Ecological economics with a focus on community

Abstract

Ecological economics is essential to ecological civilization. It has been developed on the fringe of economic thinking in the United States. It has been widely appreciated among those concerned for ecology, but it has been excluded from academic economics. It should have a better reception by economists in China. Central to it is rejection of the extreme individualism of capitalist economic thinking, typically based on substance metaphysics. It replaces this substantialist individualism with the affirmation of human beings as ‘persons in community’.

Keywords:

• ecological economics
• economic growth
• sustainability
• individualism
• community