Industrial Ecology: Paradigm Shift or Normal Science?

Abstract

Industrial ecology is an evolving framework for the analysis and design of public policy, corporate strategy, and technological systems and products. Its metaphorical denotation springs from conceptual models characteristic of sustainable or long-lived ecosystems. Some authors stress the material and energy flows within a system of producers and consumers and aim to build knowledge about these flows that can be used for such design purposes as above. Others see industrial ecology primarily in its more metaphorical sense as providing new normative themes for a possibly sustainable world. Such norms include connectedness, cooperation, and community. These particular norms are, more or less, contrary to prevailing elements of social structures in market-based, industrialized nations. The paradigmatic, normative potential of industrial ecology is contrasted with its potential as an emerging “science” of sustainability.