Feminist Perspectives on Environment and Society

Beate Littig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317878629
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

For courses in Environmental studies, Environmental Sociology, Environmental geography and Development studies; Women's studies and Women's issues options on a wide variety of degree courses. Combining theory with practice, this concise, accessible text provides a comprehensive introduction to the concepts, theories and results of environmental sociology from a feminist perspective. Within an international context it portrays in full the different feminist perspectives on environment and society, which are marginalized in mainstream research, and shows how the feminist critique on environmental sociology contributes to a more general feminist critique of society. Part of the Feminist Perspectives Series providing stimulating introductions to key feminist topics and debates written by well-known, experienced teachers in each field.

Chapter 1

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Introduction: feminist perspectives

Chapter outline

This chapter includes the following:

• presentation of the general purpose of the book;

• introduction to different feminist perspectives on the topic of environment and society;

• overview of the overall organisation of the book.

Introduction

During the past 20–25 years, the sociological analysis of the relationship between the people and the environment, as well as that of specific topics (e.g. environmental consciousness and environmental behaviour, mobility that is consistent with the environment and society, ecological modernisation), was predominantly referred to as environmental sociology, even though some authors preferred other terms according to their own points of emphasis (e.g. ‘social ecology’, Fischer-Kowalski et al. 1997; see also Catton and Dunlap 1978a, 1978b; Dunlap and Catton 1994; Nelissen et al. 1997; Redelift and Woodgate 1997). Since its beginning in the early 1970s, environmental sociology developed rather slowly towards becoming an established branch of sociology. This was often explained by theoretical problems arising from the relationship between the environment and society (e.g. Dunlap and Catton 1994; Redelift and Woodgate 1995). The fact that sociology traditionally sees itself as the science of society, of ‘social facts’ (Emile Durkheim) or of ‘social action’ (Max Weber), produces problems for the conceptual consideration of nature and environment. The debates on this topic are further complicated by the fact that they span very divergent disciplines – technology, science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc. – which create various problems of interdisciplinary research.

Feminist perspectives, or gender issues, are rarely dealt with explicitly in environmental sociology (Die Grünen 1987; Schultz and Weller 1995; Schultz 1998). The specific effects of certain environmental measures on women, or the study of specific female practices, form, at most, only a part of more general studies; for instance, representative surveys that try to compare the level of environmental consciousness between men and women. Nor is feminist theory much concerned with questions of environmental sociology – at any rate, the effects of equal rights policies or welfare regimes or of reproductive work on the environment are hardly ever discussed. Nevertheless, in specific feminist fields of study – for example, feminist analysis of housing and traffic planning – environmental effects play an important part. Falling between environmental sociology and feminist theory one may find the so-called ecofeminism. This is concerned with the destructive relationship between society and the environment based on a radically feminist analysis of patriarchy, which challenges both environmental sociology and feminist theory.

This book offers a critical overview of the sociological and feminist discussions dealing with the interrelationships of environment and society. Based on this critique I will propose a new feminist approach to investigate environmental problems which I call gender-sensitive socio-ecological research, combining both gender studies and environmental studies. Since the book is written for a broad spectrum of readers, some of whom may not necessarily be familiar with sociological theory and research or with feminist writing, I begin with a basic introduction to the relevant terms, approaches and interconnections between feminism, sociology and environment. This is the focus of the first two chapters of the book. The first chapter begins with a brief overview of the development of environmental sociology and the research topics with which it is concerned. I then describe, in Chapter 2, the different feminist perspectives that are relevant for analysing the relationships between people and the environment.

Environmental sociology

Environmental sociology is a relatively new field of study, which developed over the past 25 to 30 years. The issues surrounding the relationship between the environment and society challenge the basic assumptions of sociological theory and are still marginalised by the main stream of sociological research (Dunlap 1997; Rucht 1998). Indeed, we may note that this marginalised status seems to be a common feature of both feminist theory and environmental sociology (cf. Gerhard 1998). This is apparent when we consider that environmental sociology in most countries has been only slowly institutionalised in the university system and the research funding bodies. (For an account of the socio-environmental research in the European Union, see Redelift et al. 2000.) Consequently, environmental sociology is still carried out mainly by single individuals in academic institutions or small interest groups in non-university institutes. Yet environmental issues have become integrated into the agendas of almost all major sociological research organisations: for example, as a section for ‘Environmental Sociology’ in the American Sociological Association (in 1976), as the ‘Research Committee on Environment and Society’ (RC 24) of the International Sociological Association or as the environmental sociology section of the German Sociological Association ‘Sociology and Ecology’ (since 1997).

There are different definitions of environmental sociology which are also reflected in the various terms used, such as ‘environmental sociology’, ‘ecological sociology’ or ‘social ecology’. These approaches differ in their theoretical paradigms, in major fields of research and in the basic understanding of what really determines the relationship between society and nature (Catton and Dunlap 1978a, 1978b; Buttel 1987; Dunlap and Catton 1994; Fischer-Kowalski et al. 1997; Nelissen et al. 1997; Redelift and Woodgate 1995, 1997). Yet despite the theoretical and empirical differences they are unified by three assumptions:

1. Societies depend upon natural environments.

2. The nature–society relations have become critical in the last decades as documented in the broad phenomenology of the global socio-ecological crisis.

3. Social sciences can no longer (as they did traditionally) neglect the relations between natural systems and social systems.

Following from these assumptions, environmental/ecological sociology seeks to contribute to the understanding and solution of the socio-ecological crisis by analysing the conditions and consequences of society–nature interactions, of contemporary anthropogenic environmental change and of modern environmentalism (Buttel 1987; Dunlap and Catton 1994; Hamm 1996; Hamm and Neumann 1996; Nelissen et al. 1997; Redelift and Woodgate 1997; Reusswig et al. 1997).

In practice, environmental sociology is active in various fields of research using qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social research as well as aiming to reconceptualise the relationship between environment and society.

Table 1.1 gives an overview of current and future research fields within environmental sociology which have been identified by the environmental sociology section of the German Sociological Association (Reusswig et al. 1997). The list of topics given includes core

Table 1.1 Current and future research fields of environmental sociology

Research area	Task description	Examples
Concrete interactions	Reasons, forms and dynamics of interactions between social systems/actors and natural systems/resources	Material and energy flows of a given society; social change and land use changes; water as a contested resource; material dimensions of syndromes of global change
Consciousness and behaviour	Determinants, constraints and changes of individual and group-specific environmental consciousness and behaviour	Consumption patterns of different social groups; changes of individual attitudes towards nature; development of sustainable lifestyles
Ecological crisis and sociological theory	Empirical and conceptual discussions of the relevance of the ecological crisis to sociological theory	Concepts of nature in ecology; concepts of nature in the sociological tradition; modelling of society–nature interactions
Social learning	Determinants and forms of individual and collective learning from ecological problems within organised and institutionalised contexts	Implementation problems of environmental laws in firms; social communication of environmentalism in public organisations; mediation experiences in environmental conflicts
Nature and gender relations	Status and transformation of gender relations within societies due to environmental crisis and ecological discourse	Gender-specific attitudes and behaviour towards nature; changes of work patterns in households due to more environmentally sound behaviour; discourse changes of male–female distinctions
Political formations	Social conditions and consequences of environmentally relevant political decisions	Emergence and specific features of environmental policies; distribution effects of sustainability; political function of media; environmental goals of different political actors
Global change	Global environmental problems and change of worldwide social systems and actors	Effect of global warming on different types of society; socioeconomic globalisation as a driving force for ecological crisis; typical patterns of humanity–nature interactions; international social learning in the face of ecological crisis

Source: Reusswig et al. (1997)

areas of sociological environmental research for future analysis, many which are also being currently investigated. However, some of the topics have already received a lot of attention, especially within German-speaking environmental sociology (cf. Reusswig et al. 1997; Rucht 1998; for the USA see Buttel 1987), including:

• the relationships of environmental consciousness and environmentally sound behaviour;

• modern lifestyles and ecology;

• environmental issues in the business sector;

• environmental movements;

• the social implications of sustainable development; and

• the theoretical consequences of the environmental crisis for sociological theory.

Gender relations have hardly been considered at all in the main stream of environmental sociology, so it is almost surprising that they are included as a special research area in Table 1.1 (Buttel 1987; Dunlap 1997; Mellor 1997b). Therefore, the feminist perspectives on environmental sociology are relatively new. Yet different positions and debates are beginning to emerge, reflecting the tension between activism and theory – something that is rather familiar to feminist scholarship. They deal with complex ideas which raise basic questions: What are ‘feminist perspectives’? What is environment? What is society? What are the connections between society and environment? What does it mean to view the environment and society based on feminist perspectives? How does this relationship influence gender relations? All these ideas as well as the contexts in which they are used have multiple meanings, not only in everyday usage but also in any scientific research concerned with these topics. Hence, some of the basic terms and ideas shall be sketched in the following sections.

Feminist perspectives

The term ‘feminist perspectives’ is deliberately used in the plural form in order to indicate that there is not one but a range of different feminist perspectives. Feminism is a specific worldview that is interested in the analysis of social discrimination against women and ways of changing it. During the first wave of the women's movement (from the middle of the nineteenth century to beginning of the twentieth) the lack of women's rights and their subordinate social status were discussed publicly for the first time. This culminated in a political struggle for the legal equality of women and men, and primarily for the right to vote and have an education (Gerhard 1990; Oakley 1981). The first women's movement temporarily came to an end during the 1920s–1930s owing to the increased influence of conservative and anti-feminist positions which essentially tied the female role to the ideal of motherhood. It was long after the Second World War, in the 1970s, before the so-called second-wave women's movement began. The beginning of this second feminist movement is distinguished by the search for personal realisation in order to understand women's oppression, analyses of patriarchal violence, and the development of political counter-strategies, which were discussed in small private or semi-public groups. While at the beginning of this second-wave feminism political action and theoretical reflection were closely connected, theory and practice were separated more and more over time. The fields of interest have become more diversified, attention has shifted to new questions and their treatment has become more professional (Gerhard 1998). Feminist theory is now highly differentiated according to different epistemological perspectives. At least some of these have become established within academic programmes (e.g. as feminist economics, feminist sociology, and gender studies among others).

Even though there is no uniform understanding of feminism, should there not still be at least a basic mutual understanding that is shared by all feminists? Rosalind Delmar has tried to offer such a baseline definition:

Many would agree that, at the very least, a feminist is someone who holds that women suffer discrimination because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain negated and unsatisfied, and that the satisfaction of these needs would require a radical change (some would say a revolution even) in the social, economic and political order. But beyond that, things immediately become more complicated.

(Delmar 1994: 5)

I believe that Delmar is rather optimistic in assuming that many would agree with her. Not only are there complications beyond those she has described, but even the formulation as it is quoted here presents problems. First, one may ask what the word ‘women’ means: Does she mean ‘women’ as opposed to ‘men’? How is the term ‘women’ determined: by sex, gender, or in some other way? Where do trans-gender persons fit in? Are women discriminated against because of their sex – as Delmar seems to believe? Is there a worldwide, universal discrimination against all women, or are there differences between individual women? Do women have specific needs that are not satisfied? If this is the case, what are these needs? Does the failure to satisfy these needs result from the fact that they are women, or are there other reasons – for example, poverty? What changes are necessary and what are the appropriate measures to avoid discrimination against women? Can only women be feminists or can the term also apply to men who share the views quoted by Delmar?

None of these questions can be answered clearly from a feminist perspective. On the contrary, the various feminist perspectives disagree on exactly these questions (e.g. for political science see Sauer 2000). Since the mid-1980s several attempts have been made to classify the different feminist approaches. This has happened partly in response to the increasing differentiation of the feminist ideas about women's oppression and life situations (e.g. Eisenstein 1984; Jaggar 1983). In their book about feminist perspectives in sociology, Pamela Abbott and Claire Wallace (1997: 31ff) defined seven different feminist viewpoints: liberal/reformist, Marxist, radical, dual-systems, post-modernist/post-structuralist, materialist and Black feminists:

Liberal feminism is concerned to uncover the immediate forms of discrimination against women in Western societies and to fight for legal and other reforms to overcome them. Marxist feminists argue that the major reason for women's oppression is the exclusion of women from public production and that women's struggle for emancipation is an integral part of the fight for the proletariat (working class) to overthrow capitalism. Radical...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Feminist Perspectives Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Publisher's acknowledgements
• Author's acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: feminist perspectives
• 2 Environment and society
• 3 Work and the environment
• 4 Consumerism, lifestyles and behavioural changes
• 5 Politics and political strategies
• 6 Conclusions and outlook: towards a gender-sensitive socio-ecological research
• Glossary
• Select bibliography
• Index