John Bellamy Foster

Tag: American Journal of Sociology

  • The Power of Inaction – A Review

    Review of Cornelia Woll, ‘The Power of Inaction‘, [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 121, no. 1 (July, 2015): 313-15.

    The great financial crisis of 2007–9 has given rise to a small industry of academic studies, some directed at the wider systemic tendencies of capital, class and crisis, others at narrower regulatory or managerial issues. Cornelia Woll’s ‘The Power of Inaction,’ is a work of the latter kind. It is a study of the state-finance nexus viewed through the lens of paired comparisons of bank bailouts in six countries: (1) the United States and the United Kingdom (the Anglo-American model), (2) Germany and France (large, regulated Eurozone economies), and (3) Denmark and Ireland (smaller European economies).

  • Weber and the Environment

    “Weber and the Environment: Classical Foundations for a Post-Exemptionalist Sociology” (coauthored with Hannah Holleman, Foster listed first), American Journal of Sociology, vol. 117, no. 6 (May 2012), pp. 1625-1673. DOI: 10.1086/664617.

    In the last two decades classical sociology, notably Marx, has been mined for environmental insights in the attempt to surmount the “human exemptionalism” of post–Second World War sociology. Weber, however, has remained an enigma in this respect. This article addresses Weber’s approach to the environment, including its significance for his interpretive-causal framework and his understanding of capitalism. For Weber, sociological meanings were often anchored in biophysical realities, including climate change, resource consumption, and energy scarcity, while environmental influences were refracted in complex ways within cultural reproduction. His work thus constitutes a crucial key to constructing a meaningful postexemptionalist sociology.

    Awards
    • Winner of the 2013 Outstanding Publication Award of the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association.

  • Nature, Technology and the Sacred

    “Nature, Technology and the Sacred,” [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 112, no. 6 (May 2007). (Review of Bronislaw Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred), pp. 1937–1939. DOI: 10.1086/519706.

    The classical sociologists, including Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, all argued that society was experiencing a rapid secularization, arising from the Enlightenment, industrialization, and capitalism. While Marx famously argued that under capitalism “all that is holy is profaned,” Weber just as famously referred to the “disenchantment of nature” associated with formal rationalization. Although by no means the first work to question this secularization thesis, Nature, Technology and the Sacred does so to a degree perhaps unequaled by any other analysis.

  • Why Movements Matter

    “Why Movements Matter,” [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 108, no. 2 (September 2002), pp. 509-10. (Review of Steve Breyman, Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy.)

    In the early 1980s a trans-Atlantic antinuclear movement consisting of millions of protestors emerged seemingly out of nowhere to threaten the prerogatives of power. In Europe this took the form of massive protests against the deployment of Euromissiles—intermediate-range nuclear missiles placed on European soil. In the United States there arose the nuclear freeze movement, aimed at stopping the escalation of U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons. It is often claimed that both wings of this trans-Atlantic antinuclear movement failed. The European antimissile movement was unable to prevent the deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe. Likewise the nuclear freeze movement in the United States did not stop the Reagan administration (its main political target) from escalating its nuclear arms race with the “evil empire.”

  • Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift

    “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology” [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 105, no. 2 (September 1999), pp. 366-405. DOI: 10.1086/210315

    This article addresses a paradox: on the one hand, environmental sociology, as currently developed, is closely associated with the thesis that the classical sociological tradition is devoid of systematic insights into environmental problems; on the other hand, evidence of crucial classical contributions in this area, particularly in Marx, but also in Weber, Durkheim, and others, is too abundant to be convincingly denied. The nature of this paradox, its origins, and the means of transcending it are illustrated primarily through an analysis of Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, which, it is contended, offers important classical foundations for environmental sociology.

    Reprints
    • R. Scott Frey, The Environment and Society: A Reader (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000, 2003).
    • Reprinted in Michael Redclift and Graham Woodgate, ed., New Developments in Environmental Sociology. (Aldershot, U.K., Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 2005), pp. 55-94.