Human ecology

The academic discipline human ecology deals with the relationship between humans and their (natural) environment. The central question is, how do humans and human societies interact with nature and with their environment?

Table of contents

1 Establishing the field of human ecology 2 Quotes on Human ecology 3 See also 4 External links 5 Resources

Establishing the field of human ecology

In the USA, human ecology was established as a sociological field in the late 1970s by William R. Catton and Riley E. Dunlap, building onto the earlier works on human ecology by Chicago School's Robert E. Park. One main idea of Catton and Dunlap was to go away from the Durkheimian paradigm of explaining social facts only with social facts. Instead, they included physical and biological facts as independent variables influencing social structure and other social phenomenons. This change of paradigm can be described as a change from a classical sociological view of human exemptionalism to a new view (named new ecological paradigm by Catton and Dunlap). Humans are no longer the exeptional species that can use culture to adapt onto new environments and environmental change, and that is influenced more by social than by biological variables, but they are seen as one species out of many that interacts with a bounded natural environment.

A conflict line between this new paradigm and the classical sociological approach is the de-valuating of society and culture. Human ecology views human communities and human populations as part of the ecosystem of earth. In this view, sociology would be only a sub-discipline of ecology -- the special ecology of the species homo sapiens sapiens. Of course, this is seen as an affront by most sociologists.

It is disputed if human ecology is a sub-discipline of sociology, or if it is a sub-discipline of ecology. A point that strengthens the latter position is the methodological approach of human ecology, that is orientation rather along the lines of natural science then along the lines of social sciences. The inclusion or exclusion of human ecology in to sociology proper varies between countries and schools of sociological thinking. Environmental sociology is a field of sociology which encompasses the interactions between humans and nature/natural environment, but is rooted in the methodological and theoretical canon of sociology. Sometimes human ecology is seen as part of environmental sociology, sometimes it is seen as something completly different. Influences can also be seen between human ecology and the field of political ecology.

Quotes on Human ecology

Human Ecology is an interdisciplinary applied field that uses a holistic approach to help people solve problems and enhance human potential within their near environments - their clothing, family, home, and community. Human Ecologists promote the well-being of individuals, families, and communities through education, prevention, and empowerment. [1]

Human ecology explores not only the influence of humans on their environment but also the influence of the environment on human behaviour, and their adaptive strategies as they come to understand those influences better. [...] For us, human ecology is a methodology as much as an area of research. It is a way of thinking about the world, and a context in which we define our questions and ways to answer those questions [...] [1]

• Robert E. Park
• Ernest Burgess
• Charles Gaplin
• Louis Wirth

• Ecology, espc. Ecology#Human ecology
• Sociobiology
• Rural sociology
• Environmental sociology

• Society for Human Ecology (SHE)
• Human Ecology Review, the journal of SHE
• Long link list at SHE
• Dept. of Human Ecology at University of Alberta, Canada
• "What is Human Ecology?" at University of Oxford