patrick geddes: founder of environmental sociology

Patrick Geddes: founder ofenvironmental sociology

Maggie Studholme

Abstract

On the basis of a close reading of two early articles by Patrick Geddes, which formthe basis of his later approach to sociology, it is argued that Geddes should bereclaimed by sociologists from the geographers and the town planners, as thefounder of a distinctive environmental sociology in Britain at around the turn of thelast century. Certain of Geddes’ arguments are seen to be comparable with those ofDurkheim, in particular, and Marx to a somewhat lesser extent. Moreover, his workcontains a distinctively sociological account of the ‘structuring’ of social (and envi-ronmental) reality via the creative agency of human beings actively working in avariety of environments. Geddes’ naïve optimism may make him as much Utopianas sociological, but does not invalidate his contribution to the development of aclassical environmental sociology.

Introduction

Interest in the work of Patrick Geddes continues. Yet in spite of a number ofbooks and articles dedicated to his life and work, there seems to be nouniversal agreement on where he belongs, in an intellectual sense. The titles ofworks on Geddes give some indication of the difficulty: Biologist, TownPlanner, Re-Educator, Peace Warrior, proclaims Boardman (1978); SocialEvolutionist and City Planner says Helen Meller (1990); for Robson (1981)and Mercer (1997) he is both geographer and urban planner, while Welter(2002) has subtitled his book: ‘Patrick Geddes and the City of Life’, whichseems to hint at an affiliation with Bergsonian vitalism.1 All these appellationshave something in them. It is arguable, however, that Geddes’ true intellectualhome is neither with the geographers, nor with the town planners, or philoso-phers – but in another academic discipline to which he aspired, but whichrejected him: Sociology. Certainly he developed an early interest in the workof Comte and Le Play, was a founding member of the Sociological Society ofLondon, and a candidate for the Martin White chair in Sociology at LSE(accepted by L.T. Hobhouse in late 1907).

Late in life, Geddes was appointed Professor of Sociology and Civics in anewly formed department at the University of Bombay, for a fixed five yearThe Sociological Review, 55:3 (2007)© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published byBlackwell Publishing Inc., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,USA.

term. In spite of this, the breadth of his contribution to sociology is only rarelyacknowledged in Britain by sociologists. This is especially surprising since theemergence, in the last thirty years or so, of environmental sociology. Indeed, ithas been suggested on at least two separate occasions that Patrick Geddesdeserves to be re-instated as an early founder of environmental sociology(Martinez-Alier, 1987: 98; Meller, 1990: 312–14). As Robson (1981: 198) sug-gests, Geddes anticipated what has recently become recognised as essentialin any approach to ‘environmental management’ – the need for a multi-disciplinary approach.Yet in so far as he appears in texts devoted to the historyof sociology he is usually presented as having been eccentric (Hawthorn,1976), amateur (Philip Abrams, 1968), a ‘sociographer’ whose theory made noimpact on sociology (Fletcher, 1971); or with having contributed little beyondthe development of the survey method (which is mainly attributed to Boothand Rowntree (Mark Abrams, 1951)).A.H. Halsey, who in his recent history ofsociology acknowledges that Geddes might have made a positive contributionto the development of a sociology in which ‘much greater emphasis might havebeen given to environmental forces’ nevertheless fails to devote space to hiswork (Halsey, 2004: 48). Moreover, a recent paper (Law, 2005) argues thatGeddes’ sociology is limited in its relevance for contemporary sociology duepartly to his evolutionism, and partly to his ‘apolitical’ concept of ‘sociology ascivics’, as well as castigating Geddes for failing to address the work of hiscontemporaries, Simmel, Durkheim and Weber. This is an unfair assessment,for the following reasons.

First, to say that Geddes ought to have addressed the work of particularcontemporaries is to impose on early 20th Century sociology a degree ofcohesiveness and a shape that it simply did not have. Indeed, the ‘foundingfathers’ of sociology were still some half century away from acquiring thatlabel. Part of Geddes’ difficulty, as he presented the paper on Civics before theSociological Society of London in 1904 (not 1905, as Law suggests), was that hewas embroiled in a fierce debate about how to define sociology – at that timealmost non-existent in Britain. Of the sociologists Law cites, only Durkheimwas formally recognised, internationally, as a professional sociologist. WhenGeddes’ spokesman, friend and supporter, Victor Branford, in the very firstarticle to appear in the Sociological Papers, drew attention to the sociologicalwork of Simmel, he also cited Tonnies, Tarde, De Roberty, and De Greef(Branford, 1905). Where are the last of these now? Then again, Weber’s workwas little known in the English speaking world until as late as the 1930s. Theearliest work in English appears to have been a 1933 essay by H.M. Robertson,although this was not cited even by the LSE academic J.P. Mayer in his ownessay, On Max Weber and German Politics (1943).

Secondly, if commitment to an evolutionary sociology amounts to criteriafor contemporary irrelevance, there are many whom we should now similarlyabandon, including Marx, Durkheim and Weber themselves, since eachretained some commitment to a more or less sophisticated evolutionaryworldview.2 Finally, not only is it not obvious why an apolitical stance should

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442 © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review

lead to irrelevance, but a strong argument can be made for Geddes as both anenvironmentalist per se and as an environmental sociologist.

This paper, therefore, is a call to reclaim Geddes as the founder of adistinctive environmental sociology – and not just in Britain. He travelledwidely throughout his life and inspired and influenced many people. Fletcher(1971: 834) believed that Geddes’ ideas almost certainly ‘stimulated the growthof’ the classical human ecology of the Chicago school, through his contact withCharles Zueblin, who published a glowing report on the activities of Geddes’Edinburgh Summer Schools in the American Journal of Sociology (Zueblin,1899). In fact, Geddes probably took his own ideas to Chicago, since he gavea course of lectures there in 1898 (Meller, 1990: 303). This link should notbe overstated, however, since Robert Park, the ‘founder’ of classical humanecology, did not join the Chicago department until around 1914 (part-time),well after both Geddes’ lectures and Zueblin’s departure. Moreover, Chicagosociology was demonstrably social Darwinist in orientation, using biologicaland ecological concepts and terminology as metaphors (Miley, 1980: 166;Gaziano, 1996: 875). Geddes, on the other hand, was not a social Darwinist(though his position is close to that which Clarke (in her discussion of Darwin’sreception by French social scientists), has called ‘reform Darwinism’ (Clarke,1984)); he used ecological concepts not as tropes, but to convey what he saw asreality. Park was acquainted, however, with the work of Radhakamal Mukerjee(Mukerjee, 1926; Park, 1926). Mukerjee had met and worked with Geddes inIndia, and Geddes had written an introduction to Mukerjee’s Foundations ofIndian Economics (Mukerjee, 1916; Boardman, 1978: 280). His work owed somuch to the influence of the older man that Geddes’ friend and associate LewisMumford complained that in spite of having absorbed so much of the master’sthought, Mukerjee failed to acknowledge his sources (Novak, 1995: 245, 306).Thus Geddes’ sociological influence, direct or indirect, was widely spread,making his invisibility in the history of British sociology all the more remark-able. Moreover, given his influence on Mukerjee, whose work Dunlap andCatton, the ‘founders’ of the New Environmental Paradigm in sociology, cite asa neglected early example of environmental sociology (Dunlap and Catton,1979: 245), Geddes deserves reinstatement as classical ‘environmental’ sociolo-gist as well as ‘environmentalist’ in a fairly modern sense.

Geddes was born in 1854, which makes him of the same generation asDurkheim (born 1858). Like Durkheim, he evaded his parents’ aspiration tosee their son enter the church, a fact that is often significant in the lives ofclassical sociologists, and not only because a lack or loss of deeply held reli-gious conviction was a prerequisite for serious engagement with Darwin’stheory of evolution, which formed the starting point for many early sociologi-cal theories. It is almost impossible to read about Geddes in a way that doesnot mix, inextricably, his personal life with his work (see Meller, 1990;Boardman, 1978; Mairet, 1957). Accounts of his childhood, for example, notethe positive influence of his family position as youngest son of elderly parents(his retired father had more time to devote to his son’s informal education

Patrick Geddes: founder of environmental sociology

443© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review

than most parents) combined with the freedom of his rural background, on hisearly propensity for botanical studies. This rural and scientific backgroundcontrasted sharply with his experience of the wider world, when he later foundhimself in London with time on his hands to observe the city around him. Itwas probably this experience, in combination with his early reading of Carlyle,Ruskin, Spencer and Comte, and (via his teacher, T.H. Huxley), with the workof the French sociologist Le Play, that sparked his interest in the social as wellas the natural sciences.

From the early 1880s, Geddes made increasing incursions into a nascentsociology, even while he was employed as a teacher and demonstrator ofbotany at Edinburgh. Given his background, not only is it not surprising thathe began from biology, it was also not particularly unusual for a sociologist ofthis era to have done so. Durkheim himself, in The Division of Labour,explained the mechanics of social change in a way that drew directly onDarwin (Hawkins, 1997: 12; Lukes, 1975: 170; Durkheim, 1933 [1893]: 266).Thesuccess of Darwinian biology in drawing a wide range of diverse subjectsunder its theoretical umbrella meant that sociologists of the late nineteenthcentury could not avoid engaging with its arguments as they struggled to markout their own intellectual territory.

Geddes was a holistic thinker, although the term itself was not coined until1926, near the end of his life.3 All things biological and social, natural andcultural, scientific and artistic, theoretical and practical, were, for him, inter-linked in basic and essential ways, leading him to transpose the basic biologicaltriad of environment, function and organism, on to the Le Playist formula,place, work and family.4 By the early 1920s Geddes defined sociology in termsof the holistic study of people, affairs and places – a synthetic disciplinecomposed of anthropology, his own brand of economics, and geography –whose object was to catch the flux or moving stream of everyday life, the betterto discern its evolutionary direction (Geddes, 1922: 3–4). But Geddes, incommon with the other classical sociologists, was concerned not only with anunderstanding of society and social change, but with social amelioration. Hisdifficulty (or one of them) lay in getting people to understand his vision, which– though it differed only in certain respects from more conventional world-views – was incomprehensible to many of his contemporaries. Yet the key tounderstanding Geddes’ life’s work, now as well as then, lies in his use of theconcept of environment, worked out in an attempt to redefine economics, as asubject centred on the two way inter-relationship between people and envi-ronments while acknowledging the need for conservation of finite resources.

Two early papers give the best indication of the subsequent direction of histhought. The first, ‘On the Classification of Statistics and its Results’, waspresented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in instalments between Marchand May 1881, followed in 1884 by ‘An Analysis of the Principles of Econom-ics’. They form the basis of his subsequent sociology, and in spite of being hisearliest works are often more lucid than his later writing, which becameincreasingly tangled, making his intentions harder to decipher. Thus, although

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two papers may not be a sufficient basis for the re-incorporation of Geddes’work into the sociological canon – they are an essential prelude to a properunderstanding of his later work.

The classification of statistics

The 1881 paper was an ambitious attempt, heavily influenced by his reading ofComte, to devise a system of classification for the increasing number of socialstatistics. These needed to be organised and analysed if they were to provideuseful information about ‘the social, moral and intellectual condition of apeople’ (Geddes, 1881: 4).The system he went on to outline was based on a setof axiomatic statements about societies in their relationship with nature:

First . . . a society obviously exists within certain limits of time and space.Secondly it consists of a number of living organisms. Thirdly, these modifysurrounding nature, primarily by seizing part of its matter and energy.Fourthly, they apply this matter and energy to the maintenance of their life,i.e. the support of their physical functions. . . . A society may be much morethan all this . . . but in any case these four generalisations are obviouslytrue, neither hypothesis nor metaphysical principle being involved. Thesewill therefore henceforth be termed sociological axioms. (Geddes, 1881: 12)

These propositions formed the basis of Geddes’ subsequent explanation of thepersistence of social activity through time and space, in terms of the produc-tion and consumption of life-sustaining goods.5 A complete set of statistics ona given society would provide a detailed picture of a particular moment in themoving flux of history (Geddes, 1881: 8–9) and include detailed informationabout people (organisms), their occupations (function) and environment. Theconcept of environment was central in Geddes’ approach to sociology. He usedit, in different contexts, to refer to every aspect of human existence – natural,cultural, and built (and even to the internal environment of the body),although he was not always careful to specify which sense of the term he wasusing at any given moment. Beginning from territory, or physical environment,Geddes wanted to classify and count the quality and quantity of land, waterand other natural resources, plants, and minerals, and whether (and how) theywere used, wasted, or undisturbed by human agency. Energy was equallyimportant, so its natural sources (the sun, tidal energy, hot springs and volcanicenergy) should also be logged. Production methods – the use of natural andhuman energy to convert resources into goods, efficiently or not, were also toform part of Geddes’ statistical data (Geddes, 1881: 13).

About people, Geddes wanted to know birth, death, and migration rates,anthropometric details, and the state of a population’s mental, physical andsocial health. He also wanted a catalogue of data on occupations (referred toas ‘function’). But rather than just counting how many people were employed,



in what jobs, and what they were paid, Geddes was interested both in theenvironmental impact of each occupation, and in the importance of the occu-pational structure for social relations, which he labelled ‘mutual relations’(1881: 16, and Tables A, B, C, D in Geddes’ own diagram). The difficulty ofuncovering the nature of something as nebulous as a ‘relation’, which is impos-sible to observe empirically, led Durkheim to outline and clarify, formally, hisRules of Sociological Method (1895). Geddes, working more than ten yearsbefore Durkheim coined his now famous exhortation to consider ‘social factsas things’, proposed to study ‘mutual relations’ via the social functions of work,categorised not only in terms of the service it provided for other members ofsociety, but also in energy terms. His complex typology of different occupa-tions uses a terminology that looks very odd from a 21st century perspective,categorising service(s) provided by people for people as direct/indirect;cerebral/non-cerebral; aesthetic, intellectual or moral; or coordinating(Geddes, 1881: 16–17). It is easy to be critical of the details of this schema,accustomed as we are to understand the concept of ‘class’ in conventionalsocio-economic terms, whether we speak of bourgeois and proletariat, middleand working classes or use some other classificatory system. But this is to missthe point. Geddes’ complex typology was grounded not in conventional eco-nomics, but in an attempt to formulate an environmental economics, or anenergy balance sheet, from which could be read off an appropriate distributionof goods according to the ‘real’ underlying energy needs of people undertak-ing different social functions (Geddes, 1881: tables A, B, C, D).

Geddes realised that his scheme was over-ambitious, but he believed pas-sionately that all this data was necessary for practical social amelioration(Geddes, 1881: 19). He went on to attack the various ‘schools’ of politicaleconomists, excepting only Alfred Marshall and Yves Guyot,6 not only forignoring the importance of conservation in their work, but also for beingignorant of developments in evolutionary theory, psychology and for ignoringhistorical fact (Geddes, 1881: 21–4). Geddes insisted that his own schemedidn’t really represent any new ideas (although it probably owed somewhatmore to Marshall’s Economics of Industry than he admitted) and claimed itwas simply a return to an earlier conception of ‘economy’ as household man-agement. Yet it was by no means immediately clear, how all this information,once collected, could be collated and made commensurable. Leaving aside thevery big problem of interpretation, it would have needed a very powerfulcomputer, even by today’s standards, to accommodate all the informationGeddes thought necessary to social analysis. Yet all these statistics wouldprove to be necessary to his subsequent account of economics.

The principles of economics: physical

The 1884 paper was long, and was presented to the Royal Society of Edin-burgh in three parts. After this, whenever Geddes insisted on the importance

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of economic analysis in sociology, he had in mind this particular interpretationof the relations between people and resources and the nature of wealth.Economics, he believed could be seen to have three analytically separable butinter-related levels – physical, biological and psychological.7 Beginning fromthe ‘physical’ level, he argued that economics began from producers andconsumers, understood as self-maintaining machines, fuelled by energy fromtheir surrounding environment (Geddes, 1884: 11–12).The first job of econom-ics (which would draw on the sorts of statistics he had outlined in his earlierpaper) should be to calculate, for any given moment in time, how much energywas needed to ‘run’ human beings engaged in different activities, and theamount of energy available for this, from all sources, both natural and man-made (Geddes, 1884: 12–13). Geddes referred to resources and energy in theirnatural condition as ‘potential product’, to the apparatus of production(capital) as ‘mediate product’, and to finished goods as ‘ultimate products’,which could themselves be further subdivided into ‘transient’ and ‘permanent’products, on the basis that the former (like food and clothing) were quicklyused up, while the latter (like buildings, furniture or ‘art’) had more durablequalities (Geddes, 1884: 21; see also 1881: 14). He believed that if energy wasused as the unit of measurement it would also be possible to work out howmuch fuel (food for the workers as well as coal for machines) was wasted byinefficient production methods. This would highlight the fact that often moreenergy was wasted in production than was contained in the finished product,he said, showing just how inefficient manufacturing processes were (Geddes,1884: 17). But this was precisely Geddes’ point: conventional economics didnot take this sort of inefficiency into account, so that a profit – measured interms of monetary ‘value’, was made so long as the cost of production at anystage did not exceed the total quantity of finished goods. Geddes argued,however, that such profit was actually ‘the interest paid by Nature upon thematter and energy expended upon her during the processes of production’(Geddes, 1884: 18). His refusal of monetary calculation at this stage allowedhim to focus on what Marx only partially grasped. For Marx, the owners ofcapital derived their profit from the surplus value of the labour expended bythe worker in production. Yet to the extent that the exchange value of an itemis produced by the energy expended in human labour, which, according toGeddes, had to be considered in the same terms as the rest of the naturalworld, but which is not generally calculated as part of the cost of production,the surplus appropriated by the capitalist can be equated with the increasedquantity of resources (and especially food) required to keep the workerworking beyond the time required to reproduce the necessities of his own life.Geddes argued that if the quantity of finished goods per unit time (as man-hour, man-day or man-year) were calculated, it would be possible to work outthe amount of wealth collectively owned by the community, and consequentlythe details of appropriate distribution (Geddes, 1884: 18). Although Geddesdid not discuss this in any detail – it is likely that such a distribution wouldhave reversed the usual order of things, with most resources being allocated to



those who expended most energy in their jobs. Ambitiously, Geddes alsosuggested that this energy calculation be made for all historical periods, toinclude the total collective production of the entire human race – which heproposed to refer to as its ‘synergy’. This would highlight the importance ofconservation, by showing the vast quantities of resources and energy used upby human activity (Geddes, 1884: 19).

Dividing up goods into necessities, comforts and luxuries (‘super-necessaries’), and suggesting that the purpose of luxury goods was to stimulateconsumers’ senses – ‘gustatory, visual and tactile’,8 Geddes then argued that incivilised societies much production served an ‘aesthetic subfunction’. Yet, ifconservation was of key importance, some types of consumption were moredesirable than others. Here, rather than attempting to minimise all productionin order to conserve resources, Geddes believed that the maximisation ofpermanent goods was a better alternative (Geddes, 1884: 21).This implied thatit would be better to concentrate on producing beautiful buildings and worksof art to stimulate the sense organs than to waste resources on the productionof luxury food and clothing, which might have the same effect but which didnot last long. Beyond this, conservation demanded a reorganisation of produc-tion in the interests of efficiency, including waste reduction, the minimisationof friction in transport, and the simplification of trade (1884: 23). Such goodhousekeeping would increase the social stock of ‘Real Wealth’, which con-sisted of the total environmental conditions of living; in the aesthetic andcultural value of the man-made environment, as well as in its utility as nutri-tion or shelter; and in clean air, good light and pure water. Given the appallingenvironmental conditions in many urban areas during this period, what issurprising is perhaps not that Geddes should calculate wealth in this way, butthe refusal of so many others to do so, a point he reiterated in later writings(for example, 1888: 295–6).

The principles of economics: biological

But human beings were not just machines for the production and consumptionof goods. Geddes’ biological principles of economics now defined people as(intelligent, sentient, moral) animals (Geddes, 1884: 24). From the statisticaltable he had earlier proposed (and very much in line with wider contemporaryconcerns about the condition of the masses), he now focussed on both quali-tative and quantitative issues of population: health, efficiency and education aswell as structure (‘racial’ and other physical characteristics). In particular, hewanted to explore the relationship between social activity in environment(s)and evolution or social progress.

Complex functional differentiation, or a high division of labour, in contem-porary societies was the result of evolution. Individual organisms, whetherants, bees or human beings were ‘modified’ by occupation, heredity, and envi-ronment. Although, Geddes suggested, the social advantages of the co-

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operative division of labour were obvious, there might be disadvantages inbiological terms, since the demands of a particular job might affect an indi-vidual’s physical health and longevity in either positive or negative ways.When such ‘modifications’ became hereditary, the degenerative impact ofparticular occupations could be passed on (Geddes, 1884: 26–7). This propo-sition seems indicative of a misunderstanding of the mechanism of evolution.However, since Mendelian genetics had yet to be rediscovered, and Darwinhimself did not understand exactly how evolutionary changes occurred, this ishardly surprising (Mayr, 1991: 33–4; Jones, 1980: 78). In fact, the suggestion thatoccupational ‘environment’ might have an effect on general health and lon-gevity, and that this might affect offspring, before or after birth – which waswhat Geddes would subsequently argue (Thomson and Geddes, 1911: 118and 201), may not be confused at all. That there is continual interpenetrationbetween organisms and their environments at a biological level, each activelychanging the other, has recently been reiterated by the biologist Steven Rose(1997: 140). This is an important point. Unlike some among his sociologicalcontemporaries (including Durkheim as well as Hobhouse, who would laterbecome his rival at the Sociological Society), Geddes refused to refute theimportance of heredity in evolution. But his was not a single factor theory.Even in 1884 Geddes distinguished between ‘functional environment’, or occu-pation, and ‘ancestral environment’, meaning heredity, as well as between‘social’ or cultural environment and ‘natural’ environment. In the naturalenvironment, he thought, the most important factors were food, air quality andlight (Geddes, 1884: 27). Human animals might suffer either as a result of thedeprivation of food, light, clean water and air, or from excessive consumption(of food), in combination with too little physical exertion. Geddes moralised –along lines with which we are all too familiar today, that degeneration throughover-consumption and too little exercise was the most debilitating, bringingabout ‘that far more insidious and thorough degeneration seen in the lifehistory of myriads of parasites’ (Geddes, 1884: 28).

For ‘progress’ or ‘evolution’ rather than ‘degeneration’ (or mere mainte-nance) to occur, not only were adequate supplies of food, clean air, and waternecessary, but also ‘more and more complex conditions of the environment’.Though Geddes did not explicitly define which of his various senses of envi-ronment he had in mind here, he was speaking of social or cultural, rather thannatural, environment. Again, Geddes here exhibited his normative bias. Realwealth consisted in the totality of environmental conditions, and not in mate-rial or monetary riches.9 He insisted on the ‘evolutionary’ importance of acomplex environment as an organic ‘need’ (Geddes, 1884: 28–9). The impor-tance of the ‘aesthetic’ element in production, on which Geddes had placedmuch importance in his discussion of physical principles, turned out to be thatthe human senses need stimulus in order to ‘evolve’.

It is instructive to compare this assertion with Durkheim’s (1893) discus-sion, in The Division of Labour, about how new needs are created by thedivision of labour because people had to work harder when resources were



scarce, since they were in conflict with others doing the same thing. In theprocess, more energy was expended (there is a ‘great depletion of forces’) sothat more energy was then required to replace it (‘reparation must be propor-tionate to expenditure’). However, it was the nervous system that was mostoverworked during this process, and it was as a result of this ‘exercise’ that thecapacity of the brain increased. ‘That is how’ Durkheim claimed, ‘withouthaving desired it, humanity is found apt to receive a more intense and morevaried culture’ (Durkheim, 1893 [1933]: 272–3).

These accounts of ‘mental’ evolution are very similar. But there is onecrucially important difference. Where Durkheim makes much of the ‘conflict’over resources as the factor which ‘mechanically’ engenders mental evolution,Geddes emphasises the active, creative production of a more and morecomplex environment to stimulate the human intellect, and thus bring aboutsocial evolution (Geddes, 1884: 29). The purpose of production should, there-fore, be the deliberate modification of all sorts of environments in order tofulfil human needs. In the process people themselves would be shaped by theirenvironments, their occupations, and (directly or indirectly) by one another.Production should be seen not as the production of monetary wealth but ofparticular environmental conditions suitable for particular sorts of social life.Environments or occupations that proved to be unhealthy must be altered or,in extreme cases, given up altogether, in the interests of social progress. Thusany environment (natural, built or cultural) that was lacking in good food,light, air, and water or any productive occupation that polluted or degradedthem, should be changed or abandoned altogether in the interests of social‘health’ (Geddes, 1884: 31) Anticipating Veblen’s similar argument by morethan ten years, Geddes commented that the current ‘industrial anarchy’ wasthe result of the misconceived notion that the purpose of production was‘ “wealth” in its very variable proportions of maintenance, power over others,[and] personal immunity from function’ (Geddes, 1884: 29; Veblen, 1899).

The principles of economics: psychological

From people as machines, and people as intelligent, social, evolving animals,Geddes now shifted his focus to consider the structure of human wants anddesires (Geddes, 1884: 34). More than individual egoistic ‘wants’, Geddes wasthinking of social needs, the satisfaction of which demanded not only sympa-thy, altruism and cooperation, but an awareness of the social advantages ofcooperative behaviour. Though he phrased it differently, Geddes was trying toformulate something similar to Durkheim’s idea of the conscience collective asthe basis for social solidarity. Any society with a degree of complexity of thedivision of labour needed a shared underlying morality, but contemporarysocial problems indicated that material development was outrunning moraldevelopment. Progress towards the physical and biological ideal of synergyin production, therefore, demanded the development of a moral ideal of

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maximum altruism (Geddes, 1884: 36). Geddes had no difficulty postulatingthe centrality of altruism and co-operation rather than self-interested compe-tition as the motor of social evolution.While it may not have been fashionable,at a time when both Spencer and Darwin were arguing for the centrality ofcompetition, Geddes simply referred (often casually, in fleeting references), tosocial insects and animals that demonstrated co-operative behaviour, to makehis point (see for example, Geddes, 1881: 12; 1884: 11).

In the Division of Labour, Durkheim would postulate the existence of threeabnormal forms of the division of labour which signalled an unhealthy orpathological social condition (1933 [1893]: 353–95). In his insistence that‘material’ had outrun ‘moral’ evolution, Geddes anticipated Durkheim’s dis-cussion of the ‘anomic’ division of labour, in which the extreme rapidity ofeconomic specialisation outpaced regulative or ‘moral’ change. Durkheimsuggested that this left individuals bereft of any notion of how their ownspecialised function contributed to the maintenance of the whole, and was thusdisintegrative. Among his proffered solutions was the suggestion that someway be found to ensure that ‘the worker, far from remaining bent over his task,does not lose sight of those co-operating with him, but acts upon them and isacted upon by them (Durkheim, 1933 [1893]: 372). Geddes’ solution of moralevolution towards maximum altruism is similar, even if couched in very dif-ferent terminology, and carrying a distinct tinge of ‘inevitability’. Biologicalevidence showed, he argued, that species-maintaining behaviours such asco-operation would always triumph over those, such as the ‘iron law of com-petition’, which maintained only individuals (Geddes, 1884: 36).

Geddes went on to suggest that the active modification of the social orcultural environment should be added to that of the natural and physicalenvironment, in the interests of social amelioration, which needed well-developed minds as well as healthy bodies. In this way Geddes made education– the production of an environment stimulating for the mind, a key force forsocial progress (1884: 37–8). Thus did Geddes neatly tie together his physical,biological and psychological aspects of economics as parts of an argument forsocial amelioration through environmental regeneration and education. It isnecessary to note, however, that Geddes had strong views about the contem-porary education system, and these became more strident as he aged. Muchlater, in 1919, he would claim that what was called knowledge was often nomore than suitably diluted ‘upper class culture’, and as such had been ‘mod-erately successful in orienting the minds of “the Populace” to the existingsocial order’ (Geddes and Branford, 1919: xviii). Moreover, he abhorred thecontemporary trend for clearly delineating the boundaries of each academicdiscipline, which led, he claimed to the construction of ‘Thought Cages’ (1915:68). Social progress demanded the discovery of new relations between differ-ent aspects of things, leading to a new synthesis. Universities, as ‘trustees of thesocial inheritance’ should not only be more accessible for all, but practicallocal knowledge should be recognised as of equal value to abstract academicor technical knowledge (Geddes and Branford, 1919: xxv; Geddes and



Thomson, 1931: 1387). Many of his ideas about formal education, in fact, wereso far opposed to contemporary trends and beliefs (and actively insulting tothose who worked within, rather than outside the system) that they probablyhindered rather than helped, both the immediate reception of his work, and hisacademic career in the longer term.

Meanwhile, in 1884, Geddes suggested that his economic analysis, alreadycomplex, still needed the addition of a ‘sociological’ analysis and synthesis, forwhich his economic analysis provided the necessary background (Geddes,1884: 38). Anticipating criticism, Geddes denied building his argument aroundhis personal ethical principles (of efficiency in production, the conservation ofresources, and co-operation and sympathy between people), but insisted onthe scientific evidence in favour of these. Moreover, ethics was not an isolatedscience but involved a generalisation of the findings of the other sciences(Geddes, 1884: 40). As he had argued in 1881, most actions have both aneconomic and a moral or ethical aspect. Only where what was ethically right orgood coincided with logically derived scientific postulates ought that course ofaction to be adopted, otherwise we might find ourselves drawn into suchethically dubious activities as cannibalism (on the basis that utilising all avail-able sources of matter and energy is efficient). Ultimately, he believed, scienceand ethics would reinforce one another (Geddes, 1881: 27–30).

The theory of civics

Geddes’ conception of sociology as ‘Civics’ (Geddes, 1905, 1906) was firmlygrounded in this earlier work. It was here that he developed his idea of the‘region’, which, although (perhaps deliberately) spatially vague, was consistentwith his insistence on treating environment, function and organism (EFO)together. Natural and cultural environments differed from place to place, sothat it was futile to propose a single national or global solution to social andenvironmental problems. Each solution must be tailored to the needs of aparticular place – its topography, geology, climate, and the culture of its people.In the theory of civics, Geddes’ main development of the EFO triad was theaddition of the idea that individual and social consciousness – as ideas andideals, values, beliefs and desires – was a product of the total environment(natural, built and cultural). Thoughts and dreams, as products of differenteveryday ‘experiences’ at the level of place, work and folk (or EFO), trans-lated into the creative human ‘action’ that continually re-modelled and modi-fied the surrounding physical and cultural environment. History was a processof continuous human activity in environment, leading to the discovery ordevelopment of knowledge, (feelings, sense and experience), to thoughts(emotion, ideation, imagery), and via human institutions (specifically, the‘cloister’ or university) to further actions. Although his various attempts torepresent this idea graphically were unsuccessful (only partly due to theirincreasing complexity), this is not an especially difficult idea. As Marx put it ‘it

Maggie Studholme


is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on thecontrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx, cited inGiddens, 1971: 41). Geddes’ concept of the development of consciousness asideas, senses, feelings, emotions etc. into knowledge via interaction with envi-ronments of all kinds, leading to further action, simply makes this an explicitlyongoing process, something that Marx would not have denied. That Geddes’diagrammatic representations were idealistic, showing ‘what ought to be’rather than ‘what is’ could not have helped his cause in the eyes of hiscontemporaries (see Geddes, 1906, 1922; Geddes and Thomson, 1931). Reality,as he had already indicated with his reference to ‘industrial anarchy’, was verydifferent from the ideal embodied in the theory.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, it is this unintelligibility, not just in his dia-grams, but also, increasingly in his writing, that accounts for Geddes’ omis-sion from the history of academic sociology? Certainly Meller (1990: 2)draws attention to the fact that his ideas are not accessible, though Abrams,even while making a similarly negative assessment, suggested that Geddes’work was worthy of closer consideration than it had at that date received(Abrams, 1968: 114–20, 152). Since then, of course, Geddes has receivedmuch attention, but little that amounts to direct engagement with it as soci-ology. In his own lifetime, Geddes’ intellectual fortune (like his finances)seemed to wane as much as it waxed, and by the end of 1907 sociology hadgained an institutional foothold in the British university system that left bothhe and his supporters outside it. The story of Hobhouse’s appointment to theMartin White chair, and Geddes’ exclusion, is a complex one, and in spite ofa number of historical accounts, has yet to be fully explored (but seeHalliday, 1968; Mitchell, 1968; Owen, 1974; Hawthorn, 1976; Boardman, 1978;Collini, 1979; Abrams, 1985; Bulmer, 1985; Meller, 1990). Whatever thereasons, however, Geddes’ lack of either presence or support at LSE, for along time the only place in Britain where sociology was offered at degreelevel (Fincham, 1975), is significant, since as Edward Shils astutely pointedout, institutions ‘create a resonant and echoing intellectual environment. Thesociological ideas which undergo institutionalisation are thereby given agreater weight in the competition of interpretations of social reality’ (Shils,1971: 762).

That institutionalisation can function in this way is evidenced by Fuller’s(2006) account of the ‘hidden biological past of classical social theory’, which,along with an account of more familiar classical theorists, devotes space to thework of another of LSE’s sociological pioneers, Edward Westermarck, whilemaking not a single reference to Geddes himself. Moreover, while applaudingHobhouse for creating a sociology in which social progress requires the tran-scendence or reversal of ‘evolutionary tendencies’ (Fuller, 2006: 60), Fullerfails to see that the more narrow conceptualisation of ‘environment’ as socialand moral that emerged in the idea of orthogenic evolution (Hobhouse, 1901),largely excluded sociological consideration of the ways in which people,however distinctive their ‘human’ nature, necessarily interact with and depend



on the external, physical world. Like Hobhouse, Geddes began from biology.Unlike him, he did not feel compelled to do away with it entirely in theinterests of creating an intellectual domain called sociology. His work, between1881 and 1905, begins from the assumption that people are tied to the naturalworld in the same way as all other animals. Its novelty, as classical sociology, isthat while it at no point refutes the deep interconnections of humanity withnature, or the role of biological heredity, it simultaneously engages with whatis distinctively ‘human’ about human society – in particular the importanceof human creativity, and of cultural and intellectual ‘inheritance’ not just viaeducation, but also ‘environment’ (in all of the many senses in which hedefined it).

Meanwhile, Geddes’ invisibility in the history of sociology has meant thatothers re-thinking the sociological canon in an attempt to re-conceptualisethe relationship between humanity and (the rest of) the natural world, havebeen forced back on the re-interpretation of a mere handful of thinkers.Notably, since Catton and Dunlap (1976) called for a New Ecological Para-digm (NEP), aspects of the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber have allbeen claimed as examples of an early sociological awareness of the impor-tance of the natural environment (see for example, Buttel, 1986; Benton,1989; Dickens, 1992). Although these re-interpretations are valuable in theirown right, it is especially interesting to see themes raised by Geddes reap-pear in, for example, Dickens’s (2004) textbook Society and Nature. Un-consciously echoing Geddes’ insistence on the environment–labour-societyinteraction, the book is subtitled ‘changing our environment, changing our-selves’. Moreover, Dickens unwittingly sets out a broadly similar schematicdivision of the field into the physical, biological and psychological. Wholechapters are devoted to the transformation of the ‘external’ environmentthrough work, as well as to its commodification (physical); to human con-sumption and to the ‘internal’ biological environment of the body (biologi-cal); and to our changing psychic (psychological) structures. To be sure, theterms of his argument are very different from those of Geddes, writing ashe is some hundred years or more into the future not just of society-environment interaction, but of sociological theorising itself.10 However, inspite of the century that separates them, Geddes and Dickens represent astrand of sociological thought that embraces a realist understanding of theextent to which the sociological project of ‘human dominion over naturewithout . . . dominion over each other’ ought not to proceed on a purely‘constructivist’ basis (Fuller, 2006: 1, 204).

Conclusion

This paper has had to be selective in its presentation of Geddes’ early work.For reasons of space, I have had to avoid getting bogged down in some of his

Maggie Studholme


more controversial, difficult, or wrong-headed arguments (but see, for just oneexample, the section on population in the 1884 paper on Economics).When heis reclaimed for sociology, there will be plenty of time for everyone to engagein the most stringent critique. Nevertheless, I hope to have avoided the hagiog-raphy that Law finds in most treatments of his work (Law, 2005: 1.1), whileconsidering it in its own terms, as a contribution to the making of sociologybefore sociology was properly made. In many ways, it is a brilliant anticipationof much more recent approaches to sociology, with its wide ranging interdis-ciplinary focus, and its insistence on examining the relationship betweenpeople and their environments – not just social and cultural, but also physical,as in the idea of ‘territory’ or region, and natural (via his concern with theresources of matter and energy). In all Geddes’ work there is a wealth of socialcritique, and a concern with social improvement which is entirely in keepingwith the Classical sociological orientation of Durkheim and Marx. ForDurkheim, indeed, sociology was to be the discipline, par excellence – bestfitted to engage in diagnosis and treatment of societal ills (Durkheim, 1893).That Geddes’ social critique was grounded in an environmentalist concernwith conserving resources and improving contemporary urban environmentsfor people, rather than in (what has become) the conventional critique ofcontemporary political economy as a justification for the exploitation of themasses (as for Marx), or in a refutation of Spencer’s utilitarian sociology (as itwas for Durkheim), does not invalidate it as part of a classical tradition.Rather, Geddes’ passionate championship of an actively created environment(built, social, cultural and moral or educational) as a solution for social prob-lems shared much in common with the work of his contemporaries. Theinstitutionalisation of their more narrow treatment of human ‘environments’as social (or moral or cultural), while excluding the natural did not turn out tobe quite right.

Moreover, although its terminology may be unfamiliar, Geddes offers us adistinctively sociological account of the ‘structuring’ of social (and environ-mental) reality via the creative agency of human beings (variously inter-preted as machines, animals, or consciously desiring, sensate, intelligentbeings), actively working in all their different environments, not onlyexchanging matter and energy in the process of producing the materialthings necessary for survival, but also producing and using ideas and theoriesin a deliberate attempt to improve the conditions of their existence. Evenpower, as the ‘transformative capacity’ of knowledgeable agents is implied,although Geddes naively did not consider the extent to which the use andabuse of institutional power might adversely affect the possibilities forachievement of his vision. Perhaps the most damning criticism is just this:Geddes paints a ridiculously optimistic picture of what he believed could beachieved by people working together co-operatively to shape their ownworlds. He even put these beliefs to the test through actual social practice,living with his wife on the top floor of an Edinburgh tenement, leadingother residents to begin much necessary renovations by his own example



(Boardman, 1978: 86–9). No doubt this makes him, as Law has claimed,‘Utopian’ (Law, 2005: 2.2). Is this sufficient reason for sociologists now toreject his contribution? In any case, to accept Geddes as a (not to say the)founder of environmental sociology is not necessarily to accept his workwholesale. In the final analysis, he was both Utopian and sociologist. And asLevitas (2005) points out, sociologists could do worse than to emulate theutopian method when it comes to envisioning sustainable futures. Thisinvolves the imaginary reconstitution of society on the basis of a holisticlook at all our ‘systems of production, consumption and distribution – andthe structures of desires and wants that accompany them’. If we do notaddress, as ‘sociologists and citizens,’ the Environmental problems we haveourselves created, ‘our very silences will shape not utopian but dystopianfutures’ (Levitas, 2005: 19, 21).

University of Bristol

Notes

1 Welter notes that Geddes and Bergson were acquainted and shared many ideas in common(2002: 20).

2 Marx had his stage theory of history and a belief in the inevitability of the transition tosocialism; Durkheim used volume and density as triggers for social evolution and usedmechanical and organic solidarity to distinguish between pre modern and modern societies.Weber’s approach was more sophisticated, but still carried traces of a belief in the inevitabilityof progress in spite of contingent historical factors, especially in his ‘ideal typical’ representa-tions of, for example, authority and social action.

3 The term holism was coined by J.C. Smuts, in Holism and Evolution (1926). Both Boardman(1978) and Kitchen (1975) record Geddes’ approval of this book.

4 The influence of Le Playist sociology should not be overstated. Geddes was equally influencedby Comte’s work, from which the Le Playists wished to dissociate themselves.

5 Geddes may have taken his axioms largely from the German ‘social energeticist’ WilhelmOstwald. Compare Sorokin’s (1956 [1928]: 20–22) account of Ostwald’s work with Geddes’sociological axioms.

6 The publications to which Geddes referred here are Marshall’s (1879) Economics of Industryand Guyot’s (1881) La Science, Economique.

7 Geddes’ view was similar to that of others engaged in attempting to revise economics, includ-ing Frederick Soddy, Stanley Jevons and Wilhem Ostwald (Martinez Alier, 1987).

8 Welter (2002: 15) says that Geddes included only permanent products into the category ofsuper- necessaries, or luxuries. However, his reference to the gustatory senses in 1884 probablyindicates that some food (a transient product) should be classified as super-necessary. Thispoint is important, if only because, for all his moralising about over consumption, Geddes wasnot advocating a wholly Spartan diet, only a wholesome one.

9 It could be argued of course that the latter can be used to purchase the former. Again, this isto miss Geddes point. In any case, as Beck (1992) has amply demonstrated, even riches cannotpurchase immunity from environmental risk.

10 In particular, Dickens engages with the Risk society thesis popularised by Beck (1992) andGiddens (1990).

Maggie Studholme


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patrick geddes: founder of environmental sociology

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