SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Triple Bottom Line, Ecosystem Diversity, Anthropocentrism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1101
• Professor: Sam Alvaro

Document Summary

Environmental sociology: the study of the interaction between human society and the physical environment. Ecology: the study of how living organisms interact with the environment. Ecosystem: a community of organisms living, feeding, reproducing, and interacting in the same area. These three orientations illustrate how complex the human-nature relationship is, but also help us to explore people"s changing attitudes toward nature throughout history. Anthropocentrism: the view/perspective that human beings are separate from, and above, the rest of nature. As technology and science developed, humans were increasingly able to dominate the natural world for their own gain. This view is opposed by the human exemptionalism paradigm by catton and. Dunlap and catton: while humans were certainly exceptional, they were not exempt from the natural world. This position is also known as the new. New environmental paradigm: the view that human social actions occur within an ecosystem that has its own processes and limits. (contrary to anthropocentrism) - human actions do affect nature.