SOCIETY, SPACE AND ENVIRONMENT - TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGICAL RE-CONCEPTUALIZATION OF NATURE

Modern environmental problems constitute a challenge for the social sc iences, and during the last few decades the human being's relationship to nature itself has been an object for sociological thought. In this article the concept of nature is elaborated through discussing sociol ogical contributions on the environmental issue, and through discussin g recent thinking of human geographers and sociologists about space. I t is stated that nature viewed as unmediated reality cannot be given a n autonomous position in social theory, but has to be theoretically el aborated through how social practices and processes incorporate and tr ansform it. This leads to the suggestion that biophysical objects shou ld be theorised as belonging to the social, but that at the same time the mechanisms that generate these objects are to be regarded as not b elonging wholly to the social world. In developing two different meani ngs of nature - as materiality and as mechanisms - this article presen ts a reconceptualisation of nature such as to make it relevant for soc iological analysis.