Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves: Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation PDF
Preview Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves: Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation
CHANGING OUR ENVIRONMENT, CHANGING OURSELVES Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation Edited by JAMES S. ORMROD Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves James S . O rmrod Editor Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation Editor James S. Ormrod School of Applied Social Science University of Brighton Brighton , United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-56990-5 ISBN 978-1-137-56991-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56991-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942057 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image © Westend61 GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London Essays in Honour of Peter Dickens Prefa ce Th is book emerges from a festschrift symposium held in honour of the British sociologist Peter Dickens at the University of Brighton in July 2013. A few years ago now, Peter admitted to me that he was at a hiatus. Having fi nished a number of projects (some of which we co-authored) around the sociology of the universe, he was unsure of his next move. With the 40th anniversary of his fi rst lecturing appointment then on the horizon, it seemed to me the perfect time to take stock of his contribu- tion to the social sciences. However, with the exception of the fi rst two chapters, the other papers in the festschrift are, by Peter’s typically humble request, not papers cen- trally discussing his work, but papers that address issues that have also been of concern to him. All of the contributors to this volume were sug- gested by Peter as people whose work has inspired him, although they would no doubt return the compliment. Th e reader will fi nd relatively little in this volume that is retrospective, but for those unfamiliar with Peter’s career, I off er a necessarily brief summary in what follows. H aving trained as an architect at the University of Cambridge, and then worked as a researcher there in Land Use and Built Form Studies, Peter took his fi rst lecturing appointment in Urban Studies at the University of Sussex in 1973. He returned to Cambridge in 2000 to take up the position of Director of Social and Political Studies at Fitzwilliam College. Whilst in that role, he was also appointed Visiting Professor in vii viii Preface the sociology department at the University of Essex. He was subsequently made Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Brighton, and is currently Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Peter’s major books include: H ousing, States and Localities (1 985 , with Duncan et al.), O ne Nation? (1 988 ), U rban Sociology (1 990 ), Property, Bureaucracy and Culture (1 992 , with Savage et al.), S ociety and Nature ( 1992 , 2 004 ), Reconstructing Nature (1 996 ), S ocial Darwinism (2 000 ) and C osmic Society ( 2007 , with me). Th ese wide-ranging texts have in common a central concern with the relationship between internal and external nature: Th at is, the way in which human subjectivity, health and psychological well-being are changed as we work collectively on our environment, and how these changes in turn aff ect how we understand and interact with the environ- ments we shape. Peter’s focus has, however, continually shifted to grapple with contemporary social issues as they have appeared on the horizon, from the privatisation of public housing, to genetic engineering, to the commodifi cation of space resources. His path through these issues has been guided by a critical realist philosophy, Red–Green or ecosocialist politics and insights from structuration theory and psychoanalysis. His application of critical realist principles to the sociology of the environ- ment in particular has been well recognised (see, for example, Hartwig 2007 ). A fter 40 years in social science, there are a number of reasons why Peter Dickens is thought of with such aff ection and admiration. Th e fi rst, which will be evident to all those who have met him, is his remark- able humility. He delights, for example, in those who confuse him with Peter Dicken, author of G lobal Shift. But more important is his continual openness to new ideas from everyone he meets: undergraduate students and members of the public as much as fellow academics. And this is true even when he is with those with very diff erent views and when discussing areas in which he is expert. His work emphasises the need to combine abstract and specialist knowledge with everyday practical knowledge and memory, and he exemplifi es this in his own social relations. Peter’s writing is infused with this same character. His books on urban sociology, the environment, social Darwinism and outer space have all the breadth expected of student texts whilst avoiding the dispassionate Preface ix sequence of summaries that can so often go along with this (see Murphy 2005; Adams 2 006; Lawrence 2 006) . Instead the reader is guided through key debates, and past diff erent theoretical positions, led by particular kinds of philosophical, theoretical and political commitments. Reading Peter’s work, as is the case with the best writers, you get the sense that you are exploring the terrain together with him, rather than hearing him report back on some already completed journey. C entral to the way in which Peter synthesises material is his ability to rehabilitate classical theoretical perspectives to tackle the pertinent issues with which he grapples (refl ected, in context, in Dunlap et al 2002). He clearly owes the greatest debt to Marx, but his work is punctuated with references to Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Spencer, Veblen and others, all of whom he engages with in a scholarly but also wonderfully familiar way. For all Peter’s humility, these are not ideas we are encouraged to reify or revere as they are turned to contemporary social problems. More recent theorists are picked up along the way and integrated into these projects: David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and many others (including some of the contributors to this volume). Th inking beyond sociology in its most reductionist forms, Peter’s work has also been marked by a rejection of dualistic conceptions of the biological or social sciences. Th is has necessitated no little courage in exploring arguments distasteful to the late twentieth-/early twenty-fi rst- century sociological imagination. As Murphy puts it, he ‘carefully picks his way through a biological minefi eld where most social scientists fear to tread’ (2 005 , p. 546). Peter has refused, from ‘inside’ the sociological worldview, to label either the disciplines or subject matter of the natural and physical sciences as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Instead, he has encouraged us, often in what Klein might recognise as a necessarily depressive mode, to take on the ‘diffi cult task of combining the kinds of analysis off ered by sociology with those off ered by psychology and biology’ (Dickens 1990 , p. 112). Such business is inevitably ‘complex and messy’. Whilst, as he has emphasised, the transition between his diff erent fi elds of study has been inspired by personal or public transformations, Peter has always brought forward and built upon key concerns from pre- vious work. It is therefore possible to identify certain themes at the heart of Peter’s sociology. Th ese are the foci of this collection, and it is hoped
Description:The list of books you might like
