Social Ecological Economics: Understanding
the Past to See the Futureajes_777 340..375
By CLIVE L. SPASH*
ABSTRACT. The attempt to provide insight into the interactions
between the economy and the environment has been an on-going
struggle for many decades. The rise of Ecological Economics can be
seen as a positive step towards integrating social and natural science
understanding by a movement that aims to go beyond the confines of
mainstream economics towards a progressive political economy of the
environment. However, this vision has not been shared by all those
who have associated themselves with Ecological Economics and there
has been conflict. An historical analysis is presented that shows the
role of mainstream theory in delimiting the field of environmental
research. The argument is put forward that rather than employing a
purely mechanistic objective empirical methodology there is a need
for an integrating interdisciplinarity heterodox economic approach. In
order to distinguish this approach—from the more mainstream multidisciplinary
linking of unreconstituted ecological and economic
models—the name Social Ecological Economics is put forward as
expressing the essential socio-economic character of the needed work
ahead.
*Clive L. Spash holds the Chair of Public Policy and Governance in the Department
of Socio-Economics, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Nordbergstr.
15/4/B-UZA 4, 1090 Wien, and is a Professor II in the Department of International
Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
E-mail clive.spash@umb.no. Professor Spash is an economist who specializes in
environmental problems. His recent works include a controversial paper on carbon
trading (Spash 2010), a co-edited volume on Post-Keynesian and Ecological Economics
(Holt, Pressman, and Spash 2010), and a 4-volume collection of papers defining the
field of Ecological Economics (Spash 2009a). For more information go to www.
clivespash.org.
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 2 (April, 2011).
© 2011 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.
Introduction
Ecological Economics has developed as a modern movement since the
late 1980s (see Spash 1999). This movement has gathered together a
variety of perspectives and interests concerned to address the modern
environmental crisis. A crisis because environmental degradation—
species loss, long range transport of air pollutants, contamination of
soil and water, introduction of synthetic chemicals, desertification,
deforestation—has only belatedly been recognized as integrally linked
to the way the economy is run.
In economics, the appearance of environmental problems has for
long been minimal and attention largely left to sub-disciplinary specialists
(e.g., agricultural, resource and environmental economists)
easily sidelined and disregarded by both mainstream micro and macro
economists. In micro economics, core theoretical ideas have set the
stage in terms of price theory for over a century (see Lee 2009: 2–3),
providing a restricted orthodox worldview.1
In macro economics, the
type of subjects that dominate (e.g., money supply, unemployment
and inflation) have seemed divorced from environmental problems.
This has meant economists working on the environment could easily
be dismissed as having consigned themselves to irrelevance. Even
amongst heterodox schools (e.g., post-Keynesians, critical institutionalists,
neo-Marxists), where a voice might have been more readily
expected to be heard, there has been little or no attention. Economists
of all schools have generally been able to ignore the evidence of
environmental problems as having anything to do with their work. Yet
in more recent times this seems to have been changing.
Since the early 1990s a range of Nobel economic prize winners
(e.g., Arrow, Kahneman, Ostrom, Sen, Solow, Stiglitz) have been
found imparting their wisdom on environmental matters,2
and some
have even associated with ecological economists (e.g., Arrow, Ostrom,
Sen).3
This appears to indicate a new engagement by economists with
environmental issues and a newfound respect for the field of research.
Thus, the magazine The Economist has moved from relegating occasional
environmental articles to its science section to running regular
features and leaders. An economist may now apparently study and
publish on environmental topics while maintaining some collegiate
Social Ecological Economics 341
standing. Indeed, specialists in the area appear, in neoclassical economic
terms, as rather cunning speculators who foresaw the potential
personal returns of an early investment.
That the environment is now a headline economic issue goes
hand-in-hand with the fact that controlling pollution is big business.
The high political profile given to human induced climate change and
neo-liberal support for multi-billion dollar carbon trading markets
have made this very clear. For example, the European emissions
trading scheme had an estimated worth of $US51 billion in 2007
(European Commission 2008: 21) and $US80 billion in 2008 (Kantner
2008). The market in carbon offsets is also a growth industry (European
Commission 2008). As potentially the largest commodity market
ever created, carbon trading has stimulated considerable interest in the
financial markets and amongst banks and corporations (Spash 2010).
All this provides an incentive for the newfound environmental interest
within the economic establishment.
Unfortunately, increased popularity does not necessarily indicate
serious engagement with the subject matter, even from the most
hopeful sources. For example, Amartya Sen appears a thoughtful
writer on economics who has expressed ideas critical of orthodox
economics and offered insights on development,4
poverty and gender
issues. In a rather overlooked book, he highlighted the role and
importance of ethics in economics (Sen 1987). All this fits well with
arguments for value pluralism as found in Ecological Economics
(Gowdy and Erickson 2005). Yet he gave a plenary at the International
Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) conference in 2006 that was
not only disappointing, in offering little of substance specifically on
the environment, but also finished up expressing support for the
monistic global cost-benefit analysis of the report by Stern (2006) on
human induced climate change. He later endorsed the published
report. This support would seem in stark contrast to his ideas on
economic development as opportunity, writings on problems with
welfarism in economics, and general criticisms of using growth as a
measure of well-being. Sen, unlike some in his audience, was apparently
unconcerned by, or perhaps unaware of, Stern’s underlying
expected utility model, standard discounting approaches and use of
GDP growth as means for justifying human action, or inaction, on this
342 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
major environmental issue (see critique by Spash 2007). At the ISEE
conference he seemed oblivious to any debates in Ecological Economics
of direct relevance to his own work, or the ways in which his
own work might relate to environmental issues.
That eminent figures in the economic establishment talk to but not
about the environment is seriously problematic and brings into question
the new rhetoric of environmental concern amongst economists.
Indeed, there is a continued neglect of the environment as anything to
do with the core of economics as a subject. This can be explained by
considering two alternative ways in which economists address environmental
issues. First is the treatment of environmental problems as
special cases of more general theoretical constructs in mainstream
economics. This allows (both mainstream and heterodox) economists
who are embedded in an establishment discourse to maintain their
own preoccupations without needing to pay much attention to the
specifics raised by environmental problems (e.g., transforming to a
low carbon economy becomes green jobs, which are just an aspect of
macroeconomic employment policy). This has been the preferred
approach for most economists. Second is the recognition that serious
attention to environmental reality leads to the need for a totally new
way of thinking based in political economy and interdisciplinary
learning. As will be shown, this is the raison d’être of Ecological
Economics. Thus, work by ISEE Presidents Bina Agarwal (2001), Joan
Martinez-Alier (2002), Richard Norgaard (1994) and John Gowdy
(1994) has addressed the social and political as much as the economic,
while emphasizing the need to learn from interactions with ecosystems.
A perhaps inevitable struggle has then been on-going between
this Social Ecological Economics approach and those engaged in
legitimizing economics as an objective technical means for engineering
society, where the environment is something external to the
economy.
This paper explores that struggle and some of the resulting confusion
it has created for understanding the meaning and content of
Ecological Economics.5
The central contention of the current paper is
that the institutionalized power of mainstream theory has played an
important role in delimiting the field of environmental research. As
Lee (2009: 7) states: “The mainstream explanation focuses on how
Social Ecological Economics 343
asocial, ahistorical individuals choose among scarce resources to meet
competing ends given unlimited wants and explains it using fictitious
concepts and a deductivist, closed-system methodology.” Adopting
that approach, in part or whole, then has serious implications for the
conduct and relevance of Ecological Economics.
Understanding the discourse surrounding the work that has been
appearing as Ecological Economics involves more than merely focussing
on the academic technical debates. This requires historical analysis,
exploration of conflicts and probing of the ideological and
methodological differences. The overarching objective of the project,
of which this paper is a part, is to enable a better classification of
relevant work and indeed explain why some is inappropriately classified
while other, dispersed across a range of fields, could easily be
included within the bounds of relevance. More than one paper is
necessary to take such a project to completion.
The current paper provides an historical exploration of the community
of scholars grouped around Ecological Economics and probes
their motives and interests in order to start clarifying areas of ideological
and methodological unity and division. The next section looks
at the rise of environmental concern leading to the development of
economic thinking in the area. This sketches the claim to deep
historical roots for Ecological Economics, but clearly identifies the
modern movement as arising from late 20th
-century environmentalism.
Environmental economics is then seen as an earlier failed attempt to
create a community challenging mainstream economic thinking. This
background shows how Ecological Economics was born into a
divided and contested world. The next section then explores specific
divisions and conflict in the recent history of Ecological Economics.
Examples of scholarly interactions are employed to explain how the
movement became partially entrapped by an orthodox economic
dialogue. This historical analysis emphasizes the role of individuals in
developing and propagating ideas amongst a community of scholars
and other interested people. Rather than denying the relevance of
divisions the aim is to clarify their role in creating the current community.
I then outline some ideological and methodological developments
relating to specific subject areas and so form a vision of the
heterodox foundations of Ecological Economics. This section is an
344 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
initial attempt to bring the intellectual ideas more to the fore and has
no pretense to being an in-depth analysis of the debates or their
validity. The ideas proposed are part of the needed on-going discussion
as to the appropriate intellectual pursuits of Ecological Economics.
The overall aim is to reveal the “interwoven, interdependent
narrative of ideas and community,” as Lee (2009: 11) puts it. The paper
concludes that if this movement is to make a substantive difference
then it must pursue Social Ecological Economics as an heterodox
interdisciplinary movement in political economy.
Roots of the Modern Movement
Ecological economics engages with a range of topics that recur across
time and have been debated since the ancient Greeks. As such the
subject matter includes the limits to wealth creation, the meaning of
the “good life,” how to achieve well-being individually and socially,
ethics and behavior, the epistemology of value, and the psychological
and social impact of ostentatious consumption. Threads of reasoning
and ideas that are represented in the modern subject can be identified
in a range of 18th
- and 19th
-century sources and call upon many topics
discarded or ignored by mainstream economists, including: the writings
on social motivation of Adam Smith ([1759] 1982), population and
poverty in Malthus ([1798] 1986), Jevons ([1865] 1965) on nonrenewable
energy dependence, John Stuart Mill’s (1848) steady-state
economy, Marx (1867) on exploitation, class conflict and capital
accumulation, and the evolutionary institutional analysis and “conspicuous
consumption” of Veblen ([1899] 1991). The Romantic critique
of economics is also relevant and most notably the writings of Ruskin
([1862] 1907). In Ecological Economics some limited forays have been
made into this historical context (e.g., Becker et al. 2005; Christensen
1989; Smith 1980; Spash 1999), but most notably with respect
to the energy-environment interface in the work by Martinez-Alier
(1990).
While the subconscious roots may run deep, the conscious ones lie
directly in the 1960s and 1970s, although a few economists during the
1940s and 1950s did express ideas in form and substance that are still
current in Ecological Economics. Most notable is K. William Kapp, who
Social Ecological Economics 345
dedicated himself to researching the relationship between economics
and the environment. He also explored the relationship between social
and natural sciences, the need for knowledge integration and meaning
of interdisciplinarity (Kapp 1961). He wrote on history of thought and
methodology (Kapp and Kapp 1963), and produced extensive empirically
based institutional analyses of environmental problems (Kapp
1950, 1978). Indeed the reason he is largely unknown is that his critique
was so far ahead of its time in breadth and depth. Ciriacy-Wantrup’s
(1952) work on conservation, land and resource use is also noteworthy,
not least for developing the concept of a safe-minimum standard. More
generally, there is the work on modern industrial economies of Polanyi
(1944) and Galbraith ([1958] 1969, [1967] 2007) covering the rise of
self-regulating market economies and the corporation, respectively.
Both at points link their thesis explicitly to environmental degradation.
Like Kapp, these authors offer critical institutional analysis of the
economic process. So, while few contributed at this time, some
powerful ideas emerged that remain highly relevant to our understanding
of environmental problems.
The Emergence of Environmentalism
In the 1960s a more general and popular awakening to environmental
problems arrived with books such as Rachael Carson’s ([1962] 1987)
Silent Spring on agro-chemical pollution and Paul Ehrlich’s (1968)
Population Bomb. The issue of economic growth was also placed on
the agenda (Boulding 1966; Mishan 1969). In popular culture, the
hippie movement raised the ideal of harmony with Nature, dematerialization
and alternative lifestyles (from self-sufficiency to communes).
However, the popular environmental literature really took off
in the 1970s and only then spread into economic debates. Topics
expanded from population growth (Ehrlich and Holdren 1971), to
general limits to economic growth (Meadows et al. 1972), to questioning
the means of production (Schumacher 1973) and social
impacts of growth (Hirsch 1977). Radical environmentalism was being
born (Abbey 1975), and an associated protest movement became
institutionalized in non-governmental organizations from Friends of
the Earth and Greenpeace to Earth First and Sea Shepherd.
346 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
In economics the major factor that helped concentrate minds on
environmental issues was the energy crisis (Commoner 1976; Tanzer
1974). While this crisis was created by oil producers restricting supply,
leading to price increases, the general idea of economic dependence
on finite non-renewable resources was brought back on the agenda
after having been neglected since the 1800s. There was inevitably also
a backlash against environmental concern and defensive arguments
from mainstream economists. For example, Beckerman not only
attacked those raising concerns over finite natural resources (Beckerman
1974), but also Kapp’s environmental work (see the reply to
Beckerman by Kapp 1978: 305–318).
Such economists were, and remain, out of tune with public perception
and the growing awareness of pollution as a techno-industrial
threat to life on Earth. The link of DDT to non-human and human
birth defects was a starter. Similar consequences were feared due to
nuclear fallout from weapons testing. In 1959, contamination of the
food chain became evident when radioactive deposits were found in
wheat and milk in the northern United States. The result was to move
testing underground, although France and China persisted with above
ground testing and global pollution (e.g., Simpson et al. 1981). The
new nuclear power industry, which supplied weapons grade plutonium,
provided another environmental concern. The threat of accidents
and pollution became increasingly real from the reactor scare at
Three Mile Island in the USA to the radioactive releases from the UK’s
reprocessing plant at Windscale (renamed Sellafield in a political
rebranding exercise). Fears of a major reactor accident were ultimately
realized with the catastrophe at Chernobyl in 1986 and the resulting
global nuclear fallout.
The increasing geographical scope of pollution threats also slowly
became accepted elsewhere. In the 1970s scientists debated the idea
that air pollutants from coal fired power stations could be transported
internationally. This was contested into the 1980s and persistently
denied by countries (e.g., UK and Germany) responsible for large
scale emission of sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides, that is until
damages became evident domestically, e.g., tree loss in the Black
Forest, Germany. Confirming the sources of acidic deposition impacting
Scandinavian ecosystems became a political issue and an internaSocial
Ecological Economics 347
tional research project, leading to the 1979 United Nations Convention
on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. Meanwhile, the aircraft
industry’s proposal for large fleets of supersonic aircraft, as the future
for international travel, raised the specter of polluting the upper
atmosphere and affecting global climate. This received some analytical
attention from economists (d’Arge 1975). Another global pollution
problem to get some economists’ consideration was the depletion of
stratospheric ozone connected to the use of aerosol propellants,
mainly chlorofluorocarbons at the time (Cumberland, Hibbs, and
Hoch 1982). In a few decades pollution had moved from being
regarded as localized smog from domestic fires to international and
global with numerous sources and seriously threatening
consequences—including genetic mutation and irreversible damage to
life-supporting ecosystems and their functioning.
The Rise and Fall of Environmental Economics
Environmental economics arose, along with the growth in public
awareness, as a direct response to such problems (see, for example,
Kneese 1971). By the late 1960s, the promise of material wealth for all
and post World War II optimism in the abilities of science and
technology were faltering. Boulding (1966) characterized the economy
as being run like the Wild West, populated by cowboys who exploited
resources, chucked their waste on the ground and rode away to
infinite horizons—where lay the promise of fresh resources and new
environments to exploit and degrade—this was contrast with Earth as
a closed system like a spaceship. Economic growth was seen as
positively misleading in terms of the consequences for human society
(Mishan 1969). The challenge was for a new approach to economics.
Environmental economics then appeared both innovative and progressive,
if not downright revolutionary. For example, Bohm and
Kneese (1971: ix–x) introduced their edited volume, The Economics of
the Environment, stating that this was “a profession rethinking,
extending, and revising its concepts, and finding new applications for
them.” They drew a parallel with “the ferment in the profession when
the Keynesian revolution was in progress” and claimed history was in
the making. The reality was a little different.
348 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Any serious challenge by such key figures of the time that might
have been posed to orthodox economic methodology, its theoretical
models, or even its non-environmental preoccupations was muted.
Indeed, besides some passing rhetorical comments, time was mostly
devoted to developing mainstream economic thought and applying
this to environmental issues. Materials balance theory brought in the
laws of thermodynamics, but for compatibility with the mainstream
this needed to fit within a general equilibrium framework (Kneese,
Ayres, and d’Arge 1970). Pollution was seen as all pervasive (Hunt and
d’Arge 1973), but this needed to fit within an optimal control framework
(d’Arge and Kogiku 1973). The environment was seen to involve
a range of values neglected by and outside of economics (Krutilla
1967), but these had to fit within cost-benefit analysis and a welfare
theoretic framework (Kneese 1984).
Despite this, innovation certainly did occur. Environmental valuation
in cost-benefit analysis introduced new methods such as travel
cost, hedonic pricing and contingent valuation. The travel cost method
was the earliest to be more fully developed (Clawson and Knetsch
1966), while contingent valuation followed later, opening a whole
new research agenda (Cummings, Brookshire, and Schulze 1986).
Primary data collection from face to face interviews gave results that
questioned the economic model of human psychology and motivation,
and for some created interdisciplinary interactions (Spash 2008a).
The theory behind values expanded from pure use to option, existence
and bequest values (Krutilla 1967; Krutilla and Fisher 1978). This
contributed to discussions over the ethical basis of economics (Kneese
and Schulze 1985; Schulze and Brookshire 1982; Schulze, Brookshire
and Sandler 1981). Climate change and the treatment of future generations
were also topics on the valuation agenda (d’Arge 1979),
which raised ethical concerns (d’Arge, Schulze, and Brookshire 1982;
Spash and d’Arge 1989).
However, working inside orthodox economics—preference utilitarianizm,
optimal control modeling, discounting, a monistic value
system, and mathematics as a doctrine of rigor—heavily constrained
criticism, innovation and the ability to address environmental and
social problems. For example, in the early 1980s a key workshop on
contingent valuation was run by Cummings, Brookshire, and Schulze
Social Ecological Economics 349
(1986), bringing together a range of people including psychologists
(e.g., later Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman). Yet, those advocating
the use of attitude-behavior models from social psychology
were extremely critical of their reception: “We certainly underestimated
the barriers to interdisciplinary communication. Our proposal
that economists consider the attitudes-behaviour literature has met
with indifference or hostility. CBS are no exception” (Bishop and
Heberlein 1986: 141).
A second example is the experience of Jack Knetsch. Despite being
a pioneer of travel cost and hedonic pricing, Knetsch has also been
highly critical of valuation practice (e.g., Knetsch 1994, 2005), and in
particular its failure to learn from empirical evidence with respect to
loss-gain differences (Knetsch 1985, 1989; Knetsch and Sinden 1984).
His work with Kahneman provoked strong and defensive reactions.
This was especially so for their paper on embedding (Kahneman and
Knetsch 1992b), which refers to willingness to pay under contingent
valuation as the purchase of moral satisfaction rather than an
exchange value. Getting the paper published in the main environmental
economics journal proved problematic and it received some
special critical treatment.6
These examples indicate the roots of dissension that would lead to
Ecological Economics. While some economists posed, but never
answered, various questions, others followed arguments to their
logical ends. Those ends raised issues that just could not be addressed
within the orthodox economic frame. The entire thrust of the work
towards a new and challenging research agenda seemed to be denied.
For example, long range transport of multiple air pollutants from
dispersed sources is a major topic of environmental concern. Yet
environmental economists have persisted in teaching a core model
that characterizes pollution as a local problem between two actors,
easily corrected as a one-off market failure (Spash 2010), or worse, as
optimal due to transactions costs (a problem in their economic logic
noted early on by Mishan 1971). By the mid-1980s university education
in the area was mainly limited to North America where the
approach to topics was controlled and the curriculum restricted (e.g.,
post graduate education excluding methodology and history of
thought). In this atmosphere Ecological Economics emerged as a
350 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
challenge to what had become a captured orthodox economics of the
environment.
The Rise of Ecological Economics and Conflict
Those economists voicing strong environmental critiques in the 1970s
generally found themselves and their ideas marginalized within a
decade. The criticisms were just too revolutionary. Kapp (1970a,
1970b) was pointing out the basic failure of a system that pushes costs
onto others and characterizes them as “externalities,” as if these were
minor aberrations from outside an otherwise perfectly efficient system.
Georgescu-Roegen (1971) wrote a major thesis on the importance of
entropy for the economy that basically concluded that economic
growth was infeasible over the long run and as a result policy needed
fundamental reform. His reasoning led to questioning human society
from the size of population and the pressure placed upon systems, to
the time allowed for change and the rate at which human systems
impose change. Economic systems were then inseparable from ethical
judgments, both concerning others currently living and future generations.
Herman Daly (1977, 1992) came to the conclusion that the best
option in the face of entropy laws and critiques of growth was to aim
for a steady-state economy. All three suffered marginalization, derision
of their ideas and neglect.
Understanding the treatment of such economists requires being
aware of how orthodoxy operates and defends itself against potential
threats from heterodoxy. As Lee (2009: 6) has defined heterodoxy
there are those heretical economists who are tolerated because they
use many of the same tools and models and whose ideas have led to
theoretical advances in the orthodoxy, e.g., Knetsch. Then there are
blasphemous economists whose ideas are a rejection of and challenge
to the orthodoxy, e.g., Kapp, Geogescu-Roegen, Daly. They are
non-brethren and their persecution is a legitimate act in defense of the
orthodoxy. Economists who are lauded as part of the establishment
(e.g., Nobel prize winners) often have some heretical ideas, but they
are not blasphemers because they still believe in the fundamental core
ideas of the orthodoxy, they protect and defend that core and hold
back from pursuing the logic of their ideas to revolutionary ends.
Social Ecological Economics 351
The arrival of Ecological Economics in the late 1980s offered the
potential of picking up on the more radical literature and thinkers.
That at least became the hope of socio-economists, for if the field
were no different from the mainstream sub-fields of resource and
environmental economics the entire exercise of galvanizing a new
community would be a rather pointless repetition of what had gone
before. History pointed in the direction of a more blasphemous
heterodox economics of the environment that dared to reject neoclassical
economics in totalitus. However, developing an heterodox interdisciplinary
research field with a distinct methodology and approach
to society-economy-environment interactions was not on everyone’s
agenda and has involved conflict.
In an in-depth study, involving interviews with several noted ecological
economists, Røpke (2004, 2005) found the international movement
started by forming an uneasy alliance of divergent ecological
and economic opinions on the basis of some very broad common
concerns. In general terms, the unifying positions might have been no
more than the environment matters to the economy, the environment
is being degraded, ecology has important messages for economics that
are being neglected. Ecologists came forward who were passionate
about connecting ecological understanding with socio-economics in
order to better address environmental problems in the public arena.
Any economist prepared to talk to an ecologist concerning the environment
was a bonus. These ecologists then appear to have been
largely (often willfully) ignorant of differences between types of
economist, and many remain so. Yet such ecologists filled key roles
running the ISEE and its journal.
The result was substantial involvement by economists supporting
core neoclassical methodology and ideology. This was further encouraged
by the strategy for popular recognition and headline breaking
articles in Science or Nature. The bigger the name in the field the
better for getting the environmental message across, and as far as
economists are concerned that would clearly favor the orthodoxy. A
core group of ecologists—including Bob Costanza, Brian Walker, Paul
Ehrlich, David Pimentel and Carl Folke—chose to associate with
mainstream economic theorists such as Ken Arrow, Karl-Goran Maler
and Partha Dasgupta. The ISEE’s journal, originally controlled by
352 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Costanza, had mainstream economists placed on its board and increasingly
published much falling well within neoclassical thought, including
the mechanistic equilibrium models and preference utilitarianism
that so constrained the earlier endeavors of the more heterodox
environmental economists.
David Pearce, a noted UK mainstream environmental economist
and advocate of all pervasive monetary valuation, was an early
Associate Editor of the journal who became increasingly hostile to
anything heterodox. He is particularly remembered for a 1996 plenary
to the inaugural European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE)
Conference in Saint Quentin en Yvelines where he questioned the
reason for Ecological Economics as anything distinct from neoclassical
thought (Røpke 2005: 271), and went on to point at Charles Perrings
and rhetorically questioned his presence. Pearce was not separated
from the journal for another two years.
Perrings, later an ISEE president, has himself pursued abstract
modeling in the mode of resource economics (Perrings 1987). This
confines Ecological Economics to optimal control models despite all
the ensuing contradictions of squeezing and remolding concepts to
make them fit the method (see his collected works, Perrings 1997, and
the review by Spash 2000). This can be seen as following a line of
reasoning—common amongst mainstream economists—that equates
rigor with mathematical formalism; an argument flawed even within
mathematics itself (see Dow 2003). So mainstream economic
approaches were from the outset brought into Ecological Economics,
although the aim for many had been explicitly to move away from this
orthodoxy (e.g., Söderbaum 1999, 2008).
The potential for divisiveness was apparent to some early on. In
1990 the Swedish Beijer Institute was rebranded under the title Ecological
Economics with a Board mixing orthodox economists (Dasgupta,
Maler, Pearce, Zylicz) and ecologists (Ehrlich, Holling) with one
heterodox economist (Daly). The Institute was headed by Maler, the
Board chaired by Dasgupta and two research programs were directed
by Perrings and Costanza. As has been documented by Røpke (2005:
272) the decisions made by Dasgupta soon drove Daly to resign,
which allowed the Beijer to concentrate on methods from traditional
mainstream economics with models linked to ecology. The attempt to
Social Ecological Economics 353
capture what was fast becoming a successful new field relates to
power in academia and the potential for wider political influence. As
Daly (quoted by Røpke 2005: 272) has stated with respect to his
experience at the Beijer: “I felt it was a kind of take-over—here is
something called Ecological Economics, it is beginning to get a
little following, it might get in the way some day, let’s just take it
over.”
As the field has matured these divisions have remained strong and
resurfaced on occasion. In 2002 the incoming journal Editor, Cutler
Cleveland, expelled from the Board the more heterodox European
representatives (including an Associate Editor, and both the founding
and then current ESEE Presidents). This went unnoticed by most
people. The ISEE executive at the time refused to take any counter
action and preferred to brush over the incident in the name of
avoiding open conflict.
In 2004 a more public controversy occurred concerning the award
of the ISEE prize in the name of Kenneth Boulding. The recipients
were Dasgupta and Maler. In the Society newsletter (distributed at the
biennial conference) Perrings, then ISEE President, rejoiced in this as
signifying a change towards the approach of the Beijer Institute, i.e.,
mainstream economic formalism. However, the award came as something
of a shock to many when announced at the opening session of
the biennial ISEE conference. It was debated and contested by the
membership at the Society’s business meeting (Røpke 2005: 284–285;
Söderbaum 2007: 212–213). Neither Dasgupta nor Maler had previously
engaged with the wider community (e.g., despite being European
residents, never attending the European conferences) nor been
(nor are) members of ISEE. Their work was felt by many to be
incongruent with the developing field and Røpke (2004: 309) notes
Maler’s dislike of socio-economics. Obviously those making this
award had a different perspective7
from that of the concerned ISEE
membership, and their active involvement with the Beijer Institute
appears a unifying factor.
Such occurrences will not surprise those familiar with the book A
History of Heterodox Economics by Lee (2009). There he explains that
scientific knowledge develops within a community that defines how
work is conducted, what is valid and who is part of the community of
354 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
scholars. In self-definition an academic community selects the
goal-dependent central issues of research and those designated as
colleagues are meant to work on broadly the same or supportive
issues. Scientific knowledge is then produced by an elaborate intellectual
and social organization embedded in educational systems,
academic departments and research institutes. There is a system of
dependency and interdependence. As Lee (2009: 12) notes:
scientists that do not “fit” into this structure of dependency, do not produce
the right kind of knowledge, can be marginalized and excluded from the
community, but still exist within the field or they can be cleansed from the
field altogether.
The attempts at cleansing are apparent in Ecological Economics.
At the same time a lack of clarity as to how heterodox the movement
should be has permitted a confusing array of literature to appear
under the title of Ecological Economics. For example, consider environmental
valuation. Measurement and value issues have been high
on the agenda of Ecological Economics, in part because of the various
attempts to get old wine into new bottles to attract economic and
political support for action. For some, mainly ecologists and conservation
biologists, large monetary numbers regardless of their theoretical
foundation have been lauded a success. For others, physical
numeraires of environmental impact are sought and ecological footprints
proposed. Yet others believe environmental economists were
basically right all along and we just need more cost-benefit type
studies extending into ecosystems services (e.g., Daily 1997). Treating
ecosystems as if some artifact for trading in a market is highly
problematic on many grounds (Spash 2008b). In addition, ecologists,
or economists, simply plucking monetary numbers from the air to
claim importance for ecosystems actually undermines an alternative
theoretically grounded research agenda. Hence a mix, or muddle, of
literature has appeared, none of which learns from past experience in
economics or addresses the basic problem of developing a coherent
theory of value. Pluralism is then sometimes misleadingly referenced
as the reason for tolerating such diversity, but this is to misconceive
the requirements for advancing knowledge, which require coherence
not contradiction.
Social Ecological Economics 355
The Basis for an Heterodox Ecological Economics
There is then a need to go beyond the historical analysis to begin
exploring ideology, methodology and why the movement needs to be
heterodox in order to address society-economy-environment interactions.
A comprehensive in-depth account would require at least a
dedicated paper and need to cover much ground. A recent attempt to
define the field in this way extends to four volumes and includes a
hundred papers (Spash 2009a). The aim here is merely to indicate the
strength of argument from a few key perspectives and point to the
essential need for moving away from mainstream economics if environmental
problems are to be taken seriously, and indeed if economics
is to be taken seriously.
Learning from Ecology and the Biological Sciences
There is a dynamic and evolving interaction between human activity
and the environment that is central to understanding the development
of economic systems. Mainstream thought is resistant to the idea of
economic systems as dynamic evolving structures, something recognized
long ago by Veblen (1898). Physics rather than biology has been
the dominant comparator and methodological influence. In contrast, a
methodology is necessary that moves away from a simple belief in
mechanistic cause-effect relationships as explaining social interactions,
something that was criticized by both Kapp (1978: 281–301) and
Georgescu-Roegen (1979). Interactions with ecology have then
revived interest in biological concepts and metaphors within Ecological
Economics.
Most prominent amongst the biological/ecological concepts are
ideas of sustainability, resilience and co-evolutionary development
(Gowdy 1994; Norgaard 1981, 1987, 1988). In an evolving system
concepts of equilibrium are abstractions for convenience to describe
specific states on a path of change. Managing and attempting to
maintain systems in perceived equilibrium states can then prove
disastrous, e.g., preventing small fires in forests eventually resulting in
large scale catastrophic fires. Ecosystems understanding has developed
in terms of cycles of energy and materials organization, accumulation,
destruction and release. Interestingly, in the current context,
356 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Holling (who pioneered this approach) at one point drew a parallel
with work by Schumpeter on creative destruction (Holling 1986).
Whether such comparisons are appropriate or not, the ideas clearly
cannot fit within orthodox theory, which is built upon concepts of
stasis, equilibrium and self-correction.
Yet, employing biological analogies is no guarantee of a more
enlightened economics, as shown by Gowdy (1987). In the 1970s
economists of the Chicago School, such as Becker, Hirshleifer and
Tullock, made use of Wilson’s (1975) sociobiology to effectively revive
Social Darwinism. A natural science basis was given to their political
ideology, which was then justified as consistent with universal
assumptions for human behavior. Despite the evolutionary rhetoric,
static equilibrium thinking was maintained. Others actually advocated
a type of “economic ecology” where animals foraging become consumers
optimizing, predators are like firms and population growth is
investment (Rapport and Turner 1977).
There is also a darker side justifying a rejection of connections
between economics and biology. In the early 1900s, the rise of Social
Darwinism led to the justification of racism, sexism, and elitism as
somehow scientifically ordained. The concept is forever tainted by the
fascists use of Eugenics to justify the gas chamber for millions and
similar reasoning behind more recent “ethnic cleansing.” Thus, biological
metaphors in the social sciences remain highly unpopular in
many circles along with constructs such as Eugenics and Sociobiology
(Mokyr 1991: 132). Caution would certainly seem the order of the day.
Caution is also required due to the tendency to take ecological
concepts as new overarching goals that are universally applicable and
from there make a jump to policy conclusions. The unquestioning
faith expressed in new guiding principles (e.g., sustainability, resilience)
then bears a parallel with the belief in natural laws by economists,
during the late 1700s and early 1800s, who wished to match the
apparent progress of the natural sciences in discovering universal
truths. Sustaining something, or increasing its resilience, does not
answer the fundamental questions of why and what for.
There are clearly alternative approaches in ecology and biology, as
there are in economics, some helpful, others not so. Ecology in some
guises is an optimizing and maximizing discipline with deterministic
Social Ecological Economics 357
mathematical equilibrium models. In other guises it is a dynamic
questioning discipline that pushes the boundaries of accepted knowledge.
Modeling can be part of the latter, although in a rather different
fashion than the former approach assumes (e.g., Holling 1986). Thus,
that a core group of ecologists writing on environmental policy issues
have worked within the rhetoric of the economic orthodoxy is
perhaps unsurprising. However, some have done so despite their own
work being of the dynamic questioning type and appearing fundamentally
at odds with mainstream theory.
In general, treating environmental issues as just a technical or
modeling problem for economic and ecological scientists to solve is
far too reductionist and mechanistic. For example, this leads to
denying human agency, unpredictability, partial ignorance and social
indeterminacy. Hodgson (1993) argues economists should pay attention
to the non-reductionist forms of modern biology, rather than the
atomistic and mechanistic alternatives of Richard Dawkins, George
Williams and Edward Wilson. A biological metaphor then offers the
potential for debating a variety of issues including: complexity, levels
of abstraction, appropriate units of analysis, irreversibility, nonmarginal
and qualitative change, and non-optimizing behavior.
Redefining the Objective of the Economy
Modern economics has become dominated and obsessed with two
goals: growth and efficiency. Ecology challenges orthodox economics
by contributing the realization of alternative requirements arising from
the non-human world. Thus, concepts such as sustainability and
resilience have appeared as strong independent goals not achieved by
economic efficiency (e.g., Common and Perrings 1992). That efficiency
has come to dominate economics as a goal is interesting in
itself and is ideologically driven (Bromley 1990). The insufficiency of
such a goal is often remarked upon by economists themselves, before
venturing to set everything else to one side and proceeding to make
policy recommendations on the sole basis of supposed efficiency
analysis. Efficiency is in fact a sub-goal of growth, justified as the
means to maximize desired outputs, namely goods and services for
consumption, by avoiding resource wastage.
358 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Ecological Economics emphasizes the limits to material and energy
throughput and the problems then posed by the modern economic
obsession with increasing consumption. The idea of limits is firmly
related to the literature arising from thermodynamics and energy use
with its implications for the physical functioning of systems
(Georgescu-Roegen 1971). The critique of consumption has connected
consumer manipulation by corporations (Galbraith [1967] 2007;
Kapp 1978: 224–247) to the psychological and social roles material
consumption plays in a modern market economy (Reisch and Røpke
2004; Røpke 1999). The psychological treadmill of material throughput
then raises concerns over how to address the scale of growth, which
is something ignored in the mainstream literature where efficient
allocation dominates regardless of scale (Daly 1991, 1992). Yet the
growth goal remains despite its inadequacies. Signals of failure are
clear in the persistence of distributional inequity, global poverty and
the imposition of pollution and environmental degradation on the
poor.
In addition growth has been shown to fail as a means to happiness
even for the rich. Easterlin (1974, 1995, 2003) has shown that, within
a country at a given point in time, the richer are on average happier,
but higher living level norms (“keeping up with the Joneses”) mean
increased income over time does not increase happiness. Easterlin
(1995) offers evidence from the USA, nine European countries and
Japan. More recently, he argues the expected utility from pecuniary
gains is undermined as opposed to those from nonpecuniary
domains—such as friends, family life and health—where hedonic
adaptation and social comparison are less important.
Once it is recognised that individuals are unaware of some of the forces
shaping their choices, it can be no longer argued that they will successfully
maximize their well-being. (Easterlin 2003: 11181)
This is a conclusion guaranteed to upset the political ideologies of
orthodox economics with its rhetoric of the sovereign consumer and
minimalist government. Thus, Easterlin should really be less surprised
by the neglect of the evidence he and others have brought forth.
Such self-reported happiness research suggests less material consumption
and a search for alternative hedonic satisfiers. A tension,
common to Green political thought, then appears between appealing
Social Ecological Economics 359
to better sources of experiential pleasure and identifying that such
pleasures are in fact not the prime source of a good and meaningful
life. O’Neill (2006) takes issue with the hedonic account of welfare
because the focus is upon isolation of pleasures for the individual
rather than the pattern of a life and its experiences. There is more to
life than being a hedonist and to be a pure hedonist is to be nothing
more than bestial. This is a denial of the human potential and richness
of human relationships.
Besides the relationship of humans to each other across time and
space there is the question of our relationship with the non-human
world around us and the encroaching replacement of natural systems
with human artifacts. This exposes how economics has rather missed
the point by focusing on substitutability and the belief, or presumption,
that man-made capital can be substituted for other inputs—
Nature defined as “land” or capital—(Holland 1997). That economic
growth creates harms, as well as goods, is heavily downplayed in
mainstream economics while their incommensurability is totally
denied.
These various insights have direct relevance for how economic
growth is perceived to operate as a means for improving the human
condition and why we need new operational goals. Economics
might, for example, be redefined as achieving sustained human
well-being on the basis of the maintained health and functioning of
Earth’s ecosystems or, more radically, how to create and maintain
systems that fulfil the needs of a meaningful and worthwhile life for
all moral agents (human and non-human). The critiques call for a
transition in the economy away from material and energy consumption
but the more radical position also calls for the abandonment of
hedonism and so a fundamental redesign of the modus operandi of
modern economic systems. In either case the orthodoxy is a block
not an aid. Future research in Social Ecological Economics requires
opening up a series of closed boxes in the orthodox cellar and
dusting off the contents—what contributes to well-being, is wellbeing
an appropriate goal, what are the aspirations of human
society, who is to be taken into account, how should human
society conduct its affairs from individual behavior to institutional
design?
360 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Expanding Understanding of Human Behavior and Motivation
Rejecting atomistic and mechanistic explanations as universal truths
leads to opening up the black box of the individual. Rather than
regarding the human as some essentially irreducible atomic structure
that should remain unquestioned, the realm of human motivation is
brought into question as requiring further analysis. Psychology can then
offer tremendous potential for insight into behavior, but only if
economists are prepared to learn from rather than dominate the subject
(Earl 2005). Dropping the focus on self-interested utility maximization
leads to a rich array of possibilities. Lexicographic preferences no
longer appear as a strange exception to the rule of gross substitution but
a relatively normal approach to choice, which may be motivated by
non-utilitarian ethics, strong uncertainty, or satisficing behaviour. Needs
can be differentiated from positional affluence. Social norms provide a
link between individual and societal motivators and connect with the
role of institutions as explored by classical or critical institutional
economists (as opposed to the neoclassical “new” institutional economists).
Social organizations are then seen to involve perceptions as to
power, trust and control that impact how people respond to requests
and incentives for behavioral change.
Taking Environmental Values and Ethics Seriously
Economic value theory is derived from Benthamite utilitarianism converted
into preference theory—a move that supposedly divorces
choice from ethics. In fact the basic philosophy remains utilitarian but
now preference utilitarian as opposed to Bentham’s theory of total
utility.8
What is found within the practice of environmental costbenefit
analysis is an implicit value theory based upon consequences
telling what is right and the value of outcomes being measured in
money as a shorthand for welfare based upon individual preferences.
More than this, while preference theory and “new” welfare economics
claim to be based only upon ordinal preferences, the way in which
money is used to aggregate and make decisions means it is being
implicitly converted into a cardinal measure for interpersonal comparisons
of well-being.
Social Ecological Economics 361
Yet those producing policy information hardly seem to be paying
attention to economic theory. The rise of transferring money
numbers across time and space indicates a tendency to choose
approaches on the basis of political convenience (see Spash and
Vatn 2006). The danger here is that numbers become merely artificial
means to an end and any means of justification will suffice.
This is a form of new environmental pragmatism that has become
evident in recent times (Spash 2009b). Rather than pursue the more
difficult task of developing theoretically justified alternatives the tendency
is to borrow mainstream tools with little attention to mainstream
methodology, ideology or their implications. This is exactly
why neither social ecological economists nor neoclassical economists
gave any credence to the studies driven by ecologists for
valuing ecosystems and the world. Ecologists themselves have then
lost sight of their own expressed values, e.g., summarized by Naess
(1973, 1984) as deep ecology. Concern for Nature, and the plural
values that involves, is not expressible within the context of preference
utilitarianism (Spash 2008b). Here is where neoclassical
theory is fundamentally rejected because of its persistent monism,
reducing everything, including all ethical and moral issues, to a
single numeraire.
A key area in which such monism controls and distracts the discourse
is in the treatment of future generations (Spash 1993, 2002).
The justifications for using a single discount rate have been taken
seriously and at high levels. Within mainstream rhetoric, discount
rates are meant to be observable objective determinants of how
society should treat the future. Unable to move outside the narrow
confines of mathematical formalism, economists, from Nobel prize
winners down (e.g., Arrow et al. 1996a), then write off the future on
the basis that they are being empirical and objective. That is, they
claim, how future generations should be treated can be determined
by observing a few factors such as rates of return on capital and
consumption growth. The result is a fruitless waste of time arguing
over the appropriate rates rather than addressing the fundamental
issue, which is fair and just treatment of the unborn, and what
should determine undertaking or denying actions with long-term
impacts.
362 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Taking Institutions Seriously
Well-being in society, and social decision processes, require institutions
that allow for the expression of different types of values. This
may be described as the need for value articulating institutions (Vatn
2005). Indeed the general hope amongst the various institutional
options that might be developed is for a more inclusive participatory
approach to governance that would allow deeper environmental
values than those prevalent in daily Western life to come to the fore.
Such issues of public policy and governance have been placed
outside of mainstream economics in a deliberate attempt to make
economics appear “objective.” Yet the role of power in society cannot
be removed from the analysis and merely remains hidden. This then
makes economic analysis highly misleading because policies applied
in reality play directly to vested interest groups (such as multinational
corporations) that are not part of the analysis. Account must be taken
of government power and how the institutions of governance are
structured. The textbook approach of assuming state intervention is
minimal, markets perfectly efficient and consumers sovereign produces
highly misleading recommendations, or worse, attempts to
make the world perform like the model. Realizing that markets are
socially constructed institutions means taking responsibility for market
design and functioning rather than pretending markets can be left to
themselves.
The ways in which our institutions conduct their policy discourse is
then something that affects the direction in which society heads. For
example, the science-policy interface has run into serious problems
in several areas of public policy (from nuclear power to genetic
modification to climate change). The approach to uncertainty as
weak—where probabilities and future states are known or
knowable—conflicts with the strong uncertainty confronted in reality
(e.g., the type of uncertainty noted by Keynes [1921] 1988). Once
again mainstream economics seems unable to offer much and instead
attempts to reduce all strong uncertainty to weak uncertainty (Spash
2002). Hence the rise of post normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz
1990) as one means by which to rethink the science-policy interface
and engage the technocentric establishment with wider public values
Social Ecological Economics 363
(van der Sluijs et al. 2005). This implies challenging existing institutions
and creating new ones.
Conclusions
The subconscious roots of Ecological Economics run deep into the
past but the modern community arose from the ashes of heterodox
environmental economics. Environmental economists were taken
along with the political turmoil of the 1960s but failed to realize the
revolutionary potential they once saw in their field. That failure was a
reflection of the power that lies in orthodox economics to control
debate, forgive heretics and expell blasphemers.
Ecological Economics as a modern movement started at the basic
level of trying to combine models from two disciplines, an approach
popular in America. While linking ecology and economics was an
interesting initial step, the narrow confines of model interactions and
multidisciplinary collaboration failed to advance the movement
beyond the orthodox. In addition, ecologists within the society
advanced collaboration with orthodox economists who had little
interest in the heterodox agenda. Orthodox economists were also
placed in positions of power within the society. None of this aided the
development of the new movement in providing an alternative
research agenda. Instead, some adopted orthodox economic models
and methods despite the conflict this creates with the realization that
the environment and the economy are intertwined and neither can be
meaningfully analyzed independent of the societal context. Unfortunately,
the importance of social, political, ethical and institutional
factors is something that ecologists are not trained to detect and
orthodox economists are trained to neglect.
In Europe, where the tradition of political economy is stronger, the
range of social science interactions has encouraged interdisciplinarity.
In the ESEE, then, the field has in part become established as an
heterodox socio-economic school of thought bridging the sciencepolicy
interface. Consistent with the historical roots, the aim of this
heterodox community is very much to be able to address policy
problems and environmental issues, not to sustain theoretical constructs
for their own sake. At the same time “scientific” standards of
364 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
accumulating knowledge and understanding are seen as necessary for
progress and theoretical consistency.
This is not to deny the potential for different factions to coexist
within Ecological Economics whether in Europe or elsewhere. The
question is the extent to which differences are tolerated within the
frame of a pluralist methodology. There need to be some core shared
ideological and methodological positions in creating the community of
scholars that is Ecological Economics. That means identifying where
differences are fundamentally divisive and create incoherence. This
paper argues, on the basis of the history behind the movement, that
an heterodox economic approach is necessary both for unity and
meaning. That means excluding the incompatible orthodox and
moving ahead with alternative theories and practice.
The inability of mainstream economists to engage with the ideas of
Social Ecological Economics is both ideological and methodological.
Such economists typically have various characteristics, for example,
championing self-regulating market approaches, accepting the basic
tenets of neoclassical theory, regarding humans within the narrow
behavioral model of homo œconomicus. Under this system of
thought, economics is believed to gain rigor from using abstract
mathematical models regardless of their empirical basis or policy
relevance. This is despite claims of scientific empiricism and prediction
as providing validity. In practice primary data collection is rare,
theory is conducted without application or hypothesis testing and
evidence contradicting theory is ignored or explained away. In the
extreme, arguments that persist are redefined for incorporation within
the existing theory by borrowing the language of other disciplines
while neutering the concepts for the sake of conformity with existing
belief structures and overall ideological positions. All this mitigates the
potential for learning from problem and policy oriented interdisciplinary
research.
For Social Ecological Economists interactions with ecology and
biology have raised the profile of evolution in relation to economics.
How we understand the world is vastly different if we treat it as a
deterministic mechanical system or a chaotic evolving biological
system. The future becomes uncertain in a strong sense, which denies
our ability to predict. This describes the large divide between reality
Social Ecological Economics 365
and the technocentric ideological dream, and macroeconomic hope,
that enough capital might be accumulated, via compound interest, to
enable a leisure society. A politically untenable reality is then that
Western economies actually reached satisfaction of basic needs long
ago, but have persisted with expanding the scale of material and
energy consumption, which degrades the environment, while failing
to address declines in human social and psychological well-being or
increases in the inequitable distribution of resources.
Differences and divisions have in many ways become clearer due to
the developing alternative research agendas. The desire to combine
different heterodox schools of thought—ecological, critical institutional,
evolutionary, post-Keynesian—is in direct contrast to the drive
for recognition within and by orthodox economics. Rather than paying
attention to methodological and ideological positions, some high
profile ecologists and conservation biologists have aligned themselves
with those who hold mainstream positions, and appear to have
political power. Those taking this line may regard themselves as being
pragmatic, in the sense of achieving an end by the easiest available
means, but actually have created problems for those trying to be far
more grounded in terms of changing economic thinking. Indeed,
much of the ecosystems services valuation work, for example, merely
buys into an existing political economy in which no substantive effort
is on the agenda for challenging the idea that material and energy
growth can continue ad infinitum. At the same time this work undercuts
alternative efforts—increased public participation and empowerment
of the disenfranchised—not least by pretending that producing
simple money numbers is a politically adequate response to global
environmental problems. This argument by environmental pragmatists
both fails to achieve its aims and causes much damage along the way.
Thus, some clearer lines need to be drawn between what is
progressive in Ecological Economics, what lacks credibility and where
incoherence is preventing the advancement of ideas. Social Ecological
Economics is then envisaged as a community of scholars developing
a distinct ideological vision and specific methodological agenda. Ideologically
there is a commitment to: environmental problems requiring
behavioral and systemic change, continued economic growth through
material and energy consumption being unsustainable and politically
366 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
divisive, poverty and distribution as major economic concerns, a need
for balancing power (e.g., individual, group, government, corporate)
at different spatial scales (from the local to international), a central role
for ethical debate, envisioning markets as social constructs with
numerous flaws, political economy, design of alternative institutions,
public participation, empowerment and engagement as necessary to
address the science-policy interface, recognizing the importance of
“others” (both human and non-human). Methodologically distinct
characteristics include: value pluralism, acknowledging incommensurability,
interdisciplinarity, empiricism using quantitative and qualitative
methods, rejection of mechanistic reductionist approaches,
rejection of mathematical formalism and its claimed rigor, acceptance
of strong uncertainty (i.e., ignorance and social indeterminacy). Only
some of the constitutive elements have been touched upon in this
paper, which serves as an introduction to stimulate debate. That
debate is essential for self-understanding. If Ecological Economics is to
have a meaningful future the community must show greater awareness
of where it has come from as well as the methodological and
ideological challenges ahead.
Notes
1. The terms mainstream and orthodox are used interchangeably to designated
economists adhering to the basic textbook versions of economic
theory. Neoclassical economists are equated with both terms. No strict definition
is attempted in this paper and the boundaries of such classifications are
notoriously fuzzy. Still the core conceptual foundations are clear and distinct
from those of heterodox economics (see Lawson 2005). For more on the
definition of neoclassical and heterodox economics see Lee (2009), especially
Chapter 1.
2. Prior to the award in 2009 being given to Ostrom (see note 3),
Kahneman was perhaps the most consistent, having been associated with the
work of environmental economist Jack Knetsch from his time in Vancouver at
the University of British Columbia 1978–1993 (Kahneman and Knetsch 1992b).
He also contributed to early debates on contingent valuation (see Cummings,
Brookshire, and Schulze 1986). Arrow and Solow were involved on opposite
sides of the Exxon Valdez oil spill legal case for compensation and the
ensuing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration panel on the use
of the contingent valuation method for natural resource damage assessment
(Arrow et al. 1993). Sen (1995) also wrote commenting on contingent valuaSocial
Ecological Economics 367
tion. Arrow and Stiglitz were authors for the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change third assessment report (Arrow et al. 1996a, 1996b).
3. In some senses Eleanor Ostrom is an exception in terms of her level of
engagement on resource and environmental problems, having been consistently
focused on common property resource management in her work and
actually being a member of the Society for Ecological Economics. A trained
political scientist, she has taken a more critical institutional economics
approach.
4. He has been attributed with inspiring the multiple criteria approach of
the Human Development Index (HDI). Note, this actually ignores environmental
factors.
5. Some sections of this paper are based on the general introduction to
volume one of Spash (2009a).
6. After a protracted review process the article appeared simultaneously
with a critique (Smith 1992), commissioned by the editor, and a reply by the
authors (Kahneman and Knetsch 1992a). When a second critique was published
the editor (Ron Cummings) refused the authors an opportunity to reply
despite their concerns that they be allowed to defend their work. Jack Knetsch
(personal communication June 2004 and January 2006). Ironically this soon
became the most highly cited article in the journal and remains so by far.
7. Three ecologists Rapport D. J. (Canada) Chair, Brian Walker (Australia),
Buzz Holling (USA); one environmental scientist Kerry Turner (UK) and two
economists Clem Tisdell (Australia) and Charles Perrings (UK now USA) ISEE
President at the time of the award.
8. Polanyi (1944: 119) states that Bentham actually failed to make the link
between value and utility.
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