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-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:19:34.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Classical Theory and Environmental Sociology: Toward Deeper and Stronger Roots

from Part I - Theory in Environmental Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

By
Hannah Holleman
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

Chapter Two examines the origins of the canon of classical sociological theory and how this canon entered environmental sociology in the field’s early history. The analysis highlights the centrality of colonialism and imperialism, as well as mid-twentieth century liberalism and geopolitics – along with their ideological underpinnings – in shaping both ecological and social thought, as well as the discipline of sociology, with consequences for the later emergence of environmental sociology. The chapter closes by pointing to opportunities for further recovery of early critical perspectives lost, due in part to the process of canon formation and practices of social exclusion and academic marginalization, at great cost to the development of socio-ecological thought and action.

Keywords

Classical Social TheoryColonialismImperialismEnvironmental SociologyCritical Environmental Justice
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 11 - 29
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

Anderson, K. B. (2016). Marx at the Margins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barbosa, L. C. (2014). Theories in Environmental Sociology. In Gould, K. A. & Lewis, T. L., eds., Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–40.Google Scholar
Becker, H., & Barnes, H. E. (1938). Social Thought from Lore to Science. Boston: Heath.Google Scholar
Beckert, S. (2015). Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Bell, D. [1960] (2000). The End of History: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burkett, P. (1999). Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buttel, F. H. (2002). Environmental Sociology and the Classical Sociological Tradition: Some Observations on Current Controversies. In Buttel, F. H., Dickens, P., Dunlap, R. E., & Gijswijt, A., eds., Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 35–50.Google Scholar
Buttel, F. H., Dickens, P., Dunlap, R. E., & Gijswijt, A. (2002). Sociological Theory and the Environment: An Overview. In Buttel, F. H., Dickens, P., Dunlap, R. E., & Gijswijt, A., eds., Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 3–34.Google Scholar
Catton, W. R. Jr., & Dunlap, R. E. (1978). Environmental Sociology: A New Paradigm. American Sociologist, 13(1), 41–49.Google Scholar
Catton, W. R. Jr., & Dunlap, R. E. (1980). A New Ecological Paradigm for Post-Exuberant Sociology. American Behavioral Scientist, 24 (1), 15–47.Google Scholar
Clark, B., & Foster, J. B. (2003). Land, the Color Line, and the Quest of the Golden Fleece. Organization and Environment, 16(4), 459–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, B., Auerbach, D., & Zhang, K. X. (2017). The DuBois Nexus: Intersectionality, Political Economy, and Environmental Injustice in the Peruvian Guano Trade in the 1800s. Environmental Sociology 1, 28–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2017.1381899.Google Scholar
Coleman, P. (1989). The Liberal Conspiracy. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1997). Why Is Classical Theory Classical? American Journal of Sociology, 102(6), 1511–1557.Google Scholar
Dawson, M. C. (2016). Hidden in Plain Sight. Critical Historical Studies, 3(1), 143–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, 3rd edition. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B.[1920] (2003). The Souls of White Folk. Monthly Review, 55(6), 44–58.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B.[1947] (2007). The World and Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunlap, R. E. (2002). Paradigms, Theories, and Environmental Sociology. In Buttel, F. H., Dickens, P., Dunlap, R. E., & Gijswijt, A., eds., Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 329–350.Google Scholar
Dunlap, R. E., & Catton, W. R. Jr. (1979). Environmental Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 5, 243–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlap, R.E. & Catton, W. R. (1994). Struggling with Human Exemptionalism: The Rise, Decline and Re-vitalization of Environmental Sociology. American Sociologist, 25, 5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. B. (1999). Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 366–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. B. (2012). The Planetary Rift and the New Human Exemptionalism: A Political-Economic Critique of Ecological Modernization Theory. Organization & Environment, 25(3), 211–237.Google Scholar
Foster, J. B., & Holleman, H. (2012). Weber and the Environment: Classical Foundations for a Postexemptionalist Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 117(6), 1625–1673.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. B., Clark, B., & York, R. (2010). The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. (2016). Introduction to Sociology, 10th edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Gilman, N. (2003). Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Glacken, C. J. (1967). Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gould, K. A., & Lewis, T. L. (2014). An Introduction to Environmental Sociology. In Gould, K. A. & Lewis, T. L., eds., Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
Grove, R. H. (1995). Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hannigan, J. (1995). Environmental Sociology. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hannigan, J. (2014). Environmental Sociology, 3rd edition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holleman, H. (2015). Method in Ecological Marxism: Science and the Struggle for Change. Monthly Review, 67(5).Google Scholar
Holleman, H. (2017). De-naturalizing Ecological Disaster: Colonialism, Racism and the Global Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(1), 234–260.Google Scholar
Holleman, H. (2018). Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, B. (1986). Sorokin and Parsons at Harvard: Institutional Conflict and the Origin of a Hegemonic Tradition. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 22(2), 107–127.3.0.CO;2-A>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklick, H. (1973). A “Scientific Revolution”: Sociological Theory in the United States, 1930–1945. Sociological Inquiry, 43(1), 3–22.Google Scholar
Magdoff, H. (1978). Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Marx, K. [1867] (1976). Capital, vol. 1. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1981). Capital, vol. 3. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B. (2003). The Two Faces of Globalization: Against Globalization as We Know It. World Development, 31(4), 667–683.Google Scholar
Morris, A. D. (2015). The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. DuBois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mukherjee, R. (1932). The Ecological Outlook in Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 38(3), 349–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mukherjee, R. (1973). Indian Sociology: Historical Development and Present Problems. Sociological Bulletin, 22(1), 29–58.Google Scholar
Münch, R. (1993). The Contribution of German Social Theory to European Sociology. In Nedelmann, B. & Sztompka, P., eds., Sociology in Europe: In Search of Identity. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 45–66.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. [1949] (1954). Essays in Sociological Theory. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (1965). Full Citizenship for the Negro American? A Sociological Problem. Daedulus, 94(4), 1009–1054.Google Scholar
Parsons, T., & Johnson, H. M. (1975). Interview with Talcott Parsons. Revue Européenne des Sciences Sociales, 13(34), 81–90.Google Scholar
Pellow, D. N. (2018). What Is Critical Environmental Justice? Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Pellow, D. N., & Nyseth Brehm, H. (2013). An Environmental Sociology for the Twenty-First Century. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 229–250.Google Scholar
Rosa, E. A., & Richter, L. (2008). Durkheim on the Environment: Ex Libris or Ex Cathedra? Organization and Environment, 21 (2), 182–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Saunders, F. S. (1999). The Cultural Cold War. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Scaff, Lawrence A. (2011). Weber in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sociological Analysis. (1973). Max Weber, Dr. Alfred Ploetz, and W.E.B. Du Bois (Max Weber on Race and Society II). Sociological Analysis, 34(4), 308–312.Google Scholar
Sorokin, P. A. (1928). Contemporary Sociological Theories. New York: Harper & Bros.Google Scholar
Studholme, M. (2007). Patrick Geddes: Founder of Environmental Sociology. The Sociological Review, 55(3), 441–459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Studholme, M. (2008). Patrick Geddes and the History of Environmental Sociology in Britain: A Cautionary Tale. Journal of Classical Sociology, 8(3), 367–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, D. E. (2000). The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social Construction of Environmental Discourses. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(4), 508–580.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. E. (2016). The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. [1904] (1988). A Letter from Indian Territory. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 16(2), 133–136.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
×