IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wus009/5500.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Need for and Meaning of Social Ecological Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Spash, Clive L.

Abstract

Ecological economics has arisen over a period of three decades with a strong emphasis on the essential need to recognise the embeddedness of the economy in the biophysical. However, that element of realism is not matched by an equally well informed social theory. Indeed the tendency has been to adopt mainstream economic concepts, theories and models formulated of the basis of a formal mathematical deductivist approach that pays little or no attention to social reality. Similarly mainstream economic methods are employed as pragmatic devices for communication. As a result ecological economics has failed to develop its own consistent and coherent theory and failed to make the link between the social and the economic. In order to reverse this situation the social and political economy must be put to the fore and that is the aim of social ecological economics. This paper provides a brief overview of the arguments for such a development. The prospect is of unifying a range of critical thought on the social and environmental crises with the aim of informing the necessary social ecological transformation of the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Spash, Clive L., 2017. "The Need for and Meaning of Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2017/02, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wus009:5500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.wu.ac.at/5500/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 1979. "Methods in Economic Science," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 317-328, June.
    2. Anderson, Blake & M'Gonigle, Michael, 2012. "Does ecological economics have a future?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 37-48.
    3. Stern,Nicholas, 2007. "The Economics of Climate Change," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521700801.
    4. Spash, Clive L., 2016. "The Paris Agreement to Ignore Reality," SRE-Discussion Papers 2016/01, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    5. Clive L. Spash, 2011. "Social Ecological Economics: Understanding the Past to See the Future," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 340-375, April.
    6. Spash, Clive L., 2013. "The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 351-362.
    7. Spash, Clive L. & Vatn, Arild, 2006. "Transferring environmental value estimates: Issues and alternatives," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 379-388, December.
    8. Spash, Clive L., 2012. "New foundations for ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 36-47.
    9. Clive L. Spash & Anthony Ryan, 2012. "Economic Schools of Thought on the Environment: Investigating Unity and Division," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 36(5), pages 1091-1121.
    10. Spash, Clive L., 2007. "The economics of climate change impacts a la Stern: Novel and nuanced or rhetorically restricted?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 706-713, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kaitlin Kish & Joshua Farley, 2021. "A Research Agenda for the Future of Ecological Economics by Emerging Scholars," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-17, February.
    2. Smith, Thomas S.J. & Baranowski, Mariusz & Schmid, Benedikt, 2021. "Intentional degrowth and its unintended consequences: Uneven journeys towards post-growth transformations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    3. Iana Nesterova, 2024. "Being of deep transformations: A personal journey inspired by Clive L. Spash," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 122-138, April.
    4. Buch-Hansen, Hubert & Nesterova, Iana, 2021. "Towards a science of deep transformations: Initiating a dialogue between degrowth and critical realism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    5. Akbulut, Bengi & Adaman, Fikret, 2020. "The Ecological Economics of Economic Democracy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    6. Buchs, Arnaud & Petit, Olivier & Roman, Philippe, 2020. "Can social ecological economics of water reinforce the “big tent”?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Spash, Clive L., 2013. "The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 351-362.
    2. Spash, Clive L., 2020. "A tale of three paradigms: Realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    3. Plumecocq, Gaël, 2014. "The second generation of ecological economics: How far has the apple fallen from the tree?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 457-468.
    4. Clive L Spash, 2009. "Social Ecological Economics," Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series 2009-08, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
    5. Lundgren, Jakob, 2022. "Unity through disunity: Strengths, values, and tensions in the disciplinary discourse of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    6. Anderson, Blake & M'Gonigle, Michael, 2012. "Does ecological economics have a future?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 37-48.
    7. Spash, Clive L., 2019. "Time for a Paradigm Shift: From Economic Growth andPrice-Making Markets to Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2019/07, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    8. Spash, Clive L., 2019. "SEE Beyond Substantive Economics: Avoiding False Dichotomies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 1-1.
    9. Spash, Clive L., 2019. "Substantive Economics and Avoiding False Dichotomies in Advancing Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2019/05, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    10. Pirgmaier, Elke, 2017. "The Neoclassical Trojan Horse of Steady-State Economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 52-61.
    11. Kaitlin Kish & Joshua Farley, 2021. "A Research Agenda for the Future of Ecological Economics by Emerging Scholars," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-17, February.
    12. Clive L. Spash, 2015. "The Future Post-Growth Society," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(2), pages 366-380, March.
    13. Melgar-Melgar, Rigo E. & Hall, Charles A.S., 2020. "Why ecological economics needs to return to its roots: The biophysical foundation of socio-economic systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    14. Remig, Moritz C., 2015. "Unraveling the veil of fuzziness: A thick description of sustainability economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 194-202.
    15. Goddard, Jessica J. & Kallis, Giorgos & Norgaard, Richard B., 2019. "Keeping multiple antennae up: Coevolutionary foundations for methodological pluralism," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 1-1.
    16. Clive L. Spash, 2013. "The Ecological Economics of Boulding's Spaceship Earth," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2013_02, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    17. Iana Nesterova, 2024. "Being of deep transformations: A personal journey inspired by Clive L. Spash," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 122-138, April.
    18. Terrance Quinn, 2023. "An Emergent Transdisciplinary Methodology for Effective Collaboration in Ecological Economics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-22, May.
    19. Gendron, Corinne, 2014. "Beyond environmental and ecological economics: Proposal for an economic sociology of the environment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 240-253.
    20. Remig, Moritz C., 2017. "Structured pluralism in ecological economics — A reply to Peter Söderbaum's commentary," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 533-537.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ecological economics; social economy; political ecology; political economy; social ecological transformation; biophysical reality; mainstream economics; neoliberal environmentalism;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wus009:5500. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WU Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://research.wu.ac.at/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.