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Grasping the Nettle: Sociology, Political Economy and Carbon Dependency: A Response to Redclift

In his article, ‘The Response of the Hermeneutic Social Sciences to a ‘Post Carbon World’ ‘, which appeared in the 2011, Vol. 1, issue 3 of the International Review of Social Research, Michael Redclift (2011) argues that sociologists have ‘taken a back seat’ in the debate about post-carbon societies. Why this is so is never elaborated, although the author suggests that it’s related somehow to sociology’s longstanding difficulties with policy agendas, and to its skittishness with biological explanations of human behaviour. There are, of course other reasons that aren’t included in Redclift’s discussion. In their critique of Constance LeverTracy’s (2008a) article ‘Global Warming and Sociology,’ Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr (2010) offer two alternative explanations for ‘sociological abstinence’ on issues related to carbon dependence and climate change. First of all, they suggest that as anthropogenic climate change evolved from a science-based issue to top global policy issue, social scientists became gun-shy, avoiding a ‘polarized debate where academic research might be