Human ecology
The human ecology deals with the relationship between humans and their ( natural ) environment. The central question is, how humans and human societies with nature and with their environment interact.
Human Ecology in the U.S.
The research field of human ecology emerged - building on work done in the early years of the 20th century by the chemist Ellen Swallow Richards and the geographer J. Paul Goode - in the 1920s by a group of sociologists of the Chicago School, in particular by Robert Ezra Park, Ernest W. Burgess and Robert D. McKenzie in the USA. Other major authors of this period were Howard W. Odum and the Indian sociologist Radhakamal Mukerjee.
Once in the 1950s, human ecology ideas were rarely represented in sociology ( except eg Amos Hawley ), were in the 1970s the human ecological themes in sociology in particular by William R. Catton (* 1926) and Riley E. Dunlap picked up again prominent. The core idea of Catton and Dunlap was to move away from the Durkheimian paradigm to explain social facts only by social facts. Instead, they wanted to bring physical and biological factors as independent, the social structure and other social phenomena influencing variables in sociology. This paradigm shift can be described as a shift away from the classical sociological human exemptionalism paradigm (HEP ) towards a new ecological paradigm or new environmental paradigm (NEP ). What this means is that people are no longer regarded as an exception species, hence, outside of genetic evolution is cultural and adaptable, and are influenced more by social than by biological standards. Instead, people are considered in the context of human ecology as one of many species that interacts with the limited natural environment.
A line of conflict between this new paradigm and the classical sociological approach lay in the eyes of many critics is that so society and culture are devalued. This was considered by some sociologists as an affront, but has now established itself as self-evident and enforced (eg the actor-network theory within the sociology of science ) in other sub-disciplines.
The scientific approach
In the German-speaking human ecology is often interpreted scientifically, as a counter- flow to a sociological interpretation. This is partly attributable to the influence of Eugene Odum, who in the U.S. with one of the first comprehensive textbooks for ( scientific ) Ecology ( Fundamentals of Ecology, 1959) and humans explicitly einbezog. While the people come because of its large number and its particular ways a special role for the ecosystem earth, but go information, energy and material flows through the human society in quite a similar manner as the populations of other species, so that a scientific view is justified. A modern textbook of Human Ecology has written, for example, Nentwig.
Classification of Human Ecology
The Human Ecology is located at the intersection of the social sciences and natural sciences. Accordingly, human ecological approaches of representatives of many different disciplines operate.
Essentially participate:
- Anthropology
- Geography
- Ecology
- Sociology
Depending on the problem also participate in other related disciplines such as rural sociology, urban planning (see also Social Ecology ) and landscape planning, economics, or the historical sciences
Especially in geography, which even located at the interface between social and natural science, the human ecological approach is very valuable. It helps to overcome the apparent opposites of human geography and physical geography, and thus making a valuable contribution to a holistic human-environment research.
Definition of the German Society for Human Ecology
The German Society for Human Ecology defines the human ecology as follows:
" The human ecology is a new scientific discipline whose object of research are the interrelationships and interactions between society and the environment. Its core is a holistic approach that incorporates physical, cultural, economic and political aspects. The term human ecology originates from the sociological work of the Chicago School in 1920 and has since spread from a research perspective in the natural sciences, social sciences and planning as well as in medicine. In some countries, university professorships have been established. "