Abstract

The paper questions the compatibility of critical realism with ecological economics. In particular, it is argued that there is radical dissonance between ontological presuppositions of ecological economics and critical realist perspective. The dissonance lies in the need of ecological economics to state strict causal regularities in socioeconomic realm, given the environmental intuitions about the nature of economy and the role of materiality and non-human agency in persistence of economic systems. Using conceptual apparatus derived from Andrew Brown’s critique of critical realism and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, the paper refuses ontological nature/society dualism employed by critical realism, and stresses the role of non-humans in practical production and reproduction of socio-economic networks on the one hand, and in broadly defined ecological economic research on the other hand.

Introduction

Tony Lawson is widely acknowledged as one of the major contemporary philosophers of economics. He follows the school of critical realism set up by Roy Bhaskar’s theory of transcendental realism,@@1 and applies Bhaskar’s general philosophy of science and social ontology in economic philosophy. In the last decade, critical realism in Lawson’s interpretation emerged as an attempt to unify various heterodox economic schools. Lawson states that in social world, strict causal regularities of the form “When X then Y” are extremely rare.@@2 That means it provides alternative ontology to mainstream economics, where strict causal regularities are presupposed. However, it remains open how this philosophical school should be adopted by ecological economics. The argument presented here supports the assumption that if ecological economics were really to embrace the critical realism as its own paradigmatic theory, it would be in conflict with central pre-analytic vision of ecological economics, as formulated e.g. by Clive Spash: economy is an inseparable part of the ecosystem in which it is situated.@@3 Such a vision has certain ontological consequences that conflict with Lawson’s account of social reality and social agency. In particular, ecological economics implicitly supports an ontological account in which society and nature are not in hierarchical relation, but are parts of the same ontological region. It implies also that the boundaries between nature and society collapse and such a dualist framework then appears as inadequate ontological model. In essence, the blurring of nature/culture dichotomy is a central idea this paper follows.

At least two general motivations regarding the discussion about compatibility of critical realism and ecological economics can be found:

1. Tony Lawson proposes critical realism as a unifying philosophical paradigm for heterodox economics.@@4 Besides post-Keynesian, feminist or Marxist economics, the contemporary ecological economics can be equally included under this umbrella term. Critical realism is meant to provide solid ontological and methodological groundings for all these various economic studies. Th at could prove useful, since nowadays schools of ecological economics seem to rest in unstructured methodological pluralism, eclectics and overproduction of puzzling and contradictory presuppositions.@@5
2. Critical realism has already been a trending topic in ecological economics, and in some sciences, such as critical management studies or human geography, it has recently emerged as one of the paradigmatic theories.@@6 Hence the critical discussion should add some limits to what extent the critical realism is applicable for ecological economics.

Given the pre-analytic vision of ecological economics, we need to presume that strict causal regularities are not rare in the socio-economic realm. For example, the following statement proposes strict regularity: “Intensification of industrial production in China leads to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.” Another example is: “An economy cannot grow indefinitely in a finite world,” i.e. more growth implies more ecological turbulences. In uttering such statements, one posits some regularly occurring causal relation between economic activity and natural processes. These statements are analysed as examples of collective events defined by Andrew Brown.@@7 Such statements are standard for practically all branches of environmental science and if it were true that they cannot be proposed, a huge part of ecological research would be cast out as irrelevant. Thus, regarding ecological economics, we need to presuppose the existence of strict causal regularities in socio-economic realm, contrary to what Lawson proposes.

Moreover, the paper goes one step further even from Brown’s analysis. An alternative notion of a social actor is introduced, because in critical realism, this notion is too narrow to include some key economic actors – notably the non-human parts of the environment in which the economy is situated. To address this issue, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT) is used.@@8 In terms of ANT, the nature of socio-economic reality is reconsidered and the question of elementary parts of social assemblage is newly answered Here is an itinerary of the paper. In Section 2, the kernel of ecological economics is briefly sketched. Section 3 describes critical realism’s social ontology and Lawson’s critique of economic mainstream, connected to an argument against the existence of strict regularities in socio-economic realm. The following Section 4 presents Andrew Brown’s notion of collective events, which opens up the possibility to propose strict causal regularities in economics anew. Further discussion of Lawson’s as well as Brown’s own ontology takes place in Section 5, where the perspective of ANT is introduced. Concluding Section 6 points at the modernist notion of science and the blurring boundaries between nature and culture.

Ecological Economics

As probably in all recently emerged disciplines, the standard defi nition of what is ecological economics is not yet established. However, we can trace several core features that distinguish this fi eld of study as a separate scientific discipline. Following some key authors – such as Herman Daly, Robert Constanza, Kenneth Boulding, Clive Spash, Inge R.pke or Silvio Funtowicz – the mostly agreed characteristics of ecological economics are:

1. Insistence on ethical dimension of economic practices.@@9
2. Intertwining natural and social sciences in order to describe the interconnections between human actions and ecosystem mechanisms.@@10
3. Inspiration as well as critical distance from other heterodox traditions in economics, such as institutional, Marxist or feminist economics.@@11
4. Strong orientation on policy-making, which g is a consequence of conscious normative groundings of ecological economics.@@12
5. Irreducible value pluralism, that is essential in grasping the problems of democratic negotiation of environmental policies.@@13
   

These characteristics draw from the general intuition of ecological economics, as formulated by Inge Ropke: The basic observation in ecological economics is banal and difficult to disagree with: the human economy is embedded in nature, and economic processes are also always natural processes in the sense that they can be seen as biological, physical and chemical processes and transformations [...] The basic idea of what becomes ecological economics is that the economy ought to be studied also, but not only, as a natural object, and that economic processes should consequently also be conceptualized in terms usually used to describe processes in nature.@@14

Spash and Johanisova coined this proposition (italics in quotation above) as a pre-analytic vision of ecological economics.@@15 It can be also articulated as follows: economy is an inseparable part of the ecosystem in which it is situated.@@16

At this point, one shall argue that the same can be attributed to environmental economics, understood as an attempt to extend the narrow-minded interpretation of what enters into mainstream economic analysis with environmental factors (both in terms of preconditions and consequences of economic activity), usually counted as mere externalities. The difference between ecological and environmental economics is however methodologically as well as ontologically insurmountable, for environmental economics does not take economic activity as genuinely biophysical. Moreover, it only “internalizes externalities”, i.e. evaluates ecosystems and their services in terms of mainstream economic methodology. For this reason, environmental economics is completely out of scope of this paper.

Let me explain now a case of typical analytic apparatus of ecological economics. We can start from the Georgescu-Roegen distinction between three elements of economy: stocks, funds and flows. Imagine the economy as a giant organism that has certain inputs and certain outputs.@@17 In such a system, materials and energy flow through it. The inputs can be sorted into two categories. An input of the fi rst type is a fund. The most common fund is solar energy, which is always used only at the particular rate (i.e. it is not a subject of depletion) and as such it cannot be stockpiled without being captured in some specific energy carrier. The second type is a stock, which means (besides other characteristics) that it can be stockpiled and once entering the system, it is a subject of various transformations and can be depleted (the rate of extraction is not limited by the nature of the resource).

Stocks are basically the sources of energy carriers, such as oil, gas or coal. Given these definitions, a flow can be understood as a stream of energy carriers through the system.@@18 How is the economy conceived in this approach? In case of global terrestrial ecosystem, the primary fund is solar energy.@@19 This energy is consumed by various strategies, e.g. photosynthesis. In limiting cases, it can be trapped for some time. That is the case of fossil fuels, which are virtually the rays of sun caught in the organic material that was accumulated under the surface for hundreds of millions of years.@@20 The procreation of fossil fuel stands as an example of the situation when a stock is created. It carries initial solar energy that can be unleashed by series of activities, such extraction, refining and combustion in our case of oil. Moreover, it can be materially transformed (e.g. oil can be converted into numerous types of plastics).

From this point of view, economy does not resemble a closed cycle of money and commodities between supply and demand. Instead, a picture of organic metabolism arises. It is particularly important to stress that ecological economics introduces biophysical processes as central to the existence of economy. We end up with a picture of economics as analysis of material and energy flows through the system, because as the matter of fact, economy is a system of material processes and it ought to be studied in this respect.@@21

Henceforward, ecological economics balances between natural and social scientific approach. It frequently crosses the borders between realms of physical reality and social constructions, in order to include all objects that count in real-world economy for the purpose of adequate explanation its structuration and dynamics. It follows that sometimes, ecological economics states propositions claiming strict causal regularities of the form “If A, then B always follows,” as in the case of the platitude that we cannot grow indefinitely in a finite world.@@22 Such a general assertion is a hidden declaration of causal relation between growth of economy and the stability/resilience of global ecosystem – the more growth you have, so worse for the ecosystem.

Taking ecosystem stability and resilience as central abilities for its defence against disrupting exogenous factors, growth of economy increases stability but lowers the resilience of the system, i.e. it leaves the system vulnerable to exogenous factors and also uncovers structural problems that are in many cases just accidents waiting to happen.@@23 Growth of economy as an imperative of capitalism is intrinsically connected with existence of cheap and accessible energy resources.@@24 That brings us back to fossil fuels. Evidence from energy studies, namely in research on Peak-Oil, suggests another causal regularity within current economic system – the predominant depletion of fossil fuels that is a necessary precondition to maintain capitalism.@@25 These examples will be further investigated in Section 4.

Critical Realism

Generally speaking, critical realism can be introduced as a version of social ontology. By social ontology, it is meant here philosophical endeavour challenging the questions of basic existences that are units of social analysis. For example, when economist formulates theory of economic behaviour, she presupposes certain agents (e.g. firm) with certain properties (e.g. organisational structure, sets of preferences) and other entities that interfere with these agents (e.g. commodities, money). Moreover, critical realism is a realist ontology, i.e. it poses an existence of external reality behind the perceiving subject – there is simply some “world out there”, independent on the perception.@@26 Crucially, critical realism states that social reality is fundamentally different from natural reality, thus we can distinguish between two ontological “layers” that enjoy a certain level of mutual autonomy.@@27 The exact relation between those layers is the one of emergence: properties of entities situated in “higher” level are dependant but not reducible to properties in “lower” layer.@@28 For example, economic actors exist only insofar there are atoms and molecules in the universe, but it is nonsensical to reduce those actors to sole atoms and molecules and explain their economic behaviour in terms of particle physics. Similarly, according to critical realism, social institutions exist insofar as there are conscious human beings, but these institutions are more than simple conglomerates or concatenations of individuals – they are emergent structures irreducible to individuals. Thus social and natural layers are ontologically dissociated. Nature is the realm of iron causal rules; society functions in terms of ever-changing dialectical dynamics.@@29

Critical realism further employs these assumptions to tackle methodology of mainstream economics.@@30 Notably, critical realism insists that despite mathematic analysis proved to be fruitful methodology in physics (situated in layer 1), it is not decisive reason for its application in sociology or economics (situated in layer 2).@@31 Social reality has to be treated as dynamic, processual, continually reproduced and transformed by social practice, structured, meaningful, valuable, relational and morphogenetic.@@32 It follows that “[...] social reality is found not to comprise parts that are isolated, for more or less everything seems to be constituted in relation to other things. And components cannot be treated as atomistic or stable, for each is being continually transformed.“@@33 This conclusion is supported by our a posteriori observation of recurring failures to predict economic events by mainstream economics, or by dissonances between electoral polls and real results. Consequently, social reality is in critical realism evidently open and unpredictable. Hence one shall pay good attention to the methods that one uses in approaching social reality. Let me closely explain these statements.

Critical realism obviously stands in sharp contrast with underlying ontological and consequently methodological presuppositions of mainstream economics. In particular, critical realism proposes social ontology that leaves the methodology of mainstream economics inadequate. The latter studies socio-economic layer by means of formal-deductive method that according to critical realism does not meet the essential ontological features of this layer. Thus Lawson criticizes mainstream economics for being ultimately exclusive in relation to any other method than quantitative, formal-deductive method of econometrics. He traces this insistence back to the three interconnected propositions mainstream economics rests upon: