Sources of Social Ecology — Discourses on Society and Nature in Sociology

Environmental themes are analysed in several sociological subdisciplines, but only two of these are relevant to social ecology’s themes: environmental sociology with the investigation of natural resource use and environmental problems, and rural sociology with the investigation of land use and food production. The questions of society—nature interaction that guide social ecology appear in sociology with its many subdisciplinary specialisations as big philosophical questions that can be interpreted and answered in many different ways, as the continuing controversies in the ecological discourse show. The history and development of environmental and rural sociology with its themes, perspectives and theories is documented in recent handbooks (for environmental sociology see Redclift and Woodgate 2010; for rural sociology see Cloke et al. 2006). The following discussion does not aim to review the development of the subdisciplines, but is selective according to the core problems and themes of social ecology. The mass of specialised research in environmental sociology — on environmental awareness and behaviour, environmental movements, environmental policy, conflicts and risks — is not the knowledge that is driving the thematic research in social ecology. That knowledge is structured in the three guiding concepts of analysing nature—society interaction and in complicated notions of “societal action”.