This note responds to the discussion pieces by Elizabeth Shove and John Urry in the debates section of Sociological Research Online, 31 August 2010.[No keywords]

Constance Lever-Tracy

English

Research Papers in Economics

Sociology Still Lagging on Climate Change
by Constance Lever-Tracy
Flinders University
Sociological Research Online, 15 (4) 15
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/4/15.html> 
10.5153/sro.2242
Received: 12 Oct 2010     Accepted: 18 Nov 2010    Published: 30 Nov 2010
Abstract
This note responds to the discussion pieces by Elizabeth Shove and John Urry in the debates section of
Sociological Research Online, 31 August 2010.
Introduction
1.1 While John Urry seeks to “engender a sociology of climate change”, Elizabeth Shove argues we
already have no shortage of writings or studies on subjects clearly related to climate change, but that
individualistic economics and psychology have monopolised the attention of policy makers and no one is
listening to us. Sadly Shove is demonstrably wrong. While quite a few specialist sociologists have worked
and written on this subject[1], their voices have scarcely yet penetrated to many of the hallowed halls of
leading mainstream sociology journals. I believe a sociological lens is indispensable for an understanding
of the causes and impacts of climate change and of our responses to this threat. I also doubt if there is
much useful we can say about the future of social structures, systems and cultures without taking this
unprecedented and cascading danger into account. Whether or not societies ignore or confront the crisis
and how they do so, will affect and be affected by every aspect of social life.
Sociological silence continues
2.1 A search I made a few years ago found no appearance of either the term “climate change” or “global
warming” in article titles or abstracts in seven major sociological journals (Acta Sociologica, American
Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology[2], Current Sociology, International Sociology, Journal of
Sociology and Sociology) from January 2000 to mid 2005. Not a single paper focussed on this subject.
Similarly, Eco Marxist writings about climate change were ignored in New Left Review. The mainstream
impact of the work on climate change by Ecological Modernisation theorists and Eco-Marxists had been
very limited. I speculated about the reasons for such avoidance and suggested it was due in part to our
foundational suspicion of science and technology as prime movers of social change and in part to a more
recent wariness of speculating about a future that has so often confounded our predictions (Lever-Tracy
2008).
2.2 I have just repeated the same search from mid 2005 to September 2010 and found only six
appearances of the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in titles or abstracts in the seven journals.
Three of these involve earlier work by the contributors to this current discussion! In 2008 there appeared in
the British Journal of Sociology an article by John Urry on “Climate change, travel and complex futures”
and in the same year a symposium in Current Sociology with four papers, two by myself and one each by
Steven Brechin and Terry Leahy. A year later Current Sociology also published a paper on “Climate change
after Kyoto” by Steven Yearly. Apart from these there was silence in these prestigious journals. It seems
the reasons for this sociological avoidance of the subject have still not dissipated. Meanwhile, widely read
and cited books, which discuss the social causes and implications of climate change, have been authored
by literate natural scientists and science journalists - for example writings by Jared Diamond, Mark
Diesendorf, Mike Hulme, Tim Flannery and by Gabrielle Walker and David King. Giddens’ (2009) welcome
book breaks the mould, but is signiﬁcantly titled The Politics of Climate Change.
2.3 Attempts to insulate sociology from natural science have a long history going back to Emile Durkheim
and the origins of the discipline. This has been a major subject of debate between realists and social
constructivists within environmental sociology, since Catton and Dunlap ﬁrst counter-posed their “New
Ecological Paradigm” to what they called the “Human Exemptionalist Paradigm” in the late 1970s (Dunlap
2002;Yearley 2002). Mainstream sociologists have remained much closer to the social constructivist
paradigm of nature, which is not concerned with the validity or otherwise of the ﬁndings of natural
scientists.2.4 Stephen Crooke’s presidential address to the Australian Sociological Association conference in 2000
called on sociology to re-engage with the substantive knowledge of the natural sciences: “The relations
between natural, technical and social processes lie at the heart of fundamental issues from climate change
to genetic engineering… we must place the same issues at the top of our agendas” (Crooke, 2003: 11). His
call has not been heeded and the Australian Journal of Sociology has recorded no articles focussed on
climate change to date. Pakulski and Trantor’s eulogy on Crooke’s death (2004) made no reference to his
call for multi disciplinarity or to his belief that sociologists should become familiar with debates in the
sciences and “more comfortable with the culture of the natural sciences generally” (Crooke, 2003:11).
2.5 Ten years later John Urry’s “ten commandments” (2010), like his 2008 article, are again a powerful call
for sociology to re-engage with the relations between nature and society, natural and social science, and to
challenge the dominance of economics over policy making for a low carbon economy, but he still
perpetuates aspects of the original inhibitions, having little to say about technological change or how it
might affect the future. The recent piece merely warns (correctly of course, but surely redundantly) against
any promise of “a single magical technological ﬁx...Almost certainly there are no such single ﬁxes and no
killer techniques in and of themselves”, but he has nothing more to say about any social forces that might
in future facilitate, hinder or shape new forms of non carbon based energy, or about the kind of society that
might evolve with them. (This contrasts with his dramatic scenarios of a world where effective action has
failed).
Capitalism and technology
3.1 Sociologists have often tended to be wary of “technological determinism”, but the rejection of a single
sui generis, uni-linear and inevitable “magical” technological logic should not preclude attention to the
interaction and mutual shaping of society and technology. Without electricity there could have been no
moving assembly line or carefully calibrated division of labour in mass production. Without
microelectronics and information technology there could be no ﬂexible global economy, linking multitudes
of small and medium producers to global markets. Capitalism is not a monolithic and unidirectional
system. Without divergent trends and new rising actors, these technological changes would themselves
have remained stillborn. Over its history we have seen the self-transformation of capitalism through many
crises, which were survived in the absence of a viable alternative. There is, however, no inevitability here.
Both the electric car and the gas powered fridge are examples of viable technologies whose development
was blocked by established monopolistic power.
3.2 The crisis of global warming has produced a global imperative for a decarbonisation of our production
and consumption. As Urry rightly acknowledges, this cannot be achieved by individual initiatives but will
require prolonged and extensive changes in society, culture and technology and at least the emergence of
a very different, but perhaps not wholly unprecedented kind of capitalism.
3.3 It would for example require a retooling of the energy, production and transport systems leading to a
shift of resources and values from immediate consumption and into savings and long-term planning and
investment. This would require new regulatory and co-operative relations between the private and public
sectors. Any Consumer goods themselves would need to be durable rather than fashionable and marketing
would cease to be the prime driver of production. A major research focus would need to be devoted to
investigating the safety and viability of uncertain options which will take decades to perfect, such as
nuclear waste disposal, fusion power or carbon sequestration. It would be necessary to set in train huge
projects, such as the effective insulation and solarisation of the existing housing stock, the construction of
a DC grid to distribute renewable energy from deserts and offshore wind farms, new public transport
systems and the replacement of all fossil fuel vehicles.
3.4 Such uncertain long-term projects cannot be driven by expectations of short-term proﬁtability, but there
is no shortage of examples of dramatic changes of direction in the history of capitalism. In another such
major crisis for example, “war communism” saw massive social mobilisation, state transformation and
economic change. In the US, Roosevelt’s seemingly unrealistic call for the production of 50,000
aeroplanes in 1940 was over-fulﬁlled by 100%. Britain’s regulations, rationing and welfare, its full
employment, national solidarity and individual self sacriﬁce had little continuity with what had gone before,
although they led on to a post-war capitalism very different from that of the 1930s.
3.5 In the opposite direction, the long post-war boom unravelled with surprising speed, when struck by the
crisis of proﬁtability, in the late 1960s. Much faster than anyone could have predicted, the Keynesian
dirigiste welfare state, which had emerged from the War, and the class consensus that it protected, were
dismantled. The system of Fordist mass production for domestic markets, stabilised by tripartite accords
between large corporations, strong bureaucratic unions and interventionist states, increasingly lost its
dominance. The new leadership moved from nationally based industrial capital to globalising ﬁnancial
capital, which gained in strength with each liberalising step. The initial, tentative deregulatory moves
gathered momentum and became an avalanche (Helleiner 1995;Holloway 1994).
The current crossroads
4.1 The global ﬁnancial crisis in 2008 and 2009 saw some weakening and discrediting of the “business as
usual” advocates. There were pressures to devote signiﬁcant amounts of government stimulus packages
to major carbon reducing infrastructure schemes. The hesitant recovery at the end of the decade, and
renewed conservative assaults on neo Keynesianism have led to a stalling of some of these moves for the
time being.
4.2 The road block to global agreement in Copenhagen and the new assaults on climate science by
industry funded sceptics, should not however blind us to the continuing emergence of new currents withinglobal capitalism today. For example:
1.  The large majority of South Korea’s multi-billion dollar economic stimulus package, is reportedly to
be spent on “green jobs” and energy efﬁciency measures.
2.  In August California approved a plan for the world’s largest solar thermal farm in the Mojave Desert.
3.  In September Germany’s current strong international trade balance was in part attributed to the fact
that “The government through energy and transportation policy, has fostered a German edge in
manufacturing high-speed rail, wind turbines and other technologies that Germans have sold to the
Chinese” (Faiola, 201018).
4.  In the same month the CEO of BHP (one of the largest mining companies in the world) called for
Australia to introduce a carbon price, in order to enable industry to prepare with certainty for what
would inevitably come.
5.  There are countless reports of continuing smaller initiatives by innovative ﬁrms and local bodies,
and of research and development efforts to overcome technical and high cost obstacles.
4.3 The overall upward trend of global warming continues, with a changing climate increasingly expressed
in the greater probability of experiencing damaging weather events in many parts of the world. NASA’S
Godard Institute has now collated air, land and sea measurements for the ﬁrst half of 2010, and found the
average global temperature to be the highest ever recorded. The year 2010 is well on the way to
experiencing the hottest global average temperature ever, exceeding the previous record temperature of
1998. If the massive ﬁres in Russia, the devastation of Pakistan’s unprecedentedly severe monsoonal
ﬂoods and the worst ﬂoods in Europe in 800 years are any indication of what might be expected in the
future, the issue will not go away, nor will the opportunities for innovator proﬁts
4.4 We are at a cross roads where it is as yet unclear which changes will prove most effective and which,
if any will prevail in the battle of potential winners and losers. Each has profound but as yet unclear
implications for class and power relations and for the culture and values of the future. Sociologists who are
familiar with the large scale social and cultural changes of the past should be better prepared to understand
the possibility of such diverging futures than economists and psychologists, with their expectations of a
ﬁxed human nature and their a-historical short term perspectives. Sociology must either claim and merit a
central role on this issue or accept the increasing marginality of the discipline.
Notes
1 The just published Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society (2010) includes 15 sociologists
among its 41 authors.
2 For the BJS information was available on titles but not on abstracts.
References
CROOKE, S (2003) “Change, Uncertainty and the Future of Sociology. Presidential address to TASA
Conference 2000”, Journal of Sociology, 39 (1): 7-14.
DUNLAP, R. H. (2002) “Paradigms, Theories and Environmental Sociology” in Dunlap, R. H., Buttel, F. H.,
Dickens, P. and Gijswijt, A. (Eds) (2002) Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations,
Contemporary Insights, Lanham, Rowman and Littleﬁeld.
FAIOLA A. (2010) “Renaissance in Europe”, The Guardian Weekly, 24 September: 18
GIDDENS, A. (2009) The Politics of Climate Change, Cambridge, Polity
HELLEINER, E. (1995) “Explaining the Globalisation of Financial Markets: Bringing the State Back in”,
Review of International Political Economy, 2 (2), pp. 315-41
HOLLOWAY, J. (1994) “Global Capital and the National State”, Capital and Class, 52, pp.39-43.
LEVER-TRACY, C. (2008) “Global Warming and Sociology”, Current Sociology 56 (3)
PAKULSKI , J. and Trantor, B. (2004) “Environmentalism and Social Differentiation: A paper in memory of
Stephen Crook”, Journal of Sociology, 40(3): 221-235.
URRY, J. (2010) “Sociology Facing Climate Change”, Sociological Research Online, Volume 15, Issue 3
<http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/3/1.html>
URRY, J. (2008) “Climate Change, Travel and Complex Futures”, British Journal of Sociology 59: 261-79
YEARLEY, S (2002) “The Social Construction of Environmental Problems: A theoretical review” in Dunlap
et al. (eds)

Sociology Still Lagging on Climate Change

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics