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Human Ecology Information

Human ecology is the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments.

Contents

Development of human ecology

Ecology as a discipline was technically born when Ernst Haeckel used the word "oekologie" in 1866 to describe the study of an organism’s relationship to its environment.[1] Ecology was revolutionary at this time because it encouraged interdisciplinarity within the sciences—it created a bridge between the physical sciences and the biological sciences in order to study systems of both biotic and abiotic factors.

Human ecology is composed of concepts from ecology like interconnectivity, community behavior, and spatial organization. From the beginning, human ecology was present in geography and sociology,[2] but also in biological ecology and zoology. However, it was the social scientists who applied ecological ideas to humans in a rigorous way.[3] Throughout the 20th century, few biological ecologists really tackled human ecology, but they tended to focus on humans’ impact on the biotic world----which is only half of the picture.[4] Paul Sears is the perfect example of this, an ecologist who realized the disastrous effects that humans were having on the environment and called for human ecology to act as a means to solve them.[5] However, some social scientists expanded human ecology to include also the physical environment's impact on people.[6]

It is interesting to note that although social scientist human ecologists got their ideas from biological ecologists, these early biological ecologists had originally adapted social concepts to the natural world. These concepts that transcended disciplines and passed from the social to the biological and back to the social are the basis for human ecology.

The academic foundations of a human ecology can be attributed to the sociology department at the University of Chicago and to the work of Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess’ 1921 book Introduction to the Science of Sociology.[7] Park and Burgess used ecological concepts like those from Frederick Clements and Charles Darwin to describe human systems, specifically focusing on cities. Their student, Roderick McKenzie also played an important role in solidifying human ecology as a sub-discipline within the Chicago school. They emphasized that the difference between human ecology and the ecology of other organisms is that human societies are organized on not only the biotic level but the cultural level as well.

Human ecology as human-environment interactions is an ancient idea in geography. In the modern era, the term appears as early as 1908 in the discipline (Titles and Abstracts of Papers Presented to the Association from 1904 to 1910, Inclusive). Harlan Barrows addresses the topic in his presidential speech to the Association of American Geographers in 1923. Barrows’ speech is an attempt to redefine geography as the science of human ecology, emphasizing its study of humans’ relationships with the land instead of just a regional study of the physical land.[8]

In the early 1950s anthropologists, led by Julian H. Steward, began to further develop this human ecological study of culture, asserting that it is the intermediary between humans and their environments and what makes humans unique. Anthropologists had long been interested in humans’ direct relationships with their environments so it was easy for them to incorporate human ecology into their discipline.

Psychological ecology was also developing at the same time—a field that expanded a person’s “environment” to include their mental representation of it and focused on studying people’s behavior under field conditions instead of in a controlled laboratory setting. Kurt Lewin emphasized that the “ecology” of this mental world was the study of relations within consciousness, dramatically shifting the term but further expanding the realm of human ecology.

Ecological ideas also showed up in economics, with Kenneth E. Boulding being the strongest proponent for integrating the two disciplines that share semantic origins (“eco” meaning house). Boulding drew parallels between ecology and economics, most generally in that they are both studies of individuals as members of a system, and indicated that the “household of man” and the “household of nature” could somehow be integrated to create a perspective of greater value.[9][10]

In the late 1960s, ecological concepts started to become integrated into the applied fields, namely architecture, landscape architecture, and planning. Ian McHarg called for a future when all planning would be “human ecological planning” by default, always bound up in humans’ relationships with their environments. He emphasized local, place-based planning that takes into consideration all the “layers” of information from geology to botany to zoology to cultural history.[11]

In these early years, human ecology was still deeply enmeshed in its respective disciplines: geography, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and economics. Through the 1970s and 80s scholars like Gerald L. Young and Britta Jungen began to call for a greater integration between all of the scattered disciplines that had each established some kind of ecological thinking.[12] It was clear that throughout the 20th century human ecology was solidly multidisciplinary, in that it included people from a vast variety of disciplines, but it had not yet become interdisciplinary. During the 1970s and 80s this slowly began to change as more interdisciplinary programs, institutions, and organizations became founded focusing on human ecology.

Pioneers and proponents

Many people have contributed to the study of human ecology. The following are some of the most influential scholars:

Concepts

Many human ecological concepts come from ecology.

Educational Programs

Colleges and universities around the world offer classes, programs and degrees in human ecology. Listed below are a sample of these institutions and the programs they offer.

Human Ecology Organizations

Journals

Recent Trends

While theoretical discussions continue, research published in [Human Ecology Review] suggests that recent discourse has shifted toward applying principles of human ecology. Some of these applications focus instead on addressing problems that cross disciplinary boundaries or transcend those boundaries altogether. Scholarship has increasingly tended away from Young's idea of a "unified theory" of human ecological knowledge—that human ecology may emerge as its own discipline—and more toward the pluralism best espoused by Shepard: that human ecology is healthiest when "running out in all directions.".[23] But human ecology is neither anti-discipline nor anti-theory, rather it is the ongoing attempt to formulate, synthesize, and apply theory to bridge the widening schism between man and nature. This new human ecology emphasizes complexity over reductionism, focuses on changes over stable states, and expands ecological concepts beyond plants and animals to include people.

There is wide agreement that human ecology seeks to integrate diverse perspectives.[24] The growing popularity of liberal arts colleges have increased understanding and recognition of an interdisciplinary college education in the United States and thus human ecology—but mostly in academic circles. Paul Sears was an early proponent of applying human ecology. He saw the vast “explosion” of problems humans were creating for the environment and reminded us that “what is important is the work to be done rather than the label."[25]

In applied fields

In the applied fields of engineering, environmental planning, architecture, and landscape architecture, human ecology has continued to gain more currency.

Proponents of the new urbanism movement, like James Howard Kunstler and Andres Duany, have embraced the term human ecology as way to describe the problem of—and prescribe the solutions for—the landscapes and lifestyles of an automobile oriented society. Duany has called the human ecology movement to be "the agenda for the years ahead."[26]

While McHargian planning is still widely respected, the landscape urbanism movement seeks a new understanding between human and environment relations. Among these theorists is Frederich Steiner, who published Human Ecology: Following Nature's Lead in 2002 which focuses on the relationships among landscape, culture, and planning. The work highlights the beauty of scientific inquiry by revealing those purely human dimensions which underlie our concepts of ecology. While Steiner discusses specific ecological settings, such as cityscapes and waterscapes, and the relationships between socio-cultural and environmental regions, he also takes a diverse approach to ecology----considering even the unique synthesis between ecology and political geography.

Deiter Steiner's 2003 Human Ecology: Fragments of Anti-fragmentary view of the world is an important expose of recent trends in human ecology. Part literature review, the book is divided into four sections: "human ecology", "the implicit and the explicit", "structuration", and "the regional dimension".[27] Much of the work stresses the need for transciplinarity, antidualism, and wholeness of perspective.

In art

While some of the early writers considered how art fit into a human ecology, it was Sears who posed the idea that in the long run human ecology will in fact look more like art. Bill Carpenter (1986) calls human ecology the "possibility of an aesthetic science," renewing dialogue about how art fits into a human ecological perspective. According to Carpenter, human ecology as an aesthetic science counters the disciplinary fragmentation of knowledge by examining human consciousness.[28]

In education

While the reputation of human ecology in institutions of higher learning is growing, there is no evidence of human ecology at the primary and secondary education levels. Educational theorist Sir Ken Robinson has called for the need to diversify education so as to promote creativity in academic and non-academic (i.e.- educate their “whole being”) activities to constitute a “new conception of human ecology.”[29]

Further reading

See also

Environment portal
Ecology portal
Earth sciences portal
Sustainable development portal

References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2008)
  1. ^ Haeckel, E. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Berlin: G.Reimer.
  2. ^ Gross, M. 2004. "Human Geography and Ecological Sociology: The Unfolding of a Human Ecology, 1890 to 1930 – and Beyond," Social Science History 28(4): 575-605.
  3. ^ Moore 1920
  4. ^ Young, Gerald L. 1974. Human Ecology as an Interdisciplinary Concept.
  5. ^ Sears, P. 1954. Human Ecology: A problem in Synthesis. In Science, New Series 120 (3128) pp.959-963.
  6. ^ Gross, M. 2004. "Human Geography and Ecological Sociology: The Unfolding of a Human Ecology, 1890 to 1930 – and Beyond," Social Science History 28(4): 575-605.
  7. ^ Young, G.L. 1974. Human ecology as an interdisciplinary concept: A critical inquiry. Advances in Ecological Research. 8, 1-105.
  8. ^ Barrows, H. H. 1923. Geography as Human Ecology. Association of American Geographers Annual. 13:1-14.
  9. ^ Boulding, K.E. 1950. An Ecological Introduction. In A Reconstruction of Economics, Wiley, New York. pp. 3-17.
  10. ^ Boulding, K.E. 1966. Economics and Ecology. In Nature Environments of North America, F.F. Darling and J.P. Milton, eds, Doubleday New York. pp.225-231.
  11. ^ McHarg, I. 1981. Ecological Planning at Pennsylvania. In Landscape Planning 8(2):109-120
  12. ^ Young, G.L. 1974. Human ecology as an interdisciplinary concept: A critical inquiry. Advances in Ecological Research. 8, 1-105.
  13. ^ Barrows, H.H. 1923. Geography as Human Ecology. Association of American Geographers Annual. 13:1-14.
  14. ^ Park 1936
  15. ^ Boulding, K.E. 1950. An Ecological Introduction. In A Reconstruction of Economics, Wiley, New York. pp. 3-17.
  16. ^ Steward 1955
  17. ^ McKenzie, R.D. 1926. The Scope of Human Ecology. 20th Annual Meeting, 1925, Paper and Proceedings, vol. 20, American Sociological Society, Washington D.C., pp. 141-154.
  18. ^ Steiner, D. and M. Nauser (eds.). 1993. Human Ecology: Fragments of Anti-fragmentary Views of the World. London and New York: Routledge. Human Ecology Forum 108 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2008
  19. ^ Batson, G. 1978. The Pattern Which Connects. In Coevolution Quarterly. pp. 5-15.
  20. ^ Young, G.L. 1974. Human ecology as an interdisciplinary concept: A critical inquiry. Advances in Ecological Research. 8, 1-105.
  21. ^ Young, G.L. 1974. Human ecology as an interdisciplinary concept: A critical inquiry. Advances in Ecological Research. 8, 1-105.
  22. ^ Drury. 1998. Chance and Change. College of the Atlantic Internal Publication.
  23. ^ Shepard, Paul. 1967. What ever happened to human ecology? In Bioscience 891-894
  24. ^ Borden, R.J. and J. Jacobs. 1989. International Directory of Human Ecologists. Bar Harbor, ME: Society for Human Ecology.
  25. ^ Sears, P. 1954. Human Ecology: A problem in Synthesis. In Science, New Series 120 (3128) pp.959-963.
  26. ^ In Kunstler, J.H. 1994. The Geography of Nowhere. New York:Touchstone. pp.260
  27. ^ Steiner, D. and M. Nauser (eds.). 1993. Human Ecology: Fragments of Anti-fragmentary Views of the World. London and New York: Routledge. Human Ecology Forum 108 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2008
  28. ^ Carpenter, B. 1986. Human Ecology: The Possablilty of an Aesthetic Science. Paper presented at the Society for Human Ecology conference.
  29. ^ Robinson, K. 2006. TED Talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

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