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Before moving on to ecologism as a socio-ecological concept and ideology, we need to describe the conditions that promoted its emergence. The context related to the circumstance that, by the mid-19^th century, the stock of free land in the United States had been exhausted, setting the limits of economic growth. This became a constraint for the American democracy, which was viewing natural abundancy as a self-evident condition of social development.

The American society, having reached the limits of its expansion as the borders of its state had stabilized, and facing the aggravated social consequences of its external and internal policy, had to appreciate the close link between the social and environmental factors. This motivated its transition from an agrarian to industrial society (industrial growth and urbanization) and predetermined the understanding of the need to move from extensive to intensive use of natural resources. New socio-economic and environmental conditions gave rise to four main social reformist orientations, namely economism, conservationism, environmental movement and ecologism.

The strongest American orientation – economism, an optimistic orientation that implied a natural, spontaneous resolution of ecological problems, was characterized by an anti-reformist mood and a wait-and-see attitude. The supporters of this orientation believed that the existing social institutes were strong enough to cope with the crisis without any serious reforms. In this view, the natural environment was to serve private interest and individual initiative, and satisfaction of individual interests meant satisfaction of collective interest.

Their transcendental argument was the idea that Americans were a God chosen people endowed with inexhaustible natural wealth, both on the domestic and on the planetary-cosmic scale. Therefore, economists were opposed to the reformist projects proposed by environmentalists, who made very different forecasts. Economists pointed out that it was unclear who is interested in and who would carry out the reforms in a society which characterized by pluralistic democracy and liberal capitalism. At that time, environmentalists had no common understanding of barriers, immediate and final goals, the means for achieving them, possible deliverables and drivers for the reforms. However, they did have an understanding that social projects and reforms were needed to preserve the quality of social and natural environment.

The other three main directions represent environmentalism per se. In 1900, some conservationists were appointed to Government and received an opportunity to implement their projects as nationwide reforms. Their legislative and institutional reforms were aimed rational and efficient natural resource use, satisfying the needs of the American people for a long period.

Conservationists formulated the main principles as ensuring constant economic growth, prevention of unreasonable costs as related to natural resource use and an egalitarian distribution of natural resources. They adopted laws which helped to control the United States economy by the federal government to rule out non-productive and short-term use of natural and social resources by private business. According the opinion of conservationists, this was the possibility to move the American society away from the chaos of free market in a liberal capitalist environment and resolve a number of urgent socio-ecological issues.

A typical example of the new ecological legislation would be the adoption of the Lacy law, named after its author, senator from state of Iowa. The law, passed in 1900, regulated protection and legalized import to the United States of birds for hunting, singing and insect-eating birds, introduction and reintroduction of species “useful” for agriculture, preventing introduction of “undesirable” alien species that displace local “useful” ones. In particular, it prohibited the importation from the Old World some species of fruit-eating bats and mongooses, the ordinary sparrow and other species declared “undesirable” by the Ministry of Agriculture United States America.

This law was to strengthen the national legislation as related to fauna protection; in particular, it was aiming to prevent illegal hunting of birds to obtain their plumage used for decoration of women’s bonnets. The law ensured that poachers, as violators of the United States environmental legislation, could be prosecuted nationwide irrespectively of the United States state or foreign country law and from where the fauna items were illegally obtained. Another crucial achievement of the law was the requirement to obtain proper approvals for fauna items (for trade at the interstate level or trade with foreign countries) and proper markings of cargos. So, the law restricted the rights of individual states in these matters, regarding national priorities as being of paramount importance.

Reconciliation between the free entrepreneurship of private business and centralized government control became possible when an intermediate version of the law was passed. The idea was that businessmen were themselves to subsidize the legislative reform proposed by the government, however, the laws were, on the one hand, universal and, on the other hand, they allowed business to make its own decisions, in coordination with the local communities, locally, including in other countries. Generally, conservationism was oriented to perfecting methods for managing the natural resource use rather than to propagation of environmental values and nature protection.

Subsequently, conservationists were blamed for a number of antihuman and antisocial ideas, for example, the idea proclaiming the need to stabilize the planet’s population and even decrease it to one billion or less. In the second half of the 20^th century, the corresponding conservationist solutions, ranging from economic stimulation of birth control in China to forced sterilization in India, were made at the national states level. In the beginning of the 21^st century, conservationist “greens” push for a ban on industrialization and technical development of third countries (construction of power plants and manufacturing enterprises) and a radical shut-down of the already operating enterprises in the developed countries, paying no attention to the economic conditions and social consequences of their proposals.

The environmental movement, a trend within biocentrism, defended preservation of wild nature, which, in their opinion, has a value of its own irrespectively of its utilitarian use. For example, in 1872, the United States biocentrists established the public organization Sierra Club8. Their views were based on a romantic understanding of nature. They introduce the social into Mother Nature, which is viewed as a perfect creation with spiritual qualities that encapsulates all things living and rational.

Biocentrists view the human life in nature as a certain mode of being and type of behavior, when protection of nature and rational use of natural resources may be just an external manifestation of in-depth motives and value-related orientations. Subsequently, the supporters of this ecological public movement have done a lot to preserve wilderness. Together with industry experts and the government, they developed a natural reserve concept, and such reserves were selected and formally established.

Today we can find a huge number of international, national, regional and local public organizations and civil initiatives for environment protection9. Among themselves, they interact as networks or as partners in specific projects. Older large organizations retain a hierarchic structure. They are supported by local informers, who report violations of the environmental legislation or ecological emergencies. After that, the media and lawyers, responding to petitions filed by individuals or organizations. Where laws need to be amended, volunteers or social networks are used to gather a large number of signatures. At a “quiet” time, environment protection non-governmental organizations provide ecological trainings, raise public awareness, organize and conduct ecological holidays and festivals, various ecological events.

Worldwide and local activity of public environment protection organizations is quite significant and includes managing territories other than fit in administrative boundaries, for example, forests certification of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), wetlands and marshes of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), eco-regions of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and virgin forests of Greenpeace.

Advocates of ecologism were typically represented by researchers who were building scientific models of interaction between society and the natural environment based on consistent patterns of natural sciences, i.e., on ecology. They were using an ecosystem approach implying that individuals, local communities and the humanity in general must be optimally fit into the ecosystem, look after its wealth, ensure an optimal functioning, and prevent crises and catastrophes, including those of a planetary scale.

In this view, the main role of the humanity on this planet is to preserve a dynamic balance of ecosystems and biological diversity. Ecologists combined features typical for the conservationism shown by the government bodies in charge of environment protection with the biocentrism of the environmental protection movement.

The purpose of the American Environmental Society, established in 1915, was studying ecosystems, including human communities. Another very important goal related to promotion of this knowledge and its inclusion in educational programs. The third goal was reforming the American society to turn it into a model of socio-ecological development.

Frederic Edward Clements (1874—1945) believed that the notion of culminating points was applicable not only to biological but also to social systems10.

Aldo Leopold (1887—1948) proposed three main socio-ecological ideas that remain relevant until today. The first idea was the notion of an ecosystemic holism. Leopold believed that “…a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise”11.

An ecosystem, which incorporates a social system, becomes emergent, developing new qualities characteristic of a socio-ecological system in addition to the sum of its earlier qualities. Given the contextual and unpredictable nature of the ecosystem, its vitalism cannot be fully cognizable. The social, where it correctly interacts with abiotic and biotic items, structures and communities, leads to an optimal result of evolutionary development – the culminating point of dynamic equilibrium. Disruption of an ecosystemic equilibrium can only lead to degradation of such system.

Ecosystemic holism advocated by ecologists is useful in analyzing the kind of impact on given species and population, general development trends of the natural environment rather than a specific action and its consequences. It has the criterion of human rationality and, hence, is not synonymous with the transcendental nature of biocentrists. At the same time, ecologists are not trying to evade the question: How can one reconcile ecosystemic holism with liberalism – the discretion to choose one’s path of development?

This issue is resolved in the ideas of biotic functionalism and a biotic moral community proposed by Leopold. He maintained that a biotic moral community expands application of moral rules and, afterwards, other social institutes to non-human elements of the global ecosystem. The possibility of linking the human and non-human elements is made possible as ecologists assume that the notions of a “symbiosis” and “model of conduct” are functionally equivalent.

As a result, ethics becomes ecological and is presented as a conscious restriction of freedom of action for the sake of life on planet Earth. An ecologically responsible social behavior also implies establishing social institutes for restricting those people who are not oriented to this type of behavior. The human is perceived as the creator of qualitatively new types of environment and biotic communities, therefore, individuals are granted the right of individualism, which the non-human species may enjoy only at the specie population or the entire specie level. This right is based on the human ability to respond to changes in the natural and social environment in a reasonable manner.

The idea of biotic functionalism, enhanced by the idea of changing the man’s role in the biotic moral community, does not assume that an ecosystem as a superorganism (a supersystem) absorbs society (a subsystem). Ecosystemic holism rejects this idea, always preserving the integrity of the socio-ecological system and its emergent quality, when human moral rules allow retaining equilibrium, harmony and productivity of the ecosystem.

In fact, the modern-day socio-ecological concepts advocated by sociologists-ecologists emphasize and maintain that social interaction and development do not occur in emptiness and not in the social environment alone but also occur in the natural environment. And, in the context of a local ecological catastrophe of an anthropogenic nature or when the global ecological crisis is looming ahead, it becomes the main factor that determines interaction and development of society. Therefore, the nature-related character of social atomism, which theoretically could be combined with the evolutionary character of social change, was identified as early as a century ago.