Ecology and society

Ecology and society - Luke Martell (333.7 MAR)

Maria Hirszowicz (1981:1) defines industrialism as 'the new stage of social organisation in which human life is dominated by industrial production'.pg 17

Inter-relationship of industry and society - both the effects of the development of industry on society and of society on industry.  The effects of industrial production and economic and technological change on social structure and processes.

Richard Badham has argued that the central concerns of the sociology of industrialism are the 'social requirements of industrial development, social structures that either facilitate or hinder the efficient pursuit of industry and the impact of industrial development on society' (Badham 1984:2) pg 17

Effect of industrialism on social relations.  'Post-Fordists' see industrial societies as moving not beyond industrialism but from a Fordist mode of industrialism based on mass production standardization and uniformity in economic and social life towards greater diversification, flux and flexibility in production, consumption and social lifestyles.

Ecology is 'usually taken to mean the study of the relationship between humans, plants and animals and between them and their wider environment'. (pg21)

Three relationships -

1:            Nature on society

2:            Society on nature

3:            The effect of societies impact on nature back on society.

Sociologists have been well aware of the significance of technological developments, cultural conditions, the existence of specific social groupings and political choices in society as facilitating and driving social change.

Ecologists would identify the role of natural limits such as resource availability and finitude as affecting societal development.  The initial availability of resources will affect a society's industrial and social development. pg22

There are natural as well as economic, technological, cultural, social and political limits and influences on societal development.

Society has an effect on nature in the form of pollution and the depletion of resources.  The pursuit of particular paths of industrial development can lead to the pollution of the air, sea and land.

CFC and CO2 emissions involved respectively in ozone depletion and global warming.  The dumping of sewage and toxic waste in the sea and in landfill sites and the use of pesticides, fertilizers and such like, all of which affect the land, water and plant and animal life.  Not to mention car fumes and acid rain and many other examples of the environmental effects of social processes.

Pollution and resource depletion obviously affect 'nature'.  Yet they have a reciprocal effect on human societies.

'Social lifestyles are shaped in part by patterns of production and growth in the economy'. pg 23

The society - nature relationship is constituted by natural limits on society, society's effects on nature and the effects of society's impact on nature as they rebound on society.

'Club Rome' - The Limits of Growth Report.

The report highlights interdependency, the natural limits thesis, the notion of exponential growth and the significance of social as well as technical solutions.

Interdependency - the character of a system and each of its parts is constituted by the interdependent relationship between the parts.  Different elements are affected by others and each element affects others, often with a reciprocal effect back on itself again.  The structure of a system is as much constituted by the relationships and the dynamic interactions and 'feedback loops' between different parts of the system as by the parts themselves in isolation.