Social Ecological Economics

Description

Max Koch & Hubert Buch-Hansen:

"Ecological economics, specifically what Spash (2020b) refers to as ‘social ecological economics’, is premised on an ontology according to which reality is hierarchically ordered into a number of strata and higher strata presuppose lower and less complex ones. Consistently with critical realist philosophy of science (Bhaskar, 2015), the mechanisms of higher strata (say, the social stratum) are held to possess emergent properties as a result of which they are irreducible to, and qualitatively different from, their lower stratum foundations (say, the physical stratum). While the laws of physics never cause social outcomes, the social is nonetheless subject to biophysical structures (Spash, 2020b). Reversely, social activities can impact biophysical structures. Unlike the anthropocentric ontologies underpinning mainstream economics/political economy, then, this deep ontology – which also in critical respects resonates with Marxist political economy (Buch-Hansen & Nielsen, 2020) – constitutes a worldview that has the potential to fruitfully underpin a postgrowth political economy." (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807837?)