The issue of future societal development has captured the attention of scientists and experts from different fields and it is increasingly associated with environmental capacity and quality. The reach and the topicality of the issue were identified more than 40 years ago, while the solution materialized years later as a new paradigm of societal development – sustainable development. Considering the subject of study of sociology and its significance for steering societal development, this author was faced with the question of how and to what extent Serbian sociologists deal in their theoretical and empirical studies with the nature-society relationship and with sustainable development as a globally accepted development model. The discussion in this paper is based on the articles published in leading Serbian national journals in the fields of sociology and multidisciplinary sciences. The first findings reveal that sociologists less frequently deal with the environment and sustainable development than other social scientists, such as jurists, economists, psychologists, pedagogists, or andragologists. In this author’s opinion, one of the reasons for the relative marginalization of sociological research on the society-environment relationship is the relatively belated inclusion of specialized sociological disciplines such as social ecology or environmental sociology in the curricula of sociology academic programmes.

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The environment – a terra incognita for most sociologists in serbia

In the industrial society, nature is conceived as a resource for unlimited exploitation, and the entropic effects of its pollution and depletion can be effectively controlled and resolved. Non-human entities are viewed as raw materials for technical manipulation and the increase in the standard of living for consumers in mass societies. Contrary to such utilitarian pragmatism, some new views on the relationship of man, society and nature are appearing, as well as different concepts of environmentally balanced development. According to these views, the transition to ecological society and ecological culture will not be possible without replacing the current anthropocentric ethics with the ecocentric or environmental ethics. Deep ecology arises in the spectrum of environmental ethics theories. It is considered as a movement and a new approach to solving environmental problems. Deep ecology is a type of ecosophy formed by Arne Nes, and it focuses on wisdom and ecological balance. It is based on ecological science, but it asks deeper questions about the causes of the ecological crisis and corresponds to the general discourse on sustainable development. The article discusses the platform of deep ecology movement and gives the basic principles of deep ecology. It gives explanations of the two basic norms of deep ecology (self-understanding and biospheric egalitarianism) and criticism of these concepts.

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M Milan Miskovic

Papers

Deep ecology: A movement and a new approach to solving environmental problems