Deep Social Ecology (original) (raw)
Related papers
(2021) Enlightenment and Ecology. The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21 st Century
libcom.org https://libcom.org/library/book-review-enlightenment-ecology-legacy-murray-bookchin-21st-century, 2021
Murray Bookchin's (1921-2006) anti-capitalist thinking combined community, direct democracy and ecology into a radical political theory he called social ecology. Throughout the 20th century it stood alongside growing arguments for eco-social change and influenced leftist discourses on citizenship, domination and freedom. In the new millennium, it has formed the basis of the Kurdish feminist-ecological revolution in Rojava and thus been implemented for the first time in practice. The edited volume Enlightenment and Ecology. The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century celebrates Bookchin's legacy and considers the lived experiences of social ecology. The anthology is a heartfelt endeavour to point out the urgency, potential and possibility for social change that grounds in the collaborative world-making of ecosystems to create free democratic societies that gain their resilience through a unity in diversity. The activists, thinkers and scholars writing place their contributions in political and economic theory, in decades of social engagement and in co-creation and observation of real-life movements. The outcome is a multifaceted anthology whose engaged voices paint a vivid, dialectical picture of the challenges and hopes of creating practice out of theory.
Social ecology, deep ecology, and liberalism
Critical Review, 1992
Murray Bookchin’s influential writings on social ecology attempt to unite the traditional leftist critique of liberal democratic society with contemporary environmental concerns. His work is undermined, however, in part by the dubious comparisons he makes between market systems and ecosystems, and in particular by his failure to understand that these systems operate in a like fashion according to impersonal principles of self-organization. In the case of the market, while this impersonal process facilitates cooperation and exchange, it also rewards the instrumental nature of the relationship between human and ecological communities. Deep ecologists are therefore right to criticize the unwillingness of participants in market societies to appreciate the intrinsic value of nature. The challenges they pose to the human community – to become less anthropocentric and to approach property rights with a sense of stewardship – may be taken up by an “evolutionary liberalism,” which would strive to achieve harmony between humans and the natural world under the guidance of rules ordered by self-organizing principles.
"The Social Ecology of Murray Bookchin"
Despite more than a decade of widespread pubric discussion of "ecological crises" and,,enviro.r*arrtul problems,,, r"tfra"ti. ecological thinking has had only the *ort *u.ginal influence on contemporary society. The widespread tendenry to triviarize ecology is not limited ro its recycting Uy media, industry and politics for inclusion on their endless lists of ,.issues,,, ,,corcJrns,,, and "items on the agencra-" More disturbing irirr. ""..iii.ur treatment of ecological concep-ts by virtuallyitt tt. prevailing currents in social theory, including .,r., ih. allegldly most radical varieties.
Eco-communalism. Bookchin and the Ecology of Revolution
The article develops two main arguments. The first develops the four points on which Murray Bookchin enriches the revolutionary socialist tradition: through the integration of ecology, the consideration of the problem of hierarchy, a rereading of the history of revolutions, and the communalist project as a way to jointly overcome Marxism and anarchism. The second explains that Bookchin's work consists of two inseparable investigations, on the one hand, into the causes of the ecological crisis and, on the other, into the politics of emancipation capable of overcoming this crisis. Bookchin's communalism is ultimately an eco-communalism that allows us to reinscribe the evolution of societies in the evolution of the nature to which they belong.
"A Dialogue with Arne Naess on Social Ecology and Deep Ecology (1988-1997)"
In the spring of 1987, Donald Davis, an environmental sociologist at the University of Tennessee arranged a talk there by Murray Bookchin. At the time, I was working very closely with Bookchin, and I went there to meet with him and Davis, who had been a student and staff member at the Institute for Social Ecology. During the visit, Bookchin showed me the proofs for an article entitled "Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach," a large part of which was an attack on deep ecology, systems theory, Asian thought, and the radical environmental organization Earth First! I was disturbed by what I read. I found it to be seriously lacking in careful analysis or nuance, and often to be unfair to the objects of attack. I suggested that he rewrite it, making sure that he did not over-generalize or misrepresent any positions. He replied, rather unconvincingly, that it was too late to make any changes, and he did not respond in any way to the content of my suggestions. 1 What I did not know at the time was that he had recently written a much more extreme attack on deep ecology, in which he had parodied, and, indeed, The Trumpeter
The Dark Side of Political Ecology
Communalism: International Journal for a Rational Society, 2002
I]f the word ecology is used to describe our outlook, it is preposterous to invoke deities, mystical forces to account for the evolution of first nature into second nature.
In the wake of ecological crises, there has been a resurgence of interest in the relation between dialectical thought and nature. The work of Herbert Marcuse andMurray Bookchin offers unique approaches to this question that remain highly relevant.In the first half of the article, we engage with Marcuse’s application of the dialectical method in which he gestured to the “vital need” to push beyond the appearance of“the real” and yet lamented the loss of the ability for negative thinking to pierce the dominance of the “technical apparatus” that tied humanity to this “radical falsity”. Here,we suggest the need for a more holistic dialectical understanding of the social totality—one that is directly located within, and takes as foundational, the environmental conditions of human society. In the second half, we examine Murray Bookchin’s conception of “dialectical naturalism” as a more thorough engagement with the human/nature relation that surpasses Marcuse’s late engagements with ecologism. In particular, we offer critical reflections on the concept of “nature” in the contemporary ecology movement and illustrate how dialectical naturalism is capable of not only transcending dualistic conceptions of “man/nature” but in expanding our awareness of the potentialities of history along what Bookchin terms the “libertory pathways” to a restorative relation between human “second nature” and biological “first nature”. We posit that systemic,interconnected and accelerating ecological crises (climatic, biospheric and oceanic) form the objective and absolute contradiction of contemporary global social life that compels an awareness of the potentialities of an ecological society. Only through this awareness can we break through the reified “solutions” that have often plagued the ecology movement, bringing about the urgent social and ecological transformation that our species requires for its liberation and long-term survival.