The Sociology of Morality as Ecology of Mind

Abstract

AbstractThe article engages in a comparative analysis of efforts to pass international legislation for the conservation of wild birds in turn-of-the-century Europe. Obstacles to this project were not merely incompatible laws already existing in the involved countries, but the different ways of relating economic, moral, and aesthetic evaluations of wildlife to each other. Focusing on the stark differences between German and British approaches to the topic, the article shows how the way these categories were related to each other was a product of the involved practices shaping the experience of the natural environment. As a result of different practices, moral justifications in Britain were one form of argument among many others formulated by conservationists. The logic of discourse was cumulative, comprising of different arguments that were presented as compatible with each other. In Germany, by contrast, conservationists recognized the existence of a variety of arguments for conservation, yet emphasized the incommensurability of these arguments and commonly advanced only one argument as a valid justification. Taking the centrality of the experience of nature into account, the article argues for the expansion of the classical sociology of morality into an ecology of mind.