SOCIAL ECOLOGY:
 HARMONIZING HUMANITY AND NATURE


 James R. Nolfi, Ph.D.
 Associates in Rural Development, Inc.


 Social ecology is concerned with the use of the fundamental principals
of the science of ecology as the paradigm for restructuring human society.
These principals function at the concrete level in describing the specific
aspects of the activities of the human species within the biosphere. Simul-
taneously, however, they function at the abstract level as metaphors in
developing a social theory for interactions between human society and the
natural world, and between humans within societies. Concerned with the
functional interrelationships of components in natural systems, ecology is
inherently holistic taking a broad inclusive view of the world. As such,
this holistic paradigm (in Kuhn's sense) stands in contrast to the unrealis-
tically limited perspective presented by reductionism, which has been the
dominant paradigm of modern science.

 Murray Bookchin's "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought," published in 1968,
was a germinal document in the development of the concept of social ecology.
The most powerful aspect of the ecological paradigm, Bookchin states, is its
ability to be both critical and reconstructive. That is, ecological principles
can, on one hand, be used to critique present society and proposed alternatives
and, at the same time, give guidelines for a new social organization. Bookchin
states,
 Broadly conceived...ecology deals with the balance of nature.
 Inasmuch as nature includes humanity the science deals with the
 harmonization of nature and humanity... In the final analysis,
 it is impossible to achieve a harmonization of humanity and nature
 without creating a human community that lives in lasting balance
 with its natural environment.
Humanity, Bookchin states, produces imbalances in the natural world as a
consequence of the imbalances produced in the social world. Domination over
nature is inseparable from the problem of hierarchical domination in human
society. Modern industrial society has turned the natural world into a series
of commodities to be merchandized, in precisely the same way that it treats
human beings as mass-produced component parts to be used up and discarded.
Exploitation and an extractive relationship to nature are fundamentally
inseparable from colonialism, racism, and other kinds of exploitation in
human society.

 For example, social ecology would look at the issue of the relationship
between diversity and stability of ecosystems as it reflects on human society
from several perspectives. At the concrete level, the clear problems arising