**2. Anthropocentrism**

164 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

(those without the word sociology in their titles). It might have been found instructive, however, if sociologists had looked into his *Principles of Biology,* as we shall see in a

An earlier book by Spencer, *The Study of Sociology* (1873) was used as a textbook in one of the first courses in sociology offered in America, by William Graham Sumner (who served as the second president of the American Sociological Society). Among Sumner's many sociological writings was an essay decrying the early steps toward American imperialism by the acquisition of overseas territories (Sumner 1896). Insightful as that essay was, it fell short of seeing a human society's ecosystem dependence. So from today's perspective it appears

Spencer's was a long and productive writing career, facilitated by an inheritance which made paid employment unnecessary. It involved revised editions of several things he wrote. A young scholar, Arthur Tansley, who assisted him in the revision of *Principles of Biology* went on to become in 1913 the founding president of the British Ecological Society, and one wonders how much he may have influenced Spencer in a direction that might have, had there been enough time remaining in Spencer's career, caused salient ecological concepts and principles to percolate into his sociology, and thence into the discipline's further development. Perhaps this was another (narrowly) missed opportunity to provide needed

As sociology developed, from Comte's time and Spencer's until recently, there were other grand system-builders, but there was an over all trend toward studying smaller aspects of societal living (Catton 1964). As sociology achieved academic status as an established discipline, it had come to include demographic studies, analyses of social organizations (large and small), interpersonal relations in families and other small groups, social effects of mass communication. industrial relations, race relations, social change processes, and various "sociologies of" (religion, education, politics, economic development, science, etc.). For a while it was fashionable to think about various "schools of thought" among sociologists, but indications of agreement among different writers who attempted to list the schools were quite rare. Comprehensive system-building occasionally recurs, but it no longer dominates the field. In time the word "sociology" came to denote the body of knowledge acquired by using more or less scientific procedures to study human interactions at all levels from whole societies down to small groups (such as families) and even dyads,

Toward the end of the 19th century, another Frenchman, Emile Durkheim, sought to establish sociology's qualification as a real science by actually doing scientific research on specific sociological topics, exemplifying such a program by his studies of The *Division of Labor in Society* (1893), *Suicide* (1897)*,* and *Elementary Forms of the Religious Life* (1912). He also established a journal, the *Annee Sociologique*. Today there are numerous sociology periodicals, published in numerous countries. Most of the articles they publish are studies of social phenomena farther down the scale from the grand philosophizing of a Comte or other pioneers. And, naturally there are many sociology courses offered in colleges and universities around the world, but especially it has become established in the tertiary

to have been a missed opportunity for now badly needed enlightenment.

foresight about today's global human condition.

temporary or lasting.

curricula in the United States.

moment.

The attention of people calling themselves sociologists has been almost entirely focussed on one species―*Homo sapiens*. Nature is replete with instances of interspecific interactions, and the lives of many organisms depend heavily upon their involvement in *ecosystems*. Only recently, however, has much attention begun to be paid by academic sociologists to social organization *among other species*, or to possibly instructive parallels between societal and communal relations among creatures of various non-human species (e.g., "social insects;" monkeys and apes) and human social life.

Individuals of species *Homo sapiens* influence one another's actions as members of whole societies and as members of subgroups within them. Collective actions become structured. Sociology has provided ways of conceptualizing recurrent behavior patterns, roles, norms and sanctioning processes. More than a century of sociological research has yielded principles that enable some prediction of outcomes in the course of societal events and organizational activities. Only recently, however, has serious attention been paid by a few sociologists to the possibility that human lives are importantly subject to ecosystem constraints. "Human ecology" became a specialty within sociology largely by analogical reasoning when sociologists at the University of Chicago, studying urban growth patterns, saw parallels between their work and that of some pioneering biologists at that university studying plant and animal associations in the region (Faris 1967). At the time it seemed not to occur to anyone that perhaps it was (human) sociology that should be seen as a specialty within a larger science of ecology. Here again we have an instance of a missed opportunity to have acquired an ability to foresee today's ominous human predicament (Catton, 1980).

Although all humans living today, of all races, sizes, genders and persuasions, are members of the single species, *Homo sapiens*, sociologists do study, among other things, processes of *social* differentiation, by which various human individuals acquire in their experiences of interacting with others different skills, tastes, habits, desires, expectations, etc. Becoming differentiated by social processes, humans can function in relation to one another almost as separate *quasi-species*. Thus, when a field of knowledge developed within biology concerned with interdependence of various species collectively adapting to the environment surrounding them, its concepts and principles did attract attention among neighboring sociologists (Park et al. 1925; Park 1952; Hawley 1950). Parallels would be noted between division of labor among humans and the division of functions between assorted species populations associated in an ecosystem.

These developments were highlights of sociology's first century of existence as an academic discipline. It flourished especially at a university located in a young and growing American metropolis located at a transportation crossroads, linking urban and rural lives―Chicago. The USA saw itself at the time as a "young nation," *expecting* to grow and advance. It was perhaps expectable that a world's fair in that heartland city, held as a worldwide depression in the 1930s inflicted a serious interruption on the adolescent nation's onward-and-upward course of development, would call itself the "Century of Progress Exposition." Americans believed progress was inevitable, and were disinclined to question decades later the slogan "Progress is our most important product" in TV commercials narrated by an actor who later became the nation's president.

Sociology's Neglect of Ecological Context 167

theory in sociology (Turner, 1964) has developed enough research-supported insights to shed important light on the ways people, organizations and societies can be expected to respond to such circumstances. Such light may be as unwelcome as is the changed state of the world it reveals. Even if the facts made evident are unwelcome, sociologists are obliged

In coming decades, because of changes to planet Earth wrought by human activities since the industrial revolution, mankind is certain to experience frustrated hopes, declining material wealth, deteriorating quality of life in befouled and ravaged environments on every continent. Intensified worldwide competition for diminishing natural resources has become inevitable, as have mounting pressures toward social reorganization along unwelcome lines (see Brown, 1981; CEQ and Dept. of State, 1980; Hayes, 1979; Henshaw, 1971; Lerner, 1981; Peccei, 1981; Stoel, 1979). On the basis of collective behavior theory we can expect one or more of the following responses: panic, terror, genocidal wars. These are likely responses to our deepening ecological predicament. Only if accurately foreseen, may the pressures otherwise likely to induce destructive responses not have to impel people and nations to

Humanity's ecological situation can be succinctly described as follows: Earth, the solar system's third planet from the sun, is the sole dwelling place for our species, and functions both as the source of material supplies required for whatever we do and as the repository for noxious and/or toxic by-products of our activities, as well as the arena in which we live and act.. Seven billion of us residing on this planet, many living with the aid of potent technology, are an enormous ecological load. The load imposed upon Earth's ecosystems has grown so large that the three functions of environment—"supply depot," "activity space," and "disposal site" —increasingly encroach upon one another. Recognition of that

Human demands have grown to exceed sustainable yields from four indispensable biological systems: forests, cropland, grazing lands, and fisheries (Brown, 1981; Catton, 1980; Webb and Jacobsen, 1982). Not only for this reason, but also because the most technologically advanced peoples have committed themselves to largely disregarding the distinction between renewable and nonrenewable resources, we are courting disaster. A nonrenewable resource is anything we use in any of our activities that doesn't grow like a crop―so that it only gets replenished at rates that are enormously slower than our human ability to use it up. Substances that are resupplied only by slow geological processes (minerals, fossil fuels) cannot perpetually be obtained for human use in escalating (or even in constantly large) annual amounts. Any society's reliance upon drawing down finite and diminishing stocks of nonrenewable resources means present human wants can be satisfied

These statements may not have been regarded as "principles of sociology" but that neither falsifies them nor makes them sociologically irrelevant. Because what we use up our descendants will lack, we are stealing from posterity. Both theft of any sort, and

commit disastrously misguided and seriously counterproductive reactions.

should become an essential part of modern sociology's working paradigm.

**5. The situation confronting humanity** 

only by depriving posterity of those resources.

intergenerational relations, are legitimate sociological topics.

to face and clarify them.
