**4. Conclusions**

10 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

Within this discursive platform, environmental resources have been assigned with a definitive status that directly impacts on the Associations' burgeoning conception of security. The discursive shift in the status of biophysical environment as "*resources*" unavoidably ushered a new mode of thinking in terms of national vis-à-vis regional cooperation. In this context, biodiversity i.e. biogenetic resources of plants, animals and microbes found in the environment, are no longer seen as neutral elements of a physical border separating nations and their peoples. Environment as container and refuge of biodiversity is no longer perceived as a lifeless frontier demarcating nations and their cultures. Rather, environment and every genetic resource it contains are now considered integral and strategic component of the ASEAN's national and regional security. This new political discourse is based on the emerging definition of political and economic security that sees environmental protection and sustainable development as key organizing principles. Peria's (1998: 5) analysis of the ASEAN's changing notion of the potential of

*"Given the growing scarcity of the world's resources and the insatiable demand for it, security should be redefined to include the matter of safeguarding the integrity of a nation-state's natural* 

Notwithstanding, this new perspective is anchored on the insights that given the enormous economic, scientific and strategic potentialities of biogenetic resources,10 (which are most often found in underdeveloped and developing regions of the world with equally diverse cultural communities), national security is unthinkable without incorporating biological and

Perhaps this new notion of "genetic resource as security" is engendered by a notorious character of environmental problems – transbouderiness.11 The region as a whole has experienced a series of environmental catastrophes such as deforestation, pollution, migration and climate change.12 Moreover, regional conflicts may become the palimpsest of these environmental problems. Thus, solving environmental problems besetting the ASEAN-member nations is tantamount to addressing ongoing and potential regional

Overall, the voices of the ecofeminists, IEMs and the ASEAN represent the grassroots discourses of biodiversity both as a feature of nature and as a social construct. Being the latter, they serve as powerful interpretations of how humans relate to nature and vice versa. These interpretations are embodied in their cosmovisions and epistemologies of nature and increasingly inspiring their discourses of development couched on their vulnerable

10 These potentialities are enormous in terms of its medical, cosmetics, and warfare applications on top of the economic benefits that go with them. The state of the global bioprospecting initiatives being commissioned by gargantuan pharmaceuticals of North America and Europe epitomized such usefulness of biogenetic materials from diverse species of microbes, plants, and animals (Erasga 2003). 11 In the case of pollution, transboundary pollution is pollution that originates in one country but, by crossing the border through pathways of water or air, is able to cause damage to the environment in

12 The 1997 haze from Indonesia's biggest forest fire is an example. The haze covered vast areas in

environmental resources rightly concludes that:

genetic resources as key factors (cf. Dupont 1994).

positions within the power-relation contexts.

Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere in the region.

*resources."* 

conflicts that go with them.

another country (OECD 1997).

From the discussions above, three complementary conclusions can be derived:


The first conclusion is a necessary implication of the nature of discourse in general. Discourse according to Foucault is the production of knowledge, and ultimately the production of Truth itself. Overlaying this nature of discourse within the frame environmental negotiations could mean this insight: "that when environmental scientists are producing information about and from their researches, they are in a way, producing discourse which is as much political as the knowledge produced by policy makers in the government." This makes scientists as equality political as the policy makers in their particular point of view, agenda and passion to pursue them.

The second conclusion is a necessary implication of the first one. From the discussion above, we see those conservation biologists and their cohorts were acting political when they started mobilizing people to do something about a problem that endangers the survival of people- to stop the immanent lost of species forever. Their activism is a show of how valid their information is vis-à-vis the danger they are alerting the world about.

The third conclusion reinforces the malleability of environmental discourse. On the one hand, when policy makers started concocting policies about the environment, they are claiming something as important as the claims made by environmental scientists. On the other hand, when environmental scientists blamed the environmentally destructive lifestyles and cultures of people, they are factoring in the social to the seemingly purely technical problem. Examples are many: pollution, solid waste, acid rain, and deforestation.

To fully capture the essence of these conclusions allow me to quote a sociologist when he attempted to justify the role of social scientists (notably sociologists) in making sense of our environmental challenges. He writes:

"What are topics like solid waste, pollution, acid rain, global warming and biodiversity doing in sociology text? The answer is simple: None of these problems is a product of the 'natural world' operating on its own. On the contrary... each results from the specific actions of human beings and are, therefore social issues.... sociologists can make three vital contributions to ecological debates. First, sociologists can explore what 'the environment' means to people of varying social background… Second, sociologist, can monitor the public pulse on many environmental issues, reporting peoples' fear, hopes and fears… why certain categories of people support one side or another on controversial issues. Third, and perhaps the most important, sociologist can demonstrate how human social patterns put mounting stress on the natural environment" (Macionis 1999: 584).

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**2** 

Charles Crothers

*New Zealand* 

*Auckland University of Technology,* 

**Analysing Social Structures** 

Although social structure might seem the most important concept in sociology, and one of the major concepts in social science more generally, it is something of an 'absent presence' with many theorists addressing the issue only tangentially and with sustained attention to conceptual understanding of the nature of social structures attended to by only relatively few authors (Crothers, 1996). The history of the concept of social structure in sociology (and outside) is a topic addressed briefly here only to indicate the historical development of

Phases in the development of sociological theory concerning social structure has been described in the references just noted. Many early accounts of social structure depicted a sequence of three or four successive types beginning with hunter-gatherer bands and encompassing empires, and civilisations, together with the unique features of Western modernity. As empirical sociology developed with the work of the Chicago school (and more generally in community studies) in the interwar years more empirically based (but still dynamic) accounts were developed. Immediately before, during and after the world war 2 period the functionalist approach (partially adapted by Merton from anthropological models to better fit with more complex societies) switched attention from over-time change to understandings of how social structures fitted together and how they worked as structures. In particular, structures were seen as often operating 'behind the backs' of the people in them and were laced together in considerable part through 'latent functions' that were not always immediately obvious. By the 1970s, sociological theorists began to distance themselves from some of the determinism associated with previous approaches, and social structures began to be seen as more complex performances that arose out of the interplay between people's agency and the social environments shaping them and in turn being formed by individual actions. The two most prominent of these theorists were Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens (although many others reinforced this approach) and these were sometimes labeled as 'reproduction, practise or structurationist theorists. Since then, an array of commentary has ensued which has elicited (and partially resolved) many of the difficulties in the analyses of these theorists – Giddens fails to develop a convincing rendition of social structure whereas Bourdieu, which attempting valiantly to overcome some of the dichotomies which constrain sociological analyses, overemphasises structural determinants. Moreover, sharp critique of any collectivist models continue with many sociologists unprepared to admit the existence of collectivities other than as representations held at a micro-social level. Moreover, while 'post-structurationist' approaches (such as the

conceptual work on it (see Callinicos, 2007; Crothers, 1996, 2004).

**1. Introduction** 

