Overproduction, the environment and the general law of capitalist accumulation Then after that have a look at the more recent trends in environmental sociology, especially through discoures in which:
… notions such as modernity, postmodernity, risk society, and ecological modernization figure prominently (e.g., Mol and Spaargaren 1993; Spaargaren and Mol 1992). Equally significant has been the drift of sociologists of science, and their notions of the social construction of scientific knowledge, into the environmental sociology arena as interest has grown in researching the environmental sciences and the connections of environmental knowledge production to environmental politics and the environmental movement (Taylor and Buttel 1992; Wynne 1994; Yearley 1991).
Continue reading ‘Seminar Twenty One: Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism, Evironment and Crisis’
In the last seminar we mentioned trends that showed higher levels of religiosity in the United States, compared to Europe, yet ironically America has a stricter separation of state and religion, then say Britain. For example, Britain has an established state Church and a network of faith schools under the state sector (where some individuals may claim membership of religious organizations to access these schools for their children). In the United States, on the other hand, there is a complete separation of religion from all state functions and provisions. At first it would seem that a state sponsor of a religious tradition would result in higher levels of religiosity, but in the case of Britain and the United States the opposite is true. To understand these differing trends you might want to consider the writings of Roger Finke & Rodney Stark. In their book ‘The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy’ they liken religious activity to a marketplace. What concerns them most is the market supply of religion, and in countries where religious activity is deregulated, as in the United States, and there exists a vast plurality, each religious organisation is in competition with the other — as is the case when companies outbid each other in the production and marketing of consumer commodities. 
The objective of this seminar is to examine the relationship between consumption, late modernity and identity (and specifically class identity). First let us start with Baudrillard’s extreme post-modernist perspective, one that argues that identities in post-modernity have become increasingly frivolous. Rather, we now live in an individualized society, where collective identities no longer define as was the case in the past. 
