In the context of the 50th anniversary symposium of the Ecophysiology section of ESA, and the urgent and elevated attention to racism in the United States, I will use this talk to reflect on some of the social influences on the history and development of our discipline. The question I start with is: how has the history of race and power influenced ecophysiology as a discipline? How do these factors influence the questions we ask, and the methods we use? Caveat: I approach this as a practicing ecologist, and not a professional historian or social scientist.
Results/Conclusions
There are (at least) three intellectual roots of ecology that are strongly informed by social structures and the history of settler-colonial societies: 1) the development of biogeography in tandem with the expansion of empire; 2) the origins of Darwinism and the individualistic school of ecology in tandem with capitalism; and 3) invention of the modern idea of wilderness and erasure of the influence of indigenous (and other marginalized) groups on land and natural resources. Moreover, ecophysiology in the United States is strongly tied to the ‘Chicago school’ of ecology, emerging in an intellectual context that embraced and reinforced American racism. I hope that discussion and reflection on these historical influences can contribute to a dialog about the intellectual and social structure of ecophysiology today and our future trajectory together.