The history of the culture of civilization has a lot of metamorphoses that manifested themselves at different stages: the agricultural stage, the industrial stage, the post-industrial stage (in terms of D. Bell). Another type of culture manifested itself in different ways concerning nature and the environment. Sometimes a person humbly resigned it to heart, and sometimes he brutally conquered it. The modern problem of interaction between culture and the environment is alienation, which has not yet been overcome.
The modern culture of advanced capitalism subjugates the environment in less brutal ways than humanity during the industrial revolution. Submitting the environment to factories was not at all what the culture of rationality looks like today. The consumer society is harmoniously incorporated into nature and its resources, into the use of natural resources. Even garbage collection, cleaning in the streets and courtyards becomes an ideologically loaded process. It is not an aggressive ideology but a soft one embedded in the depths of human consciousness. Corman (2011) examines the problem of the environment and modern culture on the example of freegans and the topic of dumpsters; she characterizes this theme in one of the passages: “The presence of raccoons and freegans uncomfortably reveals ideas such as civility, urban progress and economic inevitability as interrelated constructions, rather than natural realities” (p. 32). What people took for granted with the arrival of the freegans is disputed. Rational Western culture tends to deny the rationality of such creatures, while it becomes irrational in its control and lust for consumption.
In the modern world of control, there are many instructions, including instructions for using garbage. In addition, trash has a unique symbolic role, being something that cannot be touched and even more so to eat happily. The people around them are trying to dehumanize them since it is the consumer and “Western rationality” (Banergee & Bell, 2007, p. 7) order of care for the correct and civilized environment. To properly take care of nature, there are mechanisms of public administration that environmental sociology could not have dreamed of 30 years ago.
Now developed and rich countries are pouring responsibility for environmental disasters and environmental concerns onto governments. This allows sociology to establish since it receives state protection and a field in which its investigations can be helpful, but earlier “political-cultural conditions were not propitious for their success” (Buttel, 2003, p. 308). Where there is direct state control and supervision, over time, there is excessive rationalization and then alienation. Despite the development of the media, the Internet, the survey of problems, the topic of the environment for the majority of the inhabitants of a civilized society is a topic of alienation. Even in the desire to care for the environment, there is clear mechanization, obedience to instructions, and a complete denial of any other way of helping. At the same time, urbanized areas are very selective concerning the environment. A city dweller can experience a genuine hatred of some manifestations of nature and admire others. These other manifestations are usually under his control. These are parks, landscaped gardens, artificially grown shrubs, etc.
The most crucial problem of modern culture is the alienation of nature from man. The alienation took place gradually, with the advent of state administration and submission to environmental regulations. At the same time, urbanization of the population grew, and residents of large cities formed a particular concern for the environment. They subordinated it to rationality, symbols of purity and attractiveness. Differences appear between dirty, vile nature and pure nature associated with aesthetics and benefits for humans.
References
Banerjee, D. & Bell, M. (2007) Ecogender: Locating gender in environmental social science. Society and Natural Resources, 20, 3-19. DOI: 10.1080/08941920600981272
Buttel, F. H. (2003). Environmental sociology and the explanation of environmental reform. Organization & Environment, 16(306), 306-344. DOI: 10.1177/1086026603256279
Corman, L. (2011). Getting their hands dirty: Raccoons, freegans, and urban “trash”. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 9(3).