Sociology, Environment and the Senses: Environmental Perception in the Xxist Century.

From the 1960’s, the environmental issue has gained both a field of study and a space in the political world. The global green agenda is being discussed over and over, in various contexts. At the same time, both global and local movements are arising central questions to the actual socio-economic system, and the present growth model. It is commonplace to hear we would need many Earths to keep up with the current consumption level. In this scenario, what is the place of social sciences? Assuming that there is an “environmental issue”, in which ways are societies changing or reinforcing their patterns of development? Is more information really serving its purpose, or is it only making societies to be in a permanent alert over issues such as climate change –and its phenomena- and possible lack of water? Are we getting used to being in an environmental crisis?

Here is where a central sociological question emerges: what is the social perception of the environment. Do people understand the environment to be related to their everyday life, or only present in the countryside? How are the ever growing cities being perceived? Once we pass through these obvious questions, we are urged to make some more complex reflections on how we are approaching perception studies. Crossing the environmental with the sociological epistemologic turn to bodies and emotions, it is possible to come closer to a new understanding. In what ways our bodies and sensibilities not only interact but construct the so called environment? Which is the boundary between the skin and the environment, the air and water with the perception of certain landscape? How are these connections and disconnections, socially elaborated? We aim at revising Maturana and Varela’s perspective, to analyze the enactive approach, among other conceptual tools new to the environmental sociology field.