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Section: Research Student Profiles
Vesa Arponen
- Name Vesa Arponen
- Organisation
- Science Studies, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh - Address
- Edinburgh UK
- vesa.arponen[AT]sms.ed.ac.uk
- URL
- http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/gradschool/research_student_profiles/science_and_technology_studies/arponen_vesa
Doctoral Project Description
Provisional title: The Cultural Cause of Environmental Problems: A Wittgensteinian Approach
In environmental history, and environmentalism more broadly, environmental problems are cast as flowing from a certain collectively shared ideology or conceptualisation of nature as a mechanical system manipulated for more human material well-being. I argue that this over-intellectualises the human relationship to nature casting the issue motivationally as the human performance of environmental problems flowing from a shared ideology about nature.
By contrast, I argue that the socio-economic organisation of human life in industrial market society steers geographically and ideologically diverse, but economically connected masses, to the enduring, repetitive, everyday, performance of social structures and processes disruptive of the natural environment. Due to the everyday quality of these activities, human relationship to nature is thus not ideological and the human performance of environmental problems not motivationally explainable. The import of this view is that environmental problems cannot effectively be combated by seeking a change in our attitude to nature, but by finding an alternative form of socio-economic organisation of human life.
I present my argument in a multidisciplinary fashion. (1) I develop a novel social theoretical rereading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of the human performance of social structures and processes. The core of this approach is a non-ideological picture of the human performance of social systems and processes as everyday, repetitive engagement in human interaction on day to day basis. By contrast, I argue that social theory has tended to cast social action, human interaction in general, as relying fundamentally on shared norms, conceptualisation and the like. (2) I review environmental sociological literature to illustrate the role of the system of industrial market society as the context of human performance of environmental problems. (3) I provide a set of original early modern historical case studies illustrating the non-ideological character of the human disruption of nature flowing from everyday, socio-economic interactions of socially and ideologically differently situated people.
Provisional title: The Cultural Cause of Environmental Problems: A Wittgensteinian Approach
In environmental history, and environmentalism more broadly, environmental problems are cast as flowing from a certain collectively shared ideology or conceptualisation of nature as a mechanical system manipulated for more human material well-being. I argue that this over-intellectualises the human relationship to nature casting the issue motivationally as the human performance of environmental problems flowing from a shared ideology about nature.
By contrast, I argue that the socio-economic organisation of human life in industrial market society steers geographically and ideologically diverse, but economically connected masses, to the enduring, repetitive, everyday, performance of social structures and processes disruptive of the natural environment. Due to the everyday quality of these activities, human relationship to nature is thus not ideological and the human performance of environmental problems not motivationally explainable. The import of this view is that environmental problems cannot effectively be combated by seeking a change in our attitude to nature, but by finding an alternative form of socio-economic organisation of human life.
I present my argument in a multidisciplinary fashion. (1) I develop a novel social theoretical rereading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of the human performance of social structures and processes. The core of this approach is a non-ideological picture of the human performance of social systems and processes as everyday, repetitive engagement in human interaction on day to day basis. By contrast, I argue that social theory has tended to cast social action, human interaction in general, as relying fundamentally on shared norms, conceptualisation and the like. (2) I review environmental sociological literature to illustrate the role of the system of industrial market society as the context of human performance of environmental problems. (3) I provide a set of original early modern historical case studies illustrating the non-ideological character of the human disruption of nature flowing from everyday, socio-economic interactions of socially and ideologically differently situated people.
Academic Background
I am trained in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. I received my Masters in Philosophy with Honours in 2006 and my MSc in Philosophy in 2007 with the dissertation titled Wittgensteinian Humanism. My MSc dissertation in the Science and Technology Studies at the University of Edinburgh is titled Nature, Modernity, History: A Wittgensteinian Structuralist Approach to Environmental Problems.
Click here to download Wittgensteinian Humanism (pdf format).
Click here to download Nature, Modernity, History (pdf format).
See also
Click here to visit my personal website.
This page was published on 19 December 2010