The Centre for Social Ecological Economics
Our mission is to facilitate societal transformation through understanding of structural problems and offering alternatives
A passion for creating change
The current political economy is crisis ridden and systems change is essential for a better future. This requires understanding current systemic problems in order to identify barriers to and opportunities for alternative social-ecological provisioning systems. Realising the potential for radically alternative ways of living with others, both human and non-human, requires making hopes and dreams into concrete utopias that can be realised under the right conditions. Achieving social-ecological transformation requires making those conditions a reality.
Critical & realist
Informed by depth of thought and philosophy of science. Our approach is based on scientific understanding that relates human concepts to the reality in which they exist. How humans construct their concepts is one aspect, while the validity of those concepts is another. The validity of knowledge claims is their adequacy in describing and explaining reality and enabling good practices. Humans as part of Nature are dependent upon biophysical structures they neither create nor control but must work with and within, which is exactly why ignoring natural systems has led to ecological crises. Social structures are emergent from natural structures within which they are embedded, they are dependent upon them but not deterministically created by them. Society can no more be reduced to Nature than Nature can be reduced to society. Nature and society are distinct but not separate.
Interdisciplinary
Connecting across disciplinary fields to combine social, ecological & economic understanding. We work from a heterodox economic perspective that recognises the inadequacies and failures of economic thought and seeks to apply knowledge from across disciplines. We regard social-ecological economics as an emerging scientific paradigm offering the potential to unify ideas and help support initiatives to establish alternative social-ecological provisioning systems.
“…providing the rallying cry in the fight for revolutionary change in economic thought ‘There are only alternatives’.”
Dr Richard Bärnthaler
University of Leeds