SOCI 1002H Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Ulrich Beck, Michel Foucault, Charismatic Authority
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 7
• Classical Social Theory:
• Natural environment assumed to be separate from human culture and social life
• Marx: natural resources as a gift to capital
• Kant: humans as separate from nature due to our ability to reason
• Contemporary Social Theory:
• Interdependence of human society and natural environment
• Climate change is result of economic, political, and social forces
• Making case for the crisis:
• Claims of environmental crisis and denial: claims making:
• Diversity of experts: no consensus
• Diversity of causal factors: human and nonhuman
• Environment as taken for granted
• Lack of immediate human suffering
• Scientist or Celebrity: Social and Cultural Capital
• Power: ability to do something despite the resistance of others
• Charismatic leadership: Hollywood celebrities and climate change
• Rational authority: scientific knowledge and expertise
• Culture of narcissism: consumerism and excessive individualism
• Democratization of Privilege:
• Environmental deterioration as first world problem
• Environmental deterioration as how to get ahead
• Ways of Knowing:
• Western science: study of environment as separate from human experience or
behaviour
• Indigenous knowledge: pursuit of wisdom rather than data; coexistence
• Holistic
• Ulrich Beck: Risk Society
• Managing the risks created by science and technology, through science and
technology
• Predicting and calculating hazards (earthquakes in Alberta due to fracking, water
contamination in Ontario due to industrial farming)
• Rather than fixing the cause of the harms, managing the potential risk of harm
• Michael Foucault: You’re responsible
• Recycling programs as political technology that governs a population
• Increased waste produced yet recycling as normalized social practice
• Sustainability as an Environmental Harm
• Sustaining development as environmental imperialism
• North and south: opposing goals
• Habitat protection through slow growth vs surviving poverty through
cheap/fast development
• Key Concepts:
• Independent panel on climate change and climate gate: scientific controversies
• Democratization of privilege
• Risk society
• Traditional ecological knowledges
Chapter 16 and 17
• Sovereignty: granted by state
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