Sociology of environment lecture note

1. Sociology of
Environments
AEX 8302
Course Convener:
Dr Ali Abdullahi

2. Concept of Sociology
• Auguste Comte (1789-1857) often referred to as the
father of sociology named the field of the study from
two words – (1) The Greek “Logos” meaning word,
speech, reasoning or computation, and (2) Latin
“Socius” meaning companion.
• Sociology extends in scope to deal with such
institutions, conditions and constraints as family life,
population, crime, community life, poverty, deviant
behaviour among others. There are special
sociological aspects of the economic, political,
religious and educational.

3. Concept of Rural Sociology
• Rural sociology is a branch of sociology. It is made
up of two terms rural and sociology that is science
of rural society. It is the study of the sociology of
life in the rural environment, which systematically
studies the rural communities to discover their
conditions and tendencies and formulate the
principles of progress as the term implies. It is
limited to the study of various aspects of rural
society.

4. FIELDS OF SOCIOLOGY.
• Sociological Analysis:
(i) Human culture & society.
(ii) Sociological Perspective.
(iii) Scientific methods of social science.
• Primary Units of Social Life:
(i) Individual Personality.
(ii) Groups.
(iii) Communities (Urban and rural).
(iv) Association or organisation.
(v) Population.
(vi) Society at large.

5. Fields of Sociology
• Basic Social Institutions:
(i) Family and Kinship.
(ii) Economic.
(iii) Political and legal.
(iv) Religious.
(v) Educational and Scientific.
• Fundamental Social Processes:
(i) Differentiation & stratification.
(ii) Cooperation, accommodation, assimilation.
(iii) Social conflict.
(iv) Social Integration. (v) Social Change.

6. Environmental sociology as a field
of inquiry
• ‘Earth Day 1970’ - modern environmental movement.
Starting as a modest proposal for a national teach-in on
the environment.
• Earth Day - symbolic claim to be ‘Day 1’ of the new
environmentalism (Gottlieb 1993: 199).
• Sociologists - Lack of theory or research to guide them
towards a distinctive understanding of the relationship
between society and the environment.
• The three major classical sociological pioneers – Émile
Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber – implicit
environmental dimension (Buttel 1986: 338).

7. Environmental sociology as a field of
inquiry
• The three widely ‘founders’ of the discipline of
sociology – Durkheim, Weber & Marx–addressed
some aspect of nature and society, but this was not
really definitive to their work.
• Within the area of rural sociology - empirical
research on natural resources. These enquiries took
two forms: the study of natural resource dependent
communities and research on the use of public
parkland for recreational purposes (Humphrey et
al. 2003: 11).

8. Competing functions of the environment
Catton and Dunlap’s model specifies three general
functions that the environment serves for human beings:
supply depot, living space and waste repository.
• Used as a supply depot, the environment is a
source of renewable and non-renewable natural
resources (air, water, forests, fossil fuels) that are
essential for living.
• Living space or habitat provides housing,
transportation systems and other essentials of
daily life. Overuse of this function results in
overcrowding, congestion and the destruction of
habitats for other species.
•

9. Competing functions of the
environment
• With the waste repository function, the
environment serves as a ‘sink’ for
garbage (rubbish), sewage, industrial
pollution and other by products.
Exceeding the ability of ecosystems to
absorb wastes results in health problems
from toxic wastes and in ecosystem
disruption.

10. Competing functions of the environment
Living
Space
Waste
Respitory
Supply
Depot

11. Environmental Sociology and the
Sociology of Natural Resources
• The predominant conception of the environment from
the vantage point of the sociology of natural
resources is that of; consumptive, preservationist,
recreational, and related uses of primary resources
(forests, fisheries, mining, coastal zones, riparian
zones, etc.).
• The sociology of natural resources retains a strong
emphasis on management and policy, and thus tends
to be relatively applied and empirical in orientation.

12. Environmental Sociology and the
Sociology of Natural Resources
• The characteristic unit of analysis in the
sociology of natural resources is that of the
individual resource manager user or the
resource group or locality (particularly the
non-metropolitan community. The sociology
of natural resources literature also tends to be
more eclectic in its pattern of citation, and
often more multidisciplinary in its
orientation.

13. Environmental Sociology and the
Sociology of Natural Resources
• Environmental sociology, by contrast, tends
to be more metropolitan in its stresses, in
several respects.
• Environmental sociology is most preoccupied
with manufacturing industry and with
metropolitan-centered consumption and
metro- politan social groups.

14. Environmental Sociology and the
Sociology of Natural Resources
• While primary resources are given some
attention, this is basically a reaction of
metropolitan-driven demands by way of
production and consumption institutions.
The treatment of primary resources is also a
highly aggregate one, with very little local
detail, reacting the industrial- and
metropolitan- oriented focus.

15. Environmental Sociology and the
Sociology of Natural Resources
• Environmental sociology’s conception of the
environment is basically twofold:
(1) pollution and
(2) resource scarcity induced by metropolitan-
driven and industrially driven tendencies in
production and consumption.
Environmental sociology has tended not to
develop a great deal of locally species empirical
detail about the processes by which pollution and
resource scarcity occur.