Oekology, 1892-1897
Oekology and Nutrition
Richards’s work in the fields of water, air, and food analysis led her to develop her first scientific field, oekology, the study of the environment, in 1892. Oekology was an interdisciplinary applied science that initially combined the fields of consumer nutrition and environmental education. It later included the fields of bacteriology, sociology, and dietetics. Richards chose to combine these fields because she classified air and water as major elements of the environment and food sources. In Plain Words About Food, Richards declared: “[i]f a food material may be defined as any substance which it is necessary to take into the body daily in order that life and health may be sustained, then water [and air are] food of the first importance” (3). Since she defined air and water as food and components of the environment, her use of the term environment not only referred to the macro-environment, the earth, but also a person’s micro-environment, their home, as well as individuals’ most intimate ecosystem, their bodies. Oekology, therefore, was Richards’s first attempt to solve the source of societies problems: her contemporaries’ ignorance of nutrition (3, 14).
Ellen Richards collecting pond scum, n.d., from http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/subjeco.html
Richards collected and analyzed water samples from all around the world.
The male scientific community never accepted oekology and as a result, oekology only survived as a movement for five years. In 1897, MIT forbade Richards from discussing oekology for one year. According to her biographer, Robert Clarke, the Institute was punishing Richards for an article she had written for the magazine The Outlook, where she scolded educators and scientists for refusing to accept oekology (14).
Apparently, in this article she also asserted that forcing educated women to stay in the home, was a form of oppression. At this time, women who attended college were required to choose between entering into holy matrimony and pursuing a career upon graduation. Those who opted to forgo marriage and a life of domesticity were accused of being unwomanly (15). Instead of caving to society’s pressure to marry and remain in the home, many of these women bonded together and boldly declared that they “would unleash maternal skills and capacities on a needy world” (15). Richards, who had no children, was living proof that it was possible for women to marry and have a blossoming career in social reform. Even though Richards was bold enough to write about the oppression of women in a magazine, she was not willing to risk her position within the Institute. Reluctantly, Richards submitted to MIT’s request. Yet, even as she complied with the Institute’s demand, she was developing a new movement that would empower women to enter the public sphere (14, 29).