Human ecologic

Human Ecology Review, 2017

As we enter the twenty-first century, ecological concepts have been adopted by, and adapted to, virtually every academic and applied field-from the social sciences and humanities to engineering, planning, medicine, business, and politics. With ever-increasing awareness, humanity is arriving at an understanding that we live in an ecological-and a human ecological-world. Ecology, as an interdisciplinary science, has always wrestled with topics of complexity and comprehensiveness. However, some of the most challenging issues have occurred at the intersection of natural and human ecology. For some, ecology should focus on the scientific study of nature; for others, humans are an inescapable part of the living world and the domain of ecology must include them. These concerns date to before the founding of the Ecological Society of America (ESA); indeed, they were a significant aspect of ecology from the outset. Human ecology has a complex history. The first decades of the twentieth century saw multiple attempts to initiate the field, coming not from scientific ecology, but from social sciences and human studies disciplines such as geography, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. During the 1950s and 1960s, similar attempts were made in various applied fields, including health, planning, architecture, and design. However, these initiatives seldom extended beyond their fields of origin, and they rarely had any relation to one another. ESA produced multiple advocates for human ecological orientations over the years, along with many attempts to establish formal organizational structures-though these efforts tended to be periodic and not sustained (see ). In the 1970s and 1980s, a truly interdisciplinary human ecology began to emerge, stimulated in part by the advent of the environmental movement and by the founding of an assortment of academic degree programs in human ecology worldwide. Further developments followed with the emergence of regionally based professional societies, including the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, the European

Human Ecology Review

Ecological Economics, 2004

Human Ecology Review, 2021

Broadening theoretical and methodological underpinnings will help human ecology professionals remain effective in responding to complex crises facing humanity (e.g., climate change, environmental degradation, social inequality). Diversified theoretical offerings strengthen academic and professional work, because diversity drives innovation in practice. This paper explores transdisciplinary human ecology, a neologism proposed in the early 1990s by both ecological scientists and home economists. After describing home economics and ecological sciences' approaches to human ecology theory, the Nicolescuian transdisciplinary methodology, and transdisciplinary human ecology as conceived by home economics and ecological sciences, the paper shifts to an inaugural discussion of how human ecology theory can be augmented with Nicolescuian transdisciplinary axioms and transdisciplinary human ecology. This paper served as a seed catalyzing the uptake of transdisciplinary human ecology.

Journal of Applied Ecology, 2009

1. The urgency and complexity of current environmental problems require ecologists to engage in cross-disciplinary research with social scientists, among others. 2. This study explores what ecologists expect from such cross-disciplinary engagements, through a review of editorial statements in key ecological journals and an empirical survey of ecologists working with social scientists. 3. Ecologists were found to have different perspectives on collaborating with social scientists depending upon whether they had an instrumental or non-instrumental outlook on the role of social sciences. 4. Ecologists are also pursuing other approaches to incorporate human dimensions into their work, including engaging end-users and stakeholders in their research; and enlarging the scope of ecology to include human subjects/objects in their research focus. 5. Synthesis and applications. Ecologists face strategic choices when incorporating human/social dimensions in their work-whether engagement with stakeholders, enlargement of ecology as a life science, or active exchange with the social sciences. The choice depends on the stance taken on the place of humans in nature. Each strategy poses specific challenges for ecologists relating respectively to: the justification of how and which stakeholders to engage; the avoidance of naïve borrowings of terms and methods from the social sciences; and the training needed for working in interdisciplinary teams.

2008

Problems in human ecology are complex, interrelated, incommensurable and interdisciplinary. The often need to involve stakeholder approaches and show a plurality of values. Research strategies should deal with these characteristics and research methods reflect these characteristics. The paper analyses these aspects in two ways. In the first part the results of the analysis of 15 research papers are discussed. The focus is on the methods that are used in these papers. It is shown that research in human ecology uses a mix of methods that stem from a broad group of scientific disciplines. The heterogeneous set of data that results from this array of approaches necessitates methods to integrate and structure these data. The second part of the paper addresses in a synoptical way the results of the implementation of an environmental management system in 39 primary schools in South Africa. The results show how such an environmental education programme illustrates to characteristics of approaches to environmental problems.

13 so that both habitat conservation and land-use development understand and apply best practice methodologies. Ecosystem services can only be sustained through long-term planning and monitoring the right parameters. It " s not, for instance, how many wetlands we have left, but the quality of what we " ve got left. What does it mean to be a human ecologist conducting an open transdisciplinary inquiry? Human Ecology in its various forms-as a way of knowing, a form of transdisciplinary inquiry and a university teaching program-has spread from a narrow base in a few universities in 1972 to worldwide programmes in 2011. This article tells how the field of inquiry has developed and gives details of one current Human Ecology Program as presented to students in 2009. While Human Ecology is a disciplined form of inquiry, it is a-disciplinary, in that it is inclusive of the disciplines but is not bound by any. In being transdisciplinary it draws eclectically on the disciplines as w...

Human Ecology