Thematic Profiles of Social Ecology — The Research on Resource Flows and the Physical Economy in a Global Context

Abstract

The emerging science of social ecology is discussed in this and the following chapter with two of its main research themes and results, (a) global resource flow and (b) land use related to human consumption of biomass and food, before the emerging theoretical framework, including societal relations to nature and societal metabolism, is reviewed (Chapter 6). In the following description of the analysis of societal metabolism, the social ecology of human resource use is reviewed with two guiding questions:

• 1. How is the controversy about the tragedy of the commons as one focusing on limits of human resource use solved in social ecology?

• 2. What does the idea of social metabolism and metabolic regimes imply for the empirical study of global resource flows in social ecology?