The Integrated Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of EnvironmentalismUniversal-Publishers, 1999 - 534 pages The theory and data of environmental science suggest that growth in rates of population, consumption and environmental degradation, as a result of the activities of industrialized societies, has created an ecological crisis to which modern societies must adapt. However, adaptation is problematic. Max Weber studied adaptive social change during the industrial revolution. The evolution of this new way of life was initially problematic because individuals who established industrialism were socialized under feudalism. In this dissertation, I consider The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as a theoretical treatise framed by modern human ecology in order to study social change in the context of the ecological crisis of industrialism. The Protestant Ethic is known for describing how religious ideas influenced the unfolding of modern capitalism in the West. However, there is nothing inherent in Protestantism that requires linkage to industrialism. I argue that Protestantism has evolved, and that it need not necessarily promote environmental exploitation, although under industrialism it has. I identify a "green" subculture within Protestantism, and consider how Protestantism's weakness may also be its strength. The very sociological structure that, in the absence of ecologically realistic norms, permits widespread ecosystem degradation by industrial capitalism may also generate ecologically realistic norms for a natural capitalism. Weber contended that rationality was problematic because it paradoxically results in a dual crisis of management and meaning where human agency becomes "imprisoned" as if in an "iron cage." The irrational continuation of environmentally degrading social practices eventually contributes to a legitimation crisis. People turn to religion as an alternative authority. If science and religion converge on environmental values, they might catalyze social change, unless they are too distorted by ideological bias. Adaptive social change only occurs if ethical and ecological values are in accordance with the sustainability of ecosystems. Hence, to adapt to the ecological crisis, sociocultural systems require socialization into ecological realism, because ecologically rational societies may still be maladaptively organized around environmentally unsustainable trajectories. |
From inside the book
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... concepts of lead, poisoning, or death...If dogma insists that humans' symbolic 1I use the term ecological rather than environmental in the scientific (rather than political) sense of the term. Population and consumption growth are ...
... concepts that are grounded in time and space. The ability to make cross- cultural comparisons is essential to any attempts at grappling with a worldwide ecological crisis. Historians criticize historical sociologists for making broad ...
... concept of something presupposes that there is something to which the concept refers: for Weber, any particular act of concept formation also presupposes the possession of empirical, historical knowledge about a concrete phenomenon. The ...
... the unique characteristics of particular concepts and the unique historical moment brought on by biospheric change. 12Other theorists which have used the method of individualizing comparisons 32 The Method of Individualizing Comparisons.
... concepts. Comparison is employed as a means of grasping the peculiarities of each case (Tilly, 1984:81). According to Tilly, [i]ndividualizing comparisons build on the strengths of historically grounded social science. One of the ...
Contents
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46 | |
53 | |
62 | |
81 | |
86 | |
103 | |
Webers Sociology of Religion and Biosociocultural Reorganization | 126 |
THE INTEGRATION OF THE PROTESTANT | 216 |
Theological Removal of the Barriers | 222 |
Conditions for the Development of the Ecologically Realistic Society | 247 |
ThisWorldly Social Action | 304 |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer | 313 |
Le Chambon Sur Lignon | 332 |
THE INTEGRATED PROTESTANT ETHIC | 352 |
Ecological Rationality | 373 |
Webers Critique of Western Civilization | 141 |
PROTESTANTISM AND THE RATIONAL | 158 |
Disenchantment of the Rational Societies | 202 |
Protestantism and the Legitimation Crisis of Rational Societies | 210 |
Disenchantment and Religion | 398 |
From Industrial to Natural Capitalism | 419 |
A INTEGRATING HEBREW THOUGHT INTO THE GREEK | 501 |
B MAKING SENSE OF EXILE | 522 |