Foundations of Social Ecological Economics

Book excerpt: Social ecological economics is an emerging paradigm that combines critical social science with realism to offer a radical theoretically grounded alternative economics based on ethical social provisioning to meeting needs. The foundations of the approach include its radical roots, philosophical presuppositions and preanalytic vision. Both mainstream and heterodox economics --Marxism, feminism, institutionalism, Post Keynesianism -- are critically reviewed highlighting the lack of attention to the combined social and environmental crises. The potentiality and means for integration of knowledge across heterodox thought is explored and explicitly addressed. The author tackles the failures of the mainstream economic orthodoxy and its dissenting apologists. The book justifies radical structural change, how this can be achieved and where this takes us in terms of establishing an alternative to capitalist focussed economics for sustaining and developing alternative social-ecological economies.