Environment and Society

Social and cultural ecology

Social ecology studies how societies organise their relations with environments through technology, settlement, livelihood, population and institutions. Cultural ecology, associated with Julian Steward, argues that environments shape culture through adaptation, but not deterministically: similar environments can support different cultures because technology, social organisation and history mediate adaptation. The cultural core includes subsistence, tools and social arrangements most closely linked to environment, while other cultural features are less directly determined. Political ecology adds power: environmental change is produced by unequal access to land, markets, states and knowledge, and by global trade, investment and policy. A forest is cleared not only because people need fuel, but because timber markets, land policies, dams, mines and conservation enclosures reorganise access and incentives.

Human ecology also examines population, urbanisation, migration and resource use as interacting systems. Urban environments concentrate pollution, waste, heat and flooding risks, while rural environments face soil degradation, water depletion and biodiversity loss. Environmental problems are therefore rarely purely local: a city consumption pattern drives deforestation elsewhere, a dam displaces communities upstream while powering cities downstream, and industrial waste in one region affects health in another. The concept of the Anthropocene, the idea that human activity has become a geological force, captures scale, but sociologists caution that responsibility is unequal: industrial, corporate and wealthy actors have contributed disproportionately, while poor communities bear disproportionate risk. Environmental justice insists that distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, recognition of affected communities, and participation in decisions must be judged together. A technically efficient project that excludes affected people from decisions fails justice criteria even if it reduces aggregate pollution.

Indigenous knowledge and ethno-medicine

Indigenous knowledge refers to place-based, intergenerational knowledge developed through livelihood, observation, ritual and experimentation. It includes knowledge of soils, seeds, seasons, water, forests, animals, weather signs and healing plants, often transmitted orally, through practice and through stories, songs and rituals. Ethno-medicine studies healing systems that link body, spirit, community, environment and morality, including herbal remedies, dietary practices, birthing knowledge, bone-setting and spiritual healing. These systems are not static tradition: practitioners adapt to new diseases, markets, state health systems and biomedical treatments, combining remedies and referring patients across systems. Medical pluralism describes the coexistence of biomedicine, Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, homeopathy, folk healing and faith healing, with patients navigating them according to illness, cost, trust, gender and access.

Knowledge politics is central. Colonial and developmental accounts often dismissed indigenous knowledge as superstition, while romantic accounts treat it as pure wisdom untouched by power. Both miss how knowledge is produced, tested, contested and commercialised. Bioprospecting and patenting raise questions about who owns knowledge of a plant or remedy, who benefits from commercial products, and whether communities give prior informed consent. Conservation policy can protect biodiversity while criminalising shifting cultivation, grazing or gathering that sustain livelihoods and ecological knowledge. Recognition requires more than documentation: it requires rights to land, language, institutions and participation in research and policy. In health, integration of systems must respect safety, efficacy and patient autonomy, rather than subordinating one system to another or extracting remedies without practitioners. For the examination, show indigenous knowledge as practical, dynamic and political, and ethno-medicine as a social system of meaning, practice and power, not merely a list of herbs.

Gender, forests, exclusion and degradation

Forests illustrate how gender, exclusion and degradation intersect. Women often depend heavily on forests for fuel, fodder, food, medicine and water, yet formal forest rights, committees and benefits have historically been dominated by men, landlords and state officials. When forests are enclosed for timber, conservation or plantations, women may walk further for fuel and fodder, lose income and knowledge, and face greater risk, while their labour remains invisible in official accounts. Ecofeminist perspectives argue that domination of nature and domination of women share patriarchal and capitalist logics, though critics warn against essentialising women as naturally close to nature. A more sociological account examines the gendered division of labour, property, mobility and decision-making that shapes who uses, manages and benefits from forests.

Exclusion operates through property, law and classification. Forest dwellers, pastoralists, shifting cultivators and fishing communities may be labelled encroachers on land they have used for generations, while commercial, mining or infrastructure projects receive concessions. Degradation is not caused by the poor alone, as Malthusian narratives suggest; large-scale extraction, monoculture plantations, dams, roads and market demand often drive deforestation and soil loss, while poor households cope with degraded resources through more labour, migration or dependence on markets. Community forest management, joint forest management and forest rights frameworks attempt to restore access and participation, but outcomes depend on tenure security, gender representation, benefit sharing, accountability and market linkages. Degradation also affects health, nutrition and care: polluted water, smoke from fuel, loss of wild foods and increased work burdens fall unevenly. A strong answer therefore links ecological process to social structure: who controls the forest, who is excluded, whose labour sustains it, and whose knowledge is recognised.

Disasters, pollution, climate and movements

Disasters are social as much as natural. An earthquake, flood, cyclone or drought becomes a disaster when exposure, vulnerability and lack of capacity turn a hazard into loss of life, livelihood and dignity. Vulnerability is produced by poverty, housing quality, location, caste, gender, disability, migration status and access to warning, transport, health and compensation. Women, children, elderly people, Dalits, Adivasis and informal workers often face higher risk and slower recovery, not because of nature alone, but because of social arrangements. Disaster management therefore includes mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, with attention to early warning in local languages, safe shelter, food, water, health, livelihood restoration and protection from exploitation after displacement. Technocratic accounts that blame victims or treat disasters as acts of fate obscure these social causes and the responsibility of planning, construction, land use and climate policy.

Pollution is distributed unequally through industrial location, waste dumping, air quality, water contamination and occupational exposure. Workers in mines, factories, construction and waste work face direct hazards, while nearby communities face chronic exposure with limited information and redress. Climate change intensifies these inequalities: rising temperatures, changing rainfall, sea-level rise, floods, heatwaves and crop stress affect agriculture, water, health and migration, with adaptation capacity depending on assets, information, institutions and social networks. Environmental movements respond at multiple scales: local movements defend land, water and forests; national movements demand regulation, rights and compensation; global movements demand climate justice and corporate accountability. Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan and anti-mining struggles in India illustrate how livelihood, identity, gender and democracy combine in environmental protest, though each movement has its own actors, frames and outcomes. Movements succeed partly through framing environmental harm as injustice, building alliances, using courts and media, and sustaining organisation, while states and corporations respond through repression, negotiation, compensation or greenwashing.

Hazard versus disaster

Forest actors and claims