Independent scholar Ithaca, New York, United States
Ecologists today increasingly embrace the importance of legacy, that what came before, ecologically and intellectually, affects what comes after. Yet as ecology expands to embrace allied social science and related areas, we are less aware of the broader legacy informing our study systems and our ideas. That legacy is deep–tracing back to at least the late 1700s–and broad, extending across a range of fields and topics.
Inspired by Brown & Real’s Foundations of ecology, five researchers, including two ecologists, decided to address this challenge after meeting at the National Socio-environmental Synthesis Center. We focused on socio-environmental research, which we defined as structured inquiry about the reciprocal relationships between society and environment, and hypothesized that an anthology of legacy readings would enrich ecology and allied fields.
A range of current ecological research builds on this legacy. Ecology within sustainability science builds on ideas from Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, George Marsh, Paul Ehrlich, and Donella Meadows. Land systems and land-use legacies were noted by von Humbldt, Ellinor Melville, and Arturo Gomez-Pampa and Alison Kraus. Research considering resilience and vulnerability builds on C.S. Holling, Amartya Sen, and Emilio Moran, among others. Ecology that considers issues of power and justice leverages insights from Karl Marx, Robert Bullard, Vandana Shiva, and Leonardo Boff. Much urban ecology builds on work by Mark McDonnell and Steward Pickett. Finally, planetary perspectives within ecology are informed by Evelyn Hutchinson, Rachel Carson, and Daniel Pauly.
Strikingly, these and other legacy readings are anything but old. They focus on issues, such as how altering ecological processes feeds back to affect societies and, in turn, ecological processes, that are ever current. And they frame them in ways that continue to resonate. Rather than striving to always do or focus on something new, we should recognize the value of highlighting, in fresh ways and in current context, relationships whose timelessness suggests something fundamental.
As we learn repeatedly, we are often building on, echoing, or reacting to voices that came before. Better understanding the history of ideas and perspectives within and around ecology will only enrich it. As ecology becomes more inclusive, we have an obligation to seek out more-diverse perspectives from our discipline’s past and to add our own.
