Where does mutualism collide?

In ecology and evolutionary biology, mutualism is an interaction between two species that benefits both of them, a plus/plus relationship in which each partner gains in survival or reproduction from the other's presence. Familiar cases include flowering plants and their pollinators, plant roots and the fungi that feed them (mycorrhizae), and reef fish that pick parasites off larger fish. Boucher, James, and Keeler's 1982 review The Ecology of Mutualism gathered these interactions into one field and set them apart from one-sided benefit (commensalism) and from exploitation (parasitism). The referent is a relationship between organisms of different species, measured by fitness, and it has nothing to do with an economic doctrine or a member-run insurance body.[1]

Unit

One interaction between two species in which both gain in fitness

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed by measuring each species' survival or reproductive gain when the partner is present versus absent

In political economy, mutualism is the economic and political theory developed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in which production and exchange are organised through voluntary reciprocity rather than through the state or through capitalist ownership. Its central proposals include free association of producers, workers' cooperatives, mutual credit banks that lend at cost, and the exchange of goods valued by the labour that made them. Proudhon set out this program in his 1851 General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, where free contract and reciprocity are meant to replace governing authority. This referent is a theory about how people might organise economic life, and it is unrelated to a biological interaction between species or to a particular kind of insurance body, even though all three share the word.[2]

Unit

A theory of exchange built on reciprocity, free contract, and credit at cost

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Elaborated and debated as political-economic doctrine in Proudhon's writings and later mutualist thought, not measured empirically

In sociology and social history, mutualism (or mutual aid) names the cooperative, member-run organisations through which ordinary people pool risk and help one another: friendly societies, fraternal orders, cooperatives, and mutual insurers whose members pay dues and draw benefits in sickness, old age, or death. Van Leeuwen's 2016 Mutual Insurance 1550-2015 traced these bodies from guild welfare and friendly societies to present-day micro-insurers, showing how members shared risk before and alongside the modern welfare state. The referent is a form of collective social organisation, counted by membership and benefits paid, and it is distinct from a two-species interaction in nature and from Proudhon's economic doctrine, though the sociological meaning and the economic one both grew from the nineteenth-century culture of association.[3]

Unit

One member-run body pooling contributions and paying benefits

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Studied through membership rolls, dues, and benefits paid, using the records of societies and insurers