Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 179, January 2021, 106695
Ecological Economics

COMMENTARY
A Reply to Levrel and Martinet

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Introduction

Levrel and Martinet (2020; hereafter LM) confuse two separate issues: classification relating to actual groups (their beliefs, motives and ideology) and the implications of a groups' (often paradigmatic) commitments including the implications for ontology, epistemology and methodology. The first concerns the existence of specific identifiable groups, which LM seem to accept even in terms of the validity of the classifications NRE/NEP/SEE. The second concerns how those groups' ideas fit with ideas relating to ecological, as opposed to any other, economics, and including incommensurability and incompatibility between theories, ideas and paradigms.

Section snippets

Categorisation of Ecological Economics

LM start by misrepresenting my work as being ‘normative’ and needing to meet the requirements of ‘positivism’. They state that any classification should provide “a positive diagnosis about the different ways of thinking within a field”; “this classification is more a normative view of what Spash thinks ecological economics should be rather than a positive description of the field”; “the positive and normative dimensions of the classification are not completely distinguished (or recognized) and

Factual Inaccuracies

LM claim I put forward a dichotomous classification. There are in fact three primary groupings and seven hypothesised categories, not two. My empirical work in the Cambridge Journal of Economics addresses all seven categories (Spash and Ryan, 2012); the study is cited but the content is absent from the discussion by LM.

LM state that “NEP do not have the ‘chance’ to be considered as economists”. In fact categories of NEP combined with economics (NRE or SEE or both) are explicitly hypothesised,

Misrepresenting Arguments on Pluralism

LM claim the three categories (NRE/NEP/SEE) “delegitimize methodological pluralism” and specifically reference the journal Ecological Economics in this respect. LM state my criticism of the journal is that it: “contains mainly contributions from the Bad neoclassical economists (Spash, 2012b).” (LM's emphasis). I have never used such a phrase as “Bad neoclassical economists”. They misleadingly attribute to me the argument that “the journal should not be a broad forum of discussion”. My argument

Closing Remarks

The prominent use of a 1960s Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to frame the commentary misrepresents my arguments. My categorisation is established on the basis of explaining the object of study, not a simplistic ethical dichotomy of good vs bad. Ugliness is an aesthetic judgment that is irrelevant here. LM misrepresent the motivation for my work (as established purely to “target” some “free rider ecological economists”, their terms not mine) through this personification of the

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