Social theories of environmental reform - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 72

to this emerging general sociology of networks and flows, perhaps
stronger in the substantive formulation than in the formal social theory/
concepts.
In relating environment to (global) networks and flows - both in
terms of environmental flows as well as in terms of conventional flows -
we make conceptual space for new forms of environmental reform.
Quite similar to most political economists and neo-Marxist environ-
mental social scientists, Castells discusses inequalities and power in
relation to the environment primarily in the context of a rather straight-
forward dichotomy: place-bounded environmental movements attempt
to resist the omnipotent actors of the space of (economic) flows. The
environment or nature enters into Castells's analysis mainly as negative
side effects of the space of flows. In the end, Castells's view of environ-
ment and nature comes close to being but a reformulation of the con-
ventional point of view of environmental economics ('externalities') in
combination with the traditional 'protest-approach' in environmental
sociology (social movements organizing resistance against modernity,
as we saw in the first generation of the social sciences of environmental
reform). 16 Within Castells's framework, there seems to be little room
for including environment and environmental reform within the time-
space dynamics of the space of flows itself as, among others, ecological
modernisation scholars would have it. In their debates with political
economy scholars, ecological modernisation scholars have made con-
ceptual space for the inclusion of environmental ideas, rationalities
and interests in the dominant economic practices and processes. In a
more or less similar way, in the social theory of networks and flows
environment and environmental protection should be articulated and
conceptualised in the space of place as well as in the space of flow.
Place-bound environmental resistance and protection by local NGOs
and communities are sided by articulation of the environment in inter-
national trade, in Foreign Direct Investments, in global certification
schemes such as ISO 14000 or Forest Stewardship Council labels, in
transnational company networks, in worldwide epistemic communi-
ties (such as those around water or climate change) and so on. By
interpreting environment and nature as attached to (also) the 'space of

16

But Castells ( 2004 ) does make room for a globalised environmental movement
that locates and operates networks of protest at least partly in the space of
flows (e.g., the antiglobalisation or other globalisation movement), be it that
their power to constitute and handle the switches, programs and codes that
make a difference in the network society is marginal.