ABSTRACT

This essay has three main objectives. It is, first, an argument against the persistent dichotomy: nature and culture, man and environment. Second, it describes, by means of some case studies, the complex ways modern humans use and degrade the environment and suggests the kinds of research in which social scientists must engage in order to make a contribution to the unravelling of these complex processes. Third, it speaks for the need for a normative perspective—a viewpoint that takes reasoned positions on the problems of resource use and abuse and proceeds towards scholarly attempts to examine these phenomena empirically.