Book Reviews : THE ENVIRONMENT: FROM SURPLUS TO SCARCITY, by Alan Schnaiberg. New York, Oxford University Press, 1980. 464 pp. $20.35 (paper) (original) (raw)

The Australian and New Zealand journal of sociology, 1984

Abstract

or indirectly utilized by present societies.&dquo; The point of his argument is that present industrial production systems and the social inequalities they create are at odds with improving or maintaining environmental quality and, at worst, are destroying the very biophysical environment upon which we are dependent. The author argues that the social organisation of our industrial and agricultural system of production is incongruent with the thermodynamic principles upon which our biophysical system is based. Regeneration or maintenance of the biophysical system is therefore seriously threatened by how we use it. Our evasion of thermodynamic principles (primarily the first two laws of thermodynamics) occurs &dquo;... because humans have learned to operate across ecosystems, and to view their sociocultural production as rested in a different set of principles economic, not ecological. The distinctions between these two sets of rules are important in understanding the generation of environmental problems, and the historical development of societal economies&dquo; (p. 15). Understanding pollution and correcting it therefore requires a close study of modem production systems. Social factors maintaining the current social and economic structure of these systems are the basic causes of pollution, or more generally, &dquo;biospheric disorganization&dquo;. The book is divided into two sections. The first deals with the social factors

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