Towards an Ecosociology

Abstract

This article offers insights from ecopsychology – which aims to place human behaviour back in the context of the natural world – to further the development of an ecosociology that meets Catton and Dunlap’s (1978) call for a paradigmatic shift in the way sociology views the role of nature in human society. A more ecocentric viewpoint, reincorporating direct experience, including the environment as part of being embodied, and extending the social to the more-than-human world, could offer new views on the nature of the social, what it is to be human, and wider issues of environmental sustainability. This would be a move towards a revitalized ecosociology that could help humanity come to terms with its unique, but not pre-eminent role in the global system.