Many intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities do not concede that Earth scientists have anything to say that could impinge on their understanding of the world, because the “world” consists only of humans engaging with humans, with nature no more than a passive backdrop to draw on as we please.– Clive Hamilton (2017)
New realities have always called for new paradigms, and sociology – the study of how societies are structured by inequalities and how they might change – is built on the foundational work of giants like Karl Marx and Max Weber, who grappled with explaining the rise, functioning, and possible future of capitalism as it burst onto the scene in the nineteenth century. The most original and critical works of 20th-century sociology did a decent job of keeping up with the great changes that followed: corporate control of the global economy, the great social revolutions and other attempts to make societies fairer and more just, the rise of social movements demanding rights for women, for people of color, for gendered others, for all humans’ rights generally, and now humans’ responsibilities toward animals, the planet, and the very future we hope to have.
But even while doing so, much of the discipline lost its critical punch, and nowhere has this been so dramatic and fateful as in the inattention of both mainstream and critical sociologists alike to issues of environmental and climate-induced destruction as the 21st century has rolled into being, and as their effects have inexorably become inescapable realities.
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