ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of social ecology, an approach to social-ecological research that applies transdisciplinary methods to the analysis of social relations to nature in life sustaining practices. It outlines key theoretical and methodological dimensions of social ecology that have been developed at Institute for Social-Ecological Research in Frankfurt am Main, which is one of the leading independent research institutes engaged in sustainability research in Germany. For some readers, social ecology may be associated with the school of eco-political thought developed by the late American anarchist philosopher Murray Bookchin and his followers. Hence, social-ecological research is committed to a transdisciplinary research mode. In social ecology, the concept of gender relations is developed as inter- and transdisciplinary category. The inter- and transdisciplinary content of gender relations can be historically reconstructed. As historical gender research has elaborated in great detail, the prevailing notion of gender and gender differences has been described and developed by modern scientific disciplines.
