Social Ecology

The political and social philosopher, anarchist, and environmentalist Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) developed the concept of social ecology in the 1960s as an interdisciplinary field drawing on philosophy, political and social theory, anthropology, history, economics, the natural sciences, and feminism. Social ecology as it is understood in the interdisciplinary or Bookchin sense differs substantially from the theoretical applications of social ecology (more widely known as human ecology) as developed in the field of sociology.

Human ecology developed in the first quarter of the 20th century as the study of individuals, groups, and their social environments using theoretical concepts and ideas from natural ecology. For example, mid-century human ecologists such as Amos Hawley applied ecological theories of succession and adaptation to analyze changing community populations, spatial distributions of human groups, and systems of social organization. Contemporary human and social ecologists have broadened the scope of research from strictly social phenomena to also consider the relationship and interactions between human populations and their changing physical environments. For example, a human ecologist today might look at changes in a forest dwelling community in terms of social organization and livelihood strategy following extensive deforestation.

In this vein, Bookchin argued for the creation of a more holistic “science of social ecology [that] deals with social and natural relationships in communities or ‘ecosystems.’” The key for Bookchin, as in contemporary human ecology, is the inclusion of environmental factors or variables in the formation of social phenomena. Bookchin saw that nature itself played an active role in the emergence of social structures and change. In his view, nature is “as much a precondition for the development of society—not merely its emergence—as technics, labor, language, and mind.”

Bookchin also played an important role in developing a critical social theory that relates the domination or degradation of nature to what he saw as the larger problem of social domination or social hierarchy. While the concept of social ecology in this sense never gained widespread prominence in academic discourse, the ideas of Bookchin and others within social ecology were influential in the fields of environmental ethics, democratic theory, and to a certain extent, environmental sociology, and gained even wider prominence in the environmentalist and community development literature. Central to the development of theories of social ecology is the conception that social inequalities lie at the root of all environmental problems, and that the resolution of social hierarchy will result in a more sustainable society-nature relationship.

The emphasis within social ecology on the social origins of environmental problems led to an important and long-standing debate beginning in the mid-1980s between social ecologists and deep ecologists who accused one another of anthropocentrism and biocentrism, respectively, labels that neither would camp would necessarily reject. The deep ecologists (Arne Naess, Dave Foreman, Bill Devall) relate environmental degradation to the sets of human belief systems (religions, philosophies, or ideologies) that led to the alienation and complete separation of human individuals from a pristine or “wild” nature. Deep ecologists advocate the recovery of nature through the restoration of an individual ecological consciousness. Conversely, social ecology argues that the distinct ability of humans to reason can lead to the integration of a democratic human society with a complex and dynamic ecology.

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