Social ecology (ethics)

Last updated

Social ecology is the concept of how people interact with their surroundings, how they respond to it, and how these interactions impact society and the environment at large. [1] Think about conventional ecological studies, where students investigate how various natural processes must interact to form the world's ecosystems. [2]

Contents

The same methodology is used in social ecology, which looks at society as a whole. Social ecologists examine the larger picture of our "system" by examining how individuals, collectives, and institutions interact and depend on one another. This perspective enables a more efficient method of addressing the collective issues facing society [3] [4]

Origin of term

American environmental activist Murray Bookchin introduced the idea of social ecology. [5] He makes the case that environmentalists should be less concerned with addressing the idea that humans can and should manage nature, and more with focusing on the specific symptoms of a problem [5] [6] Social ecology was built on top of this philosophy. According to Bookchin, society's divisions are detrimental to it as a whole. Human-made hierarchies are the root cause of all social and environmental problems and dysfunctions in human society. Bookchin thought that society and life should be viewed as an ecosystem, where all the components are equally vital to a stable, healthy, and sustainable environment, as opposed to a hierarchy [7]

Background

Murray Bookchin contends that rather than existing outside of nature, humans is a part of it. Bookchin distinguished between two types of nature: the first, or biotic, and the second, or human. [8] For Bookchin, nature in its whole is an ever-evolving evolutionary process rather than a static condition like a breathtaking panorama. [9] Not only the human organism but also human civilization is the product of this continuous evolutionary endeavor. [10] It is not the intention of human reason or social structure to be freak mutations apart from the rest of nature. Rather, they are designed to interact with nature and advance its evolution in ways that other species cannot. [11] Humans can assume their proper place in the ecosystem if the desire for supremacy is subdued. [12] In a nutshell, Bookchin lays out the fundamental political framework that would enable this: a global order devoid of nation states, where political life is centered around towns linked by weak institutions that forbid them from taking advantage of one another. [8] These municipalities would foster a real type of citizenship where the barriers between individual and group interests, as well as between human and ecological interests, would be eliminated. They would also naturally become part of their local ecosystems. [13]

Bookchin's main advantage is that he provides strong arguments for why people should care about ecology in addition to self-preservation. [14] The idea of "biocentrism," which prioritizes the needs of the environment over human needs and views humans as having equal value with non humans, and "anthropocentrism," which places an absolute emphasis on human interests, are two main points of contention in environmental ethics. [15] Biocentrism is predicated on the idea that humans and the rest of nature are identical, whereas anthropocentrism is predicated on the idea that humans are superior to and distinct from nature. [2] According to Bookchin, although being distinct from the rest of nature, people are nevertheless an essential component of it. [2] Thus, in his opinion, neither biocentrism nor anthropocentrism is sufficient. [8] This is particularly fascinating because it eliminates any notions that humans is completely separated from the natural world, allowing humanity to still recognize something unique about itself and find value in civilization and technological advancement. It also instills a sense of duty towards the natural world. [16]

It is thought that if these values are applied to every aspect of society, there will be more equality and cooperation and hierarchies won't determine who wins and who loses. [17] An essential component of a competent social worker's perspective is appreciating the significance of each "piece" to the system as a whole. [18]

Relationship to other similar philosophies

Communalism

Social ecology promotes autonomous individual communities built on mutual assistance and cooperation. But Bookchin set himself apart from communalism by stressing decentralization and participatory democracy. [19] This democratic deliberation purposefully promotes autonomy and self-reliance, as opposed to centralized state politics [20]

Marxism

Social class and power dynamics are the main lenses through which social ecology views society. Bookchin, however, took issue with Marxism's primary focus on economic inequality and its disregard for ecological issues. [21]

Environmentalism

Concern for the environment and the necessity of sustainable practices are shared by social ecology and environmentalism. But social ecology goes beyond conventional environmentalism, contending that social problems such as inequality, dominance, and hierarchy cannot be solved in a vacuum when it comes to ecological issues. [22]

Deep ecology

Deep ecology and social ecology promote a biocentric worldview and highlight the inherent value of nature. Bookchin, however, criticizes deep ecology for frequently focusing on individualistic solutions rather than taking into account the social causes of environmental problems. [23]

Anarchism

Anarchism and social ecology are both movements that support individual and collective autonomy while criticizing hierarchical power structures. [24] Bookchin, however, was not in agreement with many anarchists regarding the significance of democratic decision-making and social organization.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecology</span> Study of organisms and their environment

Ecology is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history.

Green anarchism, also known as ecological anarchism or eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that focuses on ecology and environmental issues. It is an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian form of radical environmentalism, which emphasises social organization, freedom and self-fulfillment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature conservation</span> Movement to protect the biosphere

Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism, environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030. In 2021, 16.64% of land and 7.9% of the oceans were protected. The 2022 IPCC report on climate impacts and adaptation, underlines the need to conserve 30% to 50% of the Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas – echoing the 30% goal of the U.N.'s Convention on Biodiversity. Ultimately, these movements should be further promoted to encourage biodiversity and to conserve a functional ecosystem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Bookchin</span> American social theorist (1921–2006)

Murray Bookchin was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. Influenced by G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Peter Kropotkin, he was a pioneer in the environmental movement. Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban affairs, and social ecology. Among the most important were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called "communalism", which seeks to reconcile and expand Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist thought.

In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism, and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecological economics</span> Interdependence of human economies and natural ecosystems

Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital.

Anthropocentrism is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From an anthropocentric perspective, humankind is seen as separate from nature and superior to it, and other entities are viewed as resources for humans to use.

A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his A Sand County Almanac (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. There he argues that there is a critical need for a "new ethic", an "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental resource management</span> Type of resource management

Environmental resource management or environmental management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aims to ensure that ecosystem services are protected and maintained for future human generations, and also maintain ecosystem integrity through considering ethical, economic, and scientific (ecological) variables. Environmental resource management tries to identify factors affecteconflicts thatd bconflicts thaty conflictthattheorists thaariset arise between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to environmental protection, resource management, sustainability, integrated landscape management, natural resource management, fisheries management, forest management, wildlife management, environmental management systems, and others.

Ecocentrism is a term used by environmental philosophers and ecologists to denote a nature-centered, as opposed to human-centered, system of values. The justification for ecocentrism usually consists in an ontological belief and subsequent ethical claim. The ontological belief denies that there are any existential divisions between human and non-human nature sufficient to claim that humans are either (a) the sole bearers of intrinsic value or (b) possess greater intrinsic value than non-human nature. Thus the subsequent ethical claim is for an equality of intrinsic value across human and non-human nature, or biospherical egalitarianism.

The environmental humanities is an interdisciplinary area of research, drawing on the many environmental sub-disciplines that have emerged in the humanities over the past several decades, in particular environmental literature, environmental philosophy, environmental history, science and technology studies, environmental anthropology, and environmental communication. Environmental humanities employs humanistic questions about meaning, culture, values, ethics, and responsibilities to address pressing environmental problems. The environmental humanities aim to help bridge traditional divides between the sciences and the humanities, as well as between Western, Eastern, and Indigenous ways of relating to the natural world and the place of humans within it. The field also resists the traditional divide between "nature" and "culture," showing how many "environmental" issues have always been entangled in human questions of justice, labor, and politics. Environmental humanities is also a way of synthesizing methods from different fields to create new ways of thinking through environmental problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental philosophy</span> Branch of philosophy

Environmental philosophy is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the natural environment and humans' place within it. It asks crucial questions about human environmental relations such as "What do we mean when we talk about nature?" "What is the value of the natural, that is non-human environment to us, or in itself?" "How should we respond to environmental challenges such as environmental degradation, pollution and climate change?" "How can we best understand the relationship between the natural world and human technology and development?" and "What is our place in the natural world?" Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism, environmental hermeneutics, and environmental theology. Some of the main areas of interest for environmental philosophers are:

Theocentrism is the belief that God is the central aspect to existence, as opposed to anthropocentrism, existentialism and sentientism. In this view, meaning and value of actions done to people or the environment are attributed to God. The tenets of theocentrism, such as humility, respect, moderations, selflessness, and mindfulness, can lend themselves towards a form of environmentalism. In modern theology, theocentrism is often linked with stewardship and environmental ethics or Creation care. It is the belief that human beings should look after the world as guardians and therefore in the way God wants them to. Humans should be considerate to all, from animals to plants to humans themselves. It maintains that human beings are merely here for a short time and should be looking after the world for future generations.

Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.

Biocentrism, in a political and ecological sense, as well as literally, is an ethical point of view that extends inherent value to all living things. It is an understanding of how the earth works, particularly as it relates to its biosphere or biodiversity. It stands in contrast to anthropocentrism, which centers on the value of humans. The related ecocentrism extends inherent value to the whole of nature.

Eco-socialism is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalization or anti-globalization. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecofeminism</span> Approach to feminism influenced by ecologist movement

Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.

<i>The Ecology of Freedom</i> 1982 book by Murray Bookchin

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy is a 1982 book by the American libertarian socialist and ecologist Murray Bookchin, in which the author describes his concept of social ecology, the idea that human social problems cause ecological problems and can be solved only by reorganizing society along ecological and ethical lines. The book is considered Bookchin's magnum opus, but it has also been criticized as utopian.

Queer ecology is the endeavor to understand nature, biology, and sexuality in the light of queer theory, thus rejecting the presumption that heterosexuality and cisgenderedness constitute any objective standard. It draws from science studies, ecofeminism, environmental justice, and queer geography. These perspectives break apart various "dualisms" that exist within human understandings of nature and culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philosophy of ecology</span>

Philosophy of ecology is a concept under the philosophy of science, which is a subfield of philosophy. Its main concerns centre on the practice and application of ecology, its moral issues, and the intersectionality between the position of humans and other entities. This topic also overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, as it attempts to answer metaphysical, epistemic and moral issues surrounding environmental ethics and public policy.

References

  1. ↑ "Social Ecology: Definition, Examples & Differnece | StudySmarter". StudySmarter UK. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  2. 1 2 3 "What is Social Ecology?". CORP-MSW1 (OMSWP). Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  3. ↑ Skeggs, Beverley; Yuill, Simon (2016-10-02). "The methodology of a multi-model project examining how facebook infrastructures social relations". Information, Communication & Society. 19 (10): 1356–1372. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2015.1091026. ISSN   1369-118X.
  4. ↑ "What is Social Ecology?". CORP-MSW1 (OMSWP). Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  5. 1 2 "What is Social Ecology?". CORP-MSW1 (OMSWP). Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  6. ↑ Andersson, David; Nässén, Jonas (December 2016). "Should environmentalists be concerned about materialism? An analysis of attitudes, behaviours and greenhouse gas emissions". Journal of Environmental Psychology. 48: 1–11. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2016.08.002.
  7. ↑ Lushombo, Leocadie; Philosophy Documentation Center (2021). "Sustainable Abundance for All: Catholic Social Thought and Action in a Risky Runaway World". Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. 41 (1): 197–198. doi:10.5840/jsce202141114. ISSN   1540-7942. S2CID   238790978.
  8. 1 2 3 Sullivan, James (2020-10-26). "Domination and Utopianism in Bookchin's "What is Social Ecology?"". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  9. ↑ Blackman, Andrew (2011-09-27). ""Social Ecology and Communalism" by Murray Bookchin". Andrew Blackman. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  10. ↑ Sullivan, James (2020-10-26). "Domination and Utopianism in Bookchin's "What is Social Ecology?"". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  11. ↑ Forsyth, Scott Brodie (2024-01-25). "Murray Bookchin's Social Ecology". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  12. ↑ Public Opinion. Public Opinion Company. 1889.
  13. ↑ Sullivan, James (2020-10-26). "Domination and Utopianism in Bookchin's "What is Social Ecology?"". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  14. ↑ Sullivan, James (2020-10-26). "Domination and Utopianism in Bookchin's "What is Social Ecology?"". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  15. ↑ Svoboda (2011). "Why there is no Evidence for the Intrinsic Value of Non-Humans". Ethics and the Environment. 16 (2): 25. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.16.2.25. S2CID   41105512.
  16. ↑ Sullivan, James (2020-10-26). "Domination and Utopianism in Bookchin's "What is Social Ecology?"". Medium. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  17. ↑ "What is Social Ecology?". CORP-MSW1 (OMSWP). Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  18. ↑ Deichman, Elizabeth Squire (1981-08-19). "The Whole of Each Piece and the Piece as a Whole". Activities, Adaptation & Aging. 1 (2): 3–6. doi:10.1300/J016v01n02_02. ISSN   0192-4788.
  19. ↑ Venturin, Federico (2019). Social Ecology and the Right to the City (1st ed.). Black Rose Books. ISBN   9781551646817.
  20. ↑ "Murray Bookchin", Wikipedia, 2024-02-08, retrieved 2024-02-19
  21. ↑ Zelezny, Lynnette C.; Schultz, P. Wesley (January 2000). "Psychology of Promoting Environmentalism: Promoting Environmentalism". Journal of Social Issues. 56 (3): 365–371. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00172. ISSN   0022-4537.
  22. ↑ Gare, Arran. "Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability". Nihilism Inc.
  23. ↑ Humphrey, Mathew (June 2000). "'Nature' in deep ecology and social ecology: Contesting the core". Journal of Political Ideologies. 5 (2): 247–268. doi:10.1080/713682940. ISSN   1356-9317. S2CID   143892848.
  24. ↑ Tartakowsky, Danielle; Tarrow, Sidney (April 1997). "Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics". Le Mouvement Social (179): 123. doi:10.2307/3778937. JSTOR   3778937.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.