Social ecology
From Envirowiki
Social Ecology is a school of anarchist thought which argues for a complete radical re-think of current society. Murray Bookchin coined the phrase in his writings in the 1970s. Bookchin was called an "eco-anarchist", and readily adopted the phrase, so eco-anarchism and social ecology can be thought of in some senses to be synonymous.
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[edit] 1 On heirarchy
Bookchin argued that the root of most problems stemmed from hierarchical domination of humans by humans. He argued that this was the root cause of the domination of nature by humans, and that it was intricately interlinked with other forms of social domination - workers by bosses, women by men, racism, homophobia, and more. Infact, bookchin argued that the socialist/marxist argument (that all social problems stemmed from class oppression), must be replaced with a concept of general heirarchical domination in order to create a truly free society[1].
[edit] 2 Basic principles
Bookchin argued for a radical re-think of current society, with aims in mind such as:
- return to human scale: a return to human scale, as opposed to the global scale of corporate multinationalism
- humans as part of the environment: re-organisation of though from humans and the environment to humans as part of the environment
- refocusing on ends instead of means: Bookchin turned away from large parts of the environment movement whom he saw as "environmental engineers" - people fixated on the means, such as renewable energy technology
[edit] 3 references
- ↑ Bookchin, Murray, "The Ecology of freedom", Black Rose press
[edit] 4 External Links
- Social Ecology on wikipedia
- "What is Social Ecology?" - Stuart Hill Chair of Social Ecology University of Western Sydney
