Environment and Society

Environment and Society Readings in Social and Environmental Studies The Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies Josai International University Gumyo 1, Togane City March 2015 Environment and Society Readings in Social and Environmental Studies The Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies Josai International University Gumyo 1, Togane City March 2015 Preface The Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies has established its educational goal as training global personnel who are of use in society by constructing “a sustainable society”, that balances society and the environment, under present circumstances marked by advancing global warming, the biodiversity crisis and other environmental issues that are appearing globally. Our faculty, is making use of its characteristic as an international university, to establish “The Global College” Programme based on an “All English” policy as a new faculty, and providing our students with diverse opportunities to take a second foreign language such as Germany or French, in order to improve their linguistic skills that are the foundation of English education, and in this way to promote global education. Furthermore, by cooperating with more than 140 overseas sister universities, we are nurturing a viewpoint that considers the environment from a global perspective by deepening international exchanges with foreign students and understanding of overseas cultures through short and long term overseas study and student exchanges. This textbook is an English summary of some of the results of education and research by our faculty edited mainly for students from abroad studying in our university to give them an accurate understanding of the contents of the education and research on the environment supplied by our faculty. To our great honour., Professor Inoue, a member of the Japan Academy and Director, International Institute of Green Materials, JIU, has contributed three latest articles in English, Professors Lemkow, has contributed an article written in English. The categories under which we have arranged the writings included here are designated the chapter title. We have added carmina arborea as a local oral historian’s narrative on the environment near our campus, located in Gumyo, Chiba Prefecture. Thanks go to the colleagues leading the joint project and the contributors to this collection. 31st March 2015 Hirotaka Suzuki Dean The Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies Josai International University Contents Ⅰ. Environmental Sociology Environment and Society: From Environmental Determinism to Environmental Governance Louis Lemkow ………………………………1 Ⅱ. Environment and Technology Development and Applications of Advanced Al-based Materials with High Specific Strength A. Inoue, F.L. Kong ………………………18 Bulk Metallic Glasses as Environmental Advanced Materials A. Inoue ………………………………………………………………… 44 Fe-based Amorphous Soft Magnetic Alloys with High Saturation Magnetization F.L. Kong, A. Inoue …………… 58 Ⅲ. Mitigating Heat-island Phenomenon Mechanism of Improving the Thermal Environment Caused by the Building Greening Hirotaka Suzuki …………………………………………………………… 69 Estimating the Thermal Environment Improvement Effects of Wall Greening Hirotaka Suzuki …………………………………………………………… 81 Ⅳ. Greenery Space and Urban Environment Study on Actual States of Public Open Spaces and the Characteristics of Green Spaces Constructed by Planned Development Design and Special Zoning Urban Area Systems in the 23 Wards of Tokyo Hirotaka Suzuki ……………………………………………………………… 99 Ⅴ. Biodiversity Science A Field Note: Fruit-Bearing Birds: White Eyes as Pollen Vectors of Camellia japonica Yoko Kunitake ………………………………………………… 112 Ⅵ. Horticulture and society Actual Conditions and Problems Regarding the Preservation and Ongoing Survival of Traditional Horticultural Plants in Japan Hirotaka Suzuki ……………………………………………… 117 Ⅶ. Botany and Society Aromatherapy Takeo Kawaguchi ……………………………………………………… 129 How Essential Oils Enter the Body Takeo Kawaguchi ………………………………………………………… 141 Ⅷ. Environmental Ethics A Critical Approach to the Japanese Collective Idea of Nature Akitsugu Taki ……………………………………………………………147 Ⅸ. Folkloristics A Folkloristic View of the Japanese People’s Perception of Nature through a Collective Idea of Animals in Some Trans-Special Matrimony Folklores Mitsuo Namoto ………………………………………………………… 169 Ⅹ. carmina arborea Trees Talk Hideko Nameki …………………………………………………………… 184 Ⅰ. Environmental Sociology Environment and Society: from Environmental Determinism to Environmental Governance Louis Lemkow 1. Introduction The term sociology was first used and defined by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in 1838. Sociology was to be the new science of society, replete with “laws” which would describe, explain and even predict the outcome of social processes. Such laws would be a direct parallel with those developed in the natural sciences. While Comte was one of the founders of the modern discipline of sociology which was consolidated in academia during 19th and 20th Centuries, attempts to understand the workings, structure and nature of human communities had formed part of western thought from at least as early as classical Greek society. Plato and Aristotle, to name just two key philosophers of the classical period, were both committed to studying and understanding the societies in which they lived. Environmental sociology is one of the newest sub disciplines of sociology, centered as it is on the study of the interaction between environment and society. Its emergence as an area of academic research responded to the political activism and new social movements of the 1960s and 70s which denounced the degradation of the environment and the existence of an ecological crisis related to human productive and consumer behaviour. As with its parent discipline of sociology, concerns to understand the interaction between environment and society predate the creation of the sub discipline. The relationship between society, its structure, social organization and culture and the physical/biotic environment in which it is embedded has represented one of the important analytical concerns of scholars in the past - indeed, we can once again trace this area of intellectual enquiry back to classical Greek society and in particular to the writings and researches of Hippocrates of Cos who lived in the 5th Century BC. This chapter shows how in western thought, our view of the environment society dialect began with the simplistic notion that our society and associated culture are the direct product of environmental and geographical factors. As society and economy were transformed by human agency, our environment in consequence was also changed and sometimes severely degraded. In this context the impact of human activity on the environment became the focus of concern of 1 scholars and the wider society. The globalization of the world’s economy and culture and accelerated techno-industrial development and exploitation of the planet’s resources saw a growing disquiet about the sustainability the Earth. Climate change, an outcome of the anthropogenic causes of environmental deterioration has lead scholars and environmental activists to conceive humanity’s relationship with the environment in the framework of complexity. We have moved from a simplistic view of the environment-society connection to a recognition that the interaction between social and ecological systems are immensely complex. This chapter looks at how it was thought that our lives and culture were governed by the environment to the current urgency of developing effective and global environmental governance in the face of the severe impacts of human activity on the planet. ２． Evironmental determinism: society and culture governed by nature While Hippocrates is best known for his work on medicine, including the impact of geographical and environmental factors on human health, he also contributed to the notion that the environment seemed to play a relevant role in determining the nature and culture of human communities. Geographical or environmental determinism of which Hippocrates is probably the first coherent exponent in western thought represents a simple model of unidirectional causality: society is molded by its physical and biological setting. This vision or paradigm was extraordinarily persistent. It managed to survive the arrival of Christianity and Islam and the profound economic changes from the late middle ages onwards. It was found in the “progressive” writings of the French Philosophes of the 18th Century and in academic geography and anthropology of the following century. It was not seriously challenged as a theory of society and culture until the fin du siècle. Here is what Hippocrates had to say about the shaping of human cultures by the environment: When a people lives in a rough mountainous country at a high elevation, and well watered where great differences of climate accompany the various seasons, the people will be of large physique, well accustomed to hardihood and bravery, with no small degree of fierceness and wildness in their character. On the other hand, in low-lying, stifling lands, of meadows.... They are phlegmatic rather than bilious. Bravery and hardihood are not an integral part of their characters although these traits can be created by training. (Hippocrates (1984), p. 67) 2 Simplistic, with naïve clichés perhaps, but Hippocrates was trying to explain the cultural diversity present in the part of the world in which he travelled and knew so well; the eastern Mediterranean. His answer

Load more