John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Contemporary Sociology

  • The Climate Moment: Environmental Sociology, Climate Change, and the Left

    “The Climate Moment: Environmental Sociology, Climate Change, and the Left,” [PDF], vol. 44, no. 3 (May 2015), pp. 314-21. DOI: 10.1177/0094306115579190a

    On September 21, 2014, the largest climate march in U.S. history took place in New York City, as more than 300,000 protestors signaled to UN delegates arriving for climate talks that more desperate measures were needed to protect humanity and other species. The massive demonstration, though representing a wide array of social and political viewpoints, had its origins on the Left. The radical intellectual thrust of the movement was apparent the day prior to the march, when a vast ‘‘People’s Summit/ Teach-In’’ was led by two organizations- Global Climate Convergence and System Change Not Climate Change- that have arisen out of the left, particularly from the ecosocialist movement, and have been influenced to a considerable extent by U.S. environmental sociology.

     

  • Logging the Globe

    ”Logging the Globe,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology (Featured Essay), vol. 25, no. 5 (September 1996), pp. 598-99. (Review of Patricia Marchak, Logging the Globe.)

    Logging the Globe goes on to analyze the ecological implications of these changes. Marchak carefully documents the unsustainable exploitation of both temperate and tropical forests. In addition, she raises issues about the ecological consequences of plantation forestry, with its sterile monoculture, and highlights the toxic wastes associated with pulp and paper production.

  • Rationality and Nature

    “Rationality and Nature,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology, vol. 24, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 784-86. (Review of Raymond Murphy, Rationality and Nature; Richard Norgaard, Development Betrayed; and Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, ed. Social Theory and the Global Environment.)

    The emergence in the 1980s and ’90s of an increasingly global approach to ecological problems-marked by the ascendance of such issues as the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, tropical deforestation, and an annual loss of species possibly in the tens of thousands-has altered forever the relation of ecology to the social sciences. Recognizing that the entire planet is increas- ingly subject to ecological depredations and that the time available for addressing these problems is extremely short, social scientists concerned with ecological issues are becoming more aggressive in their demands for the ecological transformation of their disciplines. “Sociology,” as Raymond Murphy declares in the preface to Rationality and Nature, “has been constructed as if nature didn’t matter. It has failed to take the processes of nature into account, perceiving only the social construction of reality. Environmental problems are beginning to send shock waves through this myopic sociological structure. Sociology fabricated as if nature didn’t matter constitutes pre-ecological sociology” (p. x).