From a social science perspective, one of the central points of ecological restoration is that it implies not only acknowledgement of society’s invention of nature, but also of nature’s answers to human actions. In this article, the author argues that the reflections of the early-20th century sociologists Georg Simmel and Émile Durkheim on the place of human beings in nature could serve as a model for integrating restored and invented nature into sociological analysis, while at the same time allowing other species and nonhuman nature a measure of independence as subjects or actors in a network of relationships that includes humans. Simmel’s concept of society as a web of reciprocal interaction and reciprocal effect (Wechselwirkung), in particular, is of importance for descriptions of a community that includes nonhuman as well as human elements.
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