Theoretical stances and environmental debates: Reconciling the physical and the symbolic

Abstract

Several sociologists arc currently debating the relationship of sociology to the physical environment. Their debates beg a question of more general importance to sociology: How do we organize our thinking about phenomena that are at once physical or material and symbolic or ideal? Our intention is not to add another voice in favor of or opposed to theorizing material, physical, or organic characteristics, but to examine the process of thinking about environments and more generally the realist-idealist divide. Environment (like the body) is unlike typical social science concepts in so far as it is both physical and social. If, for example, status and role are purely social concepts, environment is always more than social. I low do sociologists approach what is always more than social in the study of physical environments? Theorizing environments, we propose, is fashioned by the analytic stance of the investigator as legislative, interpretive, or symbolic realist. The strengths and weaknesses of these stances are discussed, and throughout our discussion empirical work representing each ol them is introduced. A final inquiry examines how sociologists can approach these three stances. Two strategies are identified: to assume each stance mirrors the environment as it actually exists or assume the stances are terminologies for exploring various combinations of the physical-symbolic properties ol environments. A brief plea is made for the second strategy.