ABSTRACT
The analysis of the metabolism of a socioeconomic system, be it a national economy, an industrial sector, a company, a community or a household, is a truly interdisciplinary enterprise. It necessarily utilises concepts and methodology from several social and natural science disciplines. Progress depends on an available energy surplus. The more energy a society is able to consume, the further advanced it is. Societal progress is based on energy surplus. The beginnings of cultural anthropology were, similar to the situation in sociology, marked by evolutionism, and cultural anthropology then split into a more functionalist and a more culturalist tradition. The economist Kenneth Boulding had also been a participant in the 1955 conference. When in the late 1960s it again became culturally possible to take a critical view of economic growth and consider its environmental side-effects, the stage was set for a new twist in looking at socioeconomic metabolism.
