The environmental sociology and the sociology of morality. Contact points, synergy or separation?

Abstract

This article presents a comparative analysis of two sociological sub-disciplines: the sociology of morality and the environmental sociology. The author points to the genealogical and methodological differences and similarities, as well as those related to the research subject of both sub-disciplines in order to establish the affinity of the sociology of the environment and the sociology of morality, which can be observed despite the different age and degree of institutionalisation of both sub-disciplines. The author recognises the increase in environmental awareness and the intensification of environmental problems and crises as factors influencing the gradual institutional consolidation of environmental sociology in the scientific field. One of the main conclusions of the article is the indication that the discourse and pro-ecological values are universalistic and normative in nature, and their implementation is subject to moral assessments conditioned by the class habitus and doxa of the middle class, and thus is engaged in the mechanism of (re)production of class distances. This, in turn, is the basis for formulating the hypothesis of environmentalism as a new (bourgeois) morality, and environmental sociology as a new sociology of (bourgeois) morality.