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Organization & Environment
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The Sociology of Ecology

Ecological Organicism Versus Ecosystem Ecology in the Social Construction of Ecological Science, 1926-1935

John Bellamy Foster

University of Oregon

Brett Clark

North Carolina State University

Environmental sociology has been divided in recent years by a debate between realists and constructionists centering on the knowledge claims of ecological science. Following a consideration of this debate and its relation to both environmental sociology and the "sociology of ecology," a "realist constructionism" is advanced, taking as its concrete case the conflict in the 1920s and 1930s between Jan Christian Smuts's organicist ecology and Arthur Tansley's ecosystem ecology. A central analytical issue (derived from Marx and Engels) is the "double transfer" of ideas from society to nature and back again and how this was manifested in the early 20th-century ecology in the form of a justification for ecological racism/apartheid.

Key Words: ecology • ecosystem • Smuts • Tansley • Marx • materialism • dialectics • double transfer • realist constructionism • ecological racism • critical realism • standpoint theory • environmental sociology • sociology of science • environmentalism

Organization & Environment, Vol. 21, No. 3, 311-352 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1086026608321632
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R. York
Introduction to the Symposium on Catton and Dunlap's Foundational Work Establishing an Ecological Paradigm
Organization Environment, December 1, 2008; 21(4): 446 - 448.
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