70

By combining natural and social sciences, the Vienna School of Social Ecology manages to bridge a historically significant epistemological rift. Contrasting with the focus of classical economics on monetary transactions, the Viennese school focuses instead on the physical flows that constitute an economy. The throughputs of matter and energy required by a society, characterized as flows entering and exiting the social body, forms a society’s metabolism. Developed as an indictment of economic reductionism, the analysis of the mechanisms of social metabolism integrates a more diverse set of social theories in its practice, which aim for interdisciplinarity. While the benefits of this approach to environmental research are undeniable, the mobilization of social sciences so far lacks depth. The objective of this article is to offer an epistemological framework of society able to incorporate the importance of symbolic mediations of the social relations to nature into the Viennese approach. To do so, we first look at how society mediates the relation between humans and nature. We then examine the role symbolism plays in society’s reproduction. This conceptualization allows us to suggest new theoretical considerations for further research in social ecology.