Environmental issues are quintessentially a matter of geographic place and time. A waste site exists over a specific time, occupies a specific place, and impacts specific ecologies. The same is true of any environmental perturbation or, indeed, with species or biological communities. Nothing seems more concrete -- not just to environmentalists, but to almost anyone -- than space and time.

But not so fast: for ages, sociologists and philosophers have focused on two themes that undercut the foundational status of space and time -- and thus environmentalism.

The first theme, dating from at least Kant but made more recently prominent by intellectuals such as Barthes, is the critical role of language and signs in cognition. Put simply, culture is communication, and communication is signs and symbols. Signs and symbols combine in mental models and cultural constructs, the mechanisms by which humans perceive and understand their world.

The second theme is quintessential postmodernism, backed by considerable sociological research: time and place are increasingly constructed pastiches, mixed at will by institutions or individuals. As a result of modern transportation, communication, and information technology, what is increasingly real is what Castells in The Rise of the Network Society calls “the culture of real virtuality”: what the television began the ‘Net is accelerating. Time and space are increasingly categories by which information is filed, not boundaries on experience.

These themes can of course be exaggerated. But the sociological naiveté of many environmentalists has led them to be broadly overlooked. Thus, for example, it is apparent from even a cursory study of history that “nature,” “environment,” and “sustainability” are cultural constructs, reflecting the contingency of their time and place (and the power of the elites that coined them). They are subject to change as culture changes.

That is nothing new. But add the postmodernist theme, and the potentially powerful effect of the Internet, and interesting questions arise. Cultural constructs change as culture changes and studies indicate that developed country cultures --whether in the U.S., Japan, or France -- are changing to reflect the impact of information systems and networks. These changes are telescoping time and place, rendering contingent what was (and is for environmentalists) absolute frameworks within which their most valued concepts are defined. Environmental activism requires time and place, and it is precisely these things that are being made contingent by social and cultural evolution.

One needn’t accept this somewhat theoretical critique in its entirety to be concerned about the implications. Obviously, people will continue to be physical creatures located in space/time frameworks. But a culture that increasingly devalues time and space as absolutes has the potential to undercut the cultural constructs which today inform the environmentalist movement. Leave aside for the moment whether this is “good” or “bad” -- indeed, in most cases it will be regarded as “bad” simply because those holding certain cultural constructs don’t like to see them changed, or even challenged.

Instead, ask the more basic questions: what are the aspects of environmentalism that can be regarded as contingent and discarded as history continues its evolution, and what elements must not be overlooked? And, concomitantly, what does it mean to be an environmentalist in a profoundly multicultural, postmodern world? What is the relationship between the environmental and the social?

You won’t find the answers to such questions in a 700-word column -- or in most environmental policy or science programs. Rather, you must look for yourself. If you want to understand sustainability, begin with the study of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Marx. If you want to understand time and place compression, and pastiche, study the postmodernists and sociologists -- Harvey’s Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference, for example, or perhaps Giddens’ The Consequences of Modernity. You may well find that, taken seriously, environmental issues are far more complex than even committed environmentalists understand.

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Brad Allenby is VP, Environment, Health and Safety at AT&T; an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Virginia Engineering School; and Batten Fellow at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily of any institution with which he is associated.