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Dear All, FYPI, I have just prepared the abstract pasted below for a paper hopefully to be published in 'Environmental Economics' (hence please don't distribute to anyone else, yet). Hopefully this may provide some sustenance for your various endeavours. Please feel free to comment. Warmest Alan ------------------------------- Inclusionality and sustainability - attuning with the currency of natural energy flow and how this contrasts with abstract economic rationality By Alan D.M. Rayner[1] Abstract This paper explores how the way organisms relate energetically to changing circumstances in their natural neighbourhood contrasts with human behaviour induced by economic incentives and controls. It explains how the fundamental principles of much current economic and management theory arise from the abstract logic and self-definition that underlies objective mathematical and scientific representations of reality. This abstract rationality dislocates human identity from natural identity and results in an inversion of priorities from seeking sustainable, co-creative evolutionary relationship to striving for supremacy. By revealing the omission in the foundations of abstract rationality, this paper shows how a more natural, 'inclusional' form of reasoning, based on energy flow, could transform and restore our human sense of place as inhabitants, not 'exhabitants', of the world. Such a logical and psychological transformation is necessary for developing systems of economic and social governance that encourage rather than impede sustainable human-environmental relationships. The underlying principles of these systems align with those of traditional gift flow and the dynamics of heterogeneous natural ecosystems. Here, energy is relayed continuously and reciprocally between sites of supply and sites of receipt, hence sustaining diverse, complementary functionality and avoiding cancerous monopolization. According to these principles, notions of exclusive ownership and competition or co-operation amongst independent individuals or groups are logically and ecologically unsustainable as well as a source of profound human conflict. JEL classification: B59 Keywords: energy flow; logic; inclusionality; rationality; sustainability -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * MA, PhD, Reader, Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.