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Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

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Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

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Sociological Theory
After the End of Nature
ROBERT J. BRULLE

Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change poses a fundamental challenge to the cultural beliefs
and social structure of global social order. However, the social sciences treat the natural world as a passive backdrop in which the human project unfolds, and focus
primarily on the relation between social facts. In a world where human activities are
being manifestly impacted by a continuously shifting climate, it is no longer adequate to only look to human social interactions to gain an understanding of how
social order is constituted and changed. This realization has led a number of scholars
across the range of social sciences to identify a need to move beyond anthropocentric
social sciences. This essay provides an overview of the major efforts to create a social
science that integrates social and natural facts within the field of sociology. Three
areas of foundational research in this area are discussed, including the reinterpretation of sociological classics, the development of constructed society/nature hybrids,
and the creation of linked society–natural systems models. Examples of empirical
research demonstrating these approaches are then provided. The essay concludes
with a survey of ongoing sociological theory projects on this topic.

INTRODUCTION
Over 25 years ago in a Congressional Hearing, noted climatologist James
Hansen testified that “Global warming has reached a level such that we
can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship
between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming (Hansen, 1988,
p. 3).” This testimony marks the public declaration of the scientific community that humans were significantly altering the global climate through
the emissions of CO2 . The following year, Bill McKibben published a book
titled “The End of Nature.” In this book, he argued that as a result of climate
change, the idea of nature as something independent of and separate from
human society was no longer viable. As a result of this transformation he
argues that: “We are no longer able to think of ourselves as a species tossed

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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about by larger forces—now we are those larger forces” (McKibben, 2006,
p. xviii).
Anthropogenic climate change poses a fundamental challenge to the cultural beliefs and social structure of global social order. The advent of global
climate change is a fundamental transformation in both human and natural history. The impact of human society has reached such an extent that it is
modifying the fundamental geochemical cycles on the planet. This will result
in a continuously changing climate for several millennia (Anderson, 2012;
Rockström et al., 2009). Because of this impact, the natural science community is seriously debating whether we have entered a new geological period,
known as the Anthropocene, marking the role of human activity as a significant force in the shaping of the planet (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). Regardless
of the outcome of the official geological period certification process, it is clear
that human society has entered into a new era, in which “natural forces and
human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate
of the other” (Zalesiewicz, Williams, Steffen, & Crutzen, 2010,
p. 2231).
While human society has always influenced the shape of the natural world,
the current scale and scope of the human influence on natural processes is of
an entirely new dimension. The historical development of world built around
technological industrialism (either capitalism or socialism) has reached the
limits to growth regarding the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb our carbon
emissions. Thus, the material conditions of human existence have fundamentally changed, and to live within these limits requires massive social and economic changes. For example, Anderson and Bows (2012, p. 640) convincingly
argue that continued economic growth is no longer compatible with avoiding
extremely dangerous and perhaps catastrophic climate change. However, the
existing social institutions, culture, and ways of life built around global capitalism and consumption have yet to respond to this situation. Instead, our
institutions remain frozen in the existing patterns of action, as CO2 levels continue to increase (Leahy, Bowden, & Threadgold, 2010, pp. 863–864). We are
confronted with a historical situation that has no parallel in human history.
As a result, our cultural repertoire is unable to imagine, much less provide,
responses that enable us to respond effectively to climate change. So the climate crisis manifests itself also as a cultural crisis (Hamilton, 2012, p. 728;
Zizek, 2010, pp. 326–327). This is more than just an academic issue. Failure
to respond effectively to climate change will engender a human catastrophe
“on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic
depression of the first half of the twentieth century (Stern, 2006, p. iv). Without an intellectual approach that can move us beyond the current cultural
and political impasse, the fate of future generations is at risk.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL THEORY
The current structure of academic disciplines contributes to this cultural crisis. The advent of climate change brings into question the viability of the
nineteenth century disciplinary divisions between the natural and social sciences. For the most part, the social sciences have assumed that the natural world as a passive backdrop in which the human project unfolds, and
focused on the relation between social facts. The natural sciences mirror this
distinction, in focusing only on natural facts. However, climate change shows
that this separation between the social and the natural worlds is obsolete. In
a world where human activities are being manifestly impacted by a continuously shifting climate, it is no longer adequate to only look to human social
interactions to gain an understanding of how social order is constituted and
changed. As Hamilton (2013) explains: “So the advent of the Anthropocene
shatters the self-contained world of social analysis that is the terrain of modern social science, and explains why those intellectuals who remain within
it find it impossible to “analyze” the politics, sociology or philosophy of climate change in a way that is true to the science. They end up floundering
in the old categories, unable to see that something epochal has occurred, a
rupture on the scale of the Industrial Revolution or the emergence of civilization itself” (Hamilton, 2013). The nineteenth century divisions between
the disciplines reflect a now nonexistent world in which this division might
have made some sense. By continuing to replicate this distinction, the traditional academic divisions contribute to our society’s inability to formulate
a coherent intellectual approach to the Anthropocene. As such, these divisions mirror the anthropocentric cultural beliefs on which our existing social
institutions are built. Thus, the current structure of the academic disciplines is
deeply implicated as part of the cultural crisis engendered by climate change.
Fredrick Jameson (1998, p. 50) defines this issue clearly: “It seems to be easier
for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of
nature than the breakdown of late capitalism, perhaps that is due to some
weakness in our imaginations.”
This realization has led a number of scholars across the range of social
sciences to identify a need to move beyond anthropocentric social sciences
(Urry, 2011, p. 8; Zizek, 2010, p. 333), and has resulted in a number of efforts to
integrate social and natural science perspectives in their treatment of climate
change. This emerging trend in the social sciences includes efforts in philosophy (Hamilton, 2012, p. 29, anthropology (Crate & Nuttall, 2009) history
(Chakrabarty, 2009; Domanska, 2010; Fagan, 2000) and economics (Anderson & Bows, 2012, p. 640; Daly, 2005; Norgaard, 1994). This essay seeks to
provide an overview of the major themes in this endeavor within the field of
sociology.

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FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Serious consideration of the dichotomy between sociology and the natural
sciences began after the publication of the Limits to Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972). In a landmark article, Catton and Dunlap
(1978) critiqued the field of sociology as being dominated by an anthropocentric approach, which they called the Human Exemptionalist Paradigm (HEP).
This paradigm focused sociological inquiry on the analysis of social facts,
and thus turned a blind eye toward the impacts and interactions of society
with nature. To address this failure, Catton and Dunlap advocated the adoption of a New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), which saw human beings
as “one species among the many that are independently involved in our
biotic community that shape our social life” (Catton & Dunlap, 1978, p. 45).
Accordingly, human society was seen as fully integrated into nature, and
thus sociological research needed to shift its paradigm to integrate the biophysical environment as a key factor in understanding society. Building on
this insight, there have been a number of intellectual attempts to develop a
meta-theoretical perspective that would be capable of informing a nonanthropogenic social science.1 At the risk of oversimplifying a complex literature, three approaches can be identified.
REINTERPRETATION OF CLASSIC SOCIOLOGISTS
The first approach to transcend the society/nature divide is based on a reexamination of the writings of the classic sociologists to expand the focus of
the discipline. These examinations show that the foundational theorists of
sociology, especially Marx and Weber, integrated the natural world into their
analysis of social order. Foster (1999) argues that Marx’s focus on the ecological metabolic exchange of material between society and nature linked
human society to natural processes. The reexamination of the work of Weber
focuses on the role that a society’s energy regime plays in the development
of a society. The crux of Weber’s work is seen as centering between two types
of social organization—the traditional–organic, based in human and animal
labor, and the rational–inorganic, based in coal, marks a transition to a different form of social organization. Foster and Holleman (2012, p. 1636) argue
that “it is the reliance on “inorganic” sources of energy (fossil fuels), along
with energy-intensive and high resource consumption, that, for Weber, distinguishes the environmental context of industrial capitalism.” Accordingly,

1. See Dunlap (2010) for an excellent overview of the historical development of environmental sociology and the nature/culture debate within sociology.

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they maintain that Weber was one of the first sociologists of energy consumption. These reinterpretations have animated a large number of empirical analyses, which are discussed in the next section.
WORLD COMPOSED AS HYBRID NATURAL–CULTURAL OBJECTS
The second approach, primarily centered on the work of Bruno Latour, seeks
to transcend the natural/social divide.2 Arguing from a constructionist
viewpoint, Latour maintains that there never has been any such thing as
distinctly nature or social. Rather, he argues that “Nature is not a thing, a
domain, a realm, an ontological territory. It is a way of organizing the division between appearances and reality, subjectivity and objectivity, history
and immutability” (Latour, 2010, p. 476). Thus, nature is a human-composed
object to account for resistance to innumerable interpretations.3 So, in this
perspective, the conceptions of “nature” and “society” are both part of a
collective of linguistically created worlds that brings different realities into
existence. Nature is thus composed of hybrid natural/social objects that are
selected out of the flow of experience,4 and are thus constituted as “objects”
based on shared collective interpretations in human society. Latour argues
that just as the climate scientists have composed a narrative that brings the
workings of the global system into view, and thus relevance, so to do social
scientists need to reformulate their approaches to extend this narrative to
the social world. This approach animates an ongoing project headed by
Latour.
INTEGRATED MODELS
The third area of sociological research that attempts to move beyond the
society/nature divide takes the form of integrated models. This approach
builds on an assumption that “nature and society are effectively coproduced
through the reciprocal and symmetric interplay of the social and the physical
(Goldman & Schurman, 2000, p. 575.).”5 Underlying this approach is the use
of evolutionary ecology instead of the uncritical use of systems ecology. In
systems ecology, nature is seen as a biocybernetic entity that regulates itself
(Hazelrigg, 1995, p. 295; Keulartz, 1998, p. 149). This view was commonly
held by many ecologists throughout most of the 1960s and 1970s. However,
the notion of community, and the supposed self-ordering properties of these
2. See Pollini (2013) for an excellent discussion and critique of Latour’s analysis.
3. See the discussion in footnote 5, Freudenberg, Frickel, and Gramling (1995, pp. 367–368) for a further discussion of this viewpoint.
4. Latour uses the term unrecruited objects.
5. Also see (Liu et al., 2007, p. 1513).

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communities was robustly critiqued in the 1980’s (Schrader-Frechette &
McCoy, 1994, pp. 111–112). As a result of this debate, systems ecology was
supplanted in the 1980s and 1990s by evolutionary ecology. Evolutionary
ecology centers on the idea that nature evolves through the generation,
diffusion, and selective retention of random mutations. Nature is involved
in a process of continual adaptation, which is not an active structuring
process. Accordingly, evolutionary ecology rejects the idea that nature
can be seen as a self-regulating mechanism. Rather, nature is seen as a
chaotic system, in which chance and random events, as well as linear and
nonlinear interactions govern (Hazelrigg, 1995, pp. 295–296; Zimmerman,
1994, p. 12). The uncritical use of a systems ecology perspective sets up an
artificial dichotomy between human and nonhuman nature. From a systems
ecology viewpoint, human activities are artifices that upset the balance of
the self-regulating system of nature. This informs a particular treatment of
nature as apart from man (Keulartz, 1998, p. 173, 1999). This dichotomy
is not present if an evolutionary ecology perspective is adopted. Humans
are seen as part of the complex interactions between living entities, and
the apparent metaphysical dichotomy between human and nonhuman
nature disappears into a consideration of specific interactions (Haila, 2000;
Keulartz, 1998, p. 173).
Supporting this approach are a number of epistemological arguments. The
two leading approaches are the co-constitution of nature and society pioneered by the work of Freudenberg, and a critical realist approach developed
by Carolan. For Freudenberg, analytical distinctions are needed to distinguish between nature and culture so the interrelationships can be examined.
This leads to specific comparative historical examinations of how society and
nature have interacted with one another over time (Murphy & Dunlap, 2012).
Carolan (2005) utilizes a critical realist perspective to argue for the use of
empirical research that encompasses natural and social variables in an empirical research program.
None of these three approaches has achieved intellectual dominance
within environmental sociology. Perhaps the sharpest debate is between
the constructivist and empiricist approaches. A series of articles has noted
several key issues in this debate, including major conceptual problems
in the work of Latour (Pollini, 2013), and the alleged dissolution of the
metaphysical nature/culture divide in the analysis of existing relationships
between biophysical phenomena and social systems (Carolan, 2005; Dunlap,
2010; Haila, 2000). While this debate is ongoing, there has been some
progress in sociological work that attempts to encompass natural and social
interactions.

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EMERGING APPROACHES
Much of the intellectual work over the past 35 years since the publication
of Catton and Dunlap (1978) does not advance into new theoretical territory
uniting the natural and social sciences. Rather, this work marks a shift in
research focus to the consideration of environmentally related phenomena
using standard sociological approaches. This includes use of social movement theory to examine the environmental movement and the climate denial
countermovement, attitudinal and demographic correlates of individual levels of environmental concern, and the social and cultural drivers of consumption. However, there are several different approaches that seek to integrate
the social and natural sciences, which mark an important development in
sociological theory. Within the field of environmental sociology, there are
three major areas of inquiry that examine the relationship between social
organization and environmental impacts.
•

•
•

The role of social organization in the creation and expansion of climate
change
The impact of climate change on global inequality
Integrative models.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE
Perhaps the most developed research area within environmental sociology
is the role of social organization in the creation of anthropogenic climate
change. This work links human social order to the creation of anthropogenic
climate change through the coupling of political economy with a metabolic
analysis of the flows of energy into society, and the production of greenhouse
gases. The core of the political economy analysis is based on the model
known as the Treadmill of Production (Schnaiberg, 1980). This approach
maintains that the capitalist economy creates ecological problems through
a self-reinforcing mechanism of ever more production and consumption.
The logic of the treadmill of production is an ever-growing need for capital
investment to generate goods for sale in the marketplace. The expansion
of the economy drives the creation of economic wealth, and also the negative byproducts of the production process. Thus, the treadmill operates
to maintain a positive rate of return on investments and externalizes the
environmental costs of its activities. From an ecological perspective this
process requires continuous and growing inputs of energy and material,
and thus increased carbon emissions. Utilizing the industrial metabolism
approach pioneered by Marx, researchers have empirically demonstrated
the validity of the treadmill of production approach regarding carbon
emissions (Clark & York, 2005). This research shows that the major social

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driving forces of greenhouse gas emissions are economic and population
growth, magnified by open trade policy and foreign investment in developing countries (Jorgensen & Burns, 2007; Jorgensen, Dick, & Mahutga, 2007;
York, Rosa, & Dietz, 2003). Thus, this analysis links the disruption of the
global climate system to the dynamics of the capitalist economic system,
thus effectively linking social structure to nature.
THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON GLOBAL INEQUALITY
A second major field of research on the interactions between climate change
and social order focuses on how climate change accentuates global inequality
and differentially impacts humans across the globe. This work combines the
research on environmental justice (Brulle & Pellow, 2006) with world systems
theory (Roberts & Parks, 2007). This analysis shows that the certain groups
(especially women and minorities) and the citizens of less developed countries who have the least responsibility for historical carbon emissions will
suffer the most from the initial adverse impacts of climate change. Specifically, drought caused by changing rainfall patterns, will severely impact
much of the global south, especially in Africa, with adverse impacts on agricultural productivity and water availability. In addition, rising temperatures
will allow increases of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and other insects
to expand their range. Taking all of these impacts together, climate change
will further increase the extent of global poverty and inequality. This research
has successfully joined the dynamics of the world economic system with the
geographic analysis of climate change impacts to show how the “social” fact
of global inequality will be impacted. Thus, it links the sources and outcomes
of climate change to social processes, and moves toward a linkage between
social facts and natural facts.
INTEGRATIVE MODELS
There are three types of integrative models. The first is the notion of coupled
human and natural systems (Liu et al., 2007). Primarily focused on local
or regional analyses, these analyses consider both ecological and social
variables to construct temporal or spatial models of these interactions. For
example, one study looked at the interactions of the impacts of economic
development on the natural environment, and how this then impacted
tourism levels in Wisconsin (Liu et al., 2007). A second form of integrative
models follows Carolan (2005) and integrates both biophysical and social
variable into its analysis. There have been a series of studies based on this
approach that integrates weather conditions into analyses of levels of public
opinion regarding climate change (Brulle, Carmichael, & Jenkins, 2012,

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Hamilton & Keim, 2009). The third area of research focuses on the conjoint
constitution of nature and society. In an important paper, Freudenberg,
Frickel, and Gramling (1995) develop a historical analysis of how a physical
object (a mountain in Wisconsin) was socially constructed, and how these
constructions impacted social interactions in that geographic location. This
analysis was extended to examine the interrelationships between energy
development, environmental risk, and the politics of resource dependent
communities (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010).
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
How well this research addresses the changed circumstances that we face
in the anthropocene is an open question. While the linked human and
natural systems approach provides an analysis of how specific social and
environmental processes interact, it accepts that the distinction between
social and natural facts exists. So this form of analysis reproduces the
nature/society split. While ecological modernization is certainly highly
problematic, the treadmill of production approach is not without its own
shortcomings. Fundamentally, this approach sees climate change as the
result of the process of capital accumulation. So this form of analysis, while
it does link social processes with their environmental impacts, it is not
significantly different in its approach than the linked social and natural
systems. The analysis of climate justice also follows the same form. However,
this analysis links social processes—in the form of uneven development
in a global capitalist economy to the production of carbon emissions, and
the subsequent environmental effects. Thus, this takes the form of Global
Capitalist Economic Development → Carbon Emissions → Unequal Impacts.
So these three different approaches do not move beyond the nature/society
divide. In addition, the analysis of the Treadmill of Production and Climate
Justice are both highly reliant on the causal centrality of capitalism. The
adequacy of this approach has been questioned. As Chakrabary (2009,
p. 212) notes “Capitalist globalization exists; so should its critiques. But
these critiques do not give us an adequate hold on human history once we
accept that the crisis of climate change is here with us and may exist as part
of this planet for much longer than capitalism or long after capitalism has
undergone many more historic mutations.” The final approach of conjoined
constitution of nature and society can perhaps provide a robust approach
to move beyond the nature/society split in sociological analysis. The case
studies led by Freudenberg point in this direction. However, this approach
is still in development. Recognizing the inadequacy of current approaches,
Latour (2011, p. 11) has initiated a major research effort to bridge this gap.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

However, it is not at all clear what this intellectual approach contributes to
sociological theory.
However, Latour is not alone in recognizing the inadequacy of the social
sciences in the face of global climate change. The natural science community has engaged in a long-term effort to incorporate the social sciences into
a comprehensive research program (Mooney, Duraiappah, & Larigauderie,
2013). This has culminated in the “Future Earth”6 research effort. This program seeks to “develop the knowledge for responding effectively to the risks
and opportunities of global environmental change and for supporting transformation towards global sustainability in the coming decades.” Since this
program has just been initiated, it is too early to tell if this research effort will
bridge the divide between the social and natural sciences.
A second major effort within sociology centers on the American Sociological Association (ASA) Task Force on Climate Change. Noting the inadequacy
of current sociological efforts to address climate change, the ASA convened
this task force in 2011. The report of this research effort is slated to be published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Finally, the Institute for Advanced
Studies at Princeton University has developed a program to be carried out in
the 2013–2014 academic year titled “The Environmental Turn and the Human
Sciences.” This effort involves a detailed investigation into the “on the strategies that different disciplines are adopting to deal with the challenge of environmental crises.7 ”
As early as 1978, scholars recognized the need to expand the concerns of
sociology and the other social sciences to encompass the global environment.
Since that time, there has been substantial progress in a number of areas.
However, with the advent of global climate change, the notion of the inadequacy of the social sciences in view of our changed historical circumstances
has become increasingly widespread. As a result, there are a number of initiatives under way to develop a more adequate post-holocene social science.
This is a major emerging development in the social sciences, and this topic
stands at the forefront of their future development.
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Univ. Press.
Schrader-Frechette, K. S., & McCoy, E. D. (1994). How the tail wags the dog: How
value judgments determine ecological science. Environmental Values, 3, 107–120.

Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

13

Stern, N. (2006). Stern review on the economics of climate change. Chancellor of the Exchequer: London - Executive Summary.
Urry, J. (2011). Climate change & society. Polity: Malden, MA.
York, R., Rosa, E. A., & Dietz, T. (2003). Footprints on the Earth: The environmental
consequences of modernity. American Sociological Review, 68, 279–300.
Zalasiewicz, I., Williams, M., Steffen, W., & Crutzen, P. (2010). The new world of the
anthropocene. Environmental Science and Technology, 44(7), 2228–2231.
Zimmerman, M. E. (1994). Contesting earth’s future: Radical ecology and postmodernity.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zizek, S. (2010). Living in the end times. New York, NY: Verson.

FURTHER READING
Anderson, K. (2012). Climate change going beyond dangerous – Brutal numbers and
tenuous hope. Development Dialogue, 16–40.
Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The climate of history: Four theses. Critical Inquiry, 35,
197–222.
Daly, H. (2005). Economics in a full world. Scientific American, 293(3).
Dunlap, R. (2010). The maturation and diversification of environmental sociology:
from constructivism and realism to agnosticism and pragmatism. In M. Redclift &
G. Woodgate (Eds.), The international handbook of environmental sociology (2nd ed.,
pp. 15–32). Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA.
Latour, B. (2011). Waiting for Gaia. Composing the common world through arts and politics – A lecture at the French Institute London, November 2011.
Liu, J, Dietz T., Carpenter S., Alberti M., Folke C., Moran E. … Taylor W. (2007).
Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science, 317, 1513–1516.
Roberts, J. T., & Parks, B. (2007). A climate of injustice: Global inequality, north–south
politics, and climate policy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

ROBERT J. BRULLE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robert J. Brulle (BS US Coast Guard Academy, 1974; PhD Sociology, George
Washington University, 1995) is Professor of Sociology and Environmental
Science in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the US environmental movement, critical theory, and public participation in environmental
decision making. He is the author of over 50 articles in these areas, and is
the author of Agency, Democracy and the Environment: The US Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective (MIT Press, 2000), and
editor, with David Pellow, of Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (MIT Press, 2005).
Correspondence to: Dr. Robert J. Brulle, Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19119.
Email: brullerj@drexel.edu

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

RELATED ESSAYS
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Erik Gartzke
Modeling Coal and Natural Gas Markets (Economics), Franziska Holz
Natural Resources and Development (Political Science), Kevin M. Morrison
Economics of Renewable Energy Production (Economics), Gregory F. Nemet
The Politics of Disaster Relief (Political Science), Alexander J. Oliver and
Andrew Reeves
The Social Science of Sustainability (Political Science), Johannes Urpelainen



Sociological Theory
After the End of Nature
ROBERT J. BRULLE

Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change poses a fundamental challenge to the cultural beliefs
and social structure of global social order. However, the social sciences treat the natural world as a passive backdrop in which the human project unfolds, and focus
primarily on the relation between social facts. In a world where human activities are
being manifestly impacted by a continuously shifting climate, it is no longer adequate to only look to human social interactions to gain an understanding of how
social order is constituted and changed. This realization has led a number of scholars
across the range of social sciences to identify a need to move beyond anthropocentric
social sciences. This essay provides an overview of the major efforts to create a social
science that integrates social and natural facts within the field of sociology. Three
areas of foundational research in this area are discussed, including the reinterpretation of sociological classics, the development of constructed society/nature hybrids,
and the creation of linked society–natural systems models. Examples of empirical
research demonstrating these approaches are then provided. The essay concludes
with a survey of ongoing sociological theory projects on this topic.

INTRODUCTION
Over 25 years ago in a Congressional Hearing, noted climatologist James
Hansen testified that “Global warming has reached a level such that we
can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship
between the greenhouse effect and the observed warming (Hansen, 1988,
p. 3).” This testimony marks the public declaration of the scientific community that humans were significantly altering the global climate through
the emissions of CO2 . The following year, Bill McKibben published a book
titled “The End of Nature.” In this book, he argued that as a result of climate
change, the idea of nature as something independent of and separate from
human society was no longer viable. As a result of this transformation he
argues that: “We are no longer able to think of ourselves as a species tossed

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

about by larger forces—now we are those larger forces” (McKibben, 2006,
p. xviii).
Anthropogenic climate change poses a fundamental challenge to the cultural beliefs and social structure of global social order. The advent of global
climate change is a fundamental transformation in both human and natural history. The impact of human society has reached such an extent that it is
modifying the fundamental geochemical cycles on the planet. This will result
in a continuously changing climate for several millennia (Anderson, 2012;
Rockström et al., 2009). Because of this impact, the natural science community is seriously debating whether we have entered a new geological period,
known as the Anthropocene, marking the role of human activity as a significant force in the shaping of the planet (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000). Regardless
of the outcome of the official geological period certification process, it is clear
that human society has entered into a new era, in which “natural forces and
human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate
of the other” (Zalesiewicz, Williams, Steffen, & Crutzen, 2010,
p. 2231).
While human society has always influenced the shape of the natural world,
the current scale and scope of the human influence on natural processes is of
an entirely new dimension. The historical development of world built around
technological industrialism (either capitalism or socialism) has reached the
limits to growth regarding the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb our carbon
emissions. Thus, the material conditions of human existence have fundamentally changed, and to live within these limits requires massive social and economic changes. For example, Anderson and Bows (2012, p. 640) convincingly
argue that continued economic growth is no longer compatible with avoiding
extremely dangerous and perhaps catastrophic climate change. However, the
existing social institutions, culture, and ways of life built around global capitalism and consumption have yet to respond to this situation. Instead, our
institutions remain frozen in the existing patterns of action, as CO2 levels continue to increase (Leahy, Bowden, & Threadgold, 2010, pp. 863–864). We are
confronted with a historical situation that has no parallel in human history.
As a result, our cultural repertoire is unable to imagine, much less provide,
responses that enable us to respond effectively to climate change. So the climate crisis manifests itself also as a cultural crisis (Hamilton, 2012, p. 728;
Zizek, 2010, pp. 326–327). This is more than just an academic issue. Failure
to respond effectively to climate change will engender a human catastrophe
“on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic
depression of the first half of the twentieth century (Stern, 2006, p. iv). Without an intellectual approach that can move us beyond the current cultural
and political impasse, the fate of future generations is at risk.

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3

IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL THEORY
The current structure of academic disciplines contributes to this cultural crisis. The advent of climate change brings into question the viability of the
nineteenth century disciplinary divisions between the natural and social sciences. For the most part, the social sciences have assumed that the natural world as a passive backdrop in which the human project unfolds, and
focused on the relation between social facts. The natural sciences mirror this
distinction, in focusing only on natural facts. However, climate change shows
that this separation between the social and the natural worlds is obsolete. In
a world where human activities are being manifestly impacted by a continuously shifting climate, it is no longer adequate to only look to human social
interactions to gain an understanding of how social order is constituted and
changed. As Hamilton (2013) explains: “So the advent of the Anthropocene
shatters the self-contained world of social analysis that is the terrain of modern social science, and explains why those intellectuals who remain within
it find it impossible to “analyze” the politics, sociology or philosophy of climate change in a way that is true to the science. They end up floundering
in the old categories, unable to see that something epochal has occurred, a
rupture on the scale of the Industrial Revolution or the emergence of civilization itself” (Hamilton, 2013). The nineteenth century divisions between
the disciplines reflect a now nonexistent world in which this division might
have made some sense. By continuing to replicate this distinction, the traditional academic divisions contribute to our society’s inability to formulate
a coherent intellectual approach to the Anthropocene. As such, these divisions mirror the anthropocentric cultural beliefs on which our existing social
institutions are built. Thus, the current structure of the academic disciplines is
deeply implicated as part of the cultural crisis engendered by climate change.
Fredrick Jameson (1998, p. 50) defines this issue clearly: “It seems to be easier
for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of
nature than the breakdown of late capitalism, perhaps that is due to some
weakness in our imaginations.”
This realization has led a number of scholars across the range of social
sciences to identify a need to move beyond anthropocentric social sciences
(Urry, 2011, p. 8; Zizek, 2010, p. 333), and has resulted in a number of efforts to
integrate social and natural science perspectives in their treatment of climate
change. This emerging trend in the social sciences includes efforts in philosophy (Hamilton, 2012, p. 29, anthropology (Crate & Nuttall, 2009) history
(Chakrabarty, 2009; Domanska, 2010; Fagan, 2000) and economics (Anderson & Bows, 2012, p. 640; Daly, 2005; Norgaard, 1994). This essay seeks to
provide an overview of the major themes in this endeavor within the field of
sociology.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Serious consideration of the dichotomy between sociology and the natural
sciences began after the publication of the Limits to Growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens, 1972). In a landmark article, Catton and Dunlap
(1978) critiqued the field of sociology as being dominated by an anthropocentric approach, which they called the Human Exemptionalist Paradigm (HEP).
This paradigm focused sociological inquiry on the analysis of social facts,
and thus turned a blind eye toward the impacts and interactions of society
with nature. To address this failure, Catton and Dunlap advocated the adoption of a New Environmental Paradigm (NEP), which saw human beings
as “one species among the many that are independently involved in our
biotic community that shape our social life” (Catton & Dunlap, 1978, p. 45).
Accordingly, human society was seen as fully integrated into nature, and
thus sociological research needed to shift its paradigm to integrate the biophysical environment as a key factor in understanding society. Building on
this insight, there have been a number of intellectual attempts to develop a
meta-theoretical perspective that would be capable of informing a nonanthropogenic social science.1 At the risk of oversimplifying a complex literature, three approaches can be identified.
REINTERPRETATION OF CLASSIC SOCIOLOGISTS
The first approach to transcend the society/nature divide is based on a reexamination of the writings of the classic sociologists to expand the focus of
the discipline. These examinations show that the foundational theorists of
sociology, especially Marx and Weber, integrated the natural world into their
analysis of social order. Foster (1999) argues that Marx’s focus on the ecological metabolic exchange of material between society and nature linked
human society to natural processes. The reexamination of the work of Weber
focuses on the role that a society’s energy regime plays in the development
of a society. The crux of Weber’s work is seen as centering between two types
of social organization—the traditional–organic, based in human and animal
labor, and the rational–inorganic, based in coal, marks a transition to a different form of social organization. Foster and Holleman (2012, p. 1636) argue
that “it is the reliance on “inorganic” sources of energy (fossil fuels), along
with energy-intensive and high resource consumption, that, for Weber, distinguishes the environmental context of industrial capitalism.” Accordingly,

1. See Dunlap (2010) for an excellent overview of the historical development of environmental sociology and the nature/culture debate within sociology.

Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

5

they maintain that Weber was one of the first sociologists of energy consumption. These reinterpretations have animated a large number of empirical analyses, which are discussed in the next section.
WORLD COMPOSED AS HYBRID NATURAL–CULTURAL OBJECTS
The second approach, primarily centered on the work of Bruno Latour, seeks
to transcend the natural/social divide.2 Arguing from a constructionist
viewpoint, Latour maintains that there never has been any such thing as
distinctly nature or social. Rather, he argues that “Nature is not a thing, a
domain, a realm, an ontological territory. It is a way of organizing the division between appearances and reality, subjectivity and objectivity, history
and immutability” (Latour, 2010, p. 476). Thus, nature is a human-composed
object to account for resistance to innumerable interpretations.3 So, in this
perspective, the conceptions of “nature” and “society” are both part of a
collective of linguistically created worlds that brings different realities into
existence. Nature is thus composed of hybrid natural/social objects that are
selected out of the flow of experience,4 and are thus constituted as “objects”
based on shared collective interpretations in human society. Latour argues
that just as the climate scientists have composed a narrative that brings the
workings of the global system into view, and thus relevance, so to do social
scientists need to reformulate their approaches to extend this narrative to
the social world. This approach animates an ongoing project headed by
Latour.
INTEGRATED MODELS
The third area of sociological research that attempts to move beyond the
society/nature divide takes the form of integrated models. This approach
builds on an assumption that “nature and society are effectively coproduced
through the reciprocal and symmetric interplay of the social and the physical
(Goldman & Schurman, 2000, p. 575.).”5 Underlying this approach is the use
of evolutionary ecology instead of the uncritical use of systems ecology. In
systems ecology, nature is seen as a biocybernetic entity that regulates itself
(Hazelrigg, 1995, p. 295; Keulartz, 1998, p. 149). This view was commonly
held by many ecologists throughout most of the 1960s and 1970s. However,
the notion of community, and the supposed self-ordering properties of these
2. See Pollini (2013) for an excellent discussion and critique of Latour’s analysis.
3. See the discussion in footnote 5, Freudenberg, Frickel, and Gramling (1995, pp. 367–368) for a further discussion of this viewpoint.
4. Latour uses the term unrecruited objects.
5. Also see (Liu et al., 2007, p. 1513).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

communities was robustly critiqued in the 1980’s (Schrader-Frechette &
McCoy, 1994, pp. 111–112). As a result of this debate, systems ecology was
supplanted in the 1980s and 1990s by evolutionary ecology. Evolutionary
ecology centers on the idea that nature evolves through the generation,
diffusion, and selective retention of random mutations. Nature is involved
in a process of continual adaptation, which is not an active structuring
process. Accordingly, evolutionary ecology rejects the idea that nature
can be seen as a self-regulating mechanism. Rather, nature is seen as a
chaotic system, in which chance and random events, as well as linear and
nonlinear interactions govern (Hazelrigg, 1995, pp. 295–296; Zimmerman,
1994, p. 12). The uncritical use of a systems ecology perspective sets up an
artificial dichotomy between human and nonhuman nature. From a systems
ecology viewpoint, human activities are artifices that upset the balance of
the self-regulating system of nature. This informs a particular treatment of
nature as apart from man (Keulartz, 1998, p. 173, 1999). This dichotomy
is not present if an evolutionary ecology perspective is adopted. Humans
are seen as part of the complex interactions between living entities, and
the apparent metaphysical dichotomy between human and nonhuman
nature disappears into a consideration of specific interactions (Haila, 2000;
Keulartz, 1998, p. 173).
Supporting this approach are a number of epistemological arguments. The
two leading approaches are the co-constitution of nature and society pioneered by the work of Freudenberg, and a critical realist approach developed
by Carolan. For Freudenberg, analytical distinctions are needed to distinguish between nature and culture so the interrelationships can be examined.
This leads to specific comparative historical examinations of how society and
nature have interacted with one another over time (Murphy & Dunlap, 2012).
Carolan (2005) utilizes a critical realist perspective to argue for the use of
empirical research that encompasses natural and social variables in an empirical research program.
None of these three approaches has achieved intellectual dominance
within environmental sociology. Perhaps the sharpest debate is between
the constructivist and empiricist approaches. A series of articles has noted
several key issues in this debate, including major conceptual problems
in the work of Latour (Pollini, 2013), and the alleged dissolution of the
metaphysical nature/culture divide in the analysis of existing relationships
between biophysical phenomena and social systems (Carolan, 2005; Dunlap,
2010; Haila, 2000). While this debate is ongoing, there has been some
progress in sociological work that attempts to encompass natural and social
interactions.

Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

7

EMERGING APPROACHES
Much of the intellectual work over the past 35 years since the publication
of Catton and Dunlap (1978) does not advance into new theoretical territory
uniting the natural and social sciences. Rather, this work marks a shift in
research focus to the consideration of environmentally related phenomena
using standard sociological approaches. This includes use of social movement theory to examine the environmental movement and the climate denial
countermovement, attitudinal and demographic correlates of individual levels of environmental concern, and the social and cultural drivers of consumption. However, there are several different approaches that seek to integrate
the social and natural sciences, which mark an important development in
sociological theory. Within the field of environmental sociology, there are
three major areas of inquiry that examine the relationship between social
organization and environmental impacts.
•

•
•

The role of social organization in the creation and expansion of climate
change
The impact of climate change on global inequality
Integrative models.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE
Perhaps the most developed research area within environmental sociology
is the role of social organization in the creation of anthropogenic climate
change. This work links human social order to the creation of anthropogenic
climate change through the coupling of political economy with a metabolic
analysis of the flows of energy into society, and the production of greenhouse
gases. The core of the political economy analysis is based on the model
known as the Treadmill of Production (Schnaiberg, 1980). This approach
maintains that the capitalist economy creates ecological problems through
a self-reinforcing mechanism of ever more production and consumption.
The logic of the treadmill of production is an ever-growing need for capital
investment to generate goods for sale in the marketplace. The expansion
of the economy drives the creation of economic wealth, and also the negative byproducts of the production process. Thus, the treadmill operates
to maintain a positive rate of return on investments and externalizes the
environmental costs of its activities. From an ecological perspective this
process requires continuous and growing inputs of energy and material,
and thus increased carbon emissions. Utilizing the industrial metabolism
approach pioneered by Marx, researchers have empirically demonstrated
the validity of the treadmill of production approach regarding carbon
emissions (Clark & York, 2005). This research shows that the major social

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

driving forces of greenhouse gas emissions are economic and population
growth, magnified by open trade policy and foreign investment in developing countries (Jorgensen & Burns, 2007; Jorgensen, Dick, & Mahutga, 2007;
York, Rosa, & Dietz, 2003). Thus, this analysis links the disruption of the
global climate system to the dynamics of the capitalist economic system,
thus effectively linking social structure to nature.
THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON GLOBAL INEQUALITY
A second major field of research on the interactions between climate change
and social order focuses on how climate change accentuates global inequality
and differentially impacts humans across the globe. This work combines the
research on environmental justice (Brulle & Pellow, 2006) with world systems
theory (Roberts & Parks, 2007). This analysis shows that the certain groups
(especially women and minorities) and the citizens of less developed countries who have the least responsibility for historical carbon emissions will
suffer the most from the initial adverse impacts of climate change. Specifically, drought caused by changing rainfall patterns, will severely impact
much of the global south, especially in Africa, with adverse impacts on agricultural productivity and water availability. In addition, rising temperatures
will allow increases of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and other insects
to expand their range. Taking all of these impacts together, climate change
will further increase the extent of global poverty and inequality. This research
has successfully joined the dynamics of the world economic system with the
geographic analysis of climate change impacts to show how the “social” fact
of global inequality will be impacted. Thus, it links the sources and outcomes
of climate change to social processes, and moves toward a linkage between
social facts and natural facts.
INTEGRATIVE MODELS
There are three types of integrative models. The first is the notion of coupled
human and natural systems (Liu et al., 2007). Primarily focused on local
or regional analyses, these analyses consider both ecological and social
variables to construct temporal or spatial models of these interactions. For
example, one study looked at the interactions of the impacts of economic
development on the natural environment, and how this then impacted
tourism levels in Wisconsin (Liu et al., 2007). A second form of integrative
models follows Carolan (2005) and integrates both biophysical and social
variable into its analysis. There have been a series of studies based on this
approach that integrates weather conditions into analyses of levels of public
opinion regarding climate change (Brulle, Carmichael, & Jenkins, 2012,

Sociological Theory After the End of Nature

9

Hamilton & Keim, 2009). The third area of research focuses on the conjoint
constitution of nature and society. In an important paper, Freudenberg,
Frickel, and Gramling (1995) develop a historical analysis of how a physical
object (a mountain in Wisconsin) was socially constructed, and how these
constructions impacted social interactions in that geographic location. This
analysis was extended to examine the interrelationships between energy
development, environmental risk, and the politics of resource dependent
communities (Freudenburg & Gramling, 2010).
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
How well this research addresses the changed circumstances that we face
in the anthropocene is an open question. While the linked human and
natural systems approach provides an analysis of how specific social and
environmental processes interact, it accepts that the distinction between
social and natural facts exists. So this form of analysis reproduces the
nature/society split. While ecological modernization is certainly highly
problematic, the treadmill of production approach is not without its own
shortcomings. Fundamentally, this approach sees climate change as the
result of the process of capital accumulation. So this form of analysis, while
it does link social processes with their environmental impacts, it is not
significantly different in its approach than the linked social and natural
systems. The analysis of climate justice also follows the same form. However,
this analysis links social processes—in the form of uneven development
in a global capitalist economy to the production of carbon emissions, and
the subsequent environmental effects. Thus, this takes the form of Global
Capitalist Economic Development → Carbon Emissions → Unequal Impacts.
So these three different approaches do not move beyond the nature/society
divide. In addition, the analysis of the Treadmill of Production and Climate
Justice are both highly reliant on the causal centrality of capitalism. The
adequacy of this approach has been questioned. As Chakrabary (2009,
p. 212) notes “Capitalist globalization exists; so should its critiques. But
these critiques do not give us an adequate hold on human history once we
accept that the crisis of climate change is here with us and may exist as part
of this planet for much longer than capitalism or long after capitalism has
undergone many more historic mutations.” The final approach of conjoined
constitution of nature and society can perhaps provide a robust approach
to move beyond the nature/society split in sociological analysis. The case
studies led by Freudenberg point in this direction. However, this approach
is still in development. Recognizing the inadequacy of current approaches,
Latour (2011, p. 11) has initiated a major research effort to bridge this gap.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

However, it is not at all clear what this intellectual approach contributes to
sociological theory.
However, Latour is not alone in recognizing the inadequacy of the social
sciences in the face of global climate change. The natural science community has engaged in a long-term effort to incorporate the social sciences into
a comprehensive research program (Mooney, Duraiappah, & Larigauderie,
2013). This has culminated in the “Future Earth”6 research effort. This program seeks to “develop the knowledge for responding effectively to the risks
and opportunities of global environmental change and for supporting transformation towards global sustainability in the coming decades.” Since this
program has just been initiated, it is too early to tell if this research effort will
bridge the divide between the social and natural sciences.
A second major effort within sociology centers on the American Sociological Association (ASA) Task Force on Climate Change. Noting the inadequacy
of current sociological efforts to address climate change, the ASA convened
this task force in 2011. The report of this research effort is slated to be published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Finally, the Institute for Advanced
Studies at Princeton University has developed a program to be carried out in
the 2013–2014 academic year titled “The Environmental Turn and the Human
Sciences.” This effort involves a detailed investigation into the “on the strategies that different disciplines are adopting to deal with the challenge of environmental crises.7 ”
As early as 1978, scholars recognized the need to expand the concerns of
sociology and the other social sciences to encompass the global environment.
Since that time, there has been substantial progress in a number of areas.
However, with the advent of global climate change, the notion of the inadequacy of the social sciences in view of our changed historical circumstances
has become increasingly widespread. As a result, there are a number of initiatives under way to develop a more adequate post-holocene social science.
This is a major emerging development in the social sciences, and this topic
stands at the forefront of their future development.
REFERENCES
Anderson, K., & Bows, A. (2012). A new paradigm for climate change. Nature Climate
Change, 2, 639–640.
Brulle, R. J., Carmichael, J., & Jenkins, J. C. (2012). Shifting public opinion on climate change: An empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate
change in the US, 2002–2010. Climatic Change, 1–20.
6. http://www.icsu.org/future-earth
7. http://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/announcement2013-14.pdf

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Brulle, R. J., & Pellow, D. (2006). Environmental justice: Human health and environmental inequalities. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 107–124.
Carolan, M. (2005). Society, biology, and ecology: Brining nature back into sociology’s
disciplinary narrative through critical realism. Organization and Environment, 18,
393–421.
Catton, W. R., Jr., & Dunlap, R. E. (1978). Environmental sociology: A new paradigm.
The American Sociologist, 13, 41–49.
Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The climate of history: Four theses. Critical Inquiry, 35,
197–222.
Clark, B., & York, R. (2005). Carbon metabolism: Global capitalism, climate change,
and the biospheric rift. Theory and Society, 34(4), 391–428.
Crate, S., & Nuttall, M. (Eds.) (2009). Anthropology & climate change: From encounters
to actions. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The ‘Anthropocene’. Global Change Newsletter,
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Domanska, E. (2010). Beyond anthropocentrism in historical studies. Historein, 10,
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Fagan, B. (2000). The little ice age: How climate made history 1300–1850. New York, NY:
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Foster, J. B., & Holleman, H. (2012). Weber and the environment: Classical foundations for a post-exemptionalist sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 117,
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Foster, J. B. (1999). Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 105(2), 366–405.
Freudenburg, W., & Gramling, R. (2010). Blowout in the gulf: The BP oil spill disaster
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Freudenburg, W., Frickel, S., & Gramling, R. (1995). Beyond the nature/society
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Goldman, M., & Schurman, R. (2000). Closing the “Great Divide”: New social theory
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Hamilton, C. (2012). Review essay: Theories of climate change. Australian Journal of
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Hamilton, L. C., & Keim, B. D. (2009). Regional variation in perceptions about climate
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FURTHER READING
Anderson, K. (2012). Climate change going beyond dangerous – Brutal numbers and
tenuous hope. Development Dialogue, 16–40.
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197–222.
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from constructivism and realism to agnosticism and pragmatism. In M. Redclift &
G. Woodgate (Eds.), The international handbook of environmental sociology (2nd ed.,
pp. 15–32). Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA.
Latour, B. (2011). Waiting for Gaia. Composing the common world through arts and politics – A lecture at the French Institute London, November 2011.
Liu, J, Dietz T., Carpenter S., Alberti M., Folke C., Moran E. … Taylor W. (2007).
Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science, 317, 1513–1516.
Roberts, J. T., & Parks, B. (2007). A climate of injustice: Global inequality, north–south
politics, and climate policy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

ROBERT J. BRULLE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robert J. Brulle (BS US Coast Guard Academy, 1974; PhD Sociology, George
Washington University, 1995) is Professor of Sociology and Environmental
Science in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the US environmental movement, critical theory, and public participation in environmental
decision making. He is the author of over 50 articles in these areas, and is
the author of Agency, Democracy and the Environment: The US Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective (MIT Press, 2000), and
editor, with David Pellow, of Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (MIT Press, 2005).
Correspondence to: Dr. Robert J. Brulle, Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19119.
Email: brullerj@drexel.edu

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