Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves: Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation

324 Pages·2016·5.65 MB·English

by  James S. Ormrod (eds.)

CHANGING OUR
ENVIRONMENT,
CHANGING OURSELVES
Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation
Edited by JAMES S. ORMROD
Changing our Environment, Changing Ourselves

James S . O rmrod
Editor
Changing our
Environment,
Changing Ourselves
Nature, Labour, Knowledge and Alienation
Editor
James S. Ormrod
School of Applied Social Science
University of Brighton
Brighton , United Kingdom

ISBN 978-1-137-56990-5 ISBN 978-1-137-56991-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56991-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942057
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Essays in Honour of Peter Dickens

Prefa ce
Th is book emerges from a festschrift symposium held in honour of the
British sociologist Peter Dickens at the University of Brighton in July
2013. A few years ago now, Peter admitted to me that he was at a hiatus.
Having fi nished a number of projects (some of which we co-authored)
around the sociology of the universe, he was unsure of his next move.
With the 40th anniversary of his fi rst lecturing appointment then on the
horizon, it seemed to me the perfect time to take stock of his contribu-
tion to the social sciences.
However, with the exception of the fi rst two chapters, the other papers
in the festschrift are, by Peter’s typically humble request, not papers cen-
trally discussing his work, but papers that address issues that have also
been of concern to him. All of the contributors to this volume were sug-
gested by Peter as people whose work has inspired him, although they
would no doubt return the compliment. Th e reader will fi nd relatively
little in this volume that is retrospective, but for those unfamiliar with
Peter’s career, I off er a necessarily brief summary in what follows.
H aving trained as an architect at the University of Cambridge, and
then worked as a researcher there in Land Use and Built Form Studies,
Peter took his fi rst lecturing appointment in Urban Studies at the
University of Sussex in 1973. He returned to Cambridge in 2000 to take
up the position of Director of Social and Political Studies at Fitzwilliam
College. Whilst in that role, he was also appointed Visiting Professor in
vii
viii Preface
the sociology department at the University of Essex. He was subsequently
made Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Brighton, and
is currently Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.
Peter’s major books include: H ousing, States and Localities (1 985 , with
Duncan et al.), O ne Nation? (1 988 ), U rban Sociology (1 990 ), Property,
Bureaucracy and Culture (1 992 , with Savage et al.), S ociety and Nature
( 1992 , 2 004 ), Reconstructing Nature (1 996 ), S ocial Darwinism (2 000 )
and C osmic Society ( 2007 , with me).
Th ese wide-ranging texts have in common a central concern with
the relationship between internal and external nature: Th at is, the way
in which human subjectivity, health and psychological well-being are
changed as we work collectively on our environment, and how these
changes in turn aff ect how we understand and interact with the environ-
ments we shape. Peter’s focus has, however, continually shifted to grapple
with contemporary social issues as they have appeared on the horizon,
from the privatisation of public housing, to genetic engineering, to the
commodifi cation of space resources. His path through these issues has
been guided by a critical realist philosophy, Red–Green or ecosocialist
politics and insights from structuration theory and psychoanalysis. His
application of critical realist principles to the sociology of the environ-
ment in particular has been well recognised (see, for example, Hartwig
2007 ).
A fter 40 years in social science, there are a number of reasons why
Peter Dickens is thought of with such aff ection and admiration. Th e
fi rst, which will be evident to all those who have met him, is his remark-
able humility. He delights, for example, in those who confuse him with
Peter Dicken, author of G lobal Shift. But more important is his continual
openness to new ideas from everyone he meets: undergraduate students
and members of the public as much as fellow academics. And this is true
even when he is with those with very diff erent views and when discussing
areas in which he is expert. His work emphasises the need to combine
abstract and specialist knowledge with everyday practical knowledge and
memory, and he exemplifi es this in his own social relations.
Peter’s writing is infused with this same character. His books on urban
sociology, the environment, social Darwinism and outer space have all
the breadth expected of student texts whilst avoiding the dispassionate
Preface ix
sequence of summaries that can so often go along with this (see Murphy
2005; Adams 2 006; Lawrence 2 006) . Instead the reader is guided through
key debates, and past diff erent theoretical positions, led by particular
kinds of philosophical, theoretical and political commitments. Reading
Peter’s work, as is the case with the best writers, you get the sense that
you are exploring the terrain together with him, rather than hearing him
report back on some already completed journey.
C entral to the way in which Peter synthesises material is his ability to
rehabilitate classical theoretical perspectives to tackle the pertinent issues
with which he grapples (refl ected, in context, in Dunlap et al 2002). He
clearly owes the greatest debt to Marx, but his work is punctuated with
references to Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Spencer, Veblen and others, all
of whom he engages with in a scholarly but also wonderfully familiar way.
For all Peter’s humility, these are not ideas we are encouraged to reify or
revere as they are turned to contemporary social problems. More recent
theorists are picked up along the way and integrated into these projects:
David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and
many others (including some of the contributors to this volume).
Th inking beyond sociology in its most reductionist forms, Peter’s
work has also been marked by a rejection of dualistic conceptions of the
biological or social sciences. Th is has necessitated no little courage in
exploring arguments distasteful to the late twentieth-/early twenty-fi rst-
century sociological imagination. As Murphy puts it, he ‘carefully picks
his way through a biological minefi eld where most social scientists fear
to tread’ (2 005 , p. 546). Peter has refused, from ‘inside’ the sociological
worldview, to label either the disciplines or subject matter of the natural
and physical sciences as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Instead, he has encouraged us,
often in what Klein might recognise as a necessarily depressive mode, to
take on the ‘diffi cult task of combining the kinds of analysis off ered by
sociology with those off ered by psychology and biology’ (Dickens 1990 ,
p. 112). Such business is inevitably ‘complex and messy’.
Whilst, as he has emphasised, the transition between his diff erent
fi elds of study has been inspired by personal or public transformations,
Peter has always brought forward and built upon key concerns from pre-
vious work. It is therefore possible to identify certain themes at the heart
of Peter’s sociology. Th ese are the foci of this collection, and it is hoped