RELATED TERMS: Human Ecosystem; Lifeworld – Lebenswelt – Umwelt; Systems Theory
“The economist Kate Raworth believes she has a solution. It is possible, she argues, to design an economy that allows humans and the environment to thrive.” (O’Brien, 2023)
The Greek word oikos, meaning whole house or household, lies at the root of both the notions of economy and ecology. When oikos is combined with nomos, meaning law or custom, to form economy, it is concerned with the management of the household. When it is combined with logos, meaning reason, word, speech, principle, or thought, to form ecology, it is concerned with knowledge of the household.
In modern times, economy and ecology have become separated and dissociated as (social) practices and as (academic) disciplines.
The word ‘ecology’ was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel to mean the study of a living organism and its surroundings.
Until the 17th or 18th centuries, economy referred to the management of the ‘whole house’, that is, of the polity as the association and community of citizens, while activities that served the purpose of making money were referred to as commerce. Economics, as a discipline, has become a narrow set of propositions dealing only with the economy as a separate and distinct subsystem of society. The economic subsystem’s impact on society and its social, ecological, cultural contexts have become ‘externalities’.
Ecology is the study of the inter-relationships and interactions between living organisms and their relationships to and interactions with their shared environment.
In terms of the design of narrative environments, two ecological terms which may be of particular signficance are habitat and niche. Odum distinguishes the two terms in the following way: “The ecological niche of an organism depends not only on where it lives but also on what it does. By analogy, it may be said that the habitat is the organism’s “address”, and the niche is its “profession”, biologically speaking.”
A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species. It is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds, i.e. influences and is utilized by, a species population.
The ecological niche describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors.
In the 21st century, there are moves to re-integrate economy and ecology so that they are not seen as separate and distinct. However, this is not without major difficulties, for example, concerning whether the entire ecology of the planet becomes narrowly commercialised (i.e. a market), rather than the narrow discipline of economics opening to its wider contexts, ecologies and responsibilities.
References
Al-Achrafi, S. (2017) Oikos: the origins of economic thought. Huffpost. Avaliable at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oikos-the-origins-of-econ_b_8520644 [Accessed 5 March 2021]
O’Brien, H. (2023) The planet’s economist: has Kate Raworth found a model for sustainable living?, Guardian, 8 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/the-planets-economist-has-kate-raworth-found-a-model-for-sustainable-living (Accessed: 12 May 2025).
Odum, E. P (1953) Fundamentals of Ecology. Philadelphia, PA: W B Saunders.
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