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Environmental sociology and the Frankfurt School 1: reason and capital

In a two-article project, I demonstrate that the first-generation Frankfurt School’s critical theory can conceptually inform sociological examinations of societal–environmental relations and address contemporary debates and issues in environmental sociology. This first companion article explains why Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse persistently tied the domination of nature to the domination of human beings in the context of two interrelated processes: (1) the instrumentalization of reason and (2) the development of capitalism. The Frankfurt School argued that capitalism was unsustainable due to growth dependence and provided an early analysis of environmentalism’s co-optation. While early critical theory argued that structural forces are primarily responsible for environmental degradation, they did not neglect the role of social psychological and cultural forces in maintaining these structures. In addition to clarifying and systematizing these broader contributions, I provide concrete examples of how their views can inform neo-Marxist models of growth dependency and offer an explanation as to why the mass response to environmental health hazards is through shopping.