Expanding the Theoretical Boundaries of Ecosocial Research: The Ecology/social/economy Nexus and the Concept of Care

[Intended for panel: “Politics and policies of a just transition: reconciling welfare and climate change"] Implicit and explicit assumptions and understandings about the ecological, social and economic domains and the dynamics between them are at the core of the emerging ecosocial research field. These understandings influence what is seen as important in research on the policies and politics and just transition and sustainable welfare, and what issues and perspectives are left in the margins of research. The interactions between ecological, social and economic domains have also been a core theoretical and empirical interest in ecosocial research. Yet full-fledged theoretetical development of the ecology/social/economy nexus has been rare. The aim of this conceptual paper is to examine and challenge the theoretical understandings of the ecology/social/ecology nexus underpinning research on just transition, ecosocial policies and sustainable welfare. It proposes alternative, more holistic ways to understand the interrelationships between the three domains, drawing on the concept of care and ecofeminist and feminist political ecology research. The paper provides, first, a systematic review of understandings of the ecology/social/economy nexus in existing ecosocial literature. The paper suggests that the understandings of the ‘ecology’ the ‘social’ and the ‘economy’ and the dynamics between these domains have been too narrow. For instance, ‘social’ is often discussed in terms of income inequality, wellbeing and needs-satisfaction, whereas care – the labour, resources, relationships and orientations needed to sustain life – is only mentioned in passing. Economy, in turn, is discussed in terms of economic growth, with less attention paid to capitalism, political economy and how the boundaries of the economy are constructed. Second, the paper address these theoretical gaps through building on feminist political ecology/economy and ecofeminist philosophy that have long tackled the interrelationships between the ecological, social and economic domains in original ways. More specifically, the paper uses the concept of care as a transformative lens to investigate the dynamics and interconnections between the three domains. The first key insight the paper takes from this research is the idea that care is central to humanity and therefore at the heart of the social domain. Second, feminist scholars has revealed how caring activities and ecological processes have a parallel structural relationship to economy and capitalism. Both are devalued and unaccounted for in mainstream economic thinking focused on the monetised economy. Simultaneously, capitalism relies on extracting value from unpaid care work and non-monetized natural processes and on making paid care work and priced natural processes more effective. Third, caring orientations and activities can target ecological processes and connect the social domain with the ecological domain. The paper suggests that when combined and developed into a theoretical understanding of the ecology/social/economy nexus, these feminist insights transform scholarly understandings of ecosocial transformation and open new research perspectives to the policies and politics of just transition and sustainable welfare. To illustrate the shortcomings of the dominant understandings and the potential of the new conceptualisations, the paper uses the European Union’s ecosocial policies and politics as an example.