Anticipating the Social from the Ecological: An Ecoconstructionist Reflection for Environmental Sociology

Present theories of Environmental Sociology are inadequate in investigating ecological challenges. This is the thesis of the present article. This situation is brought about by two mutually reinforcing factors: (i) by sociology’s limited and limiting notion of the social (as a result of its bias to modernity and to the experience of the West) and (ii) by environmental science’s lack of language to articulate the sociality exhibited by modern day environmental realities. Thence, the paper examines how the two disciplines’ disparate notions of the social given their conceptual and linguistic confinements can be bridged in order to expand the functionality of the social - one that is capable of not only explicating the evolving nature of human-nature nexus, but also adept in anticipating likelihoods and ramifications of preferred environmental futures. Using biodiversity as a test case, the paper ends by suggesting how the invigorated notion of the social can be explored via the ecoconstructionist reflection suitable for both sociology and environmental science unhampered by their respective disciplinal frontiers.