Abstract
Humans are both biological organisms – dependent on and interacting with the biophysical contexts within which they develop – and also social organisms – embedded and developing within bonds and chains of functional interdependence with others. Within figurational and biophysical conditions, people develop and express particular kinds of habitus, and socio-environmental impacts derive from the expression of certain kinds of habitus. Much environmental degradation is caused by unbridled ‘economic growth’, and reflects the historical expansion of economic activity, the economization of Western society and its structuring hegemony over other areas of society such as government, religion, education, and general public discourse. The social process of economization forms part of the civilizing process in most advanced industrial societies and reflects forms of control that are definitive parameters of civilizing processes: self-control, social-control and control over nature. Yet, this increasing capacity to manipulate nature has engendered a sense of dislocation from it. Currently, people develop a high level of emotional detachment from nature, a perception of it as an impersonal order, a complex of events with its own laws. But they also maintain a deep affective involvement with nature as a refuge from the social world, a space associated with health and wholesomeness. This paper reveals emerging findings from on-going longitudinal research with ‘Generation Z’ business school students, exploring their emotional involvement with and detachment from nature. What implications do these findings have for the necessary social and self-control proposed by exponents of the ecological moderation imperatives associated with processes of ecologization?
Presenters
Tim BickerstaffeSenior Lecturer, Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Economic, Social, and Cultural Context
KEYWORDS
Habitus, Social Processes, Economization, Ecologization, Involvement and Detachment, Generation Z
