CHAPTER 10 ECOLOGISM
PREVIEW The term ‘ecology’ was coined by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Derived from the Greek oikos , meaning household or habitat, he used it to refer to ‘the investigations of the total relations of the animal both to its organic and its inorganic environment’. Since the early years of the twentieth century, ecology has been recognized as a branch of biology that studies the relationship among living organisms
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Historical overview
Core themes
Types of ecologism 217 The future of ecologism 223 Questions for discussion 224 Further reading 224
and their environment. It has, however, increasingly been converted into a political term by the use made of it, especially since the 1960s, by the growing green or environmental movement. As a political ideology, ecologism is based on the belief that nature is an interconnected whole, embracing humans and non-humans, as well as the inanimate world. This has encouraged ecological thinkers to question (but not necessarily reject) the anthropocentric, or human-centred, assumptions of conventional political ideologies, allowing them to come up with new ideas about, among other things, economics, morality and social organization. Nevertheless, there are different strains and tendencies within ecologism. Some ecologists are committed to ‘shallow’ ecology, which attempts to harness the lessons of ecology to human ends and needs. This provides the basis for a reformist, or ‘modernist’, approach to ecologism, sometimes dubbed environmentalism. It is also expressed through ecological theories that acknowledge that the relationship between humankind and nature has an important social dimension. These include eco-socialism and eco- anarchism. ‘Deep’ ecologists, on the other hand, completely reject any lingering belief that the human species is in some way superior to, or more important than, any other species. This is a stance that has also been embraced by some eco- feminist thinkers.
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