Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology Volume 2
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Methods
- Part II Embodied Environmental Sociology
- Part III Beyond the Human
- Part IV Sustainability and Climate Change
- Part V Resources
- Part VI Food and Agriculture
- Part VII Social Movements
- 26 Alternative Technologies and Emancipatory Environmental Practice
- 27 The Global Fair Trade Movement: For Whom, By Whom, How, and What Next
- 28 Possibilities for Degrowth: A Radical Alternative to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Growth-Societies
- 29 Achieving Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Global South
- 30 Conclusion: Envisioning Futures with Environmental Sociology
- Index
- References
26 - Alternative Technologies and Emancipatory Environmental Practice
from Part VII - Social Movements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2020
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology Volume 2
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Methods
- Part II Embodied Environmental Sociology
- Part III Beyond the Human
- Part IV Sustainability and Climate Change
- Part V Resources
- Part VI Food and Agriculture
- Part VII Social Movements
- 26 Alternative Technologies and Emancipatory Environmental Practice
- 27 The Global Fair Trade Movement: For Whom, By Whom, How, and What Next
- 28 Possibilities for Degrowth: A Radical Alternative to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Growth-Societies
- 29 Achieving Environmental Justice: Lessons from the Global South
- 30 Conclusion: Envisioning Futures with Environmental Sociology
- Index
- References
Summary
Sociologists have struggled with how to incorporate dimensions of the built environment, including technology, into understandings of the social world. This chapter argues that a sociological understanding of technology requires grappling with the impacts of technological systems on the relative dependence, isolation, and daily practices of humans. Technologies can be utilized as tools or strategies of power that exacerbate conditions of dependence and isolation. Conversely, technologies can also be leveraged for emancipation. Alternative technologies correspond to alternative forms of daily practice, which may provide opportunities for humans to be more connected to the natural world and to one another as well as being less dependent on existing relations of power. By harnessing electricity from the power of the sun, growing a garden, or hanging clothes on a line instead of using a machine, humans can change their relationships with nature, money, and one another. It is because alternative technologies have the potential to radically restructure practice, which arguably also restructures individual cognition and broader social structures, that they offer emancipatory potential. Collective activities centering on alternative technology transitions can therefore be seen as a social movement, aimed at changing social relations via a change in engagement with material systems.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 447 - 458Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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