This way of thinking is sometimes referred to as deep ecology. Some of them argue that we need a deeper connection with nature, away from big cities and technologies. How can we transform the world for the better?Īctivists and thinkers tried to answer this question for a long time. Social ecologies, though, help us imagining a world beyond this crisis. In a capitalist system of production, such transformations can be catastrophic. In this sense, “social ecology” means the transformations of the environment that result from relations of production. The environmental catastrophe is the result of a system of exploitation that crushes living conditions on a global scale. The climate crisis put into question the technological transformations of our time. We looked at “ecology”, let’s now add the term “social”. Now it should be clearer what ecology can mean: how we understand the world around us. A series of words help us making sense of the world. In a similar fashion, we can think about “word” (logos) more as “reasoning” or “discourse”. The world is actually the home of humankind and other species. Let’s try by broadening the term “home” (oikos) and think about it more as “world”.

Such enigmatic expression may need further unpacking. The word ecology is the combination of two ancient words: “home” (oikos) + “word” (logos) = “home’s word”. What do we mean by social ecology? And why is it important?įirst of all, let’s unpack in simple terms what ecology means.

The ecology of freedom