Series: Social Ecology Today — Roots
About this series
The series ‘Social Ecology Today’ explores and clarifies the thinking and practices of social ecology, showing how this approach connects ecological crises to the social and political structures that produce them, and situates various contemporary ecological and social reflections.
Throughout the articles, we will revisit its roots and theoretical foundations, as well as its dialogues, controversies and critiques of other currents: Marxism, degrowth, deep ecology, ecofeminism, bioregionalism, ecosocialism and even certain forms of technocratic or authoritarian ecology.
The aim is not to provide an academic overview of ecological thought, but to understand what social ecology can shed light on: the profound relationship between ecological crisis, structures of domination and forms of political organisation.
Each text will thus explore the encounter – sometimes fruitful, sometimes conflictual – between social ecology and another school of thought.
Why is ecology a social and political issue?
We live in an era where ecology is everywhere—and yet the catastrophe is worsening. Between ‘transition,’ ‘carbon neutrality,’ ‘green planning,’ and ‘resilience,’ ecological language has become established in institutions, the media, and even marketing. But this apparent success masks a deeper defeat: ecology is often reduced to a technical problem (emissions, energy, flows) or a moral one (good deeds, guilt), when it is first and foremost a question of social relations: who decides? for whose benefit? according to what values?
This is precisely where social ecology makes a decisive breakthrough. Its founding intuition is simple and disturbing: the ecological crisis is not an ‘accident’ in a generally healthy society; it is the ecological expression of a deeply sick social world. Murray Bookchin — a major figure at the origin of this movement — put it bluntly: ‘Almost all of our current ecological problems have their origins in deeply rooted social problems. These problems cannot be understood — let alone solved — without an understanding of existing society and the irrationalities that run through it.’ (The Ecology of Freedom, Murray Bookchin, 1982).
In other words, social ecology is not simply a spiritual supplement: it forces us to question the institutions, culture, economy and hierarchies that structure our lives.
The heart of the diagnosis: domination before ‘nature’
Social ecology rejects the widespread idea that human beings are ‘naturally’ destructive. On the contrary, it criticises a central belief of modern societies: the idea that domination is a historical necessity, an anthropological inevitability — first domination of nature, then domination of humans among themselves.
This belief has gradually taken hold in part of Western thought, which has come to present domination as an inevitable stage of human development, even as the primary “means of production” enabling humanity to free itself from a supposedly stingy and hostile nature.
Social ecology radically overturns this perspective. It shows that domination of nature is not the source of our ecological problems: rather, it is their extension. Long before humanity sought to dominate nature, it learned to dominate other humans. Hierarchies, exploitation, concentration of power: it is these social relationships that have gradually shaped a relationship with the world based on appropriation, separation and indifference.
Freedom: not ‘market freedom’, but collective power
One of the most vibrant — and often overlooked — contributions of social ecology lies in its conception of freedom. Capitalism has long presented itself as the fulfilment of freedom: freedom to do business, to consume, to choose. But this promise masks a very different reality. Behind this rhetoric of freedom, we have seen the development of the bureaucratic state, forced labour, money as a universal mediator, structural inequalities and—crucially—a widespread separation between individuals, communities and living environments.
This modern conception of freedom is based on an illusion: that of being freed from material necessities. Modernity has gradually transformed freedom into a fantasy of deliverance, as if being free meant no longer depending on the earth, natural cycles or the work necessary for the reproduction of life. But this deliverance has always had a downside: constraints have not disappeared, they have simply been externalised. Others — precarious workers, colonised populations yesterday, ecosystems today — bear the material burden of this apparent freedom.
Social ecology therefore offers a radically different understanding of freedom. Being free does not mean freeing oneself from the necessities of existence, but being able to assume them collectively and consciously. Freedom is not an escape from the material world; it is the ability to participate in organising the conditions that make life possible. Producing one’s own sustenance, inhabiting a territory, deciding how to use resources: these activities are not purely alienating constraints, but can become the foundations of substantial freedom when organised collectively and equally.
This perspective echoes the profound intuition of social ecology: freedom is not reduced to an accumulation of individual choices, but is built in society through the development of human capacities and participation in the common world. Being free does not mean being “free of others”, but being able to take part, with them, in determining the conditions of collective life.
This is where an essential political dimension comes into play. If the ecological crisis is rooted in social relations, its resolution cannot be left to experts, market mechanisms or technocratic devices. It requires rebuilding the conditions for dialogue, deliberation and shared decision-making. For the ecological crisis is also a crisis of the commons: a crisis in the ability of societies to govern themselves and to relearn how to decide collectively on their future.
From this perspective, political autonomy cannot be dissociated from a reappropriation of the material conditions of existence. Establishing forms of direct democracy is not enough if subsistence depends on global techno-industrial systems beyond the control of communities. Social ecology thus reminds us of an often-forgotten truth: there can be no lasting freedom without collective control over the conditions of subsistence.
Dialectical naturalism: rethinking our place in nature
Social ecology is not limited to a critique of social structures; it also offers a new way of thinking about our place in the living world, without falling back into anti-humanism. It reminds us that human society does not exist outside of nature: it is a particular expression of nature, resulting from broader evolutionary processes. Society can thus be understood as a ‘second nature’ that emerges from the first nature — the living world — and can never truly be separated from it.
From this perspective, phenomena such as cooperation, mutualism and even certain forms of self-organisation are not simply human inventions that have sprung up out of nowhere. They already appear, in embryonic form, in the dynamics of life itself. This continuity allows us to conceive of an ecological and libertarian ethic without rigidly opposing society and nature, culture and the environment, humanity and life.
Such a vision profoundly transforms our ecological imagination. Nature is no longer an external backdrop or a mere reservoir of resources. It becomes a fabric of relationships of which we are a part—a living network of which we are one of the conscious expressions. This awareness gives us a special responsibility: that of guiding our societies towards forms of coexistence capable of sustaining the diversity of life rather than destroying it.
Hot topic: against green capitalism and management ecology
In the contemporary landscape, social ecology is strikingly relevant because it exposes two major impasses.
The first is market ecology — green capitalism, so-called ‘green’ growth, carbon finance, and promises of technological modernisation. This approach promises a ‘clean’ future without questioning the social drivers of the catastrophe: endless accumulation, widespread competition, and the dispossession of communities and their living environments.
The second is technocratic ecology. Under terms such as governance, steering or social engineering, the ecological question is gradually removed from political debate and entrusted to administrative expertise and management mechanisms. Societies then become systems to be optimised, and populations mere adjustment variables.
Social ecology has warned against this drift since its inception. It reminds us that the ecological crisis cannot be resolved by a simple technical or bureaucratic reorganisation of the existing system. As long as the social structures that produce domination and accumulation remain intact, technical solutions tend to reproduce the same logic in new forms.
From this perspective, the question of technology must be approached with lucidity. Technology is never neutral: it shapes social relations, material dependencies and scales of organisation. In societies dominated by the market and the state, it often tends to reinforce separation, increase dependence on complex infrastructures and intensify the industrialisation of life.
This is why, at this stage of our reflection, we are led to question the very notion of ‘liberating technologies’. Not because all technology is inherently alienating, but because the idea that technology alone can free us from material constraints perpetuates the modern fantasy of outsourcing our needs.
Behind every technological device—even those presented as ‘green,’ ‘smart,’ or ‘user-friendly’—lie heavy infrastructures, globalised extraction chains, an often invisible division of labour, and very real exploitative relationships. The extraction of metals needed for so-called clean technologies still relies heavily on extremely harsh working conditions, sometimes bordering on slavery, including the exploitation of children in certain cobalt and rare earth mines.
Thus, far from abolishing the material constraints of existence, contemporary technological systems tend above all to displace them and render them invisible, shifting them to other territories, other populations and other forms of life.
Perspectives: a political imaginary to be rebuilt, not a programme
Social ecology is not a fixed doctrine. It is a matrix for analysis and a compass: it links ecology, freedom, direct democracy, criticism of domination and the reconstruction of the commons. It brings together what many ecologies separate: emissions and inequalities, energy and democracy, land and dignity.
This is why it can produce a “spark”: it does not simply ask us to “make an effort,” it proposes to change the world—not by decree, but through a movement of reappropriation: relearning how to discuss, decide, cooperate, establish commons, and take our place in a shared world.
And if we wanted to summarize the opportunity it offers today, we could say this: social ecology reminds us that the decisive question is not only how to survive in a damaged world, but how to become capable of true collective freedom again—that is, how to build together forms of life that are just, desirable, and livable.
While social ecology links the ecological crisis to the structures of domination that permeate our societies, it does not come out of nowhere. It is part of a longer history of criticism of authority and the search for a free society. To understand its political roots, we must turn to one of the traditions that has most profoundly nourished it: the anarchist tradition.
Rebounds: