difficult economic agenda to deal with.
This reader is well written; the lessons included are well chosen and clearly articulated. Lessons are drawn not only from European countries but also from Latin American and Asian countries. The language is lucid and arguments are logical. Not a single mistake in spelling was noticed throughout the reader. I feel that apart from the undergraduate students for whom this reader was conceived, it is a must read for social scientists, policy-makers and technologists concerned with environmental issues.