Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:17:58.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - An Embodied Materialist Sociology

from Part I - Theory in Environmental Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

By
Ariel Salleh
Edited by
Katharine Legun ,
Julie C. Keller ,
Michael Carolan  and
Michael M. Bell
Katharine Legun
Affiliation:
Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Julie C. Keller
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
Michael Carolan
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Michael M. Bell
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

The essay outlines the emergence of 20th-century environmental sociology from within a discipline built on eurocentric masculinist presuppositions. The instrumental hegemony of 'humanity over nature' and its corollary in the capitalist division of labour disconnect people from their ground in natural processes, such that society and ecology become accepted as distinct ontological spheres. Salleh proposes a new lens, based on an understanding of embodied-nature. She argues that an embodied materialist epistemology can transcend the dualism, creating a sociology that supports democratic and ecologically sustainable outcomes.Salleh highlights regenerative labour skills, which apply a relational logic while maintaining community and protecting the biophysical infrastructure of global capital itself. Excluded from circuits of exchange value and independent of use value, this 'gifting' meta-industrial class provides metabolic-value, the integral basis of any society-nature metabolism. Salleh closes with an overview of how the epistemic communities that dominate contemporary environmental sociology articulate nature, and how they could benefit from an embodied materialist perspective.

Keywords

embodied-natureregenerative labourmeta-industrial classrelational logicmetabolic-value
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 47 - 63
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, B. (1998). Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Adorno, T. (1973). Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Agyeman, J., Cole, P., Haluza-DeLay, R., & O’Riley, P.. (eds.), (2009). Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada, Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S.. (1994). Reflexive Modernization, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, M. (2004). An Invitation to Environmental Sociology, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.Google Scholar
Bell, S. (2013). Our Roots Run Deep as Iron Weed, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Bello, W. (2002). Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennholdt-Thomsen, V., & Mies, M.. (1999). The Subsistence Perspective, London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Benton, T. (1993). Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights, and Social Justice, London: Verso.Google Scholar
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T.. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Bernard, J. (1957). Social Problems at Midcentury: Role, Status and Stress in a Context of Abundance, New York: Dryden Press.Google Scholar
Bertell, R. (2000). Planet Earth as a Weapon of War, London: Women’s Press.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1989). The Possibility of Naturalism, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, T. (ed.), (2017). Social Reproduction Theory, London: Pluto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biermann, F. (2012). Planetary Boundaries and Earth System Governance, Ecological Economics, 81, 4–9.Google Scholar
Bookchin, M. (1982/1991). The Ecology of Freedom, Montreal: Black Rose.Google Scholar
Brand, U., & Wissen, M.. (2012). Global Environmental Politics and the Imperial Mode of Living, Globalizations, 9, 547–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, B., & Castree, N. (eds.), (1998). Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bromley, D. (2012). Environmental Governance as Stochastic Belief Updating, Ecology and Society, 17, 14.Google Scholar
Bullard, R. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Buttel, F., Dickens, P., Dunlap, R., & Gijswijt, A. (eds.), (2002). Overview and Introduction, in Sociological Theory and the Environment, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 3–32.Google Scholar
Carolan, M. (2005). Society, Biology, and Ecology, Organization & Environment, 18, 393–431.Google Scholar
Carroll, W., & J. Sapinski, (2016). Neoliberalism and the Transnational Capitalist Class, in Springer, S., Birch, K., & MacLeavy, J. (eds.), The Handbook of Neoliberalism, New York: Routledge, pp. 25–35.Google Scholar
Catton, W., & Dunlap, R.. (1978). Environmental Sociology: A New Paradigm, The American Sociologist, 13, 41–9.Google Scholar
Clark, B., & York, R.. (2005). Dialectical Materialism and Nature, Organization & Environment, 18, 318–38.Google Scholar
D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (eds.), (2014). DeGrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dalla Costa, M., & James, S.. (1972). The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, Bristol: Falling Wall Press.Google Scholar
Dickens, P. (1995). Reconstructing Nature: Alienation, Emancipation, and the Division of Labour, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dunlap, R., & Marshall, B.. (2007). Environmental Sociology, in Bryant, C., & Peck, D. (eds.), 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 329–40.Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. (1962). The Rules of Sociological Method, Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Federici, S. (2012). Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle, Oakland, CA: PM Press.Google Scholar
Foster, J. B. (1999). Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology, American Journal of Sociology, 105, 366–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J., Clark, B., & York, R.. (2010). The Ecological Rift, New York: Monthly Review.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish, New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Fox Keller, E. (1985). Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Freudenberg, W., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R.. (1995). Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain, Sociological Forum, 10, 361–92.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gaard, G. (1993). Ecofeminism, Women, Animals, Nature, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Griffin, S. (1979). Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, London: Women’s Press.Google Scholar
Hawken, P., Lovins, A., & Lovins, H.. (1999). Natural Capitalism, London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T.. (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Isla, A. (2009). Who Pays for Kyoto Protocol? Selling Oxygen and Selling Sex in Costa Rica, in Salleh, A. (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, London: Pluto Press, pp. 199–217.Google Scholar
Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F & Acosta, A. (eds.), (2019). Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, New York: Columbia University Press and New Delhi: Tulika/AuthorsUpFront.Google Scholar
Latour, H. (2004). Politics of Nature, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Marcuse, H. (1964). One Dimensional Man, London: Abacus.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1976). Capital, New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Max-Neef, M., Elizalde, A., & Hopenhayn, M.. (1991). Human Scale Development, New York: Apex.Google Scholar
Mellor, M. (2009). Ecofeminist Political Economy and the Politics of Money, in Salleh, A. (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, London: Pluto Press, pp. 251–67.Google Scholar
Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Merchant, C. (2005). Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mol, A., Sonnenfeld, D., & Spaargaren, G.. (eds), (2009). Ecological Modernisation Reader, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morton, T. (2012). The Oedipal Logic of Ecological Awareness, Environmental Humanities, 1, 7–21.Google Scholar
Mujeres Manifesto. (2009). First Continental Summit of Indigenous Women, Lucha Indígena [Indigenous Struggle], 34: www.luchaindigena.com/.Google Scholar
Ollman, B. (1992). Dialectical Investigations, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pellow, D., & Nyseth Brehm, H.. (2013). An Environmental Sociology for the 21st Century, Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 229–50.Google Scholar
Rose, D. (1996). Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness, Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.Google Scholar
Ruddick, S. (1989). Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, Boston, MA: Beacon.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone Age Economics, New York: Aldine.Google Scholar
Salleh, A. (1988). Epistemology and the Metaphors of Production: An Eco-Feminist Reading of Critical Theory, Studies in the Humanities, 15, 130–9.Google Scholar
Salleh, A. (1997/2017). Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern, London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Salleh, A. (2006). Organised Irresponsibility: Contradictions in the Australian Government’s Strategy for GM Regulation, Environmental Politics, 15, 388–416.Google Scholar
Salleh, A. (2010). From Metabolic Rift to Metabolic Value: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement, Organization & Environment, 23, 205–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salleh, A. (2015). Neoliberalism, Scientism and Earth Systems Governance, in Bryant, R. (ed.), International Handbook of Political Ecology, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 432–46.Google Scholar
Salleh, A., Goodman, J. & Hosseini, H.. (2016). From Sociological to Ecological Imagination, in Marshall, J., & Connor, L. (eds.), Environmental Change and the World’s Futures, New York: Routledge, pp. 96–109.Google Scholar
Salleh, A. (2016). The Anthropocene: Thinking in ‘Deep Geological Time’ or Deep Libidinal Time?, International Critical Thought, 6, 422–33.Google Scholar
Schnaiberg, A. (1980). The Environment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shiva, V. (1989). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Sklair, L. (2001). The Transnational Capitalist Class, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Smith, J., Byrd, S., Reese, E., & Smythe., E. (eds.), (2012). Handbook on World Social Forum Activism, Boulder, CO: Paradigm.Google Scholar
Sohn-Rethel, A. (1978). Intellectual and Manual Labour: Critique of Epistemology. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Solon, P. (2013). Systemic Alternatives (blog) https://systemicalternatives.org/category/english/.Google Scholar
Spitzner, M. (2009). How Global Warming Is Gendered, in Salleh, A. (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, London: Pluto Press, pp. 219–29.Google Scholar
Terlinden, U. (1984). Women in the Ecology Movement, in Altbach, E., Clausen, J., Schultz, D. & Stephan, N. (eds.), German Feminism, Albany: State University of New York, pp. 318–23.Google Scholar
Vaughan, G. with Kanth, R. (2018). Interview: The Gift, Ideas for Our Times: www.gift-economy.com.Google Scholar
Via Campesina. (2009). Small Scale Sustainable Farmers Are Cooling Down the Earth. Jakarta: Via Campesina Views.Google Scholar
Vogel, L. (1983). Marxism and the Oppression of Women, Chicago, IL: HaymarketGoogle Scholar
Weber, M. (1947). Theory of Social and Economic Organization, London: William Hodge.Google Scholar
Wynne, B. (1997). Methodology and Institutions of Value as Seen from the Risk Field, in Foster, J. (ed.), Valuing Nature? London: Routledge, pp. 135–45.Google Scholar
York, R. & Rosa., E. (2003). Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory, Organization & Environment, 16, 273–88.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×