Ecology and the Environmental Movement

Abstract

With the emergence of the environmental movement in the 1960s, the science of ecology was transformed from being a relatively minor sub-field of biology into an object of political engagement and public interest. For a brief historical moment, ecology became more than a mere science; it became a component part of what I have previously characterized as an emerging ecological culture (Jamison 2001). Even though many of the political struggles that brought it into being have faded into the past, the environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s continue to influence scientific ideas and personal values, as well as broader socio-political discourses.