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The publication of expert’s works on limits of economic growth and the World Commission on Environment and Development report “Our common future” in the late 1980s gave rise to the popularity of the sustainable development theory, which will be considered in more detail in the chapter “Theories of sustainable development”.
Unlike ecoanarchists and ecosocialists, Albert Arnold Gore, one of ideologists of “green” capitalism, and other authors believed that industrial production, based on competition and profit generation, could be ecologized through state regulation and formation of new “green” markets. This did not make any changes in social relationships, but modernize them. This was to happen gradually and naturally as ecological challenges emerged, which were to be responded via new norms and rules for activities, behavior, morals and culture37.
For example, demand for ecologically clean products has grown, causing structural and technological adjustments in industry, i.e., a modernization. An increase in the government annuity for natural resource use and penalties for pollution would also encourage modernization of industry (improvements in the technology used for extraction of natural resources), reduce generation of waste, save energy, and introduce recycling, closed and waste-free production cycles. This would also lead to changes in corporate culture – acceptance of the sustainable development concept, greater responsibility of business for socio-ecological consequences of its activities.
In addition to being a state, national strategy, ecopolicy is becoming a strategy pursued by international companies and corporations. They declare that, if used rationally, global natural resources are virtually inexhaustible and can satisfy the needs of the humanity indefinitely. Even if some resources are depleted, new technology would be able to provide new materials and products of a better, or, as a minimum, the same quality.
Problems of growth would remain in the form of demographic, informational and other “explosions”, which look catastrophically from the local management level, but can be dealt with via development and implementation of global programs. All interested organizations and individuals, who will form a new global design, could now be involved in a constructive dialog and decision-making process.
Therefore, those environmentalists, who had opposed industrialization, technocracy and bureaucracy in the 1970s, lost much of their popularity in the environmental movement by the 1990s. However, the first works published in the 1980s by authors who opined that management, industry and technology, which ensure the high standard of life of the modern society, were not ecologically dangerous per se and that they could be changed for the benefit of the environment, still were criticized.
In contrast with their European colleagues, the American environmentalists, who in the 1980s participated in numerous public organizations, state-run ecological councils and research expert groups, enjoyed the support from the population, government and business, were more optimistic. A considerable part of the United States environmentalists was hoping that ecological problems could be addressed via improvements in technology and management techniques, distribution of benefits, conservation and accumulation of the national natural wealth.
The intellectual breakthrough occurred in the 1980s when Josef Huber proposed his ecological modernization concept38, which in the 1990s evolved into a scientific theory supported by business and the government. The theory of ecological modernization became quite popular among the European environmentalists, which allowed moving from confrontation to dialog and partnership with the state and business.
The ideas of ecological modernization are now largely accepted by the global environmentalist movement and implemented practically from the individual to state level. Because of scientific debate and hands-on experience, the theory of ecological modernization has gone through several stages of development and received both recognition and criticism. Several authors have proposed a number of development classifications. Historical and modern application examples have been studied, and a number of methodological approaches, allowing identification of independent lines of research, elaborated. This we will consider in more detail in the chapter “Modernist theories”.
Russian authors of environmental theories
In Russia, just like in the West, environmental theories were used by authors who included the natural context into their studies of social phenomena, who spoke of the mutual influence between humans and the natural environment and made interesting unusual conclusions. In doing so, they made a significant contribution in the development of sociology and the rise and development of ecosociology.
The specifics of Russian history make possible to split this scientific reflection into three periods – pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet. All Russian authors could be classified into those who represented the organic (sociological naturalism) and geographic school (social evolutionism), as it was done for non-Russian authors. However, for Russian authors, a division between these schools and principles would be quite notional.
Nikolay Dmitrievich Nozhin (1841—1866) had a considerable influence on his contemporaries, including sociologists. His views and publications are a good example showing the notional character of classification into scientific schools. As a biologist and a sociologist, he recognized Darwin’s biological evolution; however, he opposed Malthusianism and racism typical for some social-Darwinists. He was the first to propose an organic approach and formulated its main principles.
The main postulate goes that biological laws apply to human communities just as they do in animal species communities. Therefore, known biological laws could be used for explaining social phenomena and processes. A good example would be collective organizations – free associations of people based on the principles of solidarity and mutual assistance39.
He criticized political experts and economists for seeing contradiction where, from the biology’s point of view, they did not exist. In biology, multi-functionality does more for survival of specie than functional development within the specie. This provision is analogous to the multi-functionality of peasants and artisans and division of labor in the course of industrial production. Therefore, crises and creative regress of participants are inevitable for industrial production. He believed that his conclusions and their propagation would serve the practical purpose of science – helping people to avoid mistakes in choosing their path of development. In his opinion, dividing science into social and natural disciplines was one of these mistakes.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Stronin (1826—1889) in 1869—1885, published a three-volume edition titled “History and method” (on evolution of research methods and approaches taken by social sciences), “Politics as a science” (on social structures – groups, statuses) and “History of the public” (on evolution of society). His works show the desire to link the methodology for social and natural sciences. He believed that, as the natural and social environments are a whole, analogy could become the basic unifying method. The laws discovered in natural sciences can apply to social sciences. Realizing that scientific experiments cannot and should not be made on humans, he used the philosophic method of separating particulars from universals to construct an ideal particular model of a social phenomenon40.
This ideal social model, that was analogous to reality, could already be used for experimenting, theoretically placed in a modified environment, to obtain new knowledge, which could be subsequently verified in another analogous place and situation. This method, in different variations, was widely used at that time and is still used in sociology as Max Weber’s method for forming ideal types.
Pavel Feodorovich Lilienfeld-Toal’ (1829—1903) conducted sociological research adhering to the position that society is a real organism. In his works “Thoughts on the social science of the future” and “La pathologiе sociale” he maintained that social interactions and interrelations are in essence physiological. Just as any organism consisting of cells, intercellular substance and the nervous system, society consists of people, the natural environment and a system that manages the social processes41.
Lilienfeld believed that human society is a biological organism, living by the same laws and in the same ways as the other biological organisms. He assumed that society and nature are no different. Society is alive and thus is a direct extension of nature. Preferring such general scientific methods as comparison and analogy, he suggested an original socio-embryological law, under which society and the individual, just as any specific living organism, go through the phases of birth, maturity, senility and death (transition into a non-organic form).
The social structure suggested by Lilienfeld is similar to Stronin’s, with the addition to the natural environment, which plays the roles of an intercellular substance, of implements and spiritual achievements. He provided several historical examples of societies that were born, flourished, got old and died in various locations over time. In his opinion, a younger society could absorb some civility from an old or dead society. This indicates that he proposed a scheme of multi-vector social development long before the neo-evolutionists.
Structurally, the three laws of progress govern social development:
1) Greater political freedom strengthens the government;
2) Greater economic freedom leads to larger possessions;
3) Greater legal freedom leads to improvement in laws. As for revolutions, riots and struggle, he viewed them as a social pathology. Another social pathology is a political, economic and legal parasitism. Parasites are social structures that became detached from the social organism and act to its detriment.
In today’s encyclopedias and sociology textbooks, Russian sociologists of the organic school are mentioned only cursorily. It is normally said that their ideas are part of the history and can be interesting only for focused experts.
At present, the organic school in sociology is studied and developed by Galina Pavlovna Kuzmina. She has published more than a hundred works on the subject, prepared a training course and, one can say, revived the Russian organic school42.
Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky (1822—1885), due to his work “On migration of population in Russia”, is viewed by historians of sociology as a founding father of Russian sociology and a representative of the geographic school. Studying the Russian society in the historical perspective, he compared it with Europe and interpreted within the framework of sociology43.
He did extensive research on the influence of climatic factors on local communities and urban population of the Vologda region44 and studied fishery on the Volga, in the Caspian and White Seas and the Arctic Ocean. Based on the existing social practices and fishery technologies as well as on the evaluated stock of selected fish species, he developed efficient fishery legislation for European Russia. As a result, depletion of the fishery resources began only in the 1960s with the start of commercial fishing by large fishing vessels.
Danilevsky could be viewed as one of the first ecosociologists as he used sociological methods for studying natural resource use and nature management. This statement can radically change the current opinion in the history of ecosociology that Russian ecosociologists “descend” from the Chicago ecosociologists. It appears that, at this stage of development of Russian ecosociology, we could conduct a more in-depth study of the domestic scientific heritage, doing a “test fit” for works written by the fathers of sociology, where they tested interaction of humans and natural sites, from the ecosociology standpoint. Sadly, historians of sociology often keep silence about these works or mention them cursorily, paying more attention to the historical aspect.
Interestingly, Danilevsky, reckoned as a follower of the geographic school due to the research and analytical methods used, sharply criticized evolutionism in his work “Darwinism”45. Truly speaking, that criticism was aimed at the advocates of social Darwinism, also followers of the geographical school, along with the supporters of social biologism, rather than Darwin himself. Danilevsky argued that social inequality is radically different from biological one and cannot be a subject of studies for natural sciences.
This means that fishermen should be studied by sociologists and social sciences while fish – by biologists and natural sciences. This position helped to separate sociology from other sciences and authors writing in the interdisciplinary domain. It also contributed to sociology’s drift towards sociologism, where people interact only with people and all this happens in a non-material social space (social environment).
Danilevsky criticized social evolutionism for the belief in the existence of planetary humankind with a common history of evolution. He wrote that this view was not supported by any geographical, archeological, culturological or anthropological research. He distinguished a number of geographically isolated cultural-historical society types, in particular, ten old types – Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Chaldean, Persian, Hebrew, Arab, Greek, Roman, and Germanic, also mentioning two immature types – Incas and Mayas – that had been forcibly destroyed, leaving a question mark about the status of the New World in North America. As for the Russian society, he viewed it as a new cultural-historical type.
Lev Il’ich Mechnikov (1838—1888) was another representative of the geographical school. In his book “Civilization and great historical rivers”, he classifies cultures into riverside, seaside and ocean-side types, associating ancient civilizations with big rivers, antique civilizations – with seas and modern ones – with oceans. This division is based on the social fabric, which influences the level of the geographical environment’s exploration46.
He leant towards scientific materialism, supporting the idea of universal global development from non-organic (mechanisms) to organic (organisms) and further to intelligent nature (society). The social structure is based on solidarity, which can be compulsory, subordinate and free. These three forms of social structure correspond to three types of civilizations and three types of biogenous water bodies. Solidarity is necessary for survival in adverse conditions of the surrounding physical-geographical environment. It is expressed through teamwork and leads to progress. Progress results in the emergence of free people (anarchists), whose life is associated with the world ocean. For this reason, Mechnikov is regarded as the founder of Russian geopolitics and an ideologist of anarchism.
The Russian specifics led to a situation when, in the beginning of the 20th century, the interdisciplinary area between sociology and medicine and statistics became the most promising sociological subject (as related to further development of environmentalism). Theoretical constructions and conclusions were gradually replaced by scientific experiments. The important thing was to obtain, from natural sciences, an exhaustive reply to the questions: Who exactly are humans? How and why do they act (interact with other people and nature)?
Ivan Mihaylovich Sechenov (1829—1905) turned social science about humans into an exact science. Based on extensive experiments and data, he offered a rational explanation for all nervous and mental signs, including consciousness and its manifestation in the form of an act of will. Leaving the holistic approach to the organism as a whole, he divided acts into subconscious and conscious. He substantiated this view suggesting that all mental signs are also physiological (reflexive), and that acts and interactions of cells, organisms (individuals) and populations (society) with their inner and external environment could be studied using objective methods47.
He shared and developed the views of Russian cosmists. Together with his wife, he was the first to translate Darwin’s “The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex”48 into Russian, becoming a popularizer of the evolutionary theory, arguing in its favor in terms of physiology and psychology. He is the founding father of the synthetic evolution theory, currently comprising data from paleontology, molecular biology, genetics and systematics.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849—1936) was the first to formulate the physiological principles of higher nervous activity, based on investigation of dogs49, making clear the difference between involuntary and conditional reflexes and the role of the reinforcement mechanism in the conditioning of reflexes. It was now clear that, unlike reinforcement, incentives or punishments fail to form conditional reflexes (habits) among humans as they take effect over time rather than during an act itself.
Also of interest is Pavlov’s participation in the debate on native temperaments and their influence on behavior and emotional state. This postulate was largely rejected. Experimenting, Pavlov identified three dynamic parameters – intensity, tranquility and agility of the excitative and inhibitory processes, prevalence and various combinations of which influence intra-specie and external interaction. It was discovered that these parameters were conditioned during interaction with various environments, i.e., they were not native, and they influenced behavior (higher nervous activity) after conditioning50. However, supporters of the “ancient knowledge” continue to cling to the transcendental argument that Pavlov’s dogs were doomed to make it to the environment, which developed the qualities later identified by Pavlov.
Pavlov’s research was used by practicing psychiatrists and psychotherapists. Sociologists extrapolated the results of Pavlov’s experiments to humans and society. Politicians and businessmen received a better understanding of how they could manage, subordinate, interest prospective buyers and sell their products. Western science on behavior (the behaviorist approach to sociology) and neurolinguistics received a momentum for development and by now have taken the form of studies, using quantitative and qualitative methods, of practices and discourses, including ecological ones.
Vladimir Mihaylovich Bekhterev (1857—1927) extended the objective knowledge about physiology and pathology of human psyche. He also studied certain form of group behavior, for example, mass hysteria when a crowd behaves more stupidly than an individual behaves and ceases to be an assemblage of rational beings51. In 1907, with the support of colleagues and donors, he organized the Saint-Petersburg Psycho-neurological Institute, establishing Russia’s first sociological research and educational institution – the chair of sociology.
This chair of sociology was headed by Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevsky (1851—1916) and Evgeny Valentinovich De Roberti (1843—1915), who elaborated a prospective research program based on research in physiology and psychology, individual and collective behavior. This institution had pragmatic tasks in the field of pedagogics, law and health care and, as related to reflexology, was to establish a foundation for scientific management of living beings, including humans, behavior.
In 1908, the institute admitted its first 900 students, with more than a half of them being women. Structurally, the institute consisted of the main faculty, with classes being compulsory for all students for two years, after which they were to choose a major discipline. Aside from sociology, during the first year at the main faculty students were lectured in physics, non-organic chemistry, geology, general biology, anatomy, physiology, general and experimental psychology, logics, history of philosophy, general history, history of Russian literature and theology. At the second year, the curriculum comprised higher mathematics, statistics, physical geography, organic chemistry, general biology, anatomy and histology of the nervous system, physiology, psychophysiology of sensory organs, comparative psychology, history of philosophy, history of economic theories, general history, history of world literature, history of arts and history of culture.
It should be noted that Kovalevsky and De Roberti were high-ranking masons. Accordingly, those familiar with the subject might assume that their efforts were aiming to develop physiology and psychology, establish the corresponding institutions and, on that base, organize regular training of sociologists. These sociologists, who were quite competent, now regularly and reflectively generated a lot of specialized knowledge about interaction of humans, social groups, organizations, structures and institutes, which were easily understandable by corresponding experts. Followers of the historical approach would say that this event was inspired by the course of history. Other people would offer another opinion, for example, saying that this was the result of a public, non-commercial effort of Russian intellectuals. One way or another, it was obvious that this was a key event in the history of Russian sociology.
In Kovalevsky’s view, population growth is the main biosocial factor that directly impacts the economy as it results in economic change that brings about changes in politics, which, in turn, change social and private life. His theory of genetic (evolutionary) sociology describes and emphasizes the simultaneous interaction of individuals, groups and society in the natural physical environment and in the spiritual, cultural-historic and symbolic domains. He believed that prominent individuals had a mystical ability to control nature, resulting in recognition of power brokers by the general public. He examined and compared specific cases of historical development of nations and activities of social groups within these nations, trying to identify the reasons for the resulting social progress or for failure to achieve such progress52. This method can be used in sociological analysis of ecological and anti-ecological practices, sustainable and non-sustainable economic development, ecological and anti-ecological polities, etc.
Believing that social change was now identified purely with psychological processes, De Roberti combined biology, sociology and psychology. He maintained that mental activity was manifested in the four basic methods of obtaining knowledge about oneself and the world, namely, science, philosophy, religion and arts, which determine practical activities, including productive ones. While admitting the importance of economic relations at a certain historical stage, he believed that psychological interaction played a key role.
Paying special attention to social progress and social evolution, interaction in small groups, and influence of social factors on the personality, he advocated the idea that all social interaction is a consequence of interactions between personalities, and therefore it is basically psychological. Hence, biology, or, more precisely, physiology and psychology are capable of explaining all social phenomena. At the same time, an individual’s activities are not dominated by biological characteristics. De Roberti’s biosocial theory emphasizes that human society has evolved from three forms of universal energy – non-organic, organic and supra-organic or psychic.
Paying special attention to social progress and social evolution, interaction in small groups, and influence of social factors on the personality, he advocated the idea that all social interaction is a consequence of interactions between personalities, and therefore it is basically psychological. Hence, biology, or, more precisely, physiology and psychology are capable of explaining all social phenomena. At the same time, an individual’s activities are not dominated by biological characteristics. De Roberti’s biosocial theory emphasizes that human society has evolved from three forms of universal energy – non-organic, organic and supra-organic or psychic53.