• Social Ecology was created by Murray Bookchin in the mid 1960’s as a philosophical theory that analyses the relationship between ecology and society. It forms the foundation of Libertarian Municipalism and Democratic Confederalism (Rojava) political movements and is relation to anarchism, direct democracy, and communalism.
• Social Ecology draws from Dialetical Philosophy, Historical Anthropology, Sociology, and Biological Sciences to argue that domination of humans by humans led to the domination of nature.

‘Environmental problems are fundamentally social and political in nature and are rooted in the historical legacies of domination and social hierarchy.’ – Brian Tokar

• Core Ideas:
  • Irreducible Minimum
  • Usufruct
  • Mutual Aid
  • Direct Democracy
  • Anti-hierarchical, Anti-Class, Anti-Capitalist
  • Organic Society vs Hierarchical Society
  • 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Nature
• Controversies:
  • Bookchin’s work is flawed in places due to his reliance on the field of sociology.
  • Bookchin at the time wrote that animals were incapable of culture and that only humans were capable of such a thing. It is now known for example, that whales, one of many species, have culture. See: The hidden world of whale culture
• Questions:
  • Like other writer’s (Hannah Arendt, Campagna, Ursula M. Franklin etc.) technic plays a huge part in systems that become out of control (totalitarianism, capitalism etc.) however, many gloss over what technic truly is. What is the technic and how does it play into social ecology? See: Technic’s Hypostases
  • What would Bookchin’s work look like through the lens of Queer Ecology?
• Sources:
  • Institute for Social Ecology
  • Communalist Library
  • Social Ecology by Emily McGuire