Section 2 summarizes briefly the theoretical
inspiration from the sociology of science. Section 3
outlines the characteristic cognitive features of ecological
economics at the time of the birth of the field;
this is a small repetition from my paper on the early
history, allowing the two papers to be read independently.
In Section 4, it is described how the development
in ecological economics was influenced by
broader social factors during the following years, and
Section 5 highlights the inflow of different groups of
researchers to the field as well as the outflow from it.
Section 6 outlines the development of different
research programmes inside the framework of ecological
economics and some of the tensions that have
emerged in the field, whereas Section 7 describes the
organizational development. Finally, Section 8 summarizes
the characteristics of ecological economics
related to the theoretical inspiration and briefly
assesses the future prospects.