The Philippine Sociological Society held its 2010 National Conference at the Siliman University in Dumaguete City on October 15 and 16, 2010 with the theme "Sociologizing the Environment." Prof. Crisanto Regadio Jr. from the Social Sciences Department joined the event and presented his paper entitled “Global Warming and Environmentalism: A need to reconsider our thought on environmentalism as a new phase of the West's colonization project” on the second day of the conference.
Sharing the stage with renowned sociologists in the country, Prof. Regadio presented a sociological-historical reconstruction of the birth and trend of environmentalism and global warming phenomena in the Philippines as a social movement. His paper gives a general consideration on the birth and trend of environmentalism as a social movement on an international scale in the era of the capitalistic world in correlation to it as a movement in the Philippines. The paper exposes the anthropocentric, institutional, and global character of environmentalism, which holds the possibility of it being integrated into the everyday experience and consciousness of the Filipino. The paper intends to initiate a new discourse in understanding and exploiting the character of environmentalism and global warming phenomena as a type of culture promoted as an instrument of liberalization, globalization, and domination of capitalism in developing nations like the Philippines.
At the end of his presentation Prof. Regadio challenged Filipino sociologists to reconsider these phenomena as a social consciousness not constructed within the everyday experience of the Filipinos or bound by the socio-cultural and political setting of the country. Prof. Regadio further reminds them that the culture of environmentalism and global warming in the Philippine context should be rooted in the everyday experience of the people for it to have an integral, transformative, and progressive effect to redefine the Filipinos’ relationship with nature.
