Foundations of Social Sciences for Sustainability – Exam literature
Chapters:
1. Environmental Problems and Society (5th edition: chapter 1)
12. Living in the Just Ecological Society (5th edition: chapter 13)
9. The Human Nature of Nature (5th edition: chapter 9)
8. The Ideology of Environmental Concern pp. 280-284 (5th edition: chapter 3 pp. 246-250)
3. Consumption and Materialism (5th edition: chapter 2)
10. Mobilizing the Just Ecological Society (5th edition: chapter 11)
11. Transitioning to the Just Ecological Society (5th edition: chapter 12)
Lecture 1: Introduction
Bell et al. (2021). Chapter 1 Environmental Problems and Society
Environmental problems are:
- Problems for society: problems that threaten our existing patterns of social organization
and social thought
- Problems of society: problems that challenge us to change those patterns of social
organization and thought
Sociological imagination, Wright Mills: the ability to grasp history and biography and the relations
between the two within society in order to understand our lives as minute points of the
intersections of biography and history within society. The point is: life is lived in context.
Adding ecology: the environmental sociological imagination: gaining the ability to grasp history
and biography and the relations between the two within society and ecology, to learn to
understand our lives as intersections of biography and history within society and ecology.
Contexts that matter: both social and ecological context.
Environmental sociology:
- Contextual, relational way of thinking about the world, defines ecological sociology as:
the study of community in the largest possible sense, the community of all.
- It is not the disciplinary label that matters, but the desire to study this largest of
communities, with its many conflicts.
- Inequality is at the center of gravity of environmental sociology. Inequality is both a
product and a producer of climate change, pollution, overconsumption, resource
depletion, habitat loss, risky technology and rapid population growth. Inequality can
influence how we envision nature itself: inequality shapes our experiences, and our
experiences shape all our knowledge.
- Inequality cannot be understood apart from the justice of the communities in which it
takes place. Natural and human communities.
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,1.1 Joining the dialogue
Distinct parts of the book, deeply connected:
- The material: health, consumption, economy, science, technology, development,
population → environmental conditions
- The ideal: culture, ideology, symbols, moral values, social relations → way of thinking and
acting toward environment
- The practical: governance, mobilization, politics → just ecological society
1.1.1 The Ecology of Dialogue
Engaging in social ecology: take a step back, consider how ideals you try to put into practice are
shaped, sometimes even compromised, by out material positions. Bridging the gap between the
ideal and the material views about our practices of living:
- Materialists:
Environmental problems cannot be understood apart from the material threats
posed by the way we have organized our societies, including the organization of
ecologic relations
E.g. climate change is a dangerous consequence of how we currently organize the
economic side of social life)
Do: solve the social organization issues behind environmental problems
Materialist as in the material conditions of life
- Idealists:
Emphasize the influence of social life on how we conceptualize those problems or
the lack of those problems
E.g. in order to recognize the danger or existence of climate change, we must
wear the appropriate conceptual and ideological lenses, which we gain through
our social relations)
Do: understand our environmental ideologies, with their insights and oversights,
their social connections and disconnections
Idealist as in the philosophical sense of emphasizing the role of ideas
→ Each helps constitute and reconstitute the other (interrelationship: ecological dialogue).
Together, the material and the ideal constitute the practical conditions of our social ecology.
Ecological dialogue and power: dialogue is not a state we reach when we have overcome power;
it only happens because of power, the power to engage another’s response and the power
another grants by responding. Conflict is often involved → continually reshaping the material and
the ideal.
Ecological dialogue and the Taijitu: the material and the ideal tuck together in a basket, they
weave at their edges, making a circle and a kind of ecological holism. This holism is always
unfinished, never fully whole: this is the open space between the partial moons. Open, but not
empty: an active space of interchange, interaction and interrelation: the practical. Here, mutual
constitution of the material and the ideal is possible, either through conflict or cooperation. The
message of the authors: positive and practical environmental change is possible through
engagement of the material with the ideal.
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,1.1.2 The Dialogue of Environmental Justice
Environmental justice: the flourishing of mutual aid through communal ties within and across
social ecology. It is not only a question of fairness for humans and nonhumans, neither is it just a
question of equality.
Transformative justice: calls for identifying and changing gaps in mutual aid. Gaps manifest in
three intersection axes of environmental justice:
1. Time: issues of sustainability
2. Social space: environmental justice, disproportionate burdens
3. Species: rights and sustenance of the nonhuman, ‘ecological beauty’
1.2 Environmental Justice Across Time
Contempocentrism: it is difficult to wrap our heads around threats to environmental sustainability,
because we struggle to process complex and uncertain challenges of the future. It makes the
planning of our actions in further away in time more difficult.
Precautionary approach to ecological relations is needed: it requires us to think about what’s
ahead as we think about what we face now, while remaining mindful that questions of time are
also questions of social space and species.
1.2.1 Global Climate Change
Agreement on human-induced climate change, disagreement on what to do about it. What
follows: effects of climate change, statistics which you probably already know of, history and
examples, differences across the Earth: some places are getting relatively warmer than others.
IPCC is mentioned. Causes of the climate emergency: mostly carbon dioxide emissions from fossil
fuel use → increased greenhouse effect: extra CO2 accounts for only 58% of human-induced
climate ‘forcing’, next to methane and others, which accounts for about half of the other 42%. We
depend on fossil fuels, but this current dependence is largely unnecessary (next section).
Examples: sea-level rise, ecological disruptions like ocean acidification (oceans absorb about a
third of our CO2 emissions, changing the chemistry of ocean water (affecting shelled organisms
like coral). Another description of a chain-reaction, tipping-points, explaining that everything is
connected and interrelated. They then go on to explain the economic costs of climate change
(apart from the sadness of it all, which is too much, but to summarize: more variable weather,
drought stress, floods, melting icecaps, infectious diseases, agriculture). Added is solar radiation,
which is a tenth as strong as human-induced climate forcings. There are also a few forcings
contributing to cooling, such as increased reflectivity due to increased cloudiness, though they
do not weigh up to the warming forces.
1.2.2 Energy
Mismatch: we want more energy than we have, or the energy that we can easily retrieve. Two
responses: get more or use less (or both). Current energy sources (2017):
- 32% oil
- 27.1% coal, peat, and oil shale
- 22.2% natural gas
- 9.5% biofuels
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, → 90.8% all fossil carbon together
- 4.9% nuclear
- 2.5% hydropower
- 1,8% other, mostly wind, solar and geothermal
1.2.2.1 Fossil fuels
‘Peak oil’ seems to have been reached, as predicted by King Hubbert for the 1950s. Resulting in
companies reverting to more dangerous, dirty and difficult sources:
- Oil and gas: Gulf of Mexico, Canada, Venezuela (tar sands, or oil sands), in other places
fracking or hydraulic fracturing by injecting a high-pressure soup into the bedrock to
stimulate the flow of oil and gas
- Coal: associated downsides are climate change, smog, acid rain, particulates, despoliation
of land from coal mining, loss of coal miners’ lives etc.
1.2.2.2 Non-fossil energy sources
Politicians increasingly agree that we need a transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources. Many
see nuclear energy as a solution. Risks of nuclear energy are considered better than floods,
droughts, heat waves etc.
Dangers include:
- Chances of technological failure, resulting in the decoupling from social and ecological
lifeforms, thus the potential for accidents and plant malfunctions
- Terrorism, nuclear proliferation and warfare
- Challenge of safely storing nuclear waste
Potential of renewables (sun, wind, water, tide, heat of the Earth, biofuels), examples:
- Germany and Costa Rica, the latter is the world leader (98.1% of all electricity from
renewables)
- Denmark, China and the US: wind power
Costs and consequences renewables:
- Wind turbines: bright light radiation, noise
- Hydropower: dams up flow of ecology and displaces people
- Biofuels: consume space, need to be combusted
- Photovoltaics, heat pumps and tidal turbines: mining needed for batteries and copper
tubing for power lines
1.2.2.3 Using less
Challenges of conservation:
- The slow transition time caused by the investments we have already made. So why do it?
When you invest in something more efficient, its advantages continue on through the
years
- Some interests profit through waste (money, jobs), but this is also true for conservation
and more benign energy sources
- Our appetite for energy goes up with many of the ways we put population and aspiration
into practice, but when you think about it, the form and consequences of this depend on
how we continue our lives as social and ecological beings
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