Solidarity in human societies resides in the organisations established to manage the utilisation of natural resources. Management, as a specific pattern of human activities, emerges in the archaic use of the word economy to define the ordering of household affairs; (via Latin from Greek oikonomia; domestic management, from oikos house + -nomia, from nemein to manage). Managerial behaviour, involves the setting of targets and the marshalling of inputs necessary to overcome limiting environmental factors. It is central to activities that turn environmental resources into food, goods and services. Ecology comes from the same etymological root. As a human scientific endeavour it has prompted new institutions and organisations in society by which ecological thinking can be directed to manage ecosystems as human goods. In this respect, applied ecology is a powerful feedback from science to force cultural changes in the use of habitats and species.
Tension within society comes, on the one hand, from the managerial applications of science for the commodification and industrialisation of nature, and on the other, to the applications of ecology for the preservation of intrinsic value in the living world. These two rival views of the relationship between humans and nature define the area of cultural ecology.
From all of these viewpoints, applied ecology is influencing the formation of new social organisations and their cultural expressions through managerialism as global and local strategies and site operations. Some of these changes in society and culture come about because of direct applications of science. However, other movements, such as 'deep ecology', with their promotion of intrinsic value in ecological order, do not come directly out of the science of ecology, but are suggested, inspired and fortified, by ecological ideas. In native cultures their ideological aspects comprised beliefs, rituals, magical practices, art, ethics, religion and myths. These defined the permissible and acceptable relationships with nature, and they were part of local systems for conserving resources. In industrialised societies this role has been taken over by the cultural package of 'nature conservation', which includes the philosophies and legal systems of society directed at supporting order in habitats and their species. This is the web of perception and action that locks individuals together in geographical space as societies. It is focused on balancing the exploitation of environmental resources for production with the conservation of resources to ensure survival of the community. This balancing act involves technological, sociological and ideological management systems.
The technological aspect of management is concerned with tools, materials and machines. The sociological aspect involves the relationships into which people enter especially in work and in the family. These two aspects encompass topics that deal respectively with the exploitation of resources through production and demand. Changes in technology and social organisation will bring forth changes in the ideas and beliefs that connect people with local and planetary resources, and also define humans in the wider cosmos, but such ideas will always feed back on the social organisation, which moves forward.
The ideological aspects of the conservation of resources are expressed
- through ideas about 'nature' and 'place', as these have developed historically to provide philosophical, artistic and spiritual values for present day environmentalism;
- through science, as applied ecology;
- and through ‘living in nature’ and applying traditional ecological knowledge to realise global and local strategies of resource management.
All these aspects define the two major routes of Western reasoning about nature. On the one hand, since the 18th century, there has been a ready acceptance of the scientific drive for the domination of nature. On the other hand, the environmental outcomes of this mode of activity has precipitated the ecological search for intrinsic value and its preservation. These two rival views of the relationship between humans and nature define a fluid mind-map to steer a global society toward sustainability. The rivalry comes from fragmentation of civil society in the pursuit of profit and status. Only as conscious agents of a cultural revolution, which promotes a balanced synthesis of the exploitative and conserving segments of society, can we harness our species' ecological potential for a sustainable future.
The twentieth century opened with a revolution in humankind’s attitude to the environment. It sprang spontaneously from all branches of culture and from all countries across a Europe. The discoveries of Einstein in outer space corresponded with those of Jung into the inner space of the subconscious. Biology began to shape the modern perspective of our place in nature. The arts themselves exploded into a new environmental dimension. No longer was the inquiring mind satisfied with appearance. Scientists and artists began to define the relationship between people and environment that was more comprehensive than the search for natural resources. Thus artists, such as Paul Klee and Jean Miro, set out to combine the invisible with the visible, the abstract with the figurative. They let themselves be invaded by the living world and then processed it in a very subjective manner.
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