Abstract
This review concerns the methodological challenges that industrial ecology faces in integrating natural and social sciences. Network analysis can be seen as the most promising method to mediate between industrial ecology's overall systems approach and the complex structures found in society. It is a well established method across scientific disciplines, including the social sciences. It has been successfully applied in industrial ecology, in which localized phenomena of industrial symbiosis have been a key focus, and where metrics from both the social and natural sciences are used to understand socio-metabolic structures. In this paper we classify such studies as Social-Material Network Analyses and we discuss the body of work, drawing on network analyses from various disciplines. A challenge is the hierarchical nature of industrial networks and how it can be addressed socially. We discuss the opportunities and limitations of metric-driven network analysis and offer a review of methodological options for Social-Material Network Analyses.
Highlights
This review concerns the methodological challenges that industrial ecology faces in integrating natural and social sciences
Network analysis can be seen as the most promising method to mediate between industrial ecology’s overall systems approach and the complex structures found in society
It is a well established method across scientific disciplines, including the social sciences. It has been successfully applied in industrial ecology, in which localized phenomena of industrial symbiosis have been a key focus, and where metrics from both the social and natural sciences are used to understand sociometabolic structures
Summary
The field of industrial ecology can be considered to be “the study of the flows of materials and energy in industrial and consumer activities, of the effect of these flows on the environment, and of the influence of economic, political, regulatory and social factors on the flow, use and transformation of resources” (White, 1994, p.v.) As is recognized in the field (e.g. Fischer-Kowalski and Weisz, 1999), this requires an understanding of both the physical and the social realms and, significantly, their complex interrelations. In this review we propose that network analysis represents the most promising method to integrate industrial ecology across disciplinary lines (challenge a); and by drawing on an existing review framework of social network analyses we derive an analytical framework for Social-Material Network Analyses It acknowledges the differences between the social and natural realms by enabling the intentional (re)design of more eco- and resource efficient industrial networks (challenge b). We discuss in how far Social-Material Network Analyses can rely on evolutionary social theory by drawing on related research in geography and economics Another facet of aspect b relates to the different social dimensions of industrial networks.
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