The Re-Naturalization of Society? Environmental Challenges for Sociology

The sociological discipline, as it came to be constructed from the late 19th century and onwards, deliberately concentrated on human societies, giving little attention to biophysical nature, which is a precondition for its existence and development. Today, sociologists claim that modern environmental problems constitute a challenge to the classical sociological understanding. We have a tension between `environmental realism', which argues that sociologists need to include biophysical facts in their analysis to be able to create knowledge concerning environmental issues, and `environmental constructivism', which argues that sociology should only deal with social facts. By critically discussing these two positions, this article seeks to elaborate a position that alleviates the dichotomy between them.