Ellen Swallow Richards and Self-Sufficiency Standard

 

 

For a working adult in Illinois, an hourly wage of at least $8.57/hour was necessary in 2002 to earn the $1508 per month (with 176 hours per month of work) or $18,097 per year salary necessary to meet housing, food, transportation, miscellaneous, and tax expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). For a family of four, with two working adults, a pre-school child, and a school-age child, an hourly wage of at least $10.07 per adult was necessary in 2002 to earn the $3543 per month (for 176 hours per month of work) or $42,519 per year required to meet these same basic needs, as well as child care expenses (Pearce and Brooks 8). 

This Self-Sufficiency Standard makes clear that at least some of our basic needs have become commodities, which consumers must purchase for survival, a dilemma chemist Ellen Swallow Richards examines in her multiple explorations of human ecology at the turn of the twentieth century. The Human Ecology movement grew out of the work of Richards, who translated Haeckel’s work from its original German and, according to Robert Clarke, introduced the concept of ecology in the United States. Richards defined human ecology as "the study of the surroundings of human beings in the effects they produce on the lives of men" (1910). 

Instead of “fair use” approaches to ecology, with an ultimate goal to maximize benefits of nature for humans, our research sometimes explores how Richards’ human approaches to ecology are manifested in documentary and feature films addressing air pollution, climate change, water rights, and the clothing industry. This approach also points to sustainable development as an alternative to resource exploitations and the everyday eco-disasters associated with them. Our exploration of everyday eco-disasters demonstrates some of the disastrous consequences of applying an economic approach that condones over-development and exploitative overuse and commodification of resources sustaining our basic needs.