IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envval/v33y2024i2p216-245.html

Exploring economic dimensions of social ecological crises: A reply to special issue papers

Author

Listed:
  • Clive L. Spash

Abstract

In this paper I consider various shifts in my research and understanding stimulated by seeking how to combat social ecological crises connected to modern economies. The discussion and critical reflections are structured around five papers that were submitted to Environmental Values in an open call to address my work. A common aspect is the move away from neoclassical environmental economics, and its reductionist monetary valuation, to a more realist theory and multiple methods. This relates to my work on environmental ethics, plural values, stated preference validity and deliberative monetary valuation. Expanding beyond the narrow confines of mainstream orthodoxy has involved exploring a range of other disciplines (e.g. applied philosophy, social psychology, human geography, political science, social anthropology, history of thought and philosophy of science) and learning from this literature to rethink economics and develop social ecological economics. A broad range of subjects are covered here, including: personal responsibility, social practice, psychology of the individual, participatory processes, value (intrinsic, instrumental and relational), Nature–society relationships and interdependencies, critical realism and the conduct of unifying interdisciplinary science. I end with a series of comments concerning the failings of orthodox economics and the conduct of scientific research for social ecological transformation.

Suggested Citation

  • Clive L. Spash, 2024. "Exploring economic dimensions of social ecological crises: A reply to special issue papers," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 216-245, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envval:v:33:y:2024:i:2:p:216-245
    DOI: 10.1177/09632719241231514
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09632719241231514
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/09632719241231514?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:sae:envval:v:8:y:1999:i:4:p:413-435 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Clive L. Spash, 2022. "Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections," Environmental Values, , vol. 31(1), pages 1-14, February.
    3. Spash, Clive L., 1994. "Double CO2 and beyond: benefits, costs and compensation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 27-36, May.
    4. E. J. Mishan, 1971. "Pangloss on Pollution," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Bohm & Allen V. Kneese (ed.), The Economics of Environment, pages 66-73, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Spash, Clive L. & Hanley, Nick, 1995. "Preferences, information and biodiversity preservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 191-208, March.
    6. repec:aen:journl:1991v12-01-a04 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Nordhaus, William D, 1991. "To Slow or Not to Slow: The Economics of the Greenhouse Effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(407), pages 920-937, July.
    8. repec:sae:envval:v:25:y:2016:i:3:p:253-258 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:env:journl:ev31:commev3101 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Anna Deplazes-Zemp & Mollie Chapman, 2021. "The ABCs of Relational Values: Environmental Values that Include Aspects of Both Intrinsic and Instrumental Valuing," Environmental Values, , vol. 30(6), pages 669-693, December.
    11. Felix Windegger & Clive L. Spash, 2023. "Reconceptualising freedom in the 21st century: neoliberalism vs. degrowth," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 554-573, July.
    12. Clive L. Spash, 2008. "Deliberative Monetary Valuation and the Evidence for a New Value Theory," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(3), pages 469-488.
    13. Hornborg, Alf, 1998. "Towards an ecological theory of unequal exchange: articulating world system theory and ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 127-136, April.
    14. Daily, Gretchen C. & Ehrlich, Paul R. & Mooney, Harold A. & Ehrlich, Anne H., 1991. "Greenhouse economics: learn before you leap," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 1-10, October.
    15. Clark, Judy & Burgess, Jacquelin & Harrison, Carolyn M., 2000. ""I struggled with this money business": respondents' perspectives on contingent valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 45-62, April.
    16. Nick Hanley & Clive L. Spash, 1993. "Cost–Benefit Analysis and the Environment," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 205, June.
    17. Clive L. Spash & Anthony Ryan, 2012. "Economic Schools of Thought on the Environment: Investigating Unity and Division," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 36(5), pages 1091-1121.
    18. Vatn, Arild, 2005. "Rationality, institutions and environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 203-217, November.
    19. Spash, Clive L., 2013. "The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 351-362.
    20. Spash, Clive L. & Biel, Anders, 2002. "Social psychology and economics in environmental research," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 551-555, October.
    21. Helseth, Elisabeth Veivåg & Vedeld, Paul & Vatn, Arild & Gómez-Baggethun, Erik, 2023. "Value asymmetries in Norwegian forest governance: The role of institutions and power dynamics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    22. Clive L Spash, 2009. "Social Ecological Economics," Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series 2009-08, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
    23. Bryan Norton & Daniel Sanbeg, 2021. "Relational Values: A Unifying Idea in Environmental Ethics and Evaluation?," Environmental Values, , vol. 30(6), pages 695-714, December.
    24. Spash, Clive L., 2007. "Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV): Issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 690-699, September.
    25. Clive L. Spash, 2023. "Herman Daly: Some Personal Reflections," Environmental Values, , vol. 32(2), pages 126-130, April.
    26. repec:sae:envval:v:29:y:2020:i:4:p:461-479 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. repec:sae:envval:v:17:y:2008:i:2:p:259-284 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. Spash, Clive L. & Smith, Tone, 2019. "Of Ecosystems and Economies: Re-connecting Economics with Reality," SRE-Discussion Papers 2019/03, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    29. Spash, Clive L., 2012. "New foundations for ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 36-47.
    30. d'Arge, Ralph C & Schulze, William D & Brookshire, David S, 1982. "Carbon Dioxide and Intergenerational Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 251-256, May.
    31. Nordhaus, William D, 1991. "A Sketch of the Economics of the Greenhouse Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 146-150, May.
    32. Clive L. Spash & Ian A. Simpson, 1994. "Utilitarian And Rights‐Based Alternatives For Protecting Sites Of Special Scientific Interest," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 15-26, January.
    33. repec:sae:envval:v:25:y:2016:i:3:p:353-370 is not listed on IDEAS
    34. Ryan, Anthony M. & Spash, Clive L., 2011. "Is WTP an attitudinal measure? Empirical analysis of the psychological explanation for contingent values," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 674-687.
    35. Clive L. Spash, 2006. "Non-Economic Motivation for Contingent Values: Rights and Attitudinal Beliefs in the Willingness To Pay for Environmental Improvements," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 82(4), pages 602-622.
    36. Clive L. Spash, 2011. "Social Ecological Economics: Understanding the Past to See the Future," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 340-375, April.
    37. Alex Y. Lo & Clive L. Spash, 2013. "Deliberative Monetary Valuation: In Search Of A Democratic And Value Plural Approach To Environmental Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 768-789, September.
    38. Spash, Clive L., 2002. "Informing and forming preferences in environmental valuation: Coral reef biodiversity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 665-687, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rachelle K. Gould & Austin Himes & Lea May Anderson & Paola Arias Arévalo & Mollie Chapman & Dominic Lenzi & Barbara Muraca & Marc Tadaki, 2024. "Building on Spash's critiques of monetary valuation to suggest ways forward for relational values research," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 139-162, April.
    2. Spash, Clive L., 2013. "The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 351-362.
    3. Spash, Clive L., 2020. "A tale of three paradigms: Realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    4. Szabó, Zoltán, 2011. "Reducing protest responses by deliberative monetary valuation: Improving the validity of biodiversity valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 37-44.
    5. Lo, Alex Y. & Spash, Clive L., 2011. "Articulation of Plural Values in Deliberative Monetary Valuation: Beyond Preference Economisation and Moralisation," MPRA Paper 30002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Spash, Clive L., 2015. "Bulldozing Biodiversity: The Economics of Optimal Extinction," SRE-Discussion Papers 2015/01, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    7. Lina Isacs & Cecilia Håkansson & Therese Lindahl & Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling & Pernilla Andersson, 2024. "‘I didn’t count “willingness to pay†as part of the value’: Monetary valuation through respondents’ perspectives," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 163-188, April.
    8. Clive L Spash, 2007. "Deliberative Monetary Valuation (DMV) in Practice," Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Paper Series 2007-04, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems.
    9. Bunse, Lukas & Rendon, Olivia & Luque, Sandra, 2015. "What can deliberative approaches bring to the monetary valuation of ecosystem services? A literature review," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 88-97.
    10. Claudia E. Carter, 2024. "Reconnecting with the social-political and ecological-economic reality," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 103-121, April.
    11. Kenter, Jasper O. & Bryce, Rosalind & Christie, Michael & Cooper, Nigel & Hockley, Neal & Irvine, Katherine N. & Fazey, Ioan & O’Brien, Liz & Orchard-Webb, Johanne & Ravenscroft, Neil & Raymond, Chris, 2016. "Shared values and deliberative valuation: Future directions," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(PB), pages 358-371.
    12. Spash, Clive L., 2017. "The Need for and Meaning of Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2017/02, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    13. Plumecocq, Gaël, 2014. "The second generation of ecological economics: How far has the apple fallen from the tree?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 457-468.
    14. Lundgren, Jakob, 2022. "Unity through disunity: Strengths, values, and tensions in the disciplinary discourse of ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    15. Jacob Ainscough & Jasper O. Kenter & Elaine Azzopardi & A. Meriwether W. Wilson, 2024. "Participant perceptions of different forms of deliberative monetary valuation: Comparing democratic monetary valuation and deliberative democratic monetary valuation in the context of regional marine planning," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(2), pages 189-215, April.
    16. Terrance Quinn, 2023. "An Emergent Transdisciplinary Methodology for Effective Collaboration in Ecological Economics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-22, May.
    17. Lo, Alex Y. & Jim, C.Y., 2015. "Protest response and willingness to pay for culturally significant urban trees: Implications for Contingent Valuation Method," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 58-66.
    18. Kretschmer, Max-Friedemann & Engler, John-Oliver & von Wehrden, Henrik & Rathgens, Julius & Ament, Joe A., 2026. "Pluralism and integration? A systematic review of ecological economics methodological foundations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    19. Spash, Clive L., 2019. "Time for a Paradigm Shift: From Economic Growth andPrice-Making Markets to Social Ecological Economics," SRE-Discussion Papers 2019/07, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    20. Schlapfer, Felix, 2008. "Contingent valuation: A new perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 729-740, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envval:v:33:y:2024:i:2:p:216-245. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.