Open AccessFROM ‘POLITICAL ECONOMY’ TO ‘POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY’ OF THE CLIMATE CATASTROPHE: WHY THE ECONOMY NEEDS TO BE BLOWN UP TO BE BORN AGAIN?
Author(s) -
Mariusz Baranowski
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
society register
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2544-5502
DOI - 10.14746/sr.2021.5.3.01
Subject(s) - status quo , argument (complex analysis) , political economy of climate change , politics , context (archaeology) , perspective (graphical) , positive economics , nothing , sociology , climate change , state (computer science) , political economy , economic system , epistemology , political science , economics , market economy , ecology , paleontology , biochemistry , chemistry , philosophy , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , biology
The conceptual approach to real social phenomena and problems, as well as factors influencing and shaping them, although theoretical in nature, has momentous practical consequences. The issue of nature, and in a narrower sense of climate, constitutes a telling and representative example of the implications of the theoretical and methodological orientation adopted to study society and its relationship with the environment and its resources. This short paper aims to highlight the consequences of the shift in research perspective from ‘political economy’ to ‘political sociology’ in the context of climate change and its challenges. The article’s main argument is to outline the implications of the change of reference point for the conceptualisation and operationalisation of theoretical frameworks related to social problems and challenges, which, nota bene, are conditioned directly and indirectly by the state of the ecosystem. And the central thesis is that a fundamental reorientation towards nature and climate change within the dominant capitalist system will only be camouflaged maintenance of the status quo (accompanied noisily by a series of technological and fiscal solutions that solve nothing).