Ecology

ECOLOGY IS THE study of the interaction between an organism and its physical environment. Human ecology specifically focuses on humans as a group of organisms and their mutual relationships within the habitat. The term ecology has its origin in two ancient Greek words: oikos (house or habitat) and logia (words or teaching). Thus, the concept of ecology has its origin the Greek oikologia, and could be rendered “teaching about the habitat.” This article explores three dimensions of ecology in order: human ecology, political ecology, and biological ecology. The central theme that unites these three subsets is how humans interact with the Earth.

Often, the term human ecology is used interchangeably with cultural ecology. The human geographers find dialectical relationships between people and nature and consider cultures as a meeting ground of the two major elements of ecology: humans and environments. Each culture grows in a specific natural environment along with each human group and its living on the Earth.

Thus, it is crucial for human geographers and cultural geographers to study interactions between humans and environment to understand spatial variations of culture, its development, and distributions. Human ecology consists of these two approaches: 1) how an environment impacts and shapes a culture; and 2) the human influence on the habitat and making of cultural landscape through culture building. Employing these approaches, human ecology encompasses several branches and concepts, and this article discusses a few of them to facilitate understanding of the dialectical human-environment relationships.

Cultural ecology studies the mutual influences between human groups and the environment. Cultural

ecology often qualifies culture as an effective mediator or medium for humans to facilitate their adaptation to physical environments. This process is called an adaptive system, and cultural ecologists render this system cultural adaptation. In this venue, cultural ecologists recognize the importance of studying plant and animal adaptations to understand human-environment relationships. Cultures are the basis of successful human adaptation to environment and its change through time. 

Historically, food, clothing, shelter, and knowledge served to reduce human difficulties to subsist in the midst of powerful nature. These cultural traits are examples of an adaptive strategy, and the strategy includes almost all aspects of our culture that enables us to prosper on the Earth. Although cultures function as a meeting ground between human and environment, we should note that the same or similar physical environment produces no identical cultures. This fact indicates that each group of people employs the unique strategy to survive in its natural setting. The interaction between the unique cultural traits and surrounding environmental conditions always result in a making of individual adaptive processes. Thus, we can observe an omnipresent two-way relationship between human and environment.

The approach and themes within cultural ecology often function as the crossroads of cultural and physical geographers, and it is closely identified with four schools of thought: environmental determinism, possibilism, environmental perception, and humans as modifiers of the Earth.

All of the four pillars are particularly revealed in the studies in ethnic geography, folk geography, and the examination of ecology in popular cultures is another vital perspective in geography as an academic discipline today.

Generally, folk groups are more involved with their physical environments, thus tend to establish an intimate relationship with nature. Therefore, cultural ecology as a geographical discipline maintains a relatively close association with folk geography. Folk adaptive strategies are based on sustainability and are usually the opposite from those of popular culture. Sustainability is judged by how people use natural products and consume energy in a way that does not destroy the environment.