Today, environmental problems are considered as more complex, globalized and threatening, partially because of improved awareness, and partially due to changes in the changes in the biophysical conditions. However environmental sociology continues to deal with the issues that troubled this field from its emergence, namely with the way it should approach societal-environmental relations, and with the nature of ‘society and environment. “Major developments in the field over the past three decades are linked to changes approaches to all three phenomena” (Dunlap 15). The most challenging issues continue to be represented by the societal-environmental relations. Environmental sociology emerged during the transition from modernity to postmodernity, liquid modernity, risk society and network society, depending on different scientists (Dunlap 15). Perhaps the least disputed idea is that the world is facing increasing globalization. In the article, Dunlap focuses on key changes in the environment in the last 3 decades, the need to use more complex indicators of environmental conditions and the debates on how to deal with societal-environmental interactions.
All environmental sociologists, regardless of their orientation, are interested in studying the biophysical environment. In the first years, it was important to distinguish among built, modified and natural environment because many scholars were interested in housing and urban design. However, most built-environment scholars moved on, leaving the field with overwhelming interest in non-built environments. The author argues that currently, the field needs to conceptualize the biophysical environment in a more sophisticated way. Focusing on ecosystem services is useful because the use of ecological concepts provide more appropriate conceptualizations and helps environmental sociologists to interact more effectively with other disciplines. The author introduces a model of environmental phenomena which highlights 3 ecosystem services which are critical for human beings, namely the environment as a ‘supply depot’ which provides humans with necessary resources, the environment as a ‘waste repository’ where humans deposit the waste they produce, and the environment as a ‘living space’ where humans live, work and consume (Dunlap 17). These three services need to be combined in order to come up with a basic model of conceptualization for the phenomena.
When people overuse a certain environment, problems, such as pollution or overpopulation are likely. This is a very important issue today throughout the world and the role and responsibility of environmental sociologists has become even more important. Dunlap shows that a particular environment may not be able to serve all the three functions as once, which creates even more problems. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that, the more humans need them, the more the health of entire ecosystems is threatened. Contemporary sociologists address these phenomena by using different measures, like deforestation, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption rates or ecological footprints. The sociologists’ analyses have proved that wealthy nations use poor ones as supply depots and waste repositories by extracting natural resources, and shipping waste to them to have it disposed of. Increasing the understanding of the academia and policy makers on the role of wealthy societies in affecting other environments throughout the world demonstrates this important responsibility of the environmental sociologists.
Creating change may seem more difficult when the scholars do not agree with each other. The author focuses on the divide between constructivist-oriented scholars, practicing environmental agnosticism, a skeptical attitude towards the evidence about environmental conditions, and realist-oriented scholars, who adopt a pragmatic attitude by measuring and investigating rather than problematizing these conditions. Consequently, environmental sociologists (in Europe) may limit their attention to symbolic/ideational/cultural realm, rather than examining the materialist nature of societal-environmental conditions (in America). “Constructivists confine their efforts to contextualizing, problematizing and deconstructing the claims about ecological conditions issued by scientists, activists and policy-makerswhile realists employ various indicators of these conditions in studies of societal-environmental interactions” (22). Pragmatists use environmental indicators to investigate connections between social and biophysical phenomena.
Works Cited
Dunlap, Riley. The Maturation and Diversification of Environmental Sociology: From Constructivism and Realism to Agnosticism and Pragmatism. The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology. 2nd ed. Ed. Michael R. Redcliff. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.2010.Print.
