Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Part I Analysing the Problem -- Chapter 2. Cooperation between Natural Science and Social Science -- Chapter 3. Social Closure in the Anthropocene: The Environment as a Medium for Monopolisation and Exclusion -- Chapter 4. Energy: Paying its Full Cost, Belatedly or Upon Use? -- Chapter 5. Stuck in Dangerous Carbon Polluting Practices? -- Chapter 6. A Pattern When Exploiting Valuable but Dangerous Resources -- Part II: Assessing Solutions -- Chapter 7. Risk and Safety; Real and Staged -- Chapter 8. Are Safe Social Practices on the Horizon? -- Chapter 9. Faith 2.0 in the Mastery of Nature -- Chapter 10. Technological Solutions and Social-technological Solutions -- Chapter 11. Foresight or Discounting Danger?.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE SOCIAL ACTION ABSTRACTED FROM ITS CONTEXT -- 1 Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter: An Ecological Critique -- Pre-Ecological Sociology: Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter -- An Ecological Critique of Sociology as if Nature Did Not Matter -- Why Was Sociology Constructed as if Nature Did Not Matter? -- Toward Sociology in Which Nature Matters -- Notes -- 2 The Sociological Construction of Science Without Nature -- Nothing in Nature Gives Rise to Accounts of Nature? -- The Relativism of the Sociology of Science -- The Sociological Construction of the Social-Construction-of-Reality Premise -- The Focus on Local Contingencies -- The Double Standard of Constructivist Sociology -- The Constructivist Strategy of Ambiguity -- The Embeddedness of Scientific Constructions in Nature -- Notes -- 3 Sociological Misunderstandings Concerning Nature -- The Blind Spot of Sociology -- The Human Body -- The Relativism of Science? -- Methodological Relativism -- The Weaknesses of Social Constructivism -- Social Scares or Material Scares -- Agency and Structured Systems -- Notes -- PART TWO THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL ACTION -- 4 Weaknesses of Sociological Analyses of the Context of Social Action -- The Abolition of Nature and of Wilderness -- Nature Hidden in the Closet by Sociological Theory -- The 'Polluter-Pays' Principle -- The Burden of Proof -- Beyond Class? -- Marxist Environmentalism -- Notes -- 5 Toward the Analysis of Social Action in Its Context -- Language and Experience -- Conceptions of Nature -- Sociology Beyond the Social Construction of Reality -- Technology as Human Constructions That Redeploy Nature -- A Structural Dynamic Advancing Human Agency -- The Delusions of Advanced Modernity -- Postmodernity or Hypermodernity? -- Notes -- PART THREE THE RISK SPECIES

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE The Intensification of Rationalization and Its Alternatives -- 1 Rationalization Under the Premise of Plasticity -- 2 Rationalization and Ecological Irrationality -- 3 Rationalization Under the Premise of Greenness -- 4 Rerationalization -- 5 Derationalization -- PART TWO The Sociology of Environmental Degradation -- 6 The Political Economy of Waste -- 7 Accounting for Waste and Accountability for Waste -- 8 Environmental Classes and Environmental Conflict -- PART THREE Toward a Symbiotic Relationship with Nature -- 9 Science and Applied Science as Partial Knowledge -- 10 Parasitism: A "Light Cloak" or an "Iron Cage"? -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book and Author

Castells hypothesized two possibilities concerning global warming: i) a world awakening to the danger with policies to reverse it, or ii) the defense of productivism at all costs. Canada is presently pursuing economic benefits of a fossil-fuel superexporter, which makes it a superemitter. By focusing on the discursive legitimation of practices that cause anthropogenic climate change, this article shows how communication power in the Canadian mass media veils the adverse consequences of extracting oil from bituminous sand. It demonstrates how concern about emissions is dampened and quiescence socially constructed. The mediation between scientific warnings of danger and polluting social practices by media communication power constitutes an important element explaining why Canada's emissions are increasing. It also explains why science, an institution claimed to be particularly influential in reflexive, cosmopolitan modernization, is having little influence in societies like Canada when it brings troubling news. The article shows how a scientifically documented environmental problem becomes a societal non-problem.

Abstract:
This paper argues that climate change throws down a challenge for the social sciences. They can no longer rely on exclusively social indicators and relative ones, but must include absolute biophysical indicators in their investigations. Accurate analyses of the social causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change require that they capture the complexity of lay and scientific knowledge, and the nuances of uncertainty, of nature, and of language rather than relying on oversimplified notions. The paper examines whether resilience is a protective strategy under uncertainty and whether disasters are likely to impel mitigation of global warming. It assesses lofty post-carbon utopia discourse and suggests instead the comparative analysis of successful and unsuccessful societies in preventing anthropogenic global warming. To illustrate such an analysis, the paper sketches a study of the different developmental channels of Northern Europe and North America.