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Sociology and the ‘slow violence’ of toxic pollution. An invitation to debate

Until fairly recently Sociology neglected ecological factors. The reasons for this disciplinary inertia go back to Durkheim’s insistence that ‘social facts’ must be explained by other ‘social facts’ (Cock 1994). Another expression of disciplinary inertia is that much of the recent writing under the rubric of Environmental Sociology rejected Marxism on the grounds that Marx and Engels ignored natural limits, were technological determinists, understood labour as the only source of value and promoted an anti-ecological industrialism. This perspective has now been thoroughly debunked (O’Connor 1998; Foster and Magdoff 2011; Foster 1999 and 2009; Burkett 2005). By contrast a Sociological Marxism is emerging with a strong ecological focus. For example, Burawoy maintains that ‘Marxism continues to offer the most comprehensive critique of capitalism as well as a compelling guide to feasible alternatives’ (Burawoy 2003: 1). But it requires ‘regeneration’ and this ‘depends on the incorporation of sociological ideas’; (ibid.: 4). His key sociological idea is the notion of ‘the novel modes of commodification’ (Burawoy 2013: 36). He identifies three different periods based on different modes of commodification and different forms of countermovement. ‘The third wave, known to many as neoliberalism, begins in 1973 with the oil crisis and initiates a third wave of marketization featuring the recommodificiation of labour and money, but also the commodificiation of nature’ (Burawoy, 2013:39). This is having devastating impacts: ‘if nature is turned into a commodity it destroys our means of existence – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the land upon which we grow food, the bodies we inhabit’ (Burawoy 2013: 37). In his analysis, what is ‘unique about the third period ... is the way the expansion of capitalism has given rise to environmental degradation, moving toward ecological catastrophe’ (Burawoy 2013: 39).