This book presents the current state of the art in Social Ecology as practiced by the Vienna
School of Social Ecology globally one of the main research groups in this field. As a
significant contribution to the growing literature on interdisciplinary sustainability studies
the book introduces the purpose and nature of Social Ecology and then places the Vienna School
within the broader context of socioecological and other interdisciplinary environmental
approaches. The conceptual and methodological foundations of Social Ecology are discussed in
detail allowing the reader to obtain a broad overview of current socioecological thinking.
Issues covered include socio-metabolic transitions socioecological approaches to land use the
relation between actor-centered and system approaches a socioecological theory of labor and
the importance of legacies as conceived in Environmental History and in Long-Term
Socio-Ecological Research. To underpin this overview empirically the strengths of
socioecological research are elucidated in cases of cutting-edge research introducing a
variety of themes the Vienna School has been tackling empirically over the past years. Given
how the field is presented - reflecting research carried out on different scales reaching from
local to global as well as from past to present and future - and due to the way the book is
structured it is suitable for classroom use as a primer and also as an overview of how
Social Ecology evolved right up to its current research frontiers.
