Human Ecology
1945; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/219688
ISSN1537-5390
Autores Tópico(s)Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
ResumoHuman ecology, one of the latest arrivals on the social science scene, has borrowed its conceptual framework and methods from plant and animal ecology. Malthusianism, Darwinism, the social survey movement, and human geography are among the precursors of human ecology, which first received systematic formulation by Park and others about 1915. It strives for the objective depiction and analysis of the spatial, temporal, physical, and technological bases of social life. The capacity for symbolic communication, rationality, relatively great mobility, and formal organization and control and the possession of a technology and culture distinguish human beings from plants and animals; the recognition of these differences makes human ecology a unique social science discipline. It is concerned with localized, or territorially delimited, social structures and phenomena, the community being the core concept. The definition of natural, as distinguished from administrative, areas and of regions has been one of its chief theoretical and practical contributions. The discovery of the patterns into which social phenomena group themselves and of the coincidence of the patterns has had important implications for social control and planning. Ecological facts, not being self-explanatory, must be understood in the light of sociocultural and psychic phenomena.
Referência(s)