Professor of history, Christopher Jones, was recently awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.
The ACLS Fellowship program awards researchers in all disciplines of the humanities and related social sciences to dedicate their time towards a project of major scholastic work. Jones was chosen to be one of 71 recipients of the award out of around 1,200 applicants. His project, “Immaterial Growth: Energy and Economics in the American Century,” will examine how, when, and why we’ve come to see economics and ecology as separate and opposed, when actually history shows economists once thought that ecological aspects mattered.
Jones is looking to answer a big question that a lot of people are asking: “Are economic growth and sustainability compatible?” He hopes to find out where the divide happened.
“As a historian, how I’m approaching this, is to ask how and why have we come to see economics and ecology as separate and opposed, when actually history shows economists once thought that ecological aspects mattered,” Jones said. “It has not always been the case that we’ve imagined economics and ecology separate. That has been a historical development. My hope is, to chart the path by which that came, to what I would consider an odd place where they’re totally different. As well as how the historical view can then inform this question about the future of economic growth and sustainability that a lot of people are asking with different methodologies and approaches."
Being granted this fellowship has allowed Jones more opportunity to do his research, and to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.
“Basically what the fellowship does is give me time,” he said. “I have the ideas, I have the broad ideas, but there's a lot of nitty gritty to implement into the story, so it’s time to visit some archives, read some primary sources, and time to write the narrative, rewrite the narrative and pull it together. The fellowship is a significant acceleration of the pace of which I can get things done.”
By the end of his project, Jones’ goal is to have completed a manuscript of his research. He will be looking at the series of developments that have lead to the divide in economy and ecology. His focus will be on the late 19th century, up to the late 20th century and will include important historical figures such as economists, Robert Solow and Herman Daly.
“What I’m looking at is how economics excludes the natural world from what it thinks it has to pay attention to,” he said. “Such that economists model things such as growth. They think a lot about capital, they think about labor, they think about technological change. They don’t really think a lot about the health of planetary systems, the availability of resources, the availability of what environmentalists call ‘sinks.’ Which is a model where the atmosphere is a sink for carbon dioxide, and if it ceases to flow away we don’t have to take account of that."
Jones appreciates the opportunity to conduct the research needed to answer these questions.
“It’s an extremely exciting opportunity and I’m extraordinarily grateful,” he said. “They get incredible applications and to be selected is a real honor and it’s exciting because I think this project matters, and is going to give me the time to pull it together in a way that would have taken much longer, otherwise.”
Jones’ fellowship begins in July 2017 and will end in February 2018.