Personal Growth, Professional Development, Ongoing Education.

What Is Human Ecology?

Anne Thornley of Newcastle, NSW wrote:

I understand, for instance, what chemistry does. It deals with the elements and how they form compounds and how those elements and compounds behave with one another and with different conditions of temperature and pressure. Also I see how chemistry is applied to industry.

What I want to know is what is Human Ecology, what does it do and how is it applied?
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Anne, thank you for your question.

First of all Human Ecology is an emergent science. This means that unlike Chemistry, which has been studied since it developed out of alchemy, Human Ecology is recent and is still emerging. This emergence is a result of human problems for as we ask questions so we have to keep finding better ways to answer them. By ‘better’ it is meant ‘more effective’, ‘more apt’, ‘more fitting’ the problem or situation under study.

Chemistry is a direct science. It directly studies elements and their inter-actions. However, it also uses mathematics so we could say that in chemistry mathematics is a meta - science. That is, it goes with the prime study of elements.

Human Ecology is a meta – science, in other words it usually goes with other forms of investigation, providing access to factors unreachable by a single discipline. For instance, a National Park has conflict between various user groups. The Park engages a Human Ecologist to work with various disciplines and interest groups including farmers at the boundary of the Park, foresters, tourist operators, visitors to the Park, a company seeking mining rights, hydrologists who want to protect the Park’s water table from nearby irrigation farms, animal rights groups, State Government and National Park employees.

Because of the range of conflicting interests a process is required which can ‘go with’ the various differing viewpoint. In this case the
State Government, as the ultimate authority, requires a range of skills including research, conflict resolution, effective and diplomatic communication and education. The task of the Human Ecologist will be to design strategies which fulfill a number of criteria including: (a) participation by all stake-holders, (b) resolution of conflict (c) avenues for feed-back, questioning and critique and (d) an agreed outcome.

To understand the way Human Ecology works as a meta-discipline it is helpful to consider the project, or field of study, of Human Ecology.
The project is the relational world. This means firstly the relationships between people. It does not take much insight to recognize that a major problem on the planet, particularly in zones of conflict, is a lack of deep human communication. This is understood by those skilled at conflict resolution who see in their work that once people really listen and talk to one another then conflict may be resolved.

Secondly, Human Ecology is concerned with the relationship of people to the physical environment. From the European Enlightenment and subsequent Scientific Revolution we gained the idea that Nature existed as a resource for man to exploit. There are some famous quotations from scientists of the day such as Francis Bacon’s insistence that Nature was to be ‘tamed’. In other words the physical environment came to be seen as something inert to exploit as man saw fit.

A cursory view of global physical environment informs us that the environment is in crisis. For example, of all the great rivers we learned about in primary school, the Tigris, Euphrates, Brahamaputra, Amazon, Nile and Yellow River, not one is fresh and flowing with life. Each is poisoned one way or another; each lacks the fish stocks it is capable of carrying and many suffer from damming and being used for industrial waste - disposal.

In short mankind lacks a sense of humility in the face of large and complex eco-systems and it is the task of Human Ecology to return that appreciation that the ocean, rivers, forests, mountains, grasslands….are large and more complex than man ever imagined and that man needs to approach them with some humility. The age of dominating Nature and bending her to mans’ industrial will has passed. We are now in the age of survival and must repair and conserve the physical environment which provides us with our life.

Another major role of Human Ecology is as a ‘trans’ discipline. That is, a discipline which can encompass other disciplines. Individual disciplines have over time developed jargon, methodology and reporting means which others cannot always readily understand. It has been a moot point for some years that various university faculties can produce graduates who cannot effectively communicate with one another when they meet in the market and work place. It is a sad testament to the universities’ resistance to change that this ‘cocooning’ still occurs.

In today’s world there are many matters which are too complex for any single discipline to encompass. Climatology is one such area of complexity for it involves geologists, physicists, geographers, climate data recording centers, oceanographers, and modelers. Thus a common language is required in order for the various disciplines to effectively work together. This is the role of trans-disciplinary Human Ecology for it can ‘span’ the various specialties and provide a common language for research and reporting.

If Human Ecology is both a meta and a trans discipline what does it comprise?

In a sense Human Ecology comprises a set of professional competencies which are largely encompassed by four groups: Researching, Learning, Designing and Communicating. These competencies are applied within a broader field of ‘ways of thinking’ which includes critical thinking, scientific thinking, systemic thinking, ecological thinking… Until it was challenged in the late 20th century,
there existed only one authoritative ‘way of thinking’ and that was scientific thinking. Anything which did not conform to this ‘dominant paradigm’ was pooh hoed and marginalized. Of course there are many diverse and valid ways of thinking and it is a matter of applying the appropriate one to the context in question.

The four competencies of researching, learning, designing and communicating are themselves developed from a foundation of epistemology, methodology and ontology. Furthermore within the definitions of these we are drawn into the assumptions which underlie all human activity. These assumptions may be viewed here.

Personal Empowment though Social Action. Here is how you can participate.

 

In conclusion, Human Ecology has been emerging since the last quarter of the 20th century in response to mankind’s need to find a way forward when known ways had become stuck. For instance there are no technical questions left unanswered yet basic problems persist for large sections of humanity. These problems are due to poor distribution of wealth, education and opportunity; lack of communication; egotistic behaviour by despotic leaders and an inability of the wealthy world to relate to the poor world. In other words problems persist due to a lack of healthy relating both to other human beings and also to our physical environment.

In the same way that we have come to know the behaviour of animals and natural systems by studying their ecology so we are now coming to understand ourselves through the creation of a new understanding of our own human ecology. In many ways this emerging understanding is nothing new, it is rather a rediscovery of our own human roots which are structurally coupled to, and embedded in, Nature and as such are centered in co-operation, consensuality and tenderness.

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