Bookchin's Social Ecology is very closely related to Global Egalitarianism, and I think it could be one of the more important intellectual traditions in your framework.

The distinctive contribution is that Bookchin connects human equality, freedom, ecology, economics, and political organization into one theory.

Social Ecology → Global Egalitarianism

Bookchin's basic argument was that ecological destruction cannot be understood separately from social hierarchies. His famous formulation was that the domination of nature is connected to the domination of human beings by other human beings.

That produces several strong connections:

  • Equality: Social Ecology opposes systems of domination based on class, wealth, gender, ethnicity and political hierarchy.

  • Ecology: A genuinely egalitarian society must also develop a non-dominating relationship with the natural world.

  • Decentralization: Bookchin favored relatively small, self-governing communities rather than highly centralized political systems.

  • Participatory democracy: His idea of libertarian municipalism places political decision-making in local assemblies where ordinary people directly participate.

  • Economic democracy: Communities should have substantial democratic control over economic resources rather than leaving major decisions to either corporations or centralized bureaucracies.

  • Commons: Bookchin's vision is compatible with collectively managed resources and community stewardship.

  • Interdependence: Human beings are not isolated individuals; they exist within social and ecological systems.

  • Universalism: The goal is not simply equality within one community but the creation of a society in which domination itself is progressively dismantled.

What makes Bookchin different from ordinary socialism?

This is where I think Bookchin becomes particularly valuable for your project.

A conventional socialist argument might be:

Economic inequality is the fundamental problem; redistribute economic power.

Bookchin asks a broader question:

Why do hierarchical relationships exist at all, and how do social hierarchies reproduce ecological domination?

Consequently, he brings together:

Anarchism + socialism + ecology + participatory democracy + municipalism

That combination is unusually close to what you have been calling Global Egalitarianism.

His most important contribution: hierarchy

Bookchin's concept of hierarchy is probably the idea I'd emphasize most strongly.

For him, the problem isn't merely that one person has more money than another. A society can have economic redistribution while retaining:

  • political elites

  • racial domination

  • patriarchy

  • bureaucratic domination

  • ecological exploitation

  • centralized authority.

Social Ecology therefore asks whether we can create institutions in which people participate as equals rather than being systematically organized into relationships of domination.

That fits beautifully with your earlier discussion of anarchism.

Bookchin's political solution

His concept of libertarian municipalism is especially relevant to your Creating Utopia work.

The basic model is:

Local assemblies
↓
Direct democratic decision-making
↓
Federation of municipalities
↓
Democratic coordination at larger scales

Rather than abolishing political organization altogether, Bookchin envisioned reconstructing politics from the bottom up.

That is remarkably compatible with your interest in town halls, citizens' assemblies, participatory design and imagining alternative neighborhoods.

And there's a particularly interesting connection to your "Global" concept

Bookchin's later thinking was not simply about making one utopian village.

The model is confederation: autonomous communities cooperate and coordinate with one another while retaining substantial local democratic control.

You could therefore conceptualize the connection as:

Local egalitarian communities → democratic confederation → ecological society → global network of self-governing communities

That is quite different from creating a single centralized "global government."

Where I'd place Bookchin among your mentors

I would give Bookchin a very prominent position, but I would not make him synonymous with anarchism.

Your intellectual map could look something like:

Humanism
→ equal human worth

Socialism
→ economic equality

Anarchism
→ freedom from domination

Bookchin / Social Ecology
→ ecological + social equality and participatory democracy

Participatory Democracy
→ equal political voice

Global Egalitarianism
→ integration of these principles across humanity

And Bookchin adds something that your other traditions don't provide quite as explicitly:

An egalitarian society must overcome not only domination of humans by humans, but also the social structures that produce domination of nature.

For your dissertation, I think Bookchin may actually be one of the strongest theoretical bridges between your "Creating Utopia" work and Global Egalitarianism, because his model turns egalitarian values into a concrete question of how neighborhoods, municipalities, economies and ecological systems could actually be organized.