Socialization of environmental policy objectives: tools for environmental marketing

Abstract

One of the books that will greatly influence sociologists’ thinking about environment and society is Risk Society by Ulrich Beck (1992).² It is likely to be perceived as one of the most persuasive sociological contributions in this decade to the conceptualization of environmental degradation and ecological hazards and as such a good starting point for this chapter, which reflects on the necessity of and constraints to socialization or internalization of environmental policy objectives.³ One of the key notions in Beck’s theory of the risk society is that the modernization process through its massive industrialization evoked a change from exposure to personal risks to global risks. In pre-modern society people were also confronted with risks but these were essentially individual risks. The globalization of environmental pollution which is characteristic for modern society implies the globalization of risks people are faced with. These risks are the “dark side of modernization”, the wholesale product of industrialization, and are defined as a “systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself” (Beck, 1992, p. 21). In the 19th century the social debate focused on poverty risks or, in other words, on social class conflicts. Ecological risks that confront us in the latter part of the 20th century have brought a new dimension to risk exposure: they are no longer tied to their place of origin but by their nature threaten all forms of life on this planet. This is exactly what is meant by the process of globalization of risks: “risk society in this sense is a world risk society” (Beck, o.c., p. 21). Unlike the social and economic class-dependent risks that were characteristic of early industrial society, globalized ecological risks transcend social class and they ignore the borders of society.