Confronting economic profit with hierarchy theory: The concept of gain in ecology

Abstract

AbstractContemporary problems are often complicated by values intruding into the arena of material systems. But there have always been values in biology and social science because they are required to assess how biosocial structures have models embodying purpose as an issue separate from the models of the scientists. Values are addressed seriously in economic discourses, and other discussions will benefit from paying attention to how the dismal science does that. Economic notions of profit have values embedded in them in a way that generally does not occur in ecology and the other natural sciences. Here we generalize profit as gain in settings beyond strict economics in a way that encourages placing values properly in biological and historical social systems. Complications of elaborate control quickly enter the scene at this point and in this paper we invoke hierarchy theory to keep levels of analysis straight. Hierarchy theory often invokes dualities and a mix of process and structure that is fluid under changes in level of analysis. Beyond this, the things the hierarchy represents changes over time, so we must extend discourse of level of analysis to include how time forces the use of new levels of analysis as hierarchies change over time. Notions of gain and profit are recursive as the system uses resources and must change strategies to deal with scarcity. This in turn forces increases in efficiency in yet a new round of change. The transition from abundant resources used carelessly to scarce resources used efficiently changes controls in biosocial systems. Such changes over time amount to hierarchical restructuring, which in turn requires of the observer meticulous application of new levels of analysis as the system is redefined. The system bounded at a new hierarchical level encounters dualities embedded in the hierarchical concept of the holon. The holon offers a precision of definition of the new system as it exists as an autonomous whole while still being part of some larger system. We introduce these shifts and dualities using examples from nuclear energy, colonial insects and changes in complex societies such as the Roman Empire and the EU. In the end both ideas of profit and hierarchy theory are clarified in a two‐way exchange that moves forward our understanding of biosocial systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.