Reframing Problems of Incommensurability in Environmental Conflicts through Pragmatic Sociology: From Value Pluralism to the Plurality of Modes of Engagement with the Environment

Abstract

This paper presents the contribution of the pragmatic sociology of critical capacities to the understanding of environmental conflicts. In the field of ‘environmental valuation', nowadays colonised by economics, the approach of plural modes (or ‘regimes') of engagement provides a sociological understanding of the unequal power of conflicting ‘languages of valuation'. This frame entails a shift from ‘values’ to ‘modes of valuation', and links modes of valuation to modes of practical engagement and coordination with the surrounding environment. Different social sources of incommensurability are thus detected and reframed as critical tension within and among modes of human coordination with the environment.