Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

There is a movement among sociologists and social critics to include the built environment and physical bodies in social analysis, and to think seriously about the ways that locations and creatures (including people) matter to group life. Part of this comes from anthropological leanings in sociology, and the tradition of thick description that includes discussions of chickens and back streets as well as group life. Part of it is motivated by feminist theory, and the determination to keep bodies and gender cultures in social analysis. Not only the settings for social life but also the human form itself is a cultural artifact made from natural materials. Part of the interest in cultures of nature also comes from Foucault. It is clear that power founded in the built environment provides an almost unnoticed but consequential regulatory mechanism. Sociologists have had a long-term interest in describing the physical forms and social effects of cultural relations to the natural world. While relatively few ethnographic sociologists have paid serious attention to the physical settings for social life, those who have done community studies have sometimes illustrated the centrality of cultures of nature to collective life. Kai Erikson in Everything in its Path (1976) describes the social devastation of the Buffalo Creek flood, and how the mining industry, in disposing of its wastes, set ... log in or subscribe to read full text