'Society', 'culture'and 'environment' are among the most contentious concepts when
used to
classify human development. Society and culture are sometimes treated as virtually synonymous,
sometimes radically distinguished. On the one hand, their study has been maintained as the
particular preserve of social and cultural anthropology. On the other hand, they are often linked
toegether by biologists to embrace almost the entire
field of animal behaviour.
For the purposes of defining the changes brought about by the human economic system,
culture is
defined as local behavioural characterisitcs that are transmitted from generation to generation by
non-genetic means.
Society is defined by those characteristics that rest on the symbolic organization
of experience.
The link between society and culture is sociality, distinguished in terms of its interactive, regulative,
and constitutive forms, which establishes the connections between social life and the spread of
ideas between individuals and groups. Economic impacts on society are defined in terms of
settlement, education, health, human relationships and economic well being.
Environment is defined by the ways in which human beings and other animals construct
their
environments, which requires a characterization of the connection, established in production,
between social and ecological systems.
Links between all three concepts involve the relation between human learning, thinking,
and
consciousness.
The cultural impact of economic development that has a modern ring to it is first
noticeable in 14th
century Italy. It is marked by the significant spread of wealth beyond kings and princes that was
seen in Venice at the turn of the 14th century.
The flow of money into the north Italian towns was a stimulus to the growth of humanism
that
defined the Renaissance. It also gave rise to the idea of human progress in terms of increased
wealth and increased standards of living, at least for those with money.
The relationship between economics and progress came to a head in the 1851 Great Exhibition
in
London. However, the shift in thinking about economic development as cultural progress towards
its deletarious impact on society and environment began in the 18th century. One eighteenth-
century British tourist who recorded his opinions about the environment was the Hon. John Byng,
later Viscount Torrington, who undertook a series of tours through England and Wales between
1781 and 1794. He never intended his journals, which have been published as The Torrington
Diaries, to appear in print, and the honesty of the opinions makes them very valuable to the
historian. Although Byng was an extremely conservative, indeed reactionary character, he went out
of his way to visit the new industrial centres, invariably disliking them when he arrived. In 1792,
he
wrote of Aysgarth, a relatively small development in modern terms, in the Yorkshire Dales:
'But what has completed
the destruction of every rural thought, has been the erection of a
cotton mill on one side, whereby prospect, and quiet, are destroy'd: I now speak as a tourist
(as a policeman, a citizen, or a statesman, I enter not the field); the people, indeed, are
employ'd; but they are all abandon'd to vice from the throng... At the times when people
work not in the mill, they issue out to poaching, profligacy and plunder - Arkwright may have
introduced much wealth into his family, and into the country; but, as a tourist, I execrate his
schemes, which, having crept into every pastoral vale, have destroy'd the course, and
beauty of Nature; why, here now is a great flaring mill, whose back stream has drawn off
half the water of the falls above the bridge.
'With the bell ringing
and the clamour of the mill, all the vale is disturb'd; treason and
levelling systems are the discourse; and rebellion may be near at hand.'
A few days later, he was gratified that when he asked a man 'if the cotton trade did
not benefit the
poor?' the man replied, The worst thing in the world in my opinion, Sr., for it leaves us neither stout
husbandmen, nor modest girls; for the children bred in a cotton — mill, never get exercise
or air,
and all are impudent and saucy.'
The impending ecological disaster was clear to John Ruskin, who saw in his lifetime,
the impact of
mass tourism on the clarity of the alpine streams. In this respect, S.T. Coleridge, in his poem
'Cologne', could write:
But tell me Nymphs,
what power divine
Shall henceforth
wash the river Rhine?
Today it is often thought that the oil crisis of the early 1970s seemed to prove the
economic
ecologist argument beyond doubt. The West's dependence on this finite resource seemed very
clear when an abrupt rise in price created shortages and economic depression. The long- term
implications of a shortage of mineral resources could be impressed clearly on the public mind.
However, the emergence of finite resources as a global issue predated the oil crisis.
In 1972 a
report was presented to the United Nations World Conference on the Human Environment by
Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. It argued that man had to replace family or national loyalties with a
sense of allegiance to the planet. It preached imminent doom through man's technological
capacity. The book prophesied that children alive then would see the global crisis take inescapable
shape. The Club of Rome was also founded in 1972. It too prophesied imminent global catastrophe,
unless resource use was curbed, and resources shared .
The ideal of global planning of resources had emerged well before the Second World
War. Later
bodies that embodied this ideal, like the United Nations and its subsidiaries, had begun the post-
war era full of hope. Yet their scope had grown in almost direct proportion to their increasing
powerlessness over Third World countries. Fears of their over-population increased in the 1960s.
Theories of increasing immiserisation continued in parallel with increasing population growth and
prosperity.
Many environmental impacts stemming from economic activities now cross national boundaries.
Some are global in scope. Although most of the activities that give rise to such risks are
concentrated in the industrial countries, the risks are shared by all countries whether they benefit
from these activities or not. And most countries have little influence on the decisions that affect
these activities. These risks include harmful effects from hazardous waste and from increasing
concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The issue of
greenhouse gases and climate change has emerged as particularly urgent, with scientific
observations and analysis indicating that significant global warming and climate change are likely
over the next few decades. Although the effects may not reach critical proportions until the later
this century, their potential magnitude is so great that it would be unwise to postpone efforts to
limit their causes. In addition, there has been a transfer of environmental costs from industrial to
developing countries, as some of the "dirty" manufacturing processes have relocated away from
the
developed countries.
Environmental stress has long been seen as a result of the demand for scarce natural
resources
and the related pollution of the air, water, and land generated by rising living standards. But poverty
also creates environmental stress. In order to survive, the rural poor often degrade and destroy their
immediate environment as they cut down forests for fuelwood, overuse marginal agricultural land,
and eventually migrate to the shrinking areas of vacant land or to urban areas. Severe air and water
pollution is tolerated in many cities because it permits other gains deemed more valuable than the
immediate benefits of pollution abatement and because the long-term benefits of abatement are
heavily discounted.
Proper management of the natural resource base is actually especially important in
poor countries
that cannot afford the consequences of rapid soil degradation and other irreversible losses of
potentially renewable resources. Nor can they afford high-cost efforts to remedy environmental
damage. Efforts to develop sustainable agriculture, forestry, and fisheries may fail unless
population growth slows down.
Appropriate technologies do not exist in many resource-poor areas to sustain the present
and
projected population; even some resource- rich areas are reaching their maximum output.
According to the FAO:
"The objective
is to create an economic environment in which it is more profitable to
conserve resources than destroy them. Soil and water conservation measures, for example,
should, where possible, be designed to show an economic return to the farmer in the year of
application, because otherwise they are unlikely to be widely adopted. Similarly, habitat
conservation and game cropping for tourism should be seen as a socially and economically
profitable alternative to forest and savannah destruction."
Sustainable agriculture will thus require changes in the ways the rural poor live,
increasing their
income-earning capacity and helping them to withstand shocks and stresses in their life support
systems.
International economic relations pose a particular problem for developing countries'
efforts to
manage their environment, since the export of natural resources is a large factor in their economies.
Nevertheless, there is still a strong argument that the historical benefits of economic
progress can
be maintained alongside the environmental and social impacts of mass production and mass
transport.
