Sources ecosociology. Series: «Ecosociology». I. P. Kulyasov

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СКАЧАТЬ begin36.

      As already mentioned above, ecosociologists also responded to the ongoing social change, proposing the new ecological paradigm, under which the paradigm of human exceptionalism would be replaced by that of human emancipation. These ideas were extremely popular among younger people and public movements addressing the issues relating to the quality of life. The power, industrial and financial elites could propose no viable alternative. Children saw no future in the activities of their parents. Society was afraid that it was edging towards a catastrophe and extinction. This situation could not last for a sufficiently long time and an intellectual breakthrough was needed.

      The publication of expert’s works on limits of economic growth and the World Commission on Environment and Development report “Our common future” in the late 1980s gave rise to the popularity of the sustainable development theory, which will be considered in more detail in the chapter “Theories of sustainable development”.

      Unlike ecoanarchists and ecosocialists, Albert Arnold Gore, one of ideologists of “green” capitalism, and other authors believed that industrial production, based on competition and profit generation, could be ecologized through state regulation and formation of new “green” markets. This did not make any changes in social relationships, but modernize them. This was to happen gradually and naturally as ecological challenges emerged, which were to be responded via new norms and rules for activities, behavior, morals and culture37.

      For example, demand for ecologically clean products has grown, causing structural and technological adjustments in industry, i.e., a modernization. An increase in the government annuity for natural resource use and penalties for pollution would also encourage modernization of industry (improvements in the technology used for extraction of natural resources), reduce generation of waste, save energy, and introduce recycling, closed and waste-free production cycles. This would also lead to changes in corporate culture – acceptance of the sustainable development concept, greater responsibility of business for socio-ecological consequences of its activities.

      In addition to being a state, national strategy, ecopolicy is becoming a strategy pursued by international companies and corporations. They declare that, if used rationally, global natural resources are virtually inexhaustible and can satisfy the needs of the humanity indefinitely. Even if some resources are depleted, new technology would be able to provide new materials and products of a better, or, as a minimum, the same quality.

      Problems of growth would remain in the form of demographic, informational and other “explosions”, which look catastrophically from the local management level, but can be dealt with via development and implementation of global programs. All interested organizations and individuals, who will form a new global design, could now be involved in a constructive dialog and decision-making process.

      Therefore, those environmentalists, who had opposed industrialization, technocracy and bureaucracy in the 1970s, lost much of their popularity in the environmental movement by the 1990s. However, the first works published in the 1980s by authors who opined that management, industry and technology, which ensure the high standard of life of the modern society, were not ecologically dangerous per se and that they could be changed for the benefit of the environment, still were criticized.

      In contrast with their European colleagues, the American environmentalists, who in the 1980s participated in numerous public organizations, state-run ecological councils and research expert groups, enjoyed the support from the population, government and business, were more optimistic. A considerable part of the United States environmentalists was hoping that ecological problems could be addressed via improvements in technology and management techniques, distribution of benefits, conservation and accumulation of the national natural wealth.

      The intellectual breakthrough occurred in the 1980s when Josef Huber proposed his ecological modernization concept38, which in the 1990s evolved into a scientific theory supported by business and the government. The theory of ecological modernization became quite popular among the European environmentalists, which allowed moving from confrontation to dialog and partnership with the state and business.

      The ideas of ecological modernization are now largely accepted by the global environmentalist movement and implemented practically from the individual to state level. Because of scientific debate and hands-on experience, the theory of ecological modernization has gone through several stages of development and received both recognition and criticism. Several authors have proposed a number of development classifications. Historical and modern application examples have been studied, and a number of methodological approaches, allowing identification of independent lines of research, elaborated. This we will consider in more detail in the chapter “Modernist theories”.

      Russian authors of environmental theories

      In Russia, just like in the West, environmental theories were used by authors who included the natural context into their studies of social phenomena, who spoke of the mutual influence between humans and the natural environment and made interesting unusual conclusions. In doing so, they made a significant contribution in the development of sociology and the rise and development of ecosociology.

      The specifics of Russian history make possible to split this scientific reflection into three periods – pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. All Russian authors could be classified into those who represented the organic (sociological naturalism) and geographic school (social evolutionism), as it was done for non-Russian authors. However, for Russian authors, a division between these schools and principles would be quite notional.

      Nikolay Dmitrievich Nozhin (1841—1866) had a considerable influence on his contemporaries, including sociologists. His views and publications are a good example showing the notional character of classification into scientific schools. As a biologist and a sociologist, he recognized Darwin’s biological evolution; however, he opposed Malthusianism and racism typical for some social-Darwinists. He was the first to propose an organic approach and formulated its main principles. The main postulate goes that biological laws apply to human communities just as they do in animal species communities. Therefore, known biological laws could be used for explaining social phenomena and processes. A good example would be collective organizations – free associations of people based on the principles of solidarity and mutual assistance39.

      He criticized political experts and economists for seeing contradiction where, from the biology’s point of view, they did not exist. In biology, multi-functionality does more for survival of specie than functional development within the specie. This provision is analogous to the multi-functionality of peasants and artisans and division of labor in the course of industrial production. Therefore, crises and creative regress of participants are inevitable for industrial production. He believed that his conclusions and their propagation would serve the practical purpose of science – helping people to avoid mistakes in choosing their path of development. In his opinion, dividing science into social and natural disciplines was one of these mistakes.

      Aleksandr Ivanovich Stronin (1826—1889) in 1869—1885, published a three-volume edition titled “History and method” (on evolution of research methods and approaches taken by social sciences), “Politics as a science” (on social structures – groups, statuses) and “History of the public” (on evolution of society). His works show the desire to link the methodology for social and natural sciences. He believed that, as the natural and social environments are a whole, analogy could become СКАЧАТЬ