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Abstract
Social work's notion of environment has always been unnecessarily restrictive. The profession has tended to either ignore the natural environment or accept a shallow ecological conceptualization of nature as something other, quite separate from human activity. Deep ecology offers social work an essentially different view of the person/environment construct and argues for a fundamental shift in the way humanity views its relationship with nature. This article traces the conceptual development of deep ecology and sketches its key value premises, assumptions about the nature of the human experience, beliefs about how knowledge is acquired and its social action methodology. It offers key insights and concrete examples for incorporating a deep ecological awareness into teaching courses on human behavior and the social environment.
