Dialectics and evolutionary materialism: Expanding methodological pluralism in ecological economics

Abstract

Ecological economics is concerned with understanding the relationship of humanity's household to earth's household. Its orientation has been to nurture methodological pluralism. This expansive project has yet to include in its toolbox what we label–dialectics and evolutionary materialism. This approach and methodology for understanding complex economic systems (the foundation of humanity's household); their emergence, structure, dynamic, and the complex relationship they establish between humans and earth can expand the breadth of methodological pluralism. Ecological economics has embraced a more limited ontological and epistemological approach stressing obvious material connections and the centrality of human agency. A more expansive view of social metabolism in relation to earth and the processes of change have been thwarted by the theoretical choice to avoid confronting determinism and to elevate the role of human agency in altering the massive economic system.