Perspectives

From Society and the Anthroposcene

This will be continuously developed in the light of feedback and changing knowedge and circumstances. Hopefully sections or articles will be offered by individuals or groups who have particular expertises or experience. This will eventually become a series of linked pages outlining in detail the key perspectives on society and the environment and their critiques.

Throughout most of the 20th century sociologists have been largely silent on environmental problems and the relationship between society and its material environment. However, in the last 30 years or so there has been little choice other than to address these issues. These pages will provide a broad sociological context to environmental issues focussing particularly on the work of sociologists who have made a significant contribution to an understanding of the relationship between society and its material environment such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Alan Irwin, David Goldblatt, Anthony Giddens, John Urry and Brian Wynne to main some obvious ones.

The constitutive relations between structure and agency. Actions are never fully unconstrained or fully determined. Not all behaviour is the result of conscious decisions or motivations but embedded and embodied in social practices and processes.

Social Constructionism versus Critical Realism

Marxist ecology, capitalism and the metabolic rift

Ecological Modernisation

Deep Ecology

Ecofeminism

Social Ecology

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