Category: Sociological theories

  • Origin of environmental sociology

    Since its beginnings, environmental sociology has thus placed emphasis on studying the dependency of social life and cultural development from its natural surrounding, and on those factors that cause environmental problems and efforts to solve those problems. (Gross & Heinrichs, 2010:2) Gross, M., & Heinrichs, H. (Eds.). (2010). Environmental sociology: European perspectives and interdisciplinary challenges.…

  • Experimental governance and pre-scientific knowledge

    In a previous post it was addressed the concept of experimental governance, understood “as a means to launch an environmental project in spite of uncertainties and uphold the project without disrupting the overall process” (Gross, M., & Heinrichs, 2010:283). This point, the authors continues “is wholly pragmatic to create and facilitate the building of a…

  • Ecological modernization

    Ecological modernization is an optimistic school of thought in the social sciences that argues that the economy benefits from moves towards environmentalism. It has gained increasing attention among scholars and policymakers in the last several decades internationally. It is an analytical approach as well as a policy strategy and environmental discourse (Hajer, 1995). Hajer, M.…

  • Habermas communicative rationality and how discourse ethics and a vibrant public sphere could break the stranglehold on rationality by elites

    Te belief that meaning and reason were social in nature-i.e., required mutual cooperation and collaboration in its contruction-led early pragmatists to belive that an important part of the route to progressive social change lie in democratic deliberative approaches to addressing pressing social problems. These ideas are best illustrated by Dewey´s lifelong commitment to extensive citzen…

  • INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess

    TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. Sociology and the Social Sciences PAGE I. Sociology and “Scientific” History 1 II. Historical and Sociological Facts 6 III. Human Nature and Law 12 IV. History, Natural History, and Sociology 16 V. The Social Organism: Humanity or Leviathan? 24 VI. Social Control and Schools of Thought 27 VII. Social Control…

  • Social capital and development

    See bellow a draft/notes I took before my seminar on social capital and development at Gdansk University of Technology: We have a tendency to think that urban planning, development are one thing and politics another thing. Here, in Spain, and in the whole Europe. Why politics matters. Let´s see how traditional societies worked. I mean…

  • Desarrollo y capital social. ¿Por qué algunas regiones no prosperan?. Parte II.

    Pego aquí íntegro el artículo de Jorge Armesto titulado “Así nos roban: técnicas de saqueo municipal”. Sin duda, una forma de explicar cómo la falta de capital social entendida como la ausencia de normas y valores comunes, es hoy el principal problema de desarrollo local en muchos pueblos. Su realismo y su análisis del funcionamiento…

  • No es sólo un problema de hormigas y cigarras.

    No es sólo un problema de clase (hormigas y cigarras). También existe un problema geopolítico. Las hormigas nacidas en los centros económicos (normalmente norte) tienen muchas más posibilidades de vivir con condiciones óptimas que las nacidas en la periferia (normalmente sur). Este es el resultado del proceso de globalización que se llevan gestando desde hace…

  • No hay relación de poder sin resistencia

    No hay relaciones de poder sin resistencias, que estas son más reales y eficaces en cuanto se forman en el lugar exacto en que se ejercen las relaciones de poder.Foucault, Michel: “El sujeto y el poder”, en Revista Mexicana de Sociología, No. 3, 1988.

  • China’s losers [Diaosi]

    Amid spreading prosperity, a generation of self-styled also-rans emerges Apr 19th 2014 | SHANGHAI | ZHU GUANG, a 25-year-old product tester, projects casual cool in his red Adidas jacket and canvas shoes. He sports the shadowy wisps of a moustache and goatee, as if he has the ambition to grow a beard but not the…