Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 114
CONTENTS
Оглавление1 Theories, theorists and perspectives
3 Positivism and ‘social evolution’
4 Karl Marx: revolution not evolution
6 Emile Durkheim: the social level of reality
7 Twentieth-century structural functionalism
8 Max Weber: capitalism and religion
9 Symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology
10 Challenging mainstream sociology
11 Feminism against malestream sociology
12 Poststructuralism and postmodernity
14 Enduring theoretical dilemmas
15 Social structure and human agency
17 Societies and sociology in transformation
18 Reflexivity, risk and cosmopolitan theory
The theory of human-made global warming, despite being supported by the majority of natural scientists, has been the subject of acrimonious debate and theoretical disagreement.
The former US president, Donald Trump, has long argued that he does not believe in the theory of anthropogenic or ‘human-caused’ climate change. In 2017 he announced that the USA would withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2020. Then, in interviews following a state visit to the UK in 2019, he said:
I believe there’s a change in the weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget, it used to be called global warming, that wasn’t working, then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather you can’t miss…. I don’t remember tornados in the United States to this extent but then when you look back 40 years ago we had the worst tornado binge we ever had. In the 1890s we had our worst hurricanes. (Cited in Weaver and Lyons 2019; BBC News 2019e).
Donald Trump is clearly at odds with the overwhelming majority of natural scientists who say the evidence increasingly supports the theory of anthropogenic (human-forced) global warming. Trump questions both the evidence and the theory, while other sceptics accept the evidence of warming but reject the anthropogenic thesis, arguing that ‘natural cycles’ of warming and cooling explain the changing climate. This particular theoretical dispute has practical and serious consequences. Is there a ‘climate emergency’ or not? Should we phase out fossil fuels more quickly? Do we give up on petrol and diesel cars and move rapidly to all-electric instead? At present, the scientists seem to be winning the argument against the president’s view.
See chapter 5, ‘The Environment’, for an extended discussion of climate change.
Just as in the natural sciences, sociologists need to devise abstract interpretations – theories – to explain the evidence they collect. If they are to formulate appropriate questions that focus their efforts, they also need to adopt a theoretical approach at the outset of their research. Yet sociological theorizing does not take place in an isolated academic ivory tower. This is clear from the questions posed by the discipline’s founders, which were tied to the major social and political issues of the day. Marx sought to explain the dynamics of the capitalist economy, the causes of poverty and growing social inequality. Durkheim’s studies investigated the character of industrial society and the future of religion, while Weber sought to explain the emergence of capitalism and the consequences of bureaucratic organizations for the individual. But are these still the central issues today?
Many sociologists think that the central issues are significantly different today. For example, what are the social, economic and political consequences of globalization? How, why and with what consequences are gender relations being transformed? What is the future for multicultural societies? Indeed, what is the future for human populations across the world in the light of climate change and global environmental problems? In order to address these matters, sociologists have been forced to re-evaluate the classical theories and, where these are found wanting, to develop novel theories of their own.
For newcomers to sociology, a historical perspective is vital. Not only does it help readers to understand how the discipline emerged and changed into its present shape, but it also encourages us all to avoid trying to reinvent the (theoretical) wheel when there is no need to do so. Critics of sociological theorizing – more than a few from within the discipline itself – complain that too many ‘new’ theories are really just ‘old’ theories dressed up in a new language. An appreciation of the development of sociological theory over time sensitizes us to this criticism.
