Sociology | Class 11 | Environment and Society

20 December 2022 · 6 min read

A short watch before you read on.

Introduction

Social interactions with the environment have evolved over time and differ from place to place. Every society has an ecological foundation. When we use the word ecology, we are referring to a network of physical, biological and human systems and activities. Ecological components include rivers, mountains, oceans, plains and animals.

The relationship between a place's geography and its hydrology shapes its ecology as well. Human activity has changed that ecology. Aridity or flooding, for example, which seem to be naturally occurring features of the environment, are frequently the result of human activity, so telling natural change apart from human-driven change can be difficult.

The combination of biophysical ecology and human intervention led to the development of the social environment. It is a two-way process: just as society shapes nature, nature shapes society.

For instance, the fertile soil of the Indo-Gangetic floodplain makes extensive cultivation possible. Its high productivity supports densely settled populations and produces surpluses large enough to sustain non-agricultural activities, so complex hierarchical societies and states can develop.
In the same way, capitalist social structures have influenced nature all across the world. Urban air pollution, regional conflicts, oil wars and global warming have all left their mark on nature.

Relationship between environment and society

Social organisation influences how the environment and society interact. It essentially refers to how various social groups relate to property. This property relation governs the use of natural resources, including how they are used and by whom. Women and landless workers relate to natural resources differently from men. Because women in rural India typically do jobs such as collecting fuel and fetching water yet do not control these resources, they are more likely to experience resource scarcity more severely.

Different interactions between the environment and society also reflect different social norms, values and knowledge systems. A river's many cultural meanings, including its ecological, practical, spiritual and aesthetic value, can be reduced to a single calculation about an entrepreneur's profit and loss from selling its water.

Different viewpoints exist about the environment and how it relates to society. The "nature versus nurture" debate is one example of these differences.

According to the "nature" camp, genetics and biology have the major influence on how people turn out.
The "nurture" side argues instead that social interaction is the most significant influence on our personality and behaviour.

The social contexts in which theories and data about the environment and society arise shape them. As ideas of equality grew during the social and political upheavals of the 18th century, the old assumptions that women were fundamentally less capable than men, and that Black people were inherently less capable than White people, were challenged. In short, the environment shapes society, and society in turn influences how people behave.

Significant environmental risks and problems

Resource depletion

While fossil fuels, and petroleum in particular, get most of the attention, the damage to and depletion of water and land are possibly happening even faster.
To meet the rising demands of intensive agriculture, industry and urban centres, aquifers that stored water over hundreds of thousands of years are being emptied within a few decades.
The other major resource running out fast is the habitat for biodiversity, such as forests, grasslands and wetlands. This is mostly because of the spread of agricultural land.

Pollution

In both urban and rural areas, air pollution is seen as a serious environmental problem that contributes to respiratory and other health issues.
Indoor air pollution caused by cooking fires is another significant risk.
Water contamination is a very important problem that affects both surface water and groundwater.
Cities are also troubled by noise pollution, which has been the subject of many court judgments.

Global warming

A "greenhouse" effect is caused by the release of certain gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, which stop the sun's heat from escaping and trap it instead. Global temperatures have risen slightly but significantly as a result.
Global climate change is expected to bring more erratic and unpredictable weather. China and India are now among the world's major producers of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Genetically modified organisms

By moving genes from one species into another using modern gene-splicing techniques, scientists can introduce new traits.
Crops can be genetically modified to grow faster, grow bigger and last longer on the shelf. The long-term effects of genetic modification on the people who eat these foods, and on ecological systems, are still little understood.

Natural and man-made environmental disasters

Because the environment has a direct impact on society, environmental concerns are also social problems. For a very long time humans have been damaging the environment and using natural resources for their own gain. Human actions are causing nature to deteriorate, and this is why people now face a wide range of environmental issues.

Recent examples of both man-made and natural environmental disasters include the Bhopal tragedy of 1984, in which around 4,000 people died when a toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide facility, and the tsunami of 2004, which claimed thousands of lives.

Several contentious environmental issues include:

The Chipko Movement (Uttarakhand)
The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat)
The industrial accident in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh)

Why environmental problems are also social problems

Because the environment is the very basis of survival, there is a strong need to conserve it. If the air becomes contaminated we will not be able to live healthy lives, and there will not be enough natural resources for the next generation.
How far people can protect themselves from, or recover from, environmental catastrophes depends on their social rank and authority.
A sociological analysis shows that the way public priorities are set and pursued may not always be fair. Securing the public interest may in reality harm the interests of the poor and the politically weak, or serve the interests of powerful economic and political groups.
The school of social ecology stresses how social ties, in particular how property and production are organised, shape how people see and treat the environment.

Important terms

Administrator-anthropologist: British administrative staff who worked for the British Indian government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and who were very interested in anthropological study, particularly surveys and censuses. After retirement some of them became well known as anthropologists. Edgar Thurston, William Crooke, Herbert Risley and JH Hutton are a few famous names.
Deforestation: the loss of forest land as a result of cutting trees or using the land for other purposes, mainly agriculture.
Emissions: the waste gases produced by human activity, often from industry or transport.
Ecology: the network of biological and physical processes and systems, of which humans are a part.
Effluents: liquid waste products from industrial processes.
Hydrology: the source of water and its flows, or the overall structure of water resources in a nation or region.
Anthropometry: the branch of anthropology that studied human "types" by measuring the human body, particularly the skull (the volume of the skull, the circumference of the head and the length of the nose).
Assimilation: the process by which one culture, often the larger or more dominant one, gradually absorbs another. By the end of the process the absorbed culture has merged with the dominant culture and is no longer distinct.
Metropolis: a city with strong social and economic ties to its suburbs, nearby towns and rural areas.
Primate city: a city that is far larger than any other in the country and dominates it economically and culturally.
Magnet cities: urban areas that draw many rural residents in search of better economic prospects.
Laissez faire: a French expression (literally "let it be" or "leave alone") for a political and economic doctrine that favours less government involvement in the economy, usually resting on a belief in the efficiency of the free market.
Suburb: a neighbourhood just outside a city, with a lower population density.
Environment: both geographical and biological factors taken together.
Aquifers: underground geological structures where water is naturally stored.
Monoculture: when only one type of plant is grown in an area.
Urban ecology: a subfield of urban sociology that examines how people interact with their urban surroundings.

Why it still matters

This chapter's central idea, that the environment and society shape each other and that environmental problems are really social problems, is not just exam theory. It is playing out in the headlines right now, and it is one of the threads we follow across the Learnacy Hub.

Take global warming. In January 2025 the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations weather agency, confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record, at about 1.55 degrees Celsius above the average for 1850 to 1900. It was likely the first full calendar year to pass 1.5 degrees of warming, and the last ten years have all been among the ten warmest ever measured. That is the textbook "greenhouse effect" turning into a live global emergency, exactly the risk this chapter names.

Pollution shows the same pattern. The World Health Organization reports that about 99 per cent of the world's population breathes air that exceeds its safe guideline limits, and that dirty air is linked to roughly 7 million early deaths every year. Crucially, the heaviest exposure falls on low and middle income countries. This is the chapter's key sociological point made real: a river or a lungful of air is never shared equally, and social rank decides who can shield themselves and who cannot.

The resource-depletion section speaks directly to India. NITI Aayog, the Government of India's policy think tank, warned in its Composite Water Management Index that nearly 600 million Indians face high to extreme water stress, as the very aquifers this chapter describes are drawn down faster than they can refill. Water, like the fisheries and forests economists once treated as free, is a shared resource that a society can quietly use up, which is exactly what the "tragedy of the commons" idea is about.

So the movements in these notes, Chipko and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, were early versions of a debate that has only grown louder. If you want to keep pulling on this thread, browse our wider resources library, or work through the rest of our Class 11 Sociology notes.

Sources

World Meteorological Organization, "WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55 degrees C above pre-industrial level" (January 2025): https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-about-155degc-above-pre-industrial-level
World Health Organization, "Air pollution" health topic (99 per cent figure and about 7 million deaths a year): https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution
NITI Aayog, Composite Water Management Index (nearly 600 million Indians facing high to extreme water stress): https://social.niti.gov.in/uploads/sample/water_index_report2.pdf

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