Sharon P. answered • 10/19/21
PhD. in Anthropology, 18 years’ experience Educator, Patient
Sociology is the methodological study of human society and those interactions/relationships within groups and institutions. Environmental Sociology is how human groups interact with nature. All Sociological research/study is conducted using the Sociological Perspective as put forth by Peter Berger (1929). He states Sociology is seeing the general in particular. Sociologists identify general social patterns in the behavior of specific individuals. And seeing the strange in the familiar gives up the idea that human behavior is simply a matter of what people decide to do—and understanding that society shapes our lives and institutions.
The distinction (or importance) is that Environmental Sociology is looking only at a very specific niche in society, either at a micro-level (national-local) or macro-level (global). For example, when investigated through Karl Marx's sociological theories. These theories help give birth to Ecological Marxism that is investigating/researching the interaction of capitalism and nature regarding labor and natural resources (Foster, Clark, and York 2010). The Marxist approach has value in understanding the linkages/relationships between land, labor, and the production of some goods (materialism). And, for those who need further convincing regarding Marx's pedagogy and environmentalism, review his work in the early I 840’s in Proudhon's What is Property (Berger 1929). This notion of environmental impacts and sustainability can be traced back to Darwin (1859), Morgan (1877), Malthus (1798), Geddes (1905), Steward (1958). Bell (1998) states that “environmental sociology is ultimately about studying the community in the largest possible sense.” Therefore, Sociologists can examine the effect of human behavior on nature through probing pollution, industrial accidents, ecological catastrophes in poorer societies, and the rationalization of both negative and positive regarding globalization impacting societies and the environment vis-a-via capitalism. Also, as global warming has increased annually, the number of natural catastrophes the Sociologist can add to the equation has increased. How nature itself causes societies to adapt, adjust, interact with their institutions and the individual. Green thinking surfaced into the Sociological study in 1970 called the New Ecological Paradigm (Hannigan 1995). As discussed above, this thinking is not separate from looking at the interconnections between human behavior and the environment. NEP is just another tool of investigation in the Sociologist tool kit. To conclude, the Sociologist can investigate/research everything from resource management (capitalism), environmental issues (natural or man-made), and the socially constructed issues, responses that compel the Sociologist to take a less anthropocentric view because of nature, not man.
NOTE. this is not 398 words.
