POSTMODERNISM AND ENVIRONMENT
Key names: Heidegger, Zimmerman, Foucault, Nietsche, Gramsci
Arose out of critical theory – Neo-Marxist social theory critical of modernity
Postmodernism and ideas about Truth/science/knowledge
 | Argues truth is entirely a product of consensus values where science itself is just the name we attach to certain modes of explanation |
| Looks at the construction of scientific knowledge, scrutinizes modernistic ideals of progress, truth, growth and intrinsic value (science = truth = progress) to show that science is a product of culture, that scientific models are not removed from moral tendencies, i.e. belief that science is value neutral and thus it cannot be held responsible for environmental problems it creates (there are implications for those environmental groups which rely upon scientific rigor and assessment to convince others of the need for reform) |
| Science has become ecologically irrational having lost its commitment to sustainability and interdependence, e.g. in Enlightenment, physics was recognized as inherently social and political, scientific idea of nature was blatantly political, because this new knowledge of nature was part of a political strategy redefining the social, political and religious order - modern science has lost sight of this |
| Critiques of scientific rationality and paradigm similar/overlaps with radical green critiques of how science has been central in disenchanting nature, domination of nature at heart of modernity results in domination of human beings |
Postmodernism ideas of nature
| Looks at nature from a critical social and cultural perspective rather than a scientific one |
| Nature as object to be studied, probed and analyzed in search of truth is due to scientific revolution and age of reason; it was determined that nature was an objective reality, only to be studied by physical scientists and policy analysts |
| Explores the role of language (how language has directed meanings and values in our society) and science in the creation of humanity-environment discourses |
| Argues that the idea of nature having an opposite is an intellectual creation, not immutable truth |
| Viewing man as part of nature requires seeing cognitive and evaluative activities as part of nature too, and hence varying from organism to organism and context to context – historical, cultural, organizational |
| No conceptual issues, such as knowledge of nature or what is acceptable risk, can be divorced from concomitant dimensions of political and institutional legitimations |
| Social construction of nature stems from postmodernism, nature is our own creation – it is not simply what is out there since we keep changing the meaning of what we know to be out there, thus highlights the multiple meanings and sense of such concepts as nature, natural and environment, human, nonhuman |
| To acknowledge existence of social construction of nature, must also admit fundamental idea that knowledge itself and how it is defined is power, i.e. concept of nature is thus embedded in our very structure of knowledge |
| Postmodernism has problems with the following spectrum where both ends see nature as object, a thing, a dualism: Nature as object -> <-Nature as self |
| Argues environmental crisis is as much a social phenomenon as a physical one, e.g. for there to be a concept of pollution there must be first an understanding of the system or environment in order and pollution is basically the system out of order, thus we must first explore the system of knowing or knowledge, i.e. understanding/analyzing role of nature and environment (problems/issues) in cultural value systems is needed including the different actors, claims, types of knowledge, communication |
| Environmentalism as postmodernism is found in the ideology of bio-regionalism – a new small narrative, restricted to a certain spatial area where "small is beautiful" |
Foucault (French philosopher):
| argued that everything is interpretation, no interpretation can be regarded as superior to another, there is no final meaning for any particular sign, no notion of unitary sense of text |
| attempted to show that basic ideas about how people think of permanent truths of human nature and society change throughout the course of history |
| everyday practices enabled people to define their identities and systemize knowledge |
| his study of power and its shifting patterns is a fundamental concept of postmodernism |
| his work upsets the conventional understanding of history as a chronology of inevitable facts and replaces it with underlayers of suppressed and unconscious knowledge in and throughout history, these underlayers are the codes and assumptions of order, the structures of exclusion that legitimate epistemes by which societies achieve identities |
Ideology
| Arose as a critique against modernity, environmental crisis was Enlightenment gone wrong |
| Promotes a mode of being rather than a distinct set of values, weight is given to questioning thereby discouraging the abstract and the general (duties, laws and rules), promotes aesthetic values as opposed to general and insensitive duty oriented normative guidelines, endorses respect for otherness (nonhuman world is ultimate other for humans) and difference (nature as strange, alien, mysterious, wonderful) |
| Has contempt for bureaucratic, technological and instrumental rationality in ideology towards the environment |
| Rejects globalization which it argues is westernization |
Greatest accomplishment of postmodernism is that it has focused upon epistemological and ideological motivations in the social sciences
| ENVIRONMENT |
| ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY SYLLABUS |
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